Dionysius Periegetes

c. 90 CE–c. 140 CE · Alexandria

Dionysius Periegetes ('the traveler/guide') was a Greek poet, generally dated to the early 2nd century CE under the emperor Hadrian, often connected with Alexandria. He wrote a 'Description of the Known World,' a verse geography of the inhabited world that became a widely used school text and was translated into Latin. His personal life is essentially unknown.

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AlexandriaEgypt

We know they were here, but the specifics of what they did at this stop aren’t recorded yet in our corpus.

About Alexandria

Alexandria is the main Mediterranean port of northern Egypt and the country's second city. Founded by Alexander the Great in 331 BCE, it became the capital of the Ptolemies, whose Museum and Great Library made it the leading centre of Hellenistic learning. It also held one of the largest Jewish communities of antiquity, where the Greek Bible translation known as the Septuagint was produced and Philo wrote. Church tradition traces its patriarchate to Mark the Evangelist, and its catechetical school was led by Clement and Origen. Arab forces under Amr ibn al-As took the city in 641, and it remained a commercial and scholarly hub of the Islamic world; the Sufi master Ibn Ata Allah al-Iskandari was born there.

In Alexandria at the same time

Plutarch, Aretaeus of Cappadocia, Appian of Alexandria, Claudius Ptolemaeus, Harpocration, Achilles Tatius

Across the traditions, in Alexandria at the same time

See other sages who lived in Alexandria→

In the same place & time

Sages whose lives overlapped with Dionysius Periegetes’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.

Across the traditions

In the same tradition

Plutarch, Aretaeus of Cappadocia, Appian of Alexandria, Claudius Ptolemaeus, Harpocration, Achilles Tatius, Apollonius Dyscolus, Vettius Valens

The world in their lifetime

Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Dionysius Periegetes’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.