OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Dogwood

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​DOGWOOD (i.e. wood of the dog-tree; referred by the New English Dictionary to “dog,” apparently as indicating inferiority; but by others connected with “dag,” “dagger,” and by Prior with A.S. dolc, a brooch-pin), the name applied to plants of the genus Cornus, of the natural order Cornaceae. The common dogwood, prick-wood, skewer-wood, cornel or dogberry, C. sanguinea, is a shrub reaching a height of 8 or 9 ft., common in hedges, thickets and plantations in Great Britain. Its branches are dark red; the leaves egg-shaped, pointed, about 2 in. long by 11/2 broad, and turning red in autumn; the flowers are dull white, in terminal clusters. The berries are small, of a black-purple, bitter and one-seeded, and contain a considerable percentage of oil, which in some places is employed for lamps, and in the manufacture of soap. The wood is white and very hard, and like that of other species of the genus is used for making ladder-spokes, wheel-work, skewers, forks and other implements, and gunpowder charcoal. The red berries of the dwarf species, C. suecica, of the Scottish Highlands, are eaten, and are reputed to be tonic in properties. C. mas, the Cornelian cherry, a native of Europe and Northern Asia, bears a pulpy and edible fruit, which when unripe contains much tannin. It is a good garden plant, as is also the North American species C. florida, one of the commonest trees of the deciduous forests of the middle and southern states. Professor C. S. Sargent (Silva of North America) describes it as “one of the most beautiful of the small trees of the American forests, which it enlivens in early spring with the whiteness of its floral leaves and in autumn with the splendour of its foliage and the brilliancy of its fruit. No tree is more desirable in the garden or park in regions where the summer’s sun is sufficiently hot to ensure the production of its flowers through the perfect development of the branchlets.” The Jamaica dogwood, the root-bark of which is poisonous, is the species Piscidia Erythrina, of the natural order Leguminosae.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Dolce, Ludovico

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​DOLCE, LUDOVICO, or Luigi (1508–1568 or 1569), Italian writer, was a native of Venice, and belonged to a family of honourable tradition but decadent fortune. He received a good education, and early undertook the task of maintaining himself by his pen. Translations from Greek and Latin epics, satires, histories, plays and treatises on language and art followed each other in rapid succession, till the whole number amounted to upwards of seventy works. But he is now mainly memorable as the author of Marianna, a tragedy from the life of Herod, which was recast in French by Tristan and by Voltaire, and still keeps a place on the stage. Four licentious comedies, Il Ragazzo (1541), Il Capitano (1545), Il Marito (1560), Il Ruffiano (1560), and seven of Seneca’s tragedies complete the list of his dramatic efforts. In one epic—to translate the title-page—“he has marvellously reduced into ottava rima and united into one narrative the stories of the Iliad and the Aeneid”; in another he devotes thirty-nine cantos to a certain Primaleone, son of Palmerius; in a third he celebrates the first exploits of Count Orlando; and in a fourth he sings of the Paladin Sacripante. A life of the emperor Charles V. and a similar account of Ferdinand I., published respectively in 1560 and 1566, are his chief historical productions; and among his minor treatises it is enough to mention the Osservazioni sulla lingua volgare (1550); the Dialogo della pittura (1557); and the Dialogo nel quale si ragiona del modo di accrescar la memoria (1552).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Hieroglyphics

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​HIEROGLYPHICS (Gr. ἱερός, sacred, and γλυφή, carving), the term used by Greek and Latin writers to describe the sacred characters of the ancient Egyptian language in its classical phase. It is now also used for various systems of writing in which figures of objects take the place of conventional signs. Such characters which symbolize the idea of a thing without expressing the name of it are generally styled “ideographs” (Gr. ἰδέα, idea, and γράφειν, to write), e.g. the Chinese characters.
See Egypt, Language; Cuneiform; Inscriptions and Writing.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Hieronymus of Cardia

