Dionysodorus
(Διονυσόδωρος).
1. A Boeotian, who is mentioned by Diodorus Siculus (15.95) as the author of a history of Greece, which came down as far as the reign of Philip of Macedonia, the father of Alexander the Great. It is usually supposed that he is the same person as the Dionysodorus in Diogenes Laertius (2.42), who denied that the paean which went by the name of Socrates, was the production of the philosopher. (Comp. Schol. ad Apollon. Rhod. 1.917.) It is uncertain also whether he is the auther of a work on rivers (περὶ ποταμῶν, Schol. ad Eurip. Hippol. 122), and of another entitled τὰ ταρὰ τοῖς τραγῳδοῖς ἡμαρτημένα, which is quoted by a Scholiast. (Ad Eurip. Rhes. 504.)
2. A Greek rhetorician, who is introduced in Lucian's Symposium (100.6). Another person of the same name is mentioned, in the beginning of Plato's dialogue "Euthydemus," as a brother of Euthydemus. (Comp. Xenoph. Memor. 3.1.1.)
3. Of Troezene, a Greek grammarian, who is referred to by Plutarch (A rat. 1) and in the work of Apollonius Dyscolus "on Pronouns." [L.S]
(Διονυσόδωρος), a geometer of Cydnus, whose mode of cutting a sphere by a plane in a given ratio is preserved by Eutocius, in his comment on book ii. prop. 5, of the sphere and cylinder of Archimedes. A species of conical sun-dial is attributed to him, and Pliny (H. N. 2.109) says, that He had an inscription placed on his tomb, addressed to the world above, stating that he had been to the centre of the earth and found it 42 thousand stadia distant. Pliny calls this a striking instance of Greek vanity; but, as Weidler remarks, it is as near a guess as any that was made for a long time afterwards. (Weidler, Hist. Astron. p. 133; Heilbronner, in verb.) [A. De M.]
[Moschion.]