=Di´do.= A daughter of Belus, king of Tyre, who married Sichæus or Sicharbus, her uncle, who was priest of Hercules. Pygmalion killed Sichæsus to obtain his immense riches, and Dido, disconsolate at the loss of her husband, set sail with a number of Tyrians in quest of a place in which to form a settlement. A storm drove her fleet on the African coast, and she bought of the inhabitants as much land as could be covered by a bull's hide cut into thongs. On this land she built a citadel called Byrsa, which was the nucleus of a great city. Her subjects wished her to marry again, but she refused, and erected a funeral pile, on which she ascended and stabbed herself to death. =Diocletia´nus, Cai´us Valer´ius Jo´vius.= A celebrated Roman emperor, born of an obscure family in Dalmatia. He was first a common soldier, and by merit gradually rose to the position of a general, and at length he was invested with imperial power. He has been celebrated for his military virtues, and though he was naturally unpolished by education, yet he was the friend and patron of learning and genius. His cruelty, however, against the followers of Christianity, has been severely reprobated. After reigning twenty-one years in great prosperity, he abdicated, A.D. 304, and died nine years afterwards, aged sixty-eight. =Diodo´rus, Sic´ulus.= Celebrated as the author of a history of Egypt, Persia, Syria, Media, Greece, Rome and Carthage. It was divided into forty books, of which only fifteen are extant, with a few fragments. =Dio´genes.= A celebrated cynic philosopher of Sinope, banished from his country for coining false money. From Sinope he retired to Athens, where he became the disciple of Antisthenes, who was at the head of the Cynics. He dressed himself in the garment which distinguished the Cynics, and walked about the streets with a tub on his head, which served him as a house. His singularity, joined to his great contempt for riches, gained him reputation, and Alexander the Great visited the philosopher and asked him if there was anything in which he could oblige him. "Get out of my sunshine," was the reply of the Cynic. Such independence pleased the monarch, who, turning to his courtiers, said, "Were I not Alexander, I would wish to be Diogenes." He was once sold as a slave, and his magnanimity so pleased his master, that he made him the preceptor of his children and the guardian of his estates. He died, B.C. 324, in the ninety-sixth year of his age. The life of Diogenes does not bear strict examination: whilst boasting of his poverty, he was so arrogant that it has been observed that his virtues arose from pride and vanity, not from wisdom or sound philosophy.