[1] The MS. was found in the Library of the Jerusalem Monastery of
the Most Holy Sepulchre, in Phanar, the Greek quarter of
Constantinople. It is a small octavo volume of 120 parchment leaves,
written throughout by Leo, "notary and sinner," who finished his task
on the 11th of June 1156. Besides The _Didach[=e]_ and the Epistles
of Clement it contains several spurious Ignatian epistles.
[2] The word _twelve_ had no place in the original title and was
inserted when the original _Didach[=e]_ or _Teaching_ (e.g. _The Two
Ways_) was combined with the church manual which mentions apostles
outside of the twelve. It may be noted that the division of the
_Didach[=e]_ into chapters is due to Bryennius, that into verses to
A. Harnack.
DIDACTIC POETRY, that form of verse the aim of which is, less to excite
the hearer by passion or move him by pathos, than to instruct his mind
and improve his morals. The Greek word [Greek: didaktikos] signifies a
teacher, from the verb [Greek: didaskein], and poetry of the class under
discussion approaches us with the arts and graces of a schoolmaster. At
no time was it found convenient to combine lyrical verse with
instruction, and therefore from the beginning of literature the didactic
poets have chosen a form approaching the epical. Modern criticism, which
discourages the epic, and is increasingly anxious to limit the word
"poetry" to lyric, is inclined to exclude the term "didactic poetry"
from our nomenclature, as a phrase absurd in itself. It is indeed more
than probable that didactic verse is hopelessly obsolete. Definite
information is now to be found in a thousand shapes, directly and boldly
presented in clear and technical prose. No farmer, however elegant,
will, any longer choose to study agriculture in hexameters, or even in
Tusser's shambling metre. The sciences and the professions will not
waste their time on methods of instruction which must, from their very
nature, be artless, inexact and vague. But in the morning of the world,
those who taught with authority might well believe that verse was the
proper, nay, the only serious vehicle of their instruction. What they
knew was extremely limited, and in its nature it was simple and
straightforward; it had little technical subtlety; it constantly lapsed
into the fabulous and the conjectural. Not only could what early sages
knew, or guessed, about astronomy and medicine and geography be
conveniently put into rolling verse, but, in the absence of all written
books, this was the easiest way in which information could be made
attractive to the ear and be retained by the memory.
In the prehistoric dawn of Greek civilization there appear to have been
three classes of poetry, to which the literature of Europe looks back as
to its triple fountain-head. There were romantic epics, dealing with the
adventures of gods and heroes; these Homer represents. There were mystic
chants and religious odes, purely lyrical in character, of which the
best Orphic Hymns must have been the type. And lastly there was a great
body of verse occupied entirely with increasing the knowledge of
citizens in useful branches of art and observation; these were the
beginnings of didactic poetry, and we class them together under the dim
name of Hesiod. It is impossible to date these earliest didactic poems,
which nevertheless set the fashion of form which has been preserved ever
since. The _Works and Days_, which passes as the direct masterpiece of
Hesiod (q.v.), is the type of all the poetry which has had education as
its aim. Hesiod is supposed to have been a tiller of the ground in a
Boeotian village, who determined to enrich his neighbours' minds by
putting his own ripe stores of useful information into sonorous metre.
Historically examined, the legend of Hesiod becomes a shadow, but the
substance of the poems attributed to him remains. The genuine parts of
the _Works and Days_, which Professor Gilbert Murray has called "a slow,
lowly, simple poem," deal with rules for agriculture. The _Theogony_ is
an annotated catalogue of the gods. Other poems attributed to Hesiod,
but now lost, were on astronomy, on auguries by birds, on the character
of the physical world; still others seem to have been genealogies of
famous women. All this mass of Boeotian verse was composed for
educational purposes, in an age when even preposterous information was
better than no knowledge at all. In slightly later times, as the Greek
nation became better supplied with intellectual appliances, the stream
of didactic poetry flowed more and more closely in one, and that a
theological, channel. The great poem of Parmenides _On Nature_ and those
of Empedocles exist only in fragments, but enough remains to show that
these poets carried on the didactic method in mythology. Cleostratus of
Tenedos wrote an astronomical poem in the 6th century, and Periander a
medical one in the 4th, but didactic poetry did not flourish again in
Greece until the 3rd century, when Aratus, in the Alexandrian age, wrote
his famous _Phenomena_, a poem about things seen in the heavens. Other
later Greek didactic poets were Nicander, and perhaps Euphorion.
It was from the hands of these Alexandrian writers that the genius of
didactic poetry passed over to Rome, since, although it is possible that
some of the lost works of the early republic, and in particular those of
Ennius, may have possessed an educational character, the first and by
far the greatest didactic Latin poet known to us is Lucretius. A highly
finished translation by Cicero into Latin hexameters of the principal
works of Aratus is believed to have drawn the attention of Lucretius to
this school of Greek poetry, and it was not without reference to the
Greeks, although in a more archaic and far purer taste, that he
composed, in the 1st century before Christ, his magnificent _De rerum
natura_. By universal consent, this is the noblest didactic poem in the
literature of the world. It was intended to instruct mankind in the
interpretation and in the working of the system of philosophy revealed
by Epicurus, which at that time was exciting the sympathetic attention
of all classes of Roman society. What gave the poem of Lucretius its
extraordinary interest, and what has prolonged and even increased its
vitality, was the imaginative and illustrative insight of the author,
piercing and lighting up the recesses of human experience. On a lower
intellectual level, but of a still greater technical excellence, was the
_Georgics_ of Virgil, a poem on the processes of agriculture, published
about 30 B.C. The brilliant execution of this famous work has justly
made it the type and unapproachable standard of all poetry which desires
to impart useful information in the guise of exquisite literature.
Himself once a farmer on the banks of the Mincio, Virgil, at the apex of
his genius, set himself in his Campanian villa to recall whatever had
been essential in the agricultural life of his boyish home, and the
result, in spite of the ardours of the subject, was what J. W. Mackail
has called "the most splendid literary production of the Empire." In the
rest of surviving Latin didactic poetry, the influence and the imitation
of Virgil and Lucretius are manifest. Manilius, turning again to
Alexandria, produced a fine _Astronomica_ towards the close of the reign
of Augustus. Columella, regretting that Virgil had omitted to sing of
gardens, composed a smooth poem on horticulture. Natural philosophy
inspired Lucilius junior, of whom a didactic poem on Etna survives. Long
afterwards, under Diocletian, a poet of Carthage, Nemesianus, wrote in
the manner of Virgil the _Cynegetica_, a poem on hunting with dogs,
which has had numerous imitations in later European literatures. These
are the most important specimens of didactic poetry which ancient Rome
has handed down to us.
In Anglo-Saxon and early English poetic literature, and especially in
the religious part of it, an element of didacticism is not to be
overlooked. But it would be difficult to say that anything of importance
was written in verse with the sole purpose of imparting information,
until we reach the 16th century. Some of the later medieval allegories
are didactic or nothing. The first poem, however, which we can in any
reasonable way compare with the classic works of which we have been
speaking is the _Hundreth Pointes of Good Husbandrie_, published in 1557
by Thomas Tusser; these humble Georgics aimed at a practical description
of the whole art of English farming. Throughout the early part of the
17th century, when our national poetry was in its most vivid and
brilliant condition, the last thing a poet thought of doing was the
setting down of scientific facts in rhyme. We come across, however, one
or two writers who were as didactic as the age would permit them to be,
Samuel Daniel with his philosophy, Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke with his
"treatises" of war and monarchy. After the Restoration, as the lyrical
element rapidly died out of English poetry, there was more and more room
left for educational rhetoric in verse. The poems about prosody, founded
upon Horace, and signed by John Sheffield, 3rd earl of Mulgrave
(1648-1721), and Lord Roscommon, were among the earliest purely didactic
verse-studies in English. John Philips deserves a certain pre-eminence,
as his poem called Cyder, in 1706, set the fashion which lasted all down
the 18th century, of writing precisely in verse about definite branches
of industry or employment. None of the greater poets of the age of Anne
quite succumbed to the practice, but there is a very distinct flavour of
the purely didactic about a great deal of the verse of Pope and Gay. In
such productions as Gilbert West's (1703-1756) _Education_, Dyer's
_Fleece_, and Somerville's _Chase_, we see technical information put
forward as the central aim of the poet. Instead of a passionate
pleasure, or at least an uplifted enthusiasm, being the poet's object,
he frankly admits that, first and foremost, he has some facts about wool
or dogs or schoolmasters which he wishes to bring home to his readers,
and that, secondly, he consents to use verse, as brilliantly as he can,
for the purpose of gilding the pill and attracting an unwilling
attention. As we descend the 18th century, these works become more and
more numerous, and more dry, especially when opposed by the descriptive
and rural poets of the school of Thomson, the poet of _The Seasons_. But
Thomson himself wrote a huge poem of _Liberty_ (1732), for which we have
no name if we must not call it didactic. Even Gray began, though he
failed to finish, a work of this class, on _The Alliance of Education
and Government_. These poems were discredited by the publication of _The
Sugar-Cane_ (1764), a long verse-treatise about the cultivation of sugar
by negroes in the West Indies, by James Grainger (1721-1766), but,
though liable to ridicule, such versified treatises continued to
appear. Whether so great a writer as Cowper is to be counted among the
didactic poets is a question on which readers of _The Task_ may be
divided; this poem belongs rather to the class of descriptive poetry,
but a strong didactic tendency is visible in parts of it. Perhaps the
latest frankly educational poem which enjoyed a great popularity was
_The Course of Time_ by Robert Pollok (1798-1827), in which a system of
Calvinistic divinity is laid down with severity and in the pomp of blank
verse. This kind of literature had already been exposed, and
discouraged, by the teaching of Wordsworth, who had insisted on the
imperative necessity of charging all poetry with imagination and
passion. Oddly enough, _The Excursion_ of Wordsworth himself is perhaps
the most didactic poem of the 19th century, but it must be acknowledged
that his influence, in this direction, was saner than his practice.
Since the days of Coleridge and Shelley it has been almost impossible to
conceive a poet of any value composing in verse a work written with the
purpose of inculcating useful information.
