in Antiquity, was a designation given to plays and all manner of sports acted on the stage; because playhouses were dedicated to Dionysius or Bacchus, and Venus, as being the deities of sports and pleasure.

DIONYSIUS I., from a private secretary became general and tyrant of Syracuse and all Sicily. He was likewise a poet; and having, by bribes, gained the tragic prize at Athens, he indulged himself so immoderately at table from excess of joy, that he died of the debauch, 368 B.C.; but some authors assert that he was poisoned by his physicians.

DIONYSIUS II., his son and successor, was a greater tyrant than his father. His subjects were obliged to apply Dionysius to the Corinthians for succour; and Timoleon, their general, having conquered the tyrant, forced him to flee to Corinth, where, it is said, he was obliged to keep a school for his subsistence. He died 343 B.C.

Dionysius Halicarnassensis, a celebrated historian, and one of the most judicious critics of antiquity, was born at Halicarnassus. After the battle of Actium he went to Rome, where he staid twenty-two years under the reign of Augustus, and there composed in Greek his History of the Roman Antiquities, in twenty books, of which the first eleven only are now remaining. There are also still extant several of his critical works. The best edition of the works of this author is that of Dr Hudson, Oxford, 1704; in Greek and Latin, 2 vols folio. It has been reprinted more correctly, with notes by Reiske, Leipzig, 1774-1777, in six vols. 8vo.