Dionysius
12. Of BYZANTIUM, appears to have lived before the time of the emperor Severus, that is, before A. D. 197.
Works
Dionysius is mentioned by Stephanus of Byzantium (s. v. Χρυσόπολις and Suidas as the author of an ἀνάπλους Βοσπόρου. Suidas further calls him an epic poet, and states that he also wrote on the species of poetry called Δρῆνοι.
Periegesis
Some writers have believed that our Dionysius of Byzantium is the same as the one whose Periegesis is still extant, but this opinion is without foundation, and based only on the opinion of Suidas.
ἀνάπλους Βοσπόρου
The ἀνάπλους Βοσπόρου seems to have existed complete down to the 16th century, for P. Gyllius in his work on the Thracian Bosporus gave a considerable portion of it in a Latin translation. G. J. Vossius obtained a copy of a fragment of it, which his son Isaac had taken at Florence, and that fragment, which is now the only part of the Anaplus known to us.
Editions
The fragment obtained by Vossius is printed in Du Cange's Constantinopolis Christiana, in Hudson's Geogr. Minor. vol. iii., and in Fabricius, Bibl. Gr. iv. p. 664, note 1.
Further Information
Comp. Bernhardy in his edition of Dionys. Perieg. p. 492.)
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.