The history of didactic poetry in France repeats, in great measure, but
in drearier language, that of England. Boileau, like Pope, but with a
more definite purpose as a teacher, offered instruction in his _Art
poetique_ and in his _Epistles_. But his doctrine was always literary,
not purely educational. At the beginning of the 18th century, the
younger Racine (1692-1763) wrote sermons in verse, and at the close of
it the Abbe Delille (1738-1813) tried to imitate Virgil in poems about
horticulture. Between these two there lies a vast mass of verse written
for the indulgence of intellect rather than at the dictates of the
heart; wherever this aims at increasing knowledge, it at once becomes
basely and flatly didactic. There is nothing in French literature of the
transitional class that deserves mention beside _The Task_ or _The
Excursion_.
During the century which preceded the Romantic revival of poetry in
Germany, didactic verse was cultivated in that country on the lines of
imitation of the French, but with a greater dryness and on a lower level
of utility. Modern German literature began with Martin Opitz (1597-1639)
and the Silesian School, who were in their essence rhetorical and
educational, and who gave their tone to German verse. Albrecht von
Haller (1708-1777) brought a very considerable intellectual force to
bear on his huge poems, _The Origin of Evil_, which was theological, and
_The Alps_ (1729), botanical and topographical. Johann Peter Uz
(1720-1796) wrote a _Theodicee_, which was very popular, and not without
dignity. Johann Jacob Dusch (1725-1787) undertook to put _The Sciences_
into the eight books of a great didactic poem. Tiedge (1752-1840) was
the last of the school; in a once-famous _Urania_, he sang of God and
Immortality and Liberty. These German pieces were the most unswervingly
didactic that any modern European literature has produced. There was
hardly the pretence of introducing into them descriptions of natural
beauty, as the English poets did, or of grace and wit like the French.
The German poets simply poured into a lumbering mould of verse as much
solid information and direct instruction as the form would hold.
Didactic poetry has, in modern times, been antipathetic to the spirit of
the Latin peoples, and neither Italian nor Spanish literature has
produced a really notable work in this class. An examination of the
poems, ancient and modern, which have been mentioned above, will show
that from primitive times there have been two classes of poetic work to
which the epithet didactic has been given. It is desirable to
distinguish these a little more exactly. One is the pure instrument of
teaching, the poetry which desires to impart all that it knows about the
growing of cabbages or the prevention of disasters at sea, the
revolution of the planets or the blessings of inoculation. This is
didactic poetry proper, and this, it is almost certain, became
irrevocably obsolete at the close of the 18th century. No future Virgil
will give the world a second _Georgics_. But there is another species
which it is very improbable that criticism has entirely dislodged; that
is the poetry which combines, with philosophical instruction, an impetus
of imaginative movement, and a certain definite cultivation of fire and
beauty. In hands so noble as those of Lucretius and Goethe this species
of didactic poetry has enriched the world with durable masterpieces,
and, although the circle of readers which will endure scientific
disquisition in the bonds of verse grows narrower and narrower, it is
probable that the great poet who is also a great thinker will now and
again insist on being heard. In Sully-Prudhomme France has possessed an
eminent writer whose methods are directly instructive, and both _La
Justice_ (1878) and _Le Bonheur_ (1888) are typically didactic poems.
Perhaps future historians may name these as the latest of their class.
(E. G.)
DIDEROT, DENIS (1713-1784), French man of letters and encyclopaedist,
was born at Langres on the 5th of October 1713. He was educated by the
Jesuits, like most of those who afterwards became the bitterest enemies
of Catholicism; and, when his education was at an end, he vexed his
brave and worthy father's heart by turning away from respectable
callings, like law or medicine, and throwing himself into the vagabond
life of a bookseller's hack in Paris. An imprudent marriage (1743) did
not better his position. His wife, Anne Toinette Champion, was a devout
Catholic, but her piety did not restrain a narrow and fretful temper,
and Diderot's domestic life was irregular and unhappy. He sought
consolation for chagrins at home in attachments abroad, first with a
Madame Puisieux, a fifth-rate female scribbler, and then with Sophie
Voland, to whom he was constant for the rest of her life. His letters to
her are among the most graphic of all the pictures that we have of the
daily life of the philosophic circle in Paris. An interesting contrast
may be made between the Bohemianism of the famous English literary set
who supped at the Turk's Head with the Tory Johnson and the Conservative
Burke for their oracles, and the Bohemianism of the French set who about
the same time dined once a week at the baron D'Holbach's, to listen to
the wild sallies and the inspiring declamations of Diderot. For Diderot
was not a great writer; he stands out as a fertile, suggestive and
daring thinker, and a prodigious and most eloquent talker.
Diderot's earliest writings were of as little importance as Goldsmith's
_Enquiry into the State of Polite Learning_ or Burke's _Abridgement of
English History_. He earned 100 crowns by translating Stanyan's _History
of Greece_ (1743); with two colleagues he produced a translation of
James's _Dictionary of Medicine_ (1746-1748) and about the same date he
published a free rendering of Shaftesbury's _Inquiry Concerning Virtue
and Merit_ (1745), with some original notes of his own. With strange and
characteristic versatility, he turned from ethical speculation to the
composition of a volume of stories, the _Bijoux indiscrets_ (1748),
gross without liveliness, and impure without wit. In later years he
repented of this shameless work, just as Boccaccio is said in the day of
his grey hairs to have thought of the sprightliness of the _Decameron_
with strong remorse. From tales Diderot went back to the more congenial
region of philosophy. Between the morning of Good Friday and the evening
of Easter Monday he wrote the _Pensees philosophiques_ (1746), and he
presently added to this a short complementary essay on the sufficiency
of natural religion. The gist of these performances is to press the
ordinary rationalistic objections to a supernatural revelation; but
though Diderot did not at this time pass out into the wilderness beyond
natural religion, yet there are signs that he accepted that less as a
positive doctrine, resting on grounds of its own, than as a convenient
point of attack against Christianity. In 1747 he wrote the _Promenade du
sceptique_, a rather poor allegory--pointing first to the extravagances
of Catholicism; second, to the vanity of the pleasures of that world
which is the rival of the church; and third, to the desperate and
unfathomable uncertainty of the philosophy which professes to be so high
above both church and world.
Diderot's next piece was what first introduced him to the world as an
original thinker, his famous _Lettre sur les aveugles_ (1749). The
immediate object of this short but pithy writing was to show the
dependence of men's ideas on their five senses. It considers the case of
the intellect deprived of the aid of one of the senses; and in a second
piece, published afterwards, Diderot considered the case of a similar
deprivation in the deaf and dumb. The _Lettre sur les sourds et muets_,
however, is substantially a digressive examination of some points in
aesthetics. The philosophic significance of the two essays is in the
advance they make towards the principle of Relativity. But what
interested the militant philosophers of that day was an episodic
application of the principle of relativity to the master-conception of
God. What makes the _Lettre sur les aveugles_ interesting is its
presentation, in a distinct though undigested form, of the modern theory
of variability, and of survival by superior adaptation. It is worth
noticing, too, as an illustration of the comprehensive freedom with
which Diderot felt his way round any subject that he approached, that in
this theoretic essay he suggests the possibility of teaching the blind
to read through the sense of touch. If the _Lettre sur les aveugles_
introduced Diderot into the worshipful company of the philosophers, it
also introduced him to the penalties of philosophy. His speculation was
too hardy for the authorities, and he was thrown into the prison of
Vincennes. Here he remained for three months; then he was released, to
enter upon the gigantic undertaking of his life.
The bookseller Lebreton had applied to him with a project for the
publication of a translation into French of Ephraim Chambers's
_Cyclopaedia_, undertaken in the first instance by an Englishman, John
Mills, and a German, Gottfried Sellius (for particulars see
ENCYCLOPAEDIA). Diderot accepted the proposal, but in his busy and
pregnant intelligence the scheme became transformed. Instead of a mere
reproduction of Chambers, he persuaded the bookseller to enter upon a
new work, which should collect under one roof all the active writers,
all the new ideas, all the new knowledge, that were then moving the
cultivated class to its depths, but still were comparatively ineffectual
by reason of their dispersion. His enthusiasm infected the publishers;
they collected a sufficient capital for a vaster enterprise than they
had at first planned; D'Alembert was persuaded to become Diderot's
colleague; the requisite permission was procured from the government; in
1750 an elaborate prospectus announced the project to a delighted
public; and in 1751 the first volume was given to the world. The last of
the letterpress was issued in 1765, but it was 1772 before the
subscribers received the final volumes of the plates. These twenty years
were to Diderot years not merely of incessant drudgery, but of harassing
persecution, of sufferings from the cabals of enemies, and of injury
from the desertion of friends. The ecclesiastical party detested the
_Encyclopaedia_, in which they saw a rising stronghold for their
philosophic enemies. By 1757 they could endure the sight no longer. The
subscribers had grown from 2000 to 4000, and this was a right measure of
the growth of the work in popular influence and power. To any one who
turns over the pages of these redoubtable volumes now, it seems
surprising that their doctrines should have stirred such portentous
alarm. There is no atheism, no overt attack on any of the cardinal
mysteries of the faith, no direct denunciation even of the notorious
abuses of the church. Yet we feel that the atmosphere of the book may
well have been displeasing to authorities who had not yet learnt to
encounter the modern spirit on equal terms. The _Encyclopaedia_ takes
for granted the justice of religious tolerance and speculative freedom.
It asserts in distinct tones the democratic doctrine that it is the
common people in a nation whose lot ought to be the main concern of the
nation's government. From beginning to end it is one unbroken process of
exaltation of scientific knowledge on the one hand, and pacific industry
on the other. All these things were odious to the old governing classes
of France; their spirit was absolutist, ecclesiastical and military.
Perhaps the most alarming thought of all was the current belief that the
_Encyclopaedia_ was the work of an organized band of conspirators
against society, and that a pestilent doctrine was now made truly
formidable by the confederation of its preachers into an open league.
When the seventh volume appeared, it contained an article on "Geneva,"
written by D'Alembert. The writer contrived a panegyric on the pastors
of Geneva, of which every word was a stinging reproach to the abbes and
prelates of Versailles. At the same moment Helvetius's book, _L'Esprit_,
appeared, and gave a still more profound and, let us add, a more
reasonable shock to the ecclesiastical party. Authority could brook no
more, and in 1759 the _Encyclopaedia_ was formally suppressed.
