1.

DIO CHRYSOSTOM (c. A.D. 40-115), Greek sophist and rhetorician, was born
at Piusa (mod. _Brusa_), a town at the foot of Mount Olympus in
Bithynia. He was called Chrysostom ("golden-mouthed") from his
eloquence, and also to distinguish him from his grandson, the historian
Dio Cassius; his surname Cocceianus was derived from his patron, the
emperor Cocceius Nerva. Although he did much to promote the welfare of
his native place, he became so unpopular there that he migrated to Rome,
but, having incurred the suspicion of Domitian, he was banished from
Italy. With nothing in his pocket but Plato's _Phaedo_ and Demosthenes'
_De falsa legatione_, he wandered about in Thrace, Mysia, Scythia and
the land of the Getae. He returned to Rome on the accession of Nerva,
with whom and his successor Trajan he was on intimate terms. During this
period he paid a visit to Prusa, but, disgusted at his reception, he
went back to Rome. The place and date of his death are unknown; it is
certain, however, that he was alive in 112, when the younger Pliny was
governor of Bithynia.

Eighty orations, or rather essays on political, moral and philosophical
subjects, have come down to us under his name; the _Corinthiaca_,
however, is generally regarded as spurious, and is probably the work of
Favorinus of Arelate. Of the extant orations the following are the most
important:--_Borysthenitica_ (xxxvi.), on the advantages of monarchy,
addressed to the inhabitants of Olbia, and containing interesting
information on the history of the Greek colonies on the shores of the
Black Sea; _Olympica_ (xii.), in which Pheidias is represented as
setting forth the principles which he had followed in his statue of
Zeus, one passage being supposed by some to have suggested Lessing's
_Laocoon_; _Rhodiaca_ (xxxi.), an attack on the Rhodians for altering
the names on their statues, and thus converting them into memorials of
famous men of the day (an imitation of Demosthenes' _Leptines_); _De
regno_ (i.-iv.), addressed to Trajan, a eulogy of the monarchical form
of government, under which the emperor is the representative of Zeus
upon earth; _De Aeschylo et Sophocle et Euripide_ (lii.), a comparison
of the treatment of the story of Philoctetes by the three great Greek
tragedians; and _Philoctetes_ (lix.), a summary of the prologue to the
lost play by Euripides. In his later life, Dio, who had originally
attacked the philosophers, himself became a convert to Stoic