Dionysius
|
|
The Greco-Roman name Dionysius, deriving from the name of the god Dionysos or Dionysus, was exceedingly common, and many ancient people, famous and otherwise, bore it. It remains a common name today in the form Dennis (Denys, Denis).
Among the historical figures known by the name Dionysius, some of the more famous were:
- Dionysius the Elder (or Dionysius I), a ruler of Syracuse in Sicily
- Dionysius the Younger, (or Dionysius II), son of the preceding, more famous than his father, the quintessential Graeco-Roman tyrant
- Dionysius Periegetes, Greek geographer, 3d century BC
- Dionysius Thrax, Greek grammarian, 2d century BC
- Dionysius the Areopagite, a citizen of Corinth who was converted by Paul of Tarsus
- Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, (5th century) name given to anonymous writer, identified by some with a Georgian theologist Peter the Iberian (411‑491), author of Corpus Areopagiticum (see also pseudepigrapha)
- Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a Greek historian of the Roman period
- Saint Dionysius of Alexandria, 3rd century Egyptian bishop
- Saint Denis, Bishop of Paris, martyr (died ca. 250)
- Pope Dionysius (259 - 268)
- Dionysius Exiguus, (c. 470 – c. 540) a Dacian monk who invented the Anno Domini era
- Dionysius Telmaharensis, (d. 848) a former head of the Syrian Jacobite Church
- Dionysius the Wise, (lt. 15th - ea. 16th cen.) the Russian medieval icon-painter
- Dionysius I, Metropolitan of Moscow (c. 1300 - 1385) a 14th century orthodox prelate
- Benjamin Musaphia (1606 - 1675) a Jewish doctor, scholar, and kabbalist, who sometimes called himself Dionysius.
- Dionysius Lardner (1793 - 1859) an Irish scientific writer