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​HIERONYMUS OF CARDIA, Greek general and historian, contemporary of Alexander the Great. After the death of the king he followed the fortunes of his friend and fellow-countryman Eumenes. He was wounded and taken prisoner by Antigonus, who pardoned him and appointed him superintendent of the asphalt beds in the Dead Sea. He was treated with equal friendliness by Antigonus’s son Demetrius, who made him polemarch of Thespiae, and by Antigonus Gonatas, at whose court he died at the age of 104. He wrote a history of the Diadochi and their descendants, embracing the period from the death of Alexander to the war with Pyrrhus (323–272 B.C.), which is one of the chief authorities used by Diodorus Siculus (xviii.-xx.) and also by Plutarch in his life of Pyrrhus. He made use of official papers and was careful in his investigation of facts. The simplicity of his style rendered his work unpopular, but it is probable that it was on a high level as compared with that of his contemporaries. In the last part of his work he made a praiseworthy attempt to acquaint the Greeks with the character and early history of the Romans. He is reproached by Pausanias (i. 9. 8) with unfairness towards all rulers with the exception of Antigonus Gonatas.
See Lucian, Macrobii, 22; Plutarch, Demetrius, 39; Diod. Sic. xviii. 42. 44. 50, xix. 100; Dion. Halic. Antiq. Rom. i. 6; F. Brückner, “De vita et scriptis Hieronymi Cardii” in Zeitschrift für die Alterthumswissenschaft (1842); F. Reuss, Hieronymos von Kardia (Berlin, 1876); C. Wachsmuth, Einleitung in das Studium der alten Geschichte (1895); fragments in C. W. Müller, Frag. hist. Graec. ii. 450-461.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Hierocles

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​HIEROCLES, proconsul of Bithynia and Alexandria, lived during the reign of Diocletian (A.D. 284–305). He is said to have been the instigator of the fierce persecution of the Christians under Galerius in 303. He was the author of a work (not extant) entitled λόγοι φιλαλήθεις πρὸς τοὺς Χριστιανούς in two books, in which he endeavoured to persuade the Christians that their sacred books were full of contradictions, and that in moral influence and miraculous power Christ was inferior to Apollonius of Tyana. Our knowledge of this treatise is derived from Lactantius (Instit. div. v. 2) and Eusebius, who wrote a refutation entitled Ἀντιῤῥητικὸς πρὸς τὰ Ἱεροκλέους.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Hierocles of Alexandria

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​HIEROCLES OF ALEXANDRIA, Neoplatonist writer, flourished c. A.D. 430. He studied under the celebrated Neoplatonist Plutarch at Athens, and taught for some years in his native city. He seems to have been banished from Alexandria and to have taken up his abode in Constantinople, where he gave such offence by his religious opinions that he was thrown into prison and cruelly flogged. The only complete work of his which has been preserved is the commentary on the Carmina Aurea of Pythagoras. It enjoyed a great reputation in middle age and Renaissance times, and there are numerous translations in various European languages. Several other writings, especially one on providence and fate, a consolatory treatise dedicated to his patron Olympiodorus of Thebes, author of ἱστορικοὶ λόγοι, are quoted or referred to by Photius and Stobaeus. The collection of some 260 witticisms (ἀστεῖα) called Φιλόγελως (ed. A. Eberhard, Berlin, 1869), attributed to Hierocles and Philagrius, has no connexion with Hierocles of Alexandria, but is probably a compilation of later date, founded on two older collections. It is now agreed that the fragments of the Elements of Ethics (Ἠθικὴ στοιχείωσις) preserved in Stobaeus are from a work by a Stoic named Hierocles, contemporary of Epictetus, who has been identified with the “Hierocles Stoicus vir sanctus et gravis” in Aulus Gellius (ix. 5. 8). This theory is confirmed by the discovery of a papyrus (ed. H. von Arnim in Berliner Klassikertexte, iv. 1906; see also C. Prächter, Hierokles der Stoiker, 1901).
There is an edition of the commentary by F. W. Mullach in Fragmenta philosophorum Graecorum (1860), i. 408, including full information concerning Hierocles, the poem and the commentary; see also E. Zeller, Philosophie der Griechen (2nd ed.), iii. 2, pp. 681-687; W. Christ, Geschichte der griechischen Literatur (1898), pp. 834, 849.
Another Hierocles, who flourished during the reign of Justinian, was the author of a list of provinces and towns in the Eastern Empire, called Συνέκδημος (“fellow-traveller”; ed. A. Burckhardt, 1893); it was one of the chief authorities used by Constantine Porphyrogenitus in his work on the “themes” of the Roman Empire (see C. Krumbacher, Geschichte der byzantinischen Literatur, 1897, p. 417). In Fabricius’s Bibliotheca Graeca (ed. Harles), i. 791, sixteen persons named Hierocles, chiefly literary, are mentioned.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Higdon, Ranulf