The decree, however, did not arrest the continuance of the work. The
connivance of the authorities at the breach of their own official orders
was common in those times of distracted government. The work went on,
but with its difficulties increased by the necessity of being
clandestine. And a worse thing than troublesome interference by the
police now befell Diderot. D'Alembert, wearied of shifts and
indignities, withdrew from the enterprise. Other powerful colleagues,
Turgot among them, declined to contribute further to a book which had
acquired an evil fame. Diderot was left to bring the task to an end as
he best could. For seven years he laboured like a slave at the oar. He
wrote several hundred articles, some of them very slight, but many of
them most laborious, comprehensive and ample. He wore out his eyesight
in correcting proofs, and he wearied his soul in bringing the manuscript
of less competent contributors into decent shape. He spent his days in
the workshops, mastering the processes of manufactures, and his nights
in reproducing on paper what he had learnt during the day. And he was
incessantly harassed all the time by alarms of a descent from the
police. At the last moment, when his immense work was just drawing to an
end, he encountered one last and crowning mortification: he discovered
that the bookseller, fearing the displeasure of the government, had
struck out from the proof sheets, after they had left Diderot's hands,
all passages that he chose to think too hardy. The monument to which
Diderot had given the labour of twenty long and oppressive years was
irreparably mutilated and defaced. It is calculated that the average
annual salary received by Diderot for his share in the _Encyclopaedia_
was about L120 sterling. "And then to think," said Voltaire, "that an
army contractor makes L800 in a day!"
Although the _Encyclopaedia_ was Diderot's monumental work, he is the
author of a shower of dispersed pieces that sowed nearly every field of
intellectual interest with new and fruitful ideas. We find no
masterpiece, but only thoughts for masterpieces; no creation, but a
criticism with the quality to inspire and direct creation. He wrote
plays--_Le Fils naturel_ (1757) and _Le Pere de famille_ (1758)--and
they are very insipid performances in the sentimental vein. But he
accompanied them by essays on dramatic poetry, including especially the
_Paradoxe sur le comedien_, in which he announced the principles of a
new drama,--the serious, domestic, bourgeois drama of real life, in
opposition to the stilted conventions of the classic French stage. It
was Diderot's lessons and example that gave a decisive bias to the
dramatic taste of Lessing, whose plays, and his _Hamburgische
Dramaturgie_ (1768), mark so important an epoch in the history of the
modern theatre. In the pictorial art, Diderot's criticisms are no less
rich, fertile and wide in their ideas. His article on "Beauty" in the
_Encyclopaedia_ shows that he had mastered and passed beyond the
metaphysical theories on the subject, and the _Essai sur la peinture_
was justly described by Goethe, who thought it worth translating, as "a
magnificent work, which speaks even more helpfully to the poet than to
the painter, though to the painter too it is as a blazing torch."
Diderot's most intimate friend was Grimm, one of the conspicuous figures
of the philosophic body. Grimm wrote news-letters to various high
personages in Germany, reporting what was going on in the world of art
and literature in Paris, then without a rival as the capital of the
intellectual activity of Europe. Diderot helped his friend at one time
and another between 1759 and 1779, by writing for him an account of the
annual exhibitions of paintings. These _Salons_ are among the most
readable of all pieces of art criticism. They have a freshness, a
reality, a life, which take their readers into a different world from
the dry and conceited pedantries of the ordinary virtuoso. As has been
said by Sainte-Beuve, they initiated the French into a new sentiment,
and introduced people to the mystery and purport of colour by ideas.
"Before Diderot," Madame Necker said, "I had never seen anything in
pictures except dull and lifeless colours; it was his imagination that
gave them relief and life, and it is almost a new sense for which I am
indebted to his genius."
Greuze was Diderot's favourite among contemporary artists, and it is
easy to see why. Greuze's most characteristic pictures were the
rendering in colour of the same sentiment of domestic virtue and the
pathos of common life, which Diderot attempted with inferior success to
represent upon the stage. For Diderot was above all things interested in
the life of men,--not the abstract life of the race, but the incidents
of individual character, the fortunes of a particular family, the
relations of real and concrete motives in this or that special case. He
delighted with the enthusiasm of a born casuist in curious puzzles of
right and wrong, and in devising a conflict between the generalities of
ethics and the conditions of an ingeniously contrived practical dilemma.
Mostly his interest expressed itself in didactic and sympathetic form;
in two, however, of the most remarkable of all his pieces, it is not
sympathetic, but ironical. _Jacques le fataliste_ (written in 1773, but
not published until 1796) is in manner an imitation of _Tristram Shandy_
and _The Sentimental Journey_. Few modern readers will find in it any
true diversion. In spite of some excellent criticisms dispersed here and
there, and in spite of one or two stories that are not without a certain
effective realism, it must as a whole be pronounced savourless, forced,
and as leaving unmoved those springs of laughter and of tears which are
the common fountain of humour. _Le Neveu de Rameau_ is a far superior
performance. If there were any inevitable compulsion to name a
masterpiece for Diderot, one must select this singular "farce-tragedy."
Its intention has been matter of dispute; whether it was designed to be
merely a satire on contemporary manners, or a reduction of the theory of
self-interest to an absurdity, or the application of an ironical
clincher to the ethics of ordinary convention, or a mere setting for a
discussion about music, or a vigorous dramatic sketch of a parasite and
a human original. There is no dispute as to its curious literary
flavour, its mixed qualities of pungency, bitterness, pity and, in
places, unflinching shamelessness. Goethe's translation (1805) was the
first introduction of _Le Neveu de Rameau_ to the European public. After
executing it, he gave back the original French manuscript to Schiller,
from whom he had it. No authentic French copy of it appeared until the
writer had been nearly forty years in his grave (1823).
It would take several pages merely to contain the list of Diderot's
miscellaneous pieces, from an infinitely graceful trifle like the
_Regrets sur ma vieille robe de chambre_ up to _Le Reve de D'Alembert_,
where he plunges into the depths of the controversy as to the ultimate
constitution of matter and the meaning of life. It is a mistake to set
down Diderot for a coherent and systematic materialist. We ought to look
upon him "as a philosopher in whom all the contradictions of the time
struggle with one another" (Rosenkranz). That is to say, he is critical
and not dogmatic. There is no unity in Diderot, as there was in Voltaire
or in Rousseau. Just as in cases of conduct he loves to make new ethical
assumptions and argue them out as a professional sophist might have
done, so in the speculative problems as to the organization of matter,
the origin of life, the compatibility between physiological machinery
and free will, he takes a certain standpoint, and follows it out more or
less digressively to its consequences. He seizes a hypothesis and works
it to its end, and this made him the inspirer in others of materialist
doctrines which they held more definitely than he did. Just as Diderot
could not attain to the concentration, the positiveness, the finality of
aim needed for a masterpiece of literature, so he could not attain to
those qualities in the way of dogma and system. Yet he drew at last to
the conclusions of materialism, and contributed many of its most
declamatory pages to the _Systeme de la nature_ of his friend
D'Holbach,--the very Bible of atheism, as some one styled it. All that
he saw, if we reduce his opinions to formulae, was motion in space:
"attraction and repulsion, the only truth." If matter produces life by
spontaneous generation, and if man has no alternative but to obey the
compulsion of nature, what remains for God to do?
In proportion as these conclusions deepened in him, the more did
Diderot turn for the hope of the race to virtue; in other words, to such
a regulation of conduct and motive as shall make us tender, pitiful,
simple, contented. Hence his one great literary passion, his enthusiasm
for Richardson, the English novelist. Hence, also, his deepening
aversion for the political system of France, which makes the realization
of a natural and contented domestic life so hard. Diderot had almost as
much to say against society as even Rousseau himself. The difference
between them was that Rousseau was a fervent theist. The atheism of the
Holbachians, as he called Diderot's group, was intolerable to him; and
this feeling, aided by certain private perversities of humour, led to a
breach of what had once been an intimate friendship between Rousseau and
Diderot (1757). Diderot was still alive when Rousseau's _Confessions_
appeared, and he was so exasperated by Rousseau's stories about Grimm,
then and always Diderot's intimate, that in 1782 he transformed a life
of Seneca, that he had written four years earlier, into an _Essai sur
les regnes de Claude et de Neron_ (1778-1782), which is much less an
account of Seneca than a vindication of Diderot and Grimm, and is one of
the most rambling and inept productions in literature. As for the merits
of the old quarrel between Rousseau and Diderot, we may agree with the
latter, that too many sensible people would be in the wrong if Jean
Jacques was in the right.
Varied and incessant as was Diderot's mental activity, it was not of a
kind to bring him riches. He secured none of the posts that were
occasionally given to needy men of letters; he could not even obtain
that bare official recognition of merit which was implied by being
chosen a member of the Academy. The time came for him to provide a dower
for his daughter, and he saw no other alternative than to sell his
library. When the empress Catherine of Russia heard of his straits, she
commissioned an agent in Paris to buy the library at a price equal to
about L1000 of English money, and then handsomely requested the
philosopher to retain the books in Paris until she required them, and to
constitute himself her librarian, with a yearly salary. In 1773 Diderot
started on an expedition to thank his imperial benefactress in person,
and he passed some months at St Petersburg. The empress received him
cordially. The strange pair passed their afternoons in disputes on a
thousand points of high philosophy, and they debated with a vivacity and
freedom not usual in courts. "_Fi, donc,_" said Catherine one day, when
Diderot hinted that he argued with her at a disadvantage, "_is there any
difference among men?_" Diderot returned home in 1774. Ten years
remained to him, and he spent them in the industrious acquisition of new
knowledge, in the composition of a host of fragmentary pieces, some of
them mentioned above, and in luminous declamations with his friends. All
accounts agree that Diderot was seen at his best in conversation. "He
who only knows Diderot in his writings," says Marmontel, "does not know
him at all. When he grew animated in talk, and allowed his thoughts to
flow in all their abundance, then he became truly ravishing. In his
writings he had not the art of ensemble; the first operation which
orders and places everything was too slow and too painful to him."
Diderot himself was conscious of the want of literary merit in his
pieces. In truth he set no high value on what he had done. It is
doubtful whether he was ever alive to the waste that circumstance and
temperament together made of an intelligence from which, if it had been
free to work systematically, the world of thought had so much to hope.
He was one of those simple, disinterested and intellectually sterling
workers to whom their own personality is as nothing in presence of the
vast subjects that engage the thoughts of their lives. He wrote what he
found to write, and left the piece, as Carlyle has said, "on the waste
of accident, with an ostrich-like indifference." When he heard one day
that a collected edition of his works was in the press at Amsterdam, he
greeted the news with "peals of laughter," so well did he know the haste
and the little heed with which those works had been dashed off.
Diderot died on the 30th of July 1784, six years after Voltaire and
Rousseau, one year after his old colleague D'Alembert, and five years
before D'Holbach, his host and intimate for a lifetime. Notwithstanding
Diderot's peals of laughter at the thought, an elaborate and exhaustive
collection of his writings in twenty stout volumes, edited by MM.
