Dictys

, a Cretan, who went with Idomeneus to the Trojan war. It is supposed that he wrote a history of this celebrated war, and that at his death he ordered it to be laid in his tomb, where it remained till a violent earthquake, in the reign of Nero, opened the monument where he had been buried. This convulsion of the earth threw out his history of the ♦ Trojan war, which was found by some shepherds, and afterwards carried to Rome. This mysterious tradition is deservedly deemed fabulous; and the history of the Trojan war, which is now extant as the composition of Dictys of Crete, was composed in the 15th century, or, according to others, in the age of Const an tine, and falsely attributed to one of the followers of Idomeneus. The edition of Dictys is by Mas cell us Venia, 4to, Milan, 1477.――A king of the island of Seriph us, son of Magnes and Nais. He married the nymph Clymene, and was made king of Seriph us by Perseus, who deposed Polydectes, because he behaved with wantonne to Danae. See: Polydectes . Apollo dor us , bk. 1 , ch. 9 ; bk. 2 , ch. 4 .――A centaur, killed at the nuptials of Pirithous. Ovid , Metamorphoses , bk. 12 , li. 334 . ♦ ‘Trojon’ replaced with ‘Trojan’