Dicaearchus of Messana (Greek: Δικαίαρχος, Dikaiarkhos; also written Dicearchus, Dicearch, Diceärchus, or Diceärch) (c. 350 – c. 285 BC) was a Greek philosopher, cartographer, geographer, mathematician and author. Dicaearchus was Aristotle's student in the Lyceum. Very little of his work remains extant. He wrote on the history and geography of Greece, of which his most important work was his Life of Greece. He made important contributions to the field of cartography, where he was among the first to use geographical coordinates. He also wrote books on philosophy and politics.
Life
He was the son of one Pheidias, and born at Messana in Sicily, though he passed the greater part of his life in Greece, and especially in Peloponnesus. He was a disciple of Aristotle,[1] and a friend of Theophrastus, to whom he dedicated some of his writings. He died about 285 BC.
Writings
Dicaearchus was highly esteemed by the ancients as a philosopher and as a man of most extensive information upon a great variety of things.[2] His work is known only from the many fragmentary quotations of later writers. His works were geographical, political or historical, philosophical, and mathematical; but it is difficult to draw up an accurate list of them, since many which are quoted as distinct works appear to have been only sections of greater ones. The fragments extant, moreover, do not always enable us to form a clear notion of the works to which they once belonged. The geographical works of Dicaearchus were, according to Strabo,[3] criticised in many respects by Polybius; and Strabo himself[4] is dissatisfied with his descriptions of western and northern Europe, where Dicaearchus had never visited.
Among his geographical works may be mentioned:
* Life of Greece (Greek: Βίος Ἑλλάδος) - The Bios Hellados, in three books[5] is Dicaearchus’ most famous work. In the mid 1st century BC it inspired Jason of Nysa’s Bios Hellados and Varro's De Vita Populi Romani. It exists in only 24 fragments,[6] but he apparently attempted to write a biography of the Greek nation from earliest times to the reign of Philip II. The most famous passages are those cited by Varro[7] and Porphyry[8] which suggest a dualistic view of progress. For example, the invention of agriculture alleviates hunger through the creation of surplus, but surplus in turn proves to be an incitement to greed which leads to war. Every human advance solves one problem but also engenders another. Passages which detailed human institutions and their history suggest he thought these could arrest decline. For example, his definition of country (Greek: πάτρα), family (Greek: φρατρία), and tribe (Greek: φυλή), is about the right ordering of human relations within the polis.[9] Dicaearchus apparently explained the saying, "sharing stops choking", as a reference to how humans learned to distribute surplus fairly.[10] Many fragments are interested in the origins of the music and culture of Greece.[11] This is in contrast to the debased symposiastic Greek culture of which he complains in some of his other works.[12] His interest in defining Greek culture in its heyday is thus partly polemical: he wishes to attack current fashions in music by reminding his readership of their original forms. The link between political decline and cultural debasement (as they saw it) was also made by his fellow Peripatetic and friend Aristoxenus.[13] In a celebrated passage, he compared the introduction of the ‘New Music’ into Greek theatres to the barbarization of the Poseidoniates in the Bay of Naples.[14]
* Circuit of the Earth (Greek: Γῆς περίοδος)[15] - This work was probably the text written in explanation of the geographical maps which Dicaearchus had constructed and given to Theophrastus, and which seem to have comprised the whole world, as far as it was then known.[16]
* Description of Greece (Greek: Ἀναγραφὴ τῆς Ἑλλάδος) - A work of this title dedicated to Theophrastus, and consisting of 150 iambic verses, is still extant under the name of Dicaearchus; but its form and spirit are both unworthy of Dicaearchus, and it is in all probability the production of a much later writer, who made a metrical paraphrase of the portion of the Circuit of the Earth which referred to Greece.
* On the heights of mountains[17] - A work which may have been part of his Circuit of the Earth. It was the earliest known attempt to measure the heights of various mountains by triangulation.
* Descent into (the Cave of) Trophonius (Greek: Ἡ εἰς Τροφωνίου κατάϐασις) - A work which consisted of several books, and, as we may infer from the fragments quoted from it, contained an account of the degenerate and licentious proceedings of the priests in the cave of Trophonius.[18]
* Some other works, such as Spartan Constitution (Greek: Πολιτεία Σπαρτιατῶν),[19] Olympic Dialogue (Greek: Ὀλυμπικὸς ἀγών),[20] Panathenaic Dialogue (Greek: Παναθηναικός),[21] and several others, seem to have been merely chapters of the Life of Greece.
Of a political nature was:
* Three-city Dialogue (Tripolitikos - Greek: Τριπολιτικός)[22] - A work which has been the subject of much dispute. It was probably a study of comparative government. Following Aristotle, Dicaearchus divided all governments into three categories: the democratic, aristocratic, and monarchical,[23] He advocated a "mixed" government, echoing the Spartan system, in which elements of all three categories play a part. This may have been an inspiration for Cicero's De Republica.
Among his philosophical works may be mentioned:
* Lesbian Books (Greek: Λεσϐιακοί) - In three books, which derived its name from the fact that the scene of the philosophical dialogue was laid at Mytilene in Lesbos. In it Dicaearchus endeavoured to prove that the soul was mortal.[24] Cicero[25] when speaking of a work On the Soul, probably means this work.
* Corinthian Dialogue (Greek: Κορινθιακοί) - In three books, was a sort of supplement to the Lesbiakoi.[26] It is probably the same work as the one which Cicero, in another passage,[27] calls On Human Destruction (Latin: de Interitu Hominum).
A work On the Sacrifice at Illium (Greek: περὶ τῆς ἐν Ἰλίῳ ϑυσίας)[28] seems to have referred to the sacrifice which Alexander the Great performed at Illium.
There are lastly some other works which are of a grammatical nature, and may be the productions of Dicaearchus, viz. On Alcaeus (Greek: Περὶ Ἀλκαίου),[29] and Summaries of the plots of Euripides and Sophocles (Greek: ὑποθέσεις τῶν Εὐριπίδου καὶ Σοφοκλέους μύθων),[30] but may have been the works of Dicaearchus, a grammarian of Lacedaemon, who, according to the Suda, was a disciple of Aristarchus, and seems to be alluded to in Apollonius.[31]
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A native of Messana in Sicily. He was a scholar of Aristotle's, and is called a Peripatetic philosopher by Cicero (De Off. ii. 5); but, though he wrote some works on philosophical subjects, he seems to have devoted his attention principally to geography and statistics. His chief philosophical work was two dialogues on the soul, each divided into three books, one dialogue (Κορινθιακοί) being supposed to have been held at Corinth, the other at Mitylené (Λεσβιακοί). In these he argued against the existence of the soul. The greatest performance, however, of Dicaearchus was a treatise on the geography, politics, and manners of Greece, which he called Βίος Ἑλλάδος, "The Life of Greece," a title imitated by Varro in his Vita Populi Romani. All the philosophical writings of Dicaearchus are lost. His geographical works have shared the same fate, except a few fragments. We have remaining one hundred and fifty verses of his Ἀναγραφὴ τῆς Ἑλλάδος, or "Description of Greece," written in iambic trimeters; and also two fragments of the Βίος Ἑλλάδος, one containing a description of Boeotia and Attica, and another an account of Mount Pelion. Dicaearchus's maps were extant in the time of Cicero (Ep. ad Att. vi. 2). Cicero was very fond of the writings of Dicaearchus, and speaks of him in terms of warm admiration (Ad Att. ii. 2). In one of the extant fragments Dicaearchus quotes Posidippus, and must therefore have been alive in B.C. 289. There is an edition of the fragments of Dicaearchus by Fuhr (Darmstadt, 1841).
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