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​HIGDON (or Higden), RANULF (c. 1299–c. 1363), English chronicler, was a Benedictine monk of the monastery of St Werburg in Chester, in which he lived, it is said, for sixty-four years, and died “in a good old age,” probably in 1363. Higdon was the author of a long chronicle, one of several such works based on a plan taken from Scripture, and written for the amusement and instruction of his society. It closes the long series of general chronicles, which were soon superseded by the invention of printing. It is commonly styled the Polychronicon, from the longer title Ranulphi Castrensis, cognomine Higdon, Polychronicon (sive Historia Polycratica) ab initio mundi usque ad mortem regis Edwardi III. in septem libros dispositum. The work is divided into seven books, in humble imitation of the seven days of Genesis, and, with exception of the last book, is a summary of general history, a compilation made with considerable style and taste. It seems to have enjoyed no little popularity in the 15th century. It was the standard work on general history, and more than a hundred MSS. of it are known to exist. The Christ Church MS. says that Higdon wrote it down to the year 1342; the fine MS. at Christ’s College, Cambridge, states that he wrote to the year 1344, after which date, with the omission of two years, John of Malvern, a monk of Worcester, carried the history on to 1357, at which date it ends. According, however, to its latest editor, Higdon’s part of the work goes no further than 1326 or 1327 at latest, after which time it was carried on by two continuators to the end. Thomas Gale, in his Hist. Brit. &c., scriptores, xv. (Oxon., 1691), published that portion of it, in the original Latin, which comes down to 1066. Three early translations of the Polychronicon exist. The first was made by John of Trevisa, chaplain to Lord Berkeley, in 1387, and was printed by Caxton in 1482; the second by an anonymous writer, was written between 1432 and 1450; the third, based on Trevisa’s version, with the addition of an eighth book, was prepared by Caxton. These versions are specially valuable as illustrating the change of the English language during the period they cover.
The Polychronicon, with the continuations and the English versions, was edited for the Rolls Series (No. 41) by Churchill Babington (vols. i. and ii.) and Joseph Rawson Lumby (1865–1886). This edition was adversely criticized by Mandell Creighton in the Eng. Hist. Rev. for October 1888.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Hieronymites

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​HIERONYMITES, a common name for three or four congregations of hermits living according to the rule of St Augustine with supplementary regulations taken from St Jerome’s writings. Their habit was white, with a black cloak. (1) The Spanish Hieronymites, established near Toledo in 1374. The order soon became popular in Spain and Portugal, and in 1415 it numbered 25 houses. It possessed some of the most famous monasteries in the Peninsula, including the royal monastery of Belem near Lisbon, and the magnificent monastery built by Philip II. at the Escurial. Though the manner of life was very austere the Hieronymites devoted themselves to studies and to the active work of the ministry, and they possessed great influence both at the Spanish and the Portuguese courts. They went to Spanish and Portuguese America and played a considerable part in Christianizing and civilizing the Indians. There were Hieronymite nuns founded in 1375, who became very numerous. The order decayed during the 18th century and was completely suppressed in 1835. (2) Hieronymites of the Observance, or of Lombardy: a reform of (1) effected by the third general in 1424; it embraced seven houses in Spain and seventeen in Italy, mostly in Lombardy. It is now extinct. (3) Poor Hermits of St Jerome, established near Pisa in 1377: it came to embrace nearly fifty houses whereof only one in Rome and one in Viterbo survive. (4) Hermits of St Jerome of the congregation of Fiesole, established in 1406: they had forty houses but in 1668 they were united to (3).
See Helyot, Histoire des ordres religieux (1714), iii. cc. 57-60, iv. cc. 1-3; Max Heimbucher, Orden und Kongregationen (1896), i. § 70; and art. “Hieronymiten” in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopädie (ed. 3), and in Welte and Wetzer, Kirchenlexicon (ed. 2). (E. C. B.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Hierro