Assezat and Tourneux, was completed in 1875-1877.
AUTHORITIES.--Studies on Diderot by Scherer (1880); by E. Faguet
(1890); by Sainte-Beuve in the _Causeries du lundi_; by F. Brunetiere
in the _Etudes critiques_, 2nd series, may be consulted. In English,
Diderot has been the subject of a biography by John Morley [Viscount
Morley of Blackburn] (1878). See also Karl Rosenkranz, _Diderots Leben
und Werke_ (1866). For a discussion of the authenticity of the
posthumous works of Diderot see R. Dominic in the _Revue des deux
mondes_ (October 15, 1902). (J. Mo.)
DIDIUS SALVIUS JULIANUS, MARCUS, Roman emperor for two months (March
28-June 2) during the year A.D. 193. He was the grandson of the famous
jurist Salvius Julianus (under Hadrian and the Antonines), and the son
of a distinguished general, who might have ascended the throne after the
death of Antoninus Pius, had not his loyalty to the ruling house
prevented him. Didius filled several civil and military offices with
distinguished success, but subsequently abandoned himself to
dissipation. On the death of Pertinax, the praetorian guards offered the
throne to the highest bidder. Flavius Sulpicianus, the father-in-law of
Pertinax and praefect of the city, had already made an offer; Didius,
urged on by the members of his family, his freedmen and parasites,
hurried to the praetorian camp to contend for the prize. He and
Sulpicianus bid against each other, and finally the throne was knocked
down to Didius. The senate and nobles professed their loyalty; but the
people made no attempt to conceal their indignation at this insult to
the state, and the armies of Britain, Syria and Illyricum broke out into
open revolt. Septimius Severus, the commander of the Pannonian legions,
was declared emperor and hastened by forced marches to Italy. Didius,
abandoned by the praetorians, was condemned and executed by order of the
senate, which at once acknowledged Severus.
AUTHORITIES.--Dio Cassius lxxiii. 11-17, who was actually in Rome at
the time; Aelius Spartianus, _Didius Julianus_; Julius Capitolinus,
_Pertinax_; Herodian ii.; Aurelius Victor, _De Caesaribus_, 19;
Zosimus i. 7; Gibbon, _Decline and Fall_, chap. 5.
DIDO, or ELISSA, the reputed founder of Carthage (q.v.), in Africa,
daughter of the Tyrian king Metten (Mutto, Methres, Belus), wife of
Acerbas (more correctly Sicharbas; Sychaeus in Virgil), a priest of
Hercules. Her husband having been slain by her brother Pygmalion, Dido
fled to Cyprus, and thence to the coast of Africa, where she purchased
from a local chieftain Iarbas a piece of land on which she built
Carthage. The city soon began to prosper and Iarbas sought Dido's hand
in marriage, threatening her with war in case of refusal. To escape from
him, Dido constructed a funeral pile, on which she stabbed herself
before the people (Justin xviii. 4-7). Virgil, in defiance of the
usually accepted chronology, makes Dido a contemporary of Aeneas, with
whom she fell in love after his landing in Africa, and attributes her
suicide to her abandonment by him at the command of Jupiter (_Aeneid_,
iv.). Dido was worshipped at Carthage as a divinity under the name of
Caelestis, the Roman counterpart of Tanit, the tutelary goddess of
Carthage. According to Timaeus, the oldest authority for the story, her
name was Theiosso, in Phoenician Helissa, and she was called Dido from
her wanderings, Dido being the Phoenician equivalent of [Greek:
planetis] (_Etymologicum Magnum_, s.v.); some modern scholars, however,
translate the name by "beloved." Timaeus makes no mention of Aeneas, who
seems to have been introduced by Naevius in his _Bellum Poenicum_,
followed by Ennius in his _Annales_.
For the variations of the legend in earlier and later Latin authors,
see O. Rossbach in Pauly-Wissowa's _Realencyclopadie_, v. pt. 1
(1905); O. Meltzer's _Geschichte der Karthager_, i. (1879), and his
article in Roscher's _Lexikon der Mythologie_.
DIDON, HENRI (1840-1900), French Dominican, was born at Trouvet, Isere,
on the 17th of March 1840. He joined the Dominicans, under the influence
of Lacordaire, in 1858, and completed his theological studies at the
Minerva convent at Rome. The influence of Lacordaire was shown in the
zeal displayed by Didon in favour of a reconciliation between philosophy
and science. In 1871 his fame had so much grown that he was chosen to
deliver the funeral oration over the murdered archbishop of Paris,
Monseigneur G. Darboy. He also delivered some discourses at the church
of St Jean de Beauvais in Paris on the relations between science and
religion; but his utterances, especially on the question of divorce,
were deemed suspicious by his superiors, and his intimacy with Claude
Bernard the physiologist was disapproved. He was interdicted from
preaching and sent into retirement at the convent of Corbara in Corsica.
After eighteen months he emerged, and travelled in Germany, publishing
an interesting work upon that country, entitled _Les Allemands_ (English
translation by R. Ledos de Beaufort, London, 1884). On his return to
France in 1890 he produced his best known work, _Jesus-Christ_ (2 vols.,
Paris), for which he had qualified himself by travel in the Holy Land.
In the same year he became director of the College Albert-le-Grand at
Arcueil, and founded three auxiliary institutions, Ecole Lacordaire,
Ecole Laplace and Ecole St Dominique. He wrote, in addition, several
works on educational questions, and augmented his fame as an eloquent
preacher by discourses preached during Lent and Advent. He died at
Toulouse on the 13th of March 1900.
See the biographies by J. de Romano (1891), and A. de Coulanges
(Paris, 1900); and especially the work of Stanislas Reynaud, entitled
_Le Pere Didon, sa vie et son oeuvre_ (Paris, 1904).
DIDOT, the name of a family of learned French printers and publishers.
FRANCOIS DIDOT (1689-1757), founder of the family, was born at Paris. He
began business as a bookseller and printer in 1713, and among his
undertakings was a collection of the travels of his friend the Abbe
Prevost, in twenty volumes (1747). It was remarkable for its
typographical perfection, and was adorned with many engravings and maps.
FRANCOIS AMBROISE DIDOT (1730-1804), son of Francois, made important
improvements in type-founding, and was the first to attempt printing on
vellum paper. Among the works which he published was the famous
collection of French classics prepared by order of Louis XVI. for the
education of the Dauphin, and the folio edition of _L'Art de verifier
les dates_. PIERRE FRANCOIS DIDOT (1732-1795), his brother, devoted much
attention to the art of type-founding and to paper-making. Among the
works which issued from his press was an edition in folio of the
_Imitatio Christi_ (1788). HENRI DIDOT (1765-1852), son of Pierre
Francois, is celebrated for his "microscopic" editions of various
standard works, for which he engraved the type when nearly seventy years
of age. He was also the engraver of the _assignats_ issued by the
Constituent and Legislative Assemblies and the Convention. DIDOT
SAINT-LEGER, second son of Pierre Francois, was the inventor of the
paper-making machine known in England as the Didot machine. PIERRE DIDOT
(1760-1853), eldest son of Francois Ambroise, is celebrated as the
publisher of the beautiful "Louvre" editions of Virgil, Horace and
Racine. The Racine, in three volumes folio, was pronounced in 1801 to be
"the most perfect typographical production of all ages." FIRMIN DIDOT
(1764-1836), his brother, second son of Francois Ambroise, sustained the
reputation of the family both as printer and type-founder. He revived
(if he did not invent--a distinction which in order of time belongs to
William Ged) the process of stereotyping, and coined its name, and he
first used the process in his edition of Callet's _Tables of Logarithms_
(1795), in which he secured an accuracy till then unattainable. He
published stereotyped editions of French, English and Italian classics
at a very low price. He was the author of two tragedies--_La Reine de
Portugal_ and _La Mort d'Annibal_; and he wrote metrical translations
from Virgil, Tyrtaeus and Theocritus. AMBROISE FIRMIN DIDOT (1790-1876)
was his eldest son. After receiving a classical education, he spent
three years in Greece and in the East; and on the retirement of his
father in 1827 he undertook, in conjunction with his brother Hyacinthe,
the direction of the publishing business. Their greatest undertaking was
a new edition of the _Thesaurus Graecae linguae_ of Henri Estienne,
under the editorial care of the brothers Dindorf and M. Hase (9 vols.,
1855-1859). Among the numerous important works published by the
brothers, the 200 volumes forming the _Bibliotheque des auteurs grecs_,
_Bibliotheque latine_, and _Bibliotheque francaise_ deserve special
mention. Ambroise Firmin Didot was the first to propose (1823) a
subscription in favour of the Greeks, then in insurrection against
Turkish tyranny. Besides a translation of Thucydides (1833), he wrote
the articles "Estienne" in the _Nouvelle Biographie generale_, and
"Typographie" in the _Ency. mod._, as well as _Observations sur
l'orthographie francaise_ (1867), &c. In 1875 he published a very
learned and elaborate monograph on Aldus Manutius. His collection of
MSS., the richest in France, was said to have been worth, at the time of
his death, not less than 2,000,000 francs.
DIDRON, ADOLPHE NAPOLEON (1806-1867), French archaeologist, was born at
Hautvillers, in the department of Marne, on the 13th of March 1806. At
first a student of law, he began in 1830, by the advice of Victor Hugo,
a study of the Christian archaeology of the middle ages. After visiting
and examining the principal churches, first of Normandy, then of central
and southern France, he was on his return appointed by Guizot secretary
to the Historical Committee of Arts and Monuments (1835); and in the
following years he delivered several courses of lectures on Christian
iconography at the Bibliotheque Royale. In 1839 he visited Greece for
the purpose of examining the art of the Eastern Church, both in its
buildings and its manuscripts. In 1844 he originated the _Annales
archeologiques_, a periodical devoted to his favourite subject, which he
edited until his death. In 1845 he established at Paris a special
archaeological library, and at the same time a manufactory of painted
glass. In the same year he was admitted to the Legion of Honour. His
most important work is the _Iconographie chretienne_, of which, however,
the first portion only, _Histoire de Dieu_ (1843), was published. It was
translated into English by E. J. Millington. Among his other works may
be mentioned the _Manuel d'iconographie chretienne grecque et latine_
(1845), the _Iconographie des chapiteaux du palais ducal de Venise_
(1857), and the _Manuel des objets de bronze et d'orfevrerie_ (1859). He
died on the 13th of November 1867.
