Dionysius Atticus

Dionysius Atticus of Pergamon was a rhetorician, sophist, historian, and speechwriter of ancient Greece, who lived around the 1st century BCE, and was probably born around 80 BCE.[1][2][3][4]

He was a pupil of the celebrated Apollodorus of Pergamon, tutor of the Roman emperor Augustus. Dionysius was himself a teacher of rhetoric, and the author of several works, in which he explained the theory of Apollodorus. It would appear from his surname that he resided at Athens.[5][6]

He has at times been identified as the author of the anonymous work On the Sublime, but there is no scholarly consensus around the true identity of that author.[7] He also may be the same person as the Vipsanius Atticus described by Seneca the Elder as a disciple of Apollodorus from Pergamon, but there is also no consensus around this.[2]

References

1. Dueck, Daniela (2002). Strabo of Amasia: A Greek Man of Letters in Augustan Rome. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 9781134605606. Retrieved 2024-12-26.
2. Guérin, Charles (2020). "Greek Declaimers, Roman Context: (De)constructing Cultural Identity in Seneca the Elder". In Dinter, Martin T.; Guérin, Charles; Martinho, Marcos (eds.). Reading Roman Declamation: Seneca the Elder. Oxford University Press. p. 72. ISBN 9780191063107. Retrieved 2024-12-27.
3. Anderson, Graham (2005). The Second Sophistic: A Cultural Phenomenon in the Roman Empire. Taylor & Francis. p. 18. ISBN 9781134856848. Retrieved 2024-12-27.
4. Blasi, Anthony J. (2017). Social Science and the Christian Scriptures: Sociological Introductions and New Translation. Vol. 3. Wipf and Stock Publishers. ISBN 9781532615139. Retrieved 2024-12-27.
5. Strabo, Geographica xiii. p.625
6. Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria 3.1.18
7. Longinus (2019). Roberts, W. Rhys (ed.). Longinus on the Sublime: The Greek Text Edited After the Manuscript. Translated by Roberts, W. Rhys. Taylor & Francis. p. 16. ISBN 9780429647963. Retrieved 2024-12-26.

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Smith, William (1870). "Atticus, Dionysius". In Smith, William (ed.). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Vol. 1. p. 413.