in E. M. Stengel's _Ausgaben und Abhandlungen aus dem
Gebiete der romanischen Philologie_, No. 61 (1886, esp. sections 82,
83, 168-172); F. Colagrosso, "Ditte Cretese" in _Atti della r.
Accademia di Archeologia_ (Naples, 1897, vol. 18, pt. ii. 2); F.
Noack, "Der griechische Dictys," in _Philologus_, supp. vi. 403 ff.;
N. E. Griffin, _Dares and Dictys, Introduction to the Study of the
Medieval Versions of the Story of Troy_ (1907).

DICUIL (fl. 825), Irish monastic scholar, grammarian and geographer. He
was the author of the _De mensura orbis terrae_, finished in 825, which
contains the earliest clear notice of a European discovery of and
settlement in Iceland and the most definite Western reference to the old
freshwater canal between the Nile and the Red Sea, finally blocked up in
767. In 795 (February 1-August 1) Irish hermits had visited Iceland; on
their return they reported the marvel of the perpetual day at midsummer
in "Thule," where there was then "no darkness to hinder one from doing
what one would." These eremites also navigated the sea north of Iceland
on their first arrival, and found it ice-free for one day's sail, after
which they came to the ice-wall. Relics of this, and perhaps of other
Irish religious settlements, were found by the permanent Scandinavian
colonists of Iceland in the 9th century. Of the old Egyptian freshwater
canal Dicuil learnt from one "brother Fidelis," probably another Irish
monk, who, on his way to Jerusalem, sailed along the "Nile" into the Red
Sea--passing on his way the "Barns of Joseph" or Pyramids of Giza, which
are well described. Dicuil's knowledge of the islands north and west of
Britain is evidently intimate; his references to Irish exploration and
colonization, and to (more recent) Scandinavian devastation of the same,
as far as the Faeroes, are noteworthy, like his notice of the elephant
sent by Harun al-Rashid (in 801) to Charles the Great, the most curious
item in a political and diplomatic intercourse of high importance.
Dicuil's reading was wide; he quotes from, or refers to, thirty Greek
and Latin writers, including the classical Homer, Hecataeus, Herodotus,
Thucydides, Virgil, Pliny and King Juba, the sub-classical Solinus, the
patristic St Isidore and Orosius, and his contemporary the Irish poet
Sedulius;--in particular, he professes to utilize the alleged surveys of
the Roman world executed by order of Julius Caesar, Augustus and
Theodosius (wheth