DIDYMI, or DIDYMA (mod. _Hieronta_), an ancient sanctuary of Apollo in
Asia Minor situated in the territory of Miletus, from which it was
distant about 10 m. S. and on the promontory Poseideion. It was
sometimes called _Branchidae_ from the name of its priestly caste which
claimed descent from Branchus, a youth beloved by Apollo. As the seat of
a famous oracle, the original temple attracted offerings from Pharaoh
Necho (in whose army there was a contingent of Milesian mercenaries),
and the Lydian Croesus, and was plundered by Darius of Persia. Xerxes
finally sacked and burnt it (481 B.C.) and exiled the Branchidae to the
far north-east of his empire. This exile was believed to be voluntary,
the priests having betrayed their treasures to the Persian; and on this
belief Alexander the Great acted 150 years later, when, finding the
descendants of the Branchidae established in a city beyond the Oxus, he
ordered them to be exterminated for the sin of their fathers (328). The
celebrated cult-statue of Apollo by Canachus, familiar to us from
reproductions on Milesian coins, was also carried to Persia, there to
remain till restored by Seleucus I. in 295, and the oracle ceased to
speak for a century and a half. The Milesians were not able to undertake
the rebuilding till about 332 B.C., when the oracle revived at the
bidding of Alexander. The work proved too costly, and despite a special
effort made by the Asian province nearly 400 years later, at the bidding
of the emperor Caligula, the structure was never quite finished: but
even as it was, Strabo ranked the Didymeum the greatest of Greek temples
and Pliny placed it among the four most splendid and second only to the
Artemisium at Ephesus. In point of fact it was a little smaller than the
Samian Heraeum and the temple of Cybele at Sardis, and almost exactly
the same size as the Artemisium. The area covered by the platform
measures roughly 360 X 160 ft.
When Cyriac of Ancona visited the spot in 1446, it seems that the temple
was still standing in great part, although the _cella_ had been
converted into a fortress by the Byzantines: but when the next European
visitor, the Englishman Dr Pickering, arrived in 1673, it had collapsed.
It is conjectured that the cause was the great earthquake of 1493. The
Society of Dilettanti sent two expeditions to explore the ruins, the
first in 1764 under Richard Chandler, the second in 1812 under Sir Wm.
Gell; and the French "Rothschild Expedition" of 1873 under MM. O. Rayet
and A. Thomas sent a certain amount of architectural sculpture to the
Louvre. But no excavation was attempted till MM. E. Pontremoli and B.
Haussoullier were sent out by the French Schools of Rome and Athens in
1895. They cleared the western facade and the _prodomos_, and discovered
inscriptions giving information about other parts which they left still
buried. Finally the site was purchased by, and the French rights were
ceded to, Dr Th. Wiegand, the German explorer of Miletus, who in 1905
began a thorough clearance of what is incomparably the finest temple
ruin in Asia Minor.
The temple was a decastyle peripteral structure of the Ionic order,
standing on seven steps and possessing double rows of outer columns 60
ft. high, twenty-one in each row on the flanks. It is remarkable not
only for its great size, but (_inter alia_) for (1) the rich ornament of
its column bases, which show great variety of design; (2) its various
developments of the Ionic capital, e.g. heads of gods, probably of
Pergamene art, spring from the "eyes" of the volutes with bulls' heads
between them; (3) the massive building two storeys high at least, which
served below for _prodomos_, and above for a dispensary of oracles
([Greek: chresmographia] mentioned in the inscriptions) and a treasury;
two flights of stairs called "labyrinths" in the inscriptions, led up to
these chambers; (4) the pylon and staircase at the west; (5) the frieze
of Medusa heads and foliage. Two outer columns are still erect on the
north-east flank, carrying their entablature, and one of the inner order
stands on the south-west. The fact that the temple was never finished is
evident from the state in which some bases still remain at the west.
There were probably no pedimental sculptures. A sacred way led from the
temple to the sea at Panormus, which was flanked with rows of archaic
statues, ten of which were excavated and sent to the British Museum in
1858 by C. T. Newton. Fragments of architectural monuments, which once
adorned this road, have also been found. Modern Hieronta is a large and
growing Greek village, the only settlement within a radius of several
miles. Its harbour is Kovella, distant about 2-1/2 m., and on the N. of
the promontory.
See Dilettanti Society, _Ionian Antiquities_, ii. (1821); C. T.
Newton, _Hist. of Discoveries_, &c. (1862) and _Travels in the
Levant_, ii. (1865); O. Rayet and A. Thomas, _Milet et le Golfe
Latmique_ (1877); E. Pontremoli and B. Haussoullier, _Didymes_ (1904).
(D. G. H.)
DIDYMIUM (from the Gr. [Greek: didymos], twin), the name given to the
supposed element isolated by C. G. Mosander from cerite (1839-1841). In
1879, however, Lecoq de Boisbaudran showed that Mosander's "didymium"
contained samarium; while the residual "didymium," after removal of
samarium, was split by Auer v. Welsbach (_Monats. f. Chemie_, 1885, 6,
477) into two components (known respectively as neodymium and
praseodymium) by repeated fractional crystallization of the double
nitrate of ammonium and didymium in nitric acid. _Neodymium_ (Nd) forms
the chief portion of the old "didymium." Its salts are reddish violet in
colour, and give a characteristic absorption spectrum. It forms oxides
of composition Nd2O3 and Nd2O5, the latter being obtained by ignition of
the nitrate (B. Brauner). The atomic weight of neodymium is 143.6 (B.
Brauner, _Proc. Chem. Soc._, 1897-1898, p. 70). _Praseodymium_ (Pr)
forms oxides of composition Pr2O3, Pr2O5, xH2O (B. Brauner), and Pr4O7.
The peroxide, Pr4O7, forms a dark brown powder, and is obtained by
ignition of the oxalate or nitrate. The sesquioxide, Pr2O3, is obtained
as a greenish white mass by the reduction of the peroxide. The salts of
praseodymium are green in colour, and give a characteristic spark
spectrum. The atomic weight of praseodymium is 140.5.
DIDYMUS (?309-?394), surnamed "the Blind," ecclesiastical writer of
Alexandria, was born about the year 309. Although he became blind at the
age of four, before he had learned to read; he succeeded in mastering
the whole circle of the sciences then known; and on entering the service
of the Church he was placed at the head of the Catechetical school in
Alexandria, where he lived and worked till almost the close of the
century. Among his pupils were Jerome and Rufinus. He was a loyal
follower of Origen, though stoutly opposed to Arian and Macedonian
teaching. Such of his writings as survive show a remarkable knowledge of
scripture, and have distinct value as theological literature. Among them
are the _De Trinitate_, _De Spiritu Sancto_ (Jerome's Latin
translation), _Adversus Manichaeos_, and notes and expositions of
various books, especially the Psalms and the Catholic Epistles.
See Migne, _Patrol. Graec._ xxxix.; O. Bardenhewer, _Patrologie_, pp.
290-293 (Freiburg, 1894).
DIDYMUS CHALCENTERUS (c. 63 B.C.-A.D. 10), Greek scholar and grammarian,
flourished in the time of Cicero and Augustus. His surname (Gr. [Greek:
Chalkenteros], brazen-bowelled) came from his indefatigable industry; he
was said to have written so many books (more than 3500) that he was
unable to recollect their names ([Greek: bibliolathas]). He lived and
taught in Alexandria and Rome, where he became the friend of Varro. He
is chiefly important as having introduced Alexandrian learning to the
Romans. He was a follower of the school of Aristarchus, upon whose
recension of Homer he wrote a treatise, fragments of which have been
preserved in the Venetian Scholia. He also wrote commentaries on many
other Greek poets and prose authors. In his work on the lyric poets he
treated of the various classes of poetry and their chief
representatives, and his lists of words and phrases (used in tragedy and
comedy and by orators and historians), of words of doubtful meaning, and
of corrupt expressions, furnished the later grammarians with valuable
material. His activity extended to all kinds of subjects: grammar
(orthography, inflexions), proverbs, wonderful stories, the law-tablets
([Greek: axones]) of Solon, stones, and different kinds of wood. His
polemic against Cicero's _De republica_ (Ammianus Marcellinus xxii. 16)
provoked a reply from Suetonius. In spite of his stupendous industry,
Didymus was little more than a compiler, of little critical judgment and
doubtful accuracy, but he deserves recognition for having incorporated
in his numerous writings the works of earlier critics and commentators.
See M. W. Schmidt, _De Didymo Chalcentero_ (1853) and _Didymi
Chalcenteri fragmenta_ (1854); also F. Susemihl, _Geschichte der
griech. Literatur in der Alexandrinerzeit_, ii. (1891); J. E. Sandys,
_History of Classical Scholarship_, i. (1906).
DIE, a town of south-eastern France, capital of an arrondissement in the
department of Drome, 43 m. E.S.E. of Valence on the Paris-Lyon railway.
Pop. (1906) 3090. The town is situated in a plain enclosed by mountains
on the right bank of the Drome below its confluence with the Meyrosse,
which supplies power to some of the industries. The most interesting
structures of Die are the old cathedral, with a porch of the 11th
century supported on granite columns from an ancient temple of Cybele;
and the Porte St Marcel, a Roman gateway flanked by massive towers. The
Roman remains also include the ruins of aqueducts and altars. Die is the
seat of a sub-prefect, and of a tribunal of first instance. The
manufactures are silk, furniture, cloth, lime and cement, and there are
flour and saw mills. Trade is in timber, especially walnut, and in white
wine known as _clairette de Die_. The mulberry is largely grown for the
rearing of silkworms. Under the Romans, Die (_Dea Augusta Vocontiorum_)
was an important colony. It was formerly the seat of a bishopric, united
to that of Valence from 1276 to 1687 and suppressed in 1790. Previous to
the revocation of the edict of Nantes in 1685 it had a Calvinistic
university.
DIE (Fr. _de_, from Lat. _datum_, given), a word used in various senses,
for a small cube of ivory, &c. (see DICE), for the engraved stamps used
in coining money, &c., and various mechanical appliances in engineering.
In architecture a "die" is the term used for the square base of a
column, and it is applied also to the vertical face of a pedestal or
podium.
The fabrics known as "dice" take their name from the rectangular form of
the figure. The original figures would probably be perfectly square, but
to-day the same principle of weaving is applied, and the name dice is
given to all figures of rectangular form. The different effects in the
adjacent squares or rectangles are due to precisely the same reasons as
those explained in connexion with the ground and the figure of damasks.