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​HIERRO, or Ferro, an island in the Atlantic Ocean, forming part of the Spanish archipelago of the Canary Islands (q.v.). Pop. (1900) 6508; area 107 sq. m. Hierro, the most westerly and the smallest island of the group, is somewhat crescent-shaped. Its length is about 18 m., its greatest breadth about 15 m., and its circumference 50 m. It lies 92 m. W.S.W. of Teneriffe. Its coast is bound by high, steep rocks, which only admit of one harbour, but the interior is tolerably level. Its hill-tops in winter are sometimes wrapped in snow. Better and more abundant grass grows here than on any of the other islands. Hierro is exposed to westerly gales which frequently inflict great damage. Fresh water is scarce, but there is a sulphurous spring, with a temperature of 102° Fahr. The once celebrated and almost sacred Til tree, which was reputed to be always distilling water in great abundance from its leaves, no longer exists. Only a small part of the cultivable land is under tillage, the inhabitants being principally employed in pasturage. Valverde (pop. about 3000) is the principal town. Geographers were formerly in the habit of measuring all longitudes from Ferro, the most westerly land known to them. The longitude assigned at first has, however, turned out to be erroneous; and the so-called “Longitude of Ferro” does not coincide with the actual longitude of the island.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Higgins, Matthew James

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​HIGGINS, MATTHEW JAMES (1810–1868), British writer over the nom-de-plume “Jacob Omnium,” which was the title of his first magazine article, was born in County Meath, Ireland, ​on the 4th of December 1810. His letters in The Times were instrumental in exposing many abuses. He was a frequent contributor to the Cornhill, and was a friend of Thackeray, who dedicated to him The Adventures of Philip, and one of his ballads, “Jacob Omnium’s Hoss,” deals with an incident in Higgins’s career. He died on the 14th of August 1868. Some of his articles were published in 1875 as Essays on Social Subjects.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Dionysia

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​DIONYSIA, festivals in honour of the god Dionysus generally, but in particular the festivals celebrated in Attica and by the branches of the Attic-Ionic race in the islands and in Asia Minor. In Attica there were two festivals annually. (1) The lesser Dionysia, or τὰ κατ᾽ ἀγρούς, was held in the country places for four days (about the 19th to the 22nd of December) at the first tasting of the new wine. It was accompanied by songs, dance, phallic processions and the impromptu performances of itinerant players, who with others from the city thronged to take part in the excitement of the rustic sports. A favourite amusement was the Ascoliasmus, or dancing on one leg upon a leathern bag (ἀσκός), which had been smeared with oil. (2) The greater Dionysia, or τὰ ἐν ἄστει, was held in the city of Athens for six days (about the 28th of March to the 2nd of April). This was a festival of joy at the departure of winter and the promise of summer, Dionysus being regarded as having delivered the people from the wants and troubles of winter. The religious act of the festival was the conveying of the ancient image of the god, which had been brought from Eleutherae to Athens, from the ancient sanctuary of the Lenaeum to a small temple near the Acropolis and back again, with a chorus of boys and a procession carrying masks and singing the dithyrambus. The festival culminated in the production of tragedies, comedies and satyric dramas in the great theatre of Dionysus. Other festivals in honour of Dionysus were the ​Anthesteria (q.v.); the Lenaea (about the 28th to the 31st of January), or festival of vats, at which, after a great public banquet, the citizens went through the city in procession to attend the dramatic representations; the Oschophoria (October-November), a vintage festival, so called from the branches of vine with grapes carried by twenty youths from the ephebi, two from each tribe, in a race from the temple of Dionysus in Athens to the temple of Athena Sciras in Phalerum.
See A. Mommsen, Feste der Stadt Athen (1898); L. Preller, Griechische Mythologie; L. C. Purser in Smith’s Dictionary of Antiquities (3rd ed., 1890); article Dionysos in W. H. Roscher’s Lexikon der Mythologie; and the exhaustive account with bibliography by J. Girard in Daremberg and Saglio’s Dictionnaire des antiquités.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Dionysius Exiguus

