refore credited with being the inventor of
algebra.

DIOSCOR`IDES, a Greek physician, born in Cilicia, lived in the 1st
century; left a treatise in 5 books on materia medica, a work of great
research, and long the standard authority on the subject.

DIOSCURI, twin sons of Zeus, Castor and Pollux, a stalwart pair of
youths, of the Doric stock, great the former as a horse-breaker and the
latter as a boxer; were worshipped at Sparta as guardians of the State,
and pre-eminently as patrons of gymnastics; protected the hearth, led the
army in war, and were the convoy of the traveller by land and the voyager
by sea, which as constellations they are still held to be.

DIPHILUS, a Greek comic poet, born at Sinope; contemporary of
Menander; was the forerunner of Terence and Plautus, the Roman poets.

DIPHTHERIA, a contagious disease characterised by the formation of a
false membrane on the back of the throat.

DIPPEL, JOHANN KONRAD, a celebrated German alchemist; professed to
have discovered the philosopher's stone; did discover Prussian blue, and
an animal oil that bears his name (1672-1734).

DIPPEL'S OIL, an oil obtained from the distinctive distillation of
horn bones.

DIRCAEAN SWAN, Pindar, so called from the fountain Dirce, near
Thebes, his birthplace.

DIRCE, the wife of Lycus, king of Thebes, who for her cruelty to
Antiope, her divorced predecessor, was, by Antiope's two sons, Zethos and
Amphion, tied to a wild bull and dragged to death, after which her
carcass was flung by them into a well; the subject is represented in a
famous antique group by Apollonius and Tauriscus.

DIRECTORY, THE, the name given to the government of France,
consisting of a legislative body of two chambers, the Council of the
Ancients and the Council of Five Hundred, which succeeded the fall of the
Convention, and ruled France from October 27, 1795, till its overthrow by
Bonaparte on the 18th Brumaire (November 9, 1799). The Directors proper
were five in number, and were elected by the latter council from a list
presented by the former, and the chief members of it were Barras and
Carnot.

DIRSCHAU (11), a Prussian town on the Vistula, 21 m. SE. of Danzig,
with iron-works and a timber trade.

DIS, a name given to Pluto and the nether world over which he rules.

DISCIPLINE, THE TWO BOOKS OF, books of dates 1561 and 1581,
regulative of ecclesiastical order in the Presbyterian churches of
Scotland, of which the gr