The same weaves are used in both damasks and dices, but simpler weaves
are generally employed for the commoner classes of the latter. The
effect is, in every case, obtained by what are technically called warp
and weft float weaves. The illustration B shows the two double damask
weaves arranged to form a dice pattern, while A shows a similar pattern
made from two four-thread twill weaves. C and D represent respectively
the disposition of the threads in A and B with the first pick, and the
solid marks represent the floats of warp. The four squares, which are
almost as pronounced in the cloth as those of a chess-board, may be made
of any size by repeating each weave for the amount of surface required.
It is only in the finest cloths that the double damask weaves B are used
for dice patterns, the single damask weaves and the twill weaves being
employed to a greater extent. This class of pattern is largely employed
for the production of table-cloths of lower and medium qualities. The
term damask is also often applied to cloths of this character, and
especially so when the figure is formed by rectangles of different
sizes.
[Illustration: A B C D]
DIEBITSCH, HANS KARL FRIEDRICH ANTON, count von Diebitsch and Narden,
called by the Russians Ivan Ivanovich, Count Diebich-Zabalkansky
(1785-1831), Russian field-marshal, was born in Silesia on the 13th of
May 1785. He was educated at the Berlin cadet school, but by the desire
of his father, a Prussian officer who had passed into the service of
Russia, he also did the same in 1801. He served in the campaign of 1805,
and was wounded at Austerlitz, fought at Eylau and Friedland, and after
Friedland was promoted captain. During the next five years of peace he
devoted himself to the study of military science, engaging once more in
active service in the War of 1812. He distinguished himself very greatly
in Wittgenstein's campaign, and in particular at Polotzk (October 18 and
19), after which combat he was raised to the rank of major-general. In
the latter part of the campaign he served against the Prussian
contingent of General Yorck (von Wartenburg), with whom, through
Clausewitz, he negotiated the celebrated convention of Tauroggen,
serving thereafter with Yorck in the early part of the War of
Liberation. After the battle of Lutzen he served in Silesia and took
part in negotiating the secret treaty of Reichenbach. Having
distinguished himself at the battles of Dresden and Leipzig he was
promoted lieutenant-general. At the crisis of the campaign of 1814 he
strongly urged the march of the allies on Paris; and after their entry
the emperor Alexander conferred on him the order of St Alexander Nevsky.
In 1815 he attended the congress of Vienna, and was afterwards made
adjutant-general to the emperor, with whom, as also with his successor
Nicholas, he had great influence. By Nicholas he was created baron, and
later count. In 1820 he had become chief of the general staff, and in
1825 he assisted in suppressing the St Petersburg _emeute_. His greatest
exploits were in the Russo-Turkish War of 1828-1829, which, after a
period of doubtful contest, was decided by Diebitsch's brilliant
campaign of Adrianople; this won him the rank of field-marshal and the
honorary title of Zabalkanski to commemorate his crossing of the
Balkans. In 1830 he was appointed to command the great army destined to
suppress the insurrection in Poland. He won the terrible battle of
Grochow on the 25th of February, and was again victorious at Ostrolenka
on the 26th of May, but soon afterwards he died of cholera (or by his
own hand) at Klecksewo near Pultusk, on the 10th of June 1831.
See Belmont (Schumberg), _Graf Diebitsch_ (Dresden, 1830); Sturmer,
_Der Tod des Grafen Diebitsch_ (Berlin, 1832); Bantych-Kamenski,
_Biographies of Russian Field-Marshals_ (in Russian, St Petersburg,
1841).
DIEDENHOFEN (Fr. _Thionville_), a fortified town of Germany, in
Alsace-Lorraine, dist. Lorraine, on the Mosel, 22 m. N. from Metz by
rail. Pop. (1905) 6047. It is a railway junction of some consequence,
with cultivation of vines, fruit and vegetables, brewing, tanning, &c.
Diedenhofen is an ancient Frank town (Theudonevilla, Totonisvilla), in
which imperial diets were held in the 8th century; was captured by Conde
in 1643 and fortified by Vauban; capitulated to the Prussians, after a
severe bombardment, on the 25th of November 1870.
DIEKIRCH, a small town in the grand duchy of Luxemburg, charmingly
situated on the banks of the Sure. Pop. (1905) 3705. Its name is said to
be derived from Dide or Dido, granddaughter of Odin and niece of Thor.
The mountain at the foot of which the town lies, now called Herrenberg,
was formerly known as Thorenberg, or Thor's mountain. On the summit of
this rock rises a perennial stream which flows down into the town under
the name of Bellenflesschen. Diekirch was an important Roman station,
and in the 14th century John of Luxemburg, the blind king of Bohemia,
fortified it, surrounding the place with a castellated wall and a ditch
supplied by the stream mentioned. It remained more or less fortified
until the beginning of the 19th century when the French during their
occupation levelled the old walls, and substituted the avenues of trees
that now encircle the town. Diekirch is the administrative centre of one
of the three provincial divisions of the grand duchy. It is visited
during the summer by many thousand tourists and travellers from Holland,
Belgium and Germany.
DIELECTRIC, in electricity, a non-conductor of electricity; it is the
same as insulator. The "dielectric constant" of a medium is its specific
inductive capacity, and on the electromagnetic theory of light it equals
the square of its refractive index for light of infinite wave length
(see ELECTROSTATICS; MAGNETO-OPTICS).
DIELMANN, FREDERICK (1847- ), American portrait and figure painter, was
born at Hanover, Germany, on the 25th of December 1847. He was taken to
the United States in early childhood; studied under Diez at the Royal
Academy at Munich; was first an illustrator, and became a distinguished
draughtsman and painter of genre pictures. His mural decorations and
mosaic panels for the Congressional library, Washington, are notable. He
was elected in 1899 president of the National Academy of Design.
DIEMEN, ANTHONY VAN (1593-1645), Dutch admiral and governor-general of
the East Indian settlements, was born at Kuilenburg in 1593. He was
educated in commerce, and on entering the service of the East India
Company speedily attained high rank. In 1631 he led a Dutch fleet from
the Indies to Holland, and in 1636 he was raised to the
governor-generalship. He came into conflict with the Portuguese, and
took their possessions in Ceylon and Malacca from them. He greatly
extended the commercial relationships of the Dutch, opening up trade
with Tong-king, China and Japan. As an administrator also he showed
ability, and the foundation of a Latin school and several churches in
Batavia is to be ascribed to him. Exploring expeditions were sent to
Australia under his auspices in 1636 and 1642, and Abel Tasman named
after him (Van Diemen's Land) the island now called Tasmania. Van Diemen
died at Batavia on the 19th of April 1645.
DIEPENBECK, ABRAHAM VAN (1599-1675), Flemish painter, was born at
Herzogenbusch, and studied painting at Antwerp, where he became one of
Rubens's "hundred pupils." But he was not one of the cleverest of
Rubens's followers, and he succeeded, at the best, in imitating the
style and aping the peculiarities of his master. We see this in his
earliest pictures--a portrait dated 1629 in the Munich Pinakothek, and a
"Distribution of Alms" of the same period in the same collection. Yet
even at this time there were moments when Diepenbeck probably fancied
that he might take another path. A solitary copperplate executed with
his own hand in 1630 represents a peasant sitting under a tree holding
the bridle of an ass, and this is a minute and finished specimen of the
engraver's art which shows that the master might at one time have hoped
to rival the animal draughtsmen who flourished in the schools of
Holland. However, large commissions now poured in upon him; he was asked
for altarpieces, subject-pieces and pagan allegories. He was tempted to
try the profession of a glass-painter, and at last he gave up every
other occupation for the lucrative business of a draughtsman and
designer for engravings. Most of Diepenbeck's important canvases are in
continental galleries. The best are the "Marriage of St Catherine" at
Berlin and "Mary with Angels Wailing over the Dead Body of Christ" in
the Belvedere at Vienna, the first a very fair specimen of the artist's
skill, the second a picture of more energy and feeling than might be
expected from one who knew more of the outer form than of the spirit of
Rubens. Then we have the fine "Entombment" at Brunswick, and "St Francis
Adoring the Sacrament" at the museum at Brussels, "Clelia and her Nymphs
Flying from the Presence and Pursuit of Porsenna" in two examples at
Berlin and Paris, and "Neptune and Amphitrite" at Dresden. In all these
compositions the drawing and execution are after the fashion of Rubens,
though inferior to Rubens in harmony of tone and force of contrasted
light and shade. Occasionally a tendency may be observed to imitate the
style of Vandyck, for whom, in respect of pictures, Diepenbeck in his
lifetime was frequently taken. But Diepenbeck spent much less of his
leisure on canvases than on glass-painting. Though he failed to master
the secrets of gorgeous tinting, which were lost, apparently for ever in
the 16th century, he was constantly employed during the best years of
his life in that branch of his profession. In 1635 he finished forty
scenes from the life of St Francis of Paula in the church of the Minimes
at Antwerp. In 1644 he received payment for four windows in St Jacques
of Antwerp, two of which are still preserved, and represent Virgins to
whom Christ appears after the Resurrection. The windows ascribed to him
at St Gudule of Brussels were executed from the cartoons of Theodore van
Thulden. On the occasion of his matriculation at Antwerp in 1638-1639,
Diepenbeck was registered in the guild of St Luke as a glass-painter. He
resigned his membership in the Artist Club of the Violette in 1542,
apparently because he felt hurt by a valuation then made of drawings
furnished for copperplates to the engraver Pieter de Jode. The earliest
record of his residence at Antwerp is that of his election to the
brotherhood (Sodalitat) "of the Bachelors" in 1634. It is probable that
before this time he had visited Rome and London, as noted in the work of
Houbraken. In 1636 he was made a burgess of Antwerp. He married twice,
in 1637 and 1652. He died in December 1675, and was buried at St Jacques
of Antwerp.
