2. The references to his family and early years are extremely scanty and
vague. In the _Chronicon Orientale_, p. 94, he is stated to have been a
_Sabaita_ and sprung from "the chiefs and nobles of that race": and
several writers speak as if he had been a rhetorician before his
conversion (as Cyprian of Carthage had been). The exact meaning of the
term "Sabaita" above is doubtful. Strictly used, it should mean a member
of the Sabaite convent near Jerusalem, and the _Chronicon_ may be
claiming Dionysius as that, though, of course, without any ground for the
claim. If it is equivalent, however, to "Sabæan" here, it implies an Arab
descent for him, which is hardly probable, as he seems always to consider
himself connected by education and residence, if not by birth, with the
city-folk of Alexandria, whom he distinguishes from the Coptic
inhabitants of Egypt ({Aigyptioi}); so that it would be rather surprising
to find that his family came from the remoter parts of Arabia, where the
Sabæans dwelt. The other tradition of his having been a rhetorician may
be due to some confusion between our Dionysius and a much later
Alexandrian writer of the same name, who edited the works of the
Areopagite with notes and wrote other treatises. On the other hand,
Dionysius's literary style is such that it might very well have been
formed by the study and practice of rhetoric, while he has been thought
himself to corroborate the statement of the _Chronicon Orientale_, as to
the high position of his family, in his reply to Germanus (p. 49), where
he refers to the "losses of dignities" which he has suffered for the
Faith.
3. He was probably a priest, and not less than thirty, when he became
head of the Catechetical School in 231, and in 264 he excused himself
from attendance at the Council of Antioch on the ground of age and
infirmity; and so it is a safe inference that he was born about or before
200, being thus nearly of an age with Cyprian of Carthage, and only ten
or fifteen years younger than Origen, his master.