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​DIONYSIUS EXIGUUS, one of the most learned men of the 6th century, and especially distinguished as a chronologist, was, according to the statement of his friend Cassiodorus, a Scythian by birth, “Scytha natione.” This may mean only that he was a native of the region bordering on the Black Sea, and does not necessarily imply that he was not of Greek origin. Such origin is indicated by his name and by his thorough familiarity with the Greek language. His surname “Exiguus” is usually translated “the Little,” but he probably assumed it out of humility. He was living at Rome in the first half of the 6th century, and is usually spoken of as abbot of a Roman monastery. Cassiodorus, however, calls him simply “monk,” while Bede calls him “abbot.” But as it was not unusual to apply the latter term to distinguished monks who were not heads of their houses, it is uncertain whether Dionysius was abbot in fact or only by courtesy. He was in high repute as a learned theologian, was profoundly versed in the Holy Scriptures and in canon law, and was also an accomplished mathematician and astronomer. We owe to him a collection of 401 ecclesiastical canons, including the apostolical canons and the decrees of the councils of Nicaea, Constantinople, Chalcedon and Sardis, and also a collection of the decretals of the popes from Siricius (385) to Anastasius II. (498). These collections, which had great authority in the West (see Canon Law), were published by Justel in 1628. Dionysius did good service to his contemporaries by his translations of many Greek works into Latin; and by these translations some works, the originals of which have perished, have been handed down to us. His name, however, is now perhaps chiefly remembered for his chronological labours. It was Dionysius who introduced the method of reckoning the Christian era which we now use (see Chronology). His friend Cassiodorus depicts in glowing terms the character of Dionysius as a saintly ascetic, and praises his wisdom and simplicity, his accomplishments and his lowly-mindedness, his power of eloquent speech and his capacity of silence. He died at Rome, some time before A.D. 550.
His works have been published in Migne, Patrologia Latina, tome 67; see especially A. Tardif, Histoire des sources du droit canonique (Paris, 1887), and D. Pitra, Analecta novissima, Spicilegii Solesmensis continuatio, vol. i. p. 36 (Paris, 1885).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Diomedes (Latin grammarian)

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​DIOMEDES, Latin grammarian, flourished at the end of the 4th century A.D. He was the author of an extant Ars grammatica in three books, dedicated to a certain Athanasius. The third book is the most important, as containing extracts from Suetonius’s De poëtis. Diomedes wrote about the same time as Charisius (q.v.) and used the same sources independently. The works of both grammarians are valuable, but whereas much of Charisius has been lost, the Ars of Diomedes has come down to us complete. In book i. he treats of the eight parts of speech; in ii. of the elementary ideas of grammar and of style; in iii. of quantity and metres.
The best edition is in H. Keil’s Grammatici Latini, i.; see also C. von Paucker, Kleinere Studien, i. (1883), on the Latinity of Diomedes.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Diomedes (Greek legend)

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​DIOMEDES, in Greek legend, son of Tydeus, one of the bravest of the heroes of the Trojan War. In the Iliad he is the favourite of Athena, by whose aid he not only overcomes all mortals who venture to oppose him, but is even enabled to attack the gods. In the post-Homeric story, he made his way with Odysseus by an underground passage into the citadel of Troy and carried off the Palladium, the presence of which within the walls secured Troy against capture (Virgil, Aeneid, ii. 164). On his return to Argos, finding that his wife had been unfaithful, he removed to Aetolia, and thence to Daunia (Apulia), where he married the daughter of King Daunus. He was buried or mysteriously disappeared on one of the islands in the Adriatic called after him Diomedeae, his sorrowing companions being changed into birds by the gods out of compassion (Ovid, Metam. xiv. 457 ff.). He was the reputed founder of Argyrippa (Arpi) and other Italian cities (Aeneid, xi. 243 ff.). He was worshipped as a hero not only in Greece, but on the coast of the Adriatic, as at Thurii and Metapontum. At Argos, his native place, during the festival of Athena, his shield was carried through the streets as a relic, together with the Palladium, and his statue was washed in the river Inachus.