DIEPPE, a seaport of northern France, capital of an arrondissement in
the department of Seine-Inferieure, on the English Channel, 38 m. N. of
Rouen, and 105 m. N.W. of Paris by the Western railway. Pop. (1906)
22,120. It is situated at the mouth of the river Arques in a valley
bordered on each side by steep white cliffs. The main part of the town
lies to the west, and the fishing suburb of Le Pollet to the east of the
river and harbour. The sea-front of Dieppe, which in summer attracts
large numbers of visitors, consists of a pebbly beach backed by a
handsome marine promenade. Dieppe has a modern aspect; its streets are
wide and its houses, in most cases, are built of brick. Two squares side
by side and immediately to the west of the outer harbour form the
nucleus of the town, the Place Nationale, overlooked by the statue of
Admiral A. Duquesne, and the Place St Jacques, named after the beautiful
Gothic church which stands in its centre. The Grande Rue, the busiest
and handsomest street, leads westward from the Place Nationale. The
church of St Jacques was founded in the 13th century, but consists in
large measure of later workmanship and was in some portions restored in
the 19th century. The castle, overlooking the beach from the summit of
the western cliff, was erected in 1435. The church of Notre-Dame de Bon
Secours on the opposite cliff, and the church of St Remy, of the 16th
and 17th centuries, are other noteworthy buildings. A well-equipped
casino stands at the west end of the sea-front. The public institutions
include the subprefecture, tribunals of first instance and commerce, a
chamber of commerce, a communal college and a school of navigation.
Dieppe has one of the safest and deepest harbours on the English
Channel. A curved passage cut in the bed of the Arques and protected by
an eastern and a western jetty gives access to the outer harbour, which
communicates at the east end by a lockgate with the Bassin Duquesne and
the Bassin Berigny, and at the west end by the New Channel, with an
inner tidal harbour and two other basins. Vessels drawing 20 ft. can
enter the new docks at neap tide. A dry-dock and a gridiron are included
among the repairing facilities of the port. The harbour railway station
is on the north-west quay of the outer harbour alongside which the
steamers from Newhaven lie. The distance of Dieppe from Newhaven, with
which there has long been daily communication, is 64 m. The imports
include silk and cotton goods, thread, oil-seeds, timber, coal and
mineral oil; leading exports are wine, silk, woollen and cotton fabrics,
vegetables and fruit and flint-pebbles. The average annual value of
imports for the five years 1901-1905 was L4,916,000 (L4,301,000 for the
years 1896-1900); the exports were valued at L9,206,000 (L7,023,000 for
years 1896-1900). The industries comprise shipbuilding, cotton-spinning,
steam-sawing, the manufacture of machinery, porcelain, briquettes, lace,
and articles in ivory and bone, the production of which dates from the
15th century. There is also a tobacco factory of some importance. The
fishermen of Le Pollet, to whom tradition ascribes a Venetian origin,
are among the main providers of the Parisian market. The sea-bathing
attracts many visitors in the summer. Two miles to the north-east of the
town is the ancient camp known as the Cite de Limes, which perhaps
furnished the nucleus of the population of Dieppe.
It is suggested on the authority of its name, that Dieppe owed its
origin to a band of Norman adventurers, who found its "diep" or inlet
suitable for their ships, but it was unimportant till the latter half of
the 12th century. Its first castle was probably built in 1188 by Henry
II. of England, and it was counted a place of some consideration when
Philip Augustus attacked it in 1195. By Richard I. of England it was
bestowed in 1197 on the archbishop of Rouen in return for certain
territory in the neighbourhood of the episcopal city. In 1339 it was
plundered by the English, but it soon recovered from the blow, and in
spite of the opposition of the lords of Hantot managed to surround
itself with fortifications. Its commercial activity was already great,
and it is believed that its seamen visited the coast of Guinea in 1339,
and founded there a Petit Dieppe in 1365. The town was occupied by the
English from 1420 to 1435. A siege undertaken in 1442 by John Talbot,
first earl of Shrewsbury, was raised by the dauphin, afterwards Louis
XI., and the day of the deliverance continued for centuries to be
celebrated by a great procession and miracle plays. In the beginning of
the 16th century Jean Parmentier, a native of the town, made voyages to
Brazil and Sumatra; and a little later its merchant prince, Jacques
Ango, was able to blockade the Portuguese fleet in the Tagus. Francis I.
began improvements which were continued under his successor. Its
inhabitants in great number embraced the reformed religion; and they
were among the first to acknowledge Henry IV., who fought one of his
great battles at the neighbouring village of Arques. Few of the cities
of France suffered more from the revocation of the edict of Nantes in
1685; and this blow was followed in 1694 by a terrible bombardment on
the part of the English and Dutch. The town was rebuilt after the peace
of Ryswick, but the decrease of its population and the deterioration of
its port prevented the restoration of its commercial prosperity. During
the 19th century it made rapid advances, partly owing to Marie Caroline,
duchess of Berry, who brought it into fashion as a watering-place; and
also because the establishment of railway communication with Paris gave
an impetus to its trade. During the Franco-German War the town was
occupied by the Germans from December 1870 till July 1871.
See L. Vitet, _Histoire de Dieppe_ (Paris, 1844); D. Asseline, _Les
Antiquites et chroniques de la ville de Dieppe_, a 17th-century
account published at Paris in 1874.
DIERX, LEON (1838- ), French poet, was born in the island of Reunion
in 1838. He came to Paris to study at the Central School of Arts and
Manufactures, and subsequently settled there, taking up a post in the
education office. He became a disciple of Leconte de Lisle and one of
the most distinguished of the Parnassians. In the death of Stephane
Mallarme in 1898 he was acclaimed "prince of poets" by "les jeunes." His
works include: _Poemes et poesies_ (1864); _Levres closes_ (1867);
_Paroles d'un vaincu_ (1871); _La Rencontre_, a dramatic scene (1875)
and _Les Amants_ (1879). His _Poesies completes_ (1872) were crowned by
the French Academy. A complete edition of his works was published in 2
vols., 1894-1896.
DIES, CHRISTOPH ALBERT (1755-1822), German painter, was born at Hanover,
and learned the rudiments of art in his native place. For one year he
studied in the academy of Dusseldorf, and then he started at the age of
twenty with thirty ducats in his pocket for Rome. There he lived a
frugal life till 1796. Copying pictures, chiefly by Salvator Rosa, for a
livelihood, his taste led him to draw and paint from nature in Tivoli,
Albano and other picturesque places in the vicinity of Rome. Naples, the
birthplace of his favourite master, he visited more than once for the
same reasons. In this way he became a bold executant in water-colours
and in oil, though he failed to acquire any originality of his own. Lord
Bristol, who encouraged him as a copyist, predicted that he would be a
second Salvator Rosa. But Dies was not of the wood which makes original
artists. Besides other disqualifications, he had necessities which
forced him to give up the great career of an independent painter. David,
then composing his Horatii at Rome, wished to take him to Paris. But
Dies had reasons for not accepting the offer. He was courting a young
Roman whom he subsequently married. Meanwhile he had made the
acquaintance of Volpato, for whom he executed numerous drawings, and
this no doubt suggested the plan, which he afterwards carried out, of
publishing, in partnership with Mechan, Reinhardt and Frauenholz, the
series of plates known as the _Collection de vues pittoresques de
l'Italie_, published in seventy-two sheets at Nuremberg in 1799. With so
many irons in the fire Dies naturally lost the power of concentration.
Other causes combined to affect his talent. In 1787 he swallowed by
mistake three-quarters of an ounce of sugar of lead. His recovery from
this poison was slow and incomplete. He settled at Vienna, and lived
there on the produce of his brush as a landscape painter, and on that of
his pencil or graver as a draughtsman and etcher. But instead of getting
better, his condition became worse, and he even lost the use of one of
his hands. In this condition he turned from painting to music, and spent
his leisure hours in the pleasures of authorship. He did not long
survive, dying at Vienna in 1822, after long years of chronic suffering.
From two pictures now in the Belvedere gallery, and from numerous
engraved drawings from the neighbourhood of Tivoli, we gather that Dies
was never destined to rise above a respectable mediocrity. He followed
Salvator Rosa's example in imitating the manner of Claude Lorraine. But
Salvator adapted the style of Claude, whilst Dies did no more than copy
it.
DIEST, a small town in the province of Brabant, Belgium, situated on the
Demer at its junction with the Bever. Pop. (1904) 8383. It lies about
half-way between Hasselt and Louvain, and is still one of the five
fortified places in Belgium. It contains many breweries, and is famous
for the excellence of its beer.
DIESTERWEG, FRIEDRICH ADOLF WILHELM (1790-1866), German educationist,
was born at Siegen on the 29th of October 1790. Educated at Herborn and
Tubingen universities, he took to the profession of teaching in 1811. In
1820 he was appointed director of the new school at Mors, where he put
in practice the methods of Pestalozzi. In 1832 he was summoned to Berlin
to direct the new state-schools seminary in that city. Here he proved
himself a strong supporter of unsectarian religious teaching. In 1846 he
established the Pestalozzi institution at Pankow, and the Pestalozzi
societies for the support of teachers' widows and orphans. In 1850 he
retired on a pension, but continued vigorously to advocate his
educational views. In 1858 he was elected to the chamber of deputies as
member for the city of Berlin, and voted with the Liberal opposition. He
died in Berlin on the 7th of July 1866. Diesterweg was a voluminous
writer on educational subjects, and was the author of various school
text-books.
DIET, a term used in two senses, (1) food or the regulation of feeding
(see DIETARY and DIETETICS), (2) an assembly or council (Fr. _diete_;
It. _dieta_; Low Lat. _diaeta_; Ger. _Tag_). We are here concerned only
with this second sense. In modern usage, though in Scotland the term is
still sometimes applied to any assembly or session, it is practically
confined to the sense of an assembly of estates or of national or
federal representatives. The origin of the word in this connotation is
somewhat complicated. It is undoubtedly ultimately derived from the
Greek [Greek: diaita] (Lat. _diaeta_), which meant "mode of life" and
thence "prescribed mode of life," the English "diet" or "regimen." This
was connected with the verb [Greek: diaitan], in the sense of "to rule,"
"to regulate"; compare the office of [Greek: diaitetes] at Athens, and
_dieteta_, "umpire," in Late Latin. In both Greek and Latin, too, the
word meant "a room," from which the transition to "a place of assembly"
and so to "an assembly" would be easy. In the latter sense the word,
however, actually occurs only in Low Latin, Du Cange (_Glossarium_,
s.v.) deriving it from the late sense of "meal" or "feast," the Germans
being accustomed to combine their political assemblies with feasting. It
is clear, too, that the word _diaeta_ early became confused with Lat.
_dies_, "day" (Ger. _Tag_), "especially a set day, a day appointed for
public business; whence, by extension, meeting for business, an
assembly" (Skeat). Instances of this confusion are given by Du Cange,
e.g. _diaeta_ for _dieta_, "a day's journey" (also an obsolete sense of
"diet" in English), and _dieta_ for "the ordinary course of the church,"
i.e. "the daily office," which suggests the original sense of _diaeta_
as "a prescribed mode of life."
