featuring an iron-tipped yard-arm with battering ram operated by a system of pulleys
and windlasses; he also describes movable towers and a ram-tortoise (A M.
pp. 10–15 W.; V 10.13). For the rare name, cf. the founder of the Lukian city Dias:
S B, s.v.
Irby-Massie and Keyser (2002) 164.
GLIM
Diagoras of Cyprus (220 – 180 BCE?)
D, MM 4.64.6, recounts that he restricted the use of opium because it weak-
ened the senses of sight and hearing (he is listed between E and A,
yielding the date-range estimate); P 20.200 repeats this, but also records his directions
for extracting opium, 20.198, and lists him in his index, 1.ind.12–13, 20–21, 34–35. O-
, Syn 3.158 (CMG 6.3, p.106), and A A 7.110 (CMG 8.2, pp. 375–376),
record his rose-collyrium, starting with rose-petals stripped of their whitish bases, antimony,
calamine, copper flakes, saffron, Indian nard, myrrh, and opium, in gum and rainwater;
evidently popular, as A, in G CMLoc 4.8 (12.767–768 K.), A
T (2.63 Puschm.), and P A 7.16.37 (CMG 9.2, p. 342), record
very similar recipes. E Pi-37 (p. 71 Nachm.) records that he called the voluntary
nerves peronas (“pins”).
RE 5.1 (1903) 311 (#3), M. Wellmann.
PTK
D M ⇒ D P
D ⇒ D
Didumos “the music theorist” (ca 60 CE)
Musical writer whose book On the Difference Between the Aristoxenians and the Pythagoreans
(Peri te ̄s diaphoras to ̄n Aristoxeneio ̄n te kai Puthagoreio ̄n) is quoted by P in his commen-
tary on P’s Harmonics (26.2–29, 27.17–28.6 Düring). Ptolemy himself preserves
and critiques a set of tetrachordal divisions worked out by Didumos (Harm. ii.13–14); these
are important for their strict adherence both to certain core Pythagorean mathematical
principles and to key structural features of A’ tetrachordal divisions. Ptolemy
also reports that Didumos made certain improvements to the monochord to facilitate the
playing of melodies on the instrument (one not well suited to musical performance); his
intention may have been to demonstrate in a melodic context the scales of Aristoxenos’ age,
newly “translated” into ratios (see Barker 1994).
Didumos’ work may have been both Ptolemy’s and Porphurios’ immediate source for the
harmonic writings of A, E (for both of whom Ptolemy transmits
tetrachordal divisions) and P K (whom Porphurios quotes immediately
before his excerpts from Didumos) – indeed, Porphurios goes so far as to claim that Ptolemy
plagiarized the greater part of his material from Didumos’ book. Although Porphurios’ own
quotations from Didumos do not adequately support the accusation, the fact that Porphu-
rios could make it at all suggests that Didumos’ work was both substantial and ambitious,
and it is clear that in many respects Ptolemy’s treatise owes much to Didumos.
DIAGORAS OF CYPRUS