The word "diet" is now used in English for the _Reichstag_, "imperial
diet" of the old Holy Roman Empire; for the _Bundestag_, "federal diet,"
of the former Germanic confederation; sometimes for the _Reichstag_ of
the modern German empire; for the _Landtage_, "territorial diets" of the
constituent states of the German and Austrian empires; as well as for
the former or existing federal or national assemblies of Switzerland,
Hungary, Poland, &c. Although, however, the word is still sometimes used
of all the above, the tendency is to confine it, so far as contemporary
assemblies are concerned, to those of subordinate importance. Thus
"parliament" is often used of the German _Reichstag_ or of the Russian
Landtag, while the _Landtag_, e.g. of Styria, would always be rendered
"diet." In what follows we confine ourselves to the diet of the Holy
Roman Empire and its relation to its successors in modern Germany.
The origin of the diet, or deliberative assembly, of the Holy Roman
Empire must be sought in the _placitum_ of the Frankish empire. This
represented the tribal assembly of the Franks, meeting (originally in
March, but after 755 in May, whence it is called the Campus Maii) partly
for a military review on the eve of the summer campaign, partly for
deliberation on important matters of politics and justice. By the side
of this larger assembly, however, which contained in theory, if not in
practice, the whole body of Franks available for war, there had
developed, even before Carolingian times, a smaller body composed of the
magnates of the Empire, both lay and ecclesiastical. The germ of this
smaller body is to be found in the episcopal synods, which, afforced by
the attendance of lay magnates, came to be used by the king for the
settlement of national affairs. Under the Carolingians it was usual to
combine the assembly of magnates with the _generalis conventus_ of the
"field of May," and it was in this inner assembly, rather than in the
general body (whose approval was merely formal, and confined to matters
momentous enough to be referred to a general vote), that the centre of
power really lay. It is from the assembly of magnates that the diet of
medieval Germany springs. The general assembly became meaningless and
unnecessary, as the feudal array gradually superseded the old levy _en
masse_, in which each freeman had been liable to service; and after the
close of the 10th century it no longer existed.
The imperial diet (_Reichstag_) of the middle ages might sometimes
contain representatives of Italy, the _regnum Italicum_; but it was
practically always confined to the magnates of Germany, the _regnum
Teutonicum_. Upon occasion a summons to the diet might be sent even to
the knights, but the regular members were the princes (_Fursten_), both
lay and ecclesiastical. In the 13th century the seven electors began to
disengage themselves from the prince as a separate element, and the
Golden Bull (1356) made their separation complete; from the 14th century
onwards the nobles (both counts and other lords) are regarded as regular
members; while after 1250 the imperial and episcopal towns often appear
through their representatives. By the 14th century, therefore, the
originally homogeneous diet of princes is already, at any rate
practically if not yet in legal form, divided into three colleges--the
electors, the princes and nobles, and the representatives of the towns
(though, as we shall see, the latter can hardly be reckoned as regular
members until the century of the Reformation). Under the Hohenstaufen it
is still the rule that every member of the diet must attend personally,
or lose his vote; at a later date the principle of representation by
proxy, which eventually made the diet into a mere congress of envoys,
was introduced. By the end of the 13th century the vote of the majority
had come to be regarded as decisive; but in accordance with the strong
sense of social distinctions which marks German history, the quality as
well as the quantity of votes was weighed, and if the most powerful of
the princes were agreed, the opinion of the lesser magnates was not
consulted. The powers of the medieval diet extended to matters like
legislation, the decision upon expeditions (especially the _expeditio
Romana_), taxation and changes in the constitution of the principalities
or the Empire. The election of the king, which was originally regarded
as one of the powers of the diet, had passed to the electors by the
middle of the 13th century.
A new era in the history of the diet begins with the Reformation. The
division of the diet into three colleges becomes definite and precise;
the right of the electors, for instance, to constitute a separate
college is explicitly recognized as a matter of established custom in
1544. The representatives of the towns now become regular members. In
the 15th century they had only attended when special business, such as
imperial reform or taxation, fell under discussion; in 1500, however,
they were recognized as a separate and regular estate, though it was not
until 1648 that they were recognized as equal to the other estates of
the diet. The estate of the towns, or college of municipal
representatives, was divided into two benches, the Rhenish and the
Swabian. The estate of the princes and counts, which stood midway
between the electors and the towns, also attained, in the years that
followed the Reformation, its final organization. The vote of the great
princes ceased to be personal, and began to be territorial. This had two
results. The division of a single territory among the different sons of
a family no longer, as of old, multiplied the voting power of the
family; while in the opposite case, the union of various territories in
the hands of a single person no longer meant the extinction of several
votes, since the new owner was now allowed to give a vote for each of
his territories. The position of the counts and other lords, who joined
with the princes in forming the middle estate, was finally fixed by the
middle of the 17th century. While each of the princes enjoyed an
individual vote, the counts and other lords were arranged in groups,
each of which voted as a whole, though the whole of its vote
(_Kuriatstimme_) only counted as equal to the vote of a single prince
(_Virilstimme_). There were six of these groups; but as the votes of the
whole college of princes and counts (at any rate in the 18th century)
numbered 100, they could exercise but little weight.
The last era in the history of the diet may be said to open with the
treaty of Westphalia (1648). The treaty acknowledged that Germany was no
longer a unitary state, but a loose confederation of sovereign princes;
and the diet accordingly ceased to bear the character of a national
assembly, and became a mere congress of envoys. The "last diet" which
issued a regular recess (_Reichsabschied_--the term applied to the
_acta_ of the diet, as formally compiled and enunciated at its
dissolution) was that of Regensburg in 1654. The next diet, which met at
Regensburg in 1663, never issued a recess, and was never dissolved; it
continued in permanent session, as it were, till the dissolution of the
Empire in 1806. This result was achieved by the process of turning the
diet from an assembly of principals into a congress of envoys. The
emperor was represented by two _commissarii_; the electors, princes and
towns were similarly represented by their accredited agents. Some
legislation was occasionally done by this body; a _conclusum imperii_
(so called in distinction from the old _recessus imperii_ of the period
before 1663) might slowly (very slowly--for the agents, imperfectly
instructed, had constantly to refer matters back to their principals) be
achieved; but it rested with the various princes to promulgate and
enforce the _conclusum_ in their territories, and they were sufficiently
occupied in issuing and enforcing their own decrees. In practice the
diet had nothing to do; and its members occupied themselves in
"wrangling about chairs"--that is to say, in unending disputes about
degrees and precedences.
In the Germanic Confederation, which occupies the interval between the
death of the Holy Roman Empire and the formation of the North German
Confederation (1815-1866), a diet (_Bundestag_) existed, which was
modelled on the old diet of the 18th century. It was a standing congress
of envoys at Frankfort-on-Main. Austria presided in the diet, which, in
the earlier years of its history, served, under the influence of
Metternich, as an organ for the suppression of Liberal opinion. In the
North German Confederation (1867-1870) a new departure was made, which
has been followed in the constitution of the present German empire. Two
bodies were instituted--a _Bundesrat_, which resembles the old diet in
being a congress of envoys sent by the sovereigns of the different
states of the confederation, and a _Reichstag_, which bears the name of
the old diet, but differs entirely in composition. The new Reichstag is
a popular representative assembly, based on wide suffrage and elected by
ballot; and, above all, it is an assembly representing, not the several
states, but the whole Empire, which is divided for this purpose into
electoral districts. Both as a popular assembly, and as an assembly
which represents the whole of a united Germany, the new Reichstag goes
back, one may almost say, beyond the diet even of the middle ages, to
the days of the old Teutonic folk-moot.
See R. Schroder, _Lehrbuch der deutschen Rechtsgeschichte_ (1902), pp.
149, 508, 820, 880. Schroder gives a bibliography of monographs
bearing on the history of the medieval diet. (E. BR.)
DIETARY, in a general sense, a system or course of diet, in the sense of
food; more particularly, such an allowance and regulation of food as
that supplied to workhouses, the army and navy, prisons, &c. Lowest in
the scale of such dietaries comes what is termed "bare existence" diet,
administered to certain classes of the community who have a claim on
their fellow-countrymen that their lives and health shall be preserved
_in statu quo_, but nothing further. This applies particularly to the
members of a temporarily famine-stricken community. Before the days of
prison reform, too, the dietary scale of many prisons was to a certain
extent penal, in that the food supplied to prisoners was barely
sufficient for existence. Nowadays more humane principles apply; there
is no longer the obvious injustice of applying the same scale of
quantity and quality to all prisoners under varying circumstances of
constitution and surroundings, and whether serving long or short periods
of imprisonment.
The system of dietary in force in the local and convict prisons of
England and Wales is that recommended by the Home Office on the advice
of a departmental committee. As to the local prison dietary, its
application is based on (1) the principle of variation of diet with
length of sentence; (2) the system of progressive dietary; (3) the
distinction between hard labour diets and non-hard labour diets; (4)
the differentiation of diet according to age and sex. There are three
classes of diet, classes A, B and C. Class A diet is given to
prisoners undergoing not more than seven days' imprisonment. The food
is good and wholesome, but sufficiently plain and unattractive, so as
not to offer temptation to the loafer or mendicant. It is given in
quantity sufficient to maintain health and strength during the single
week. Prisoners sentenced to more than seven days and not more than
fourteen days are given class A diet for the first seven days and
class B for the remainder of the sentence. In most of the local
prisons in England and Wales prisoners sentenced to hard labour
received hard labour diet, although quite 60% were unable to perform
the hardest forms of prison labour either through physical defect, age
or infirmity. The departmental committee of 1899 in their report
recommended that no distinction should be made between hard labour and
non-hard labour diets. Class A diet is as follows:--_Breakfast_,
Bread, 8 oz. daily (6 oz. for women and juveniles) with 1 pint of
gruel. Juveniles (males and females under sixteen years of age) get,
in addition, 1/2 pint of milk. _Dinner_, 8 oz. of bread daily, with 1
pint of porridge on three days of the week, 8 oz. of potatoes
(representing the vegetable element) on two other days, and 8 oz. of
suet pudding (representing the fatty element) on the other two days.
_Supper_, the breakfast fare repeated.
Class B diet, which is also given to (1) prisoners on remand or
awaiting trial, (2) offenders of the 1st division who do not maintain
themselves, (3) offenders of the 2nd division and (4) debtors, is as
shown in Table I.
Class C diet is class B amplified, and is given to those prisoners
serving sentences of three months and over.