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gave so much satisfaction, that she was employed to prepareeditions of Latin authors for the dauphin, the first of which wasFloras. In 1081 she published a translation of Anacreon and Sap-pho, which was followed by versions of some of Plautus ’s comedies,and of the Plutus and Clouds of Aristophanes. In 1083 she mar-ried M. Dacier, and soon after they renounced the Protestant re-ligion. In 1711 appeared her translation of the Iliad ; and in 1714she defended Ilomer against M. de la Motte , in a book, entitledThe Causes of the Corruption of'Paste; this was followed in 1716by another against father llardouin. The same year was printedher version of the Odyssey, which closed her literary labours.She died in 1720. She had two daughters and a son. One of thedaughters became a nun, the other died at the age of 18, and theson when he was a child. Madame Dacier was as remarkable forher modesty as her erudition. A learned German having paidher a visit, begged that she would write her name and a sentencein his book. She excused herself as long as she could, but beingstrongly importuned she complied, and added to her signature averse from Sophocles , importing that silence is the ornament of thefemale sex.

DACRYDIUM, in pharmacy, the juice of scamony, preparedand hardened in a quince made hollow ; called also Lachrvmula.

DACRYODFS, or DACRYOIDES, [from irAp, a tear, andform,] a name given to ulcers, which coulinuully yield aputrid matter, resembling tears.

DACTY LE, [i.ixryxge, a linger,] a poetical foot consisting ofone long sellable and two short, like the joints of a linger ; ascan-didus, Y; firs. The dactyle is said to be the invention of Diony-sius or Bacchus, who delivered oracles in this measure at Delphos,before Apollo . The Greeks call it tvoXithw;. The dactyl andspondee are the most considerable of the poetical feel: as beingtile measures used in heroic verse, by Ilomer, Virgil, Ac. Thesetwo are of equal time, but not equal motion. The spondee hasan even, strong, and steady pace, like a trot: the dactyl resemblesthe nimble strokes of a gallop.

DACTY LET! IRA, or DACTYLITHR A, Digitai.e, a me-dicine used by the ancient physicians, to excite vomiting.

DACTYLIC Verses are hexameter verses, ending in a dactylinstead of a spondee ; as Spondaic Verses are those which have aspondee in the tilth foot instead of a dactyl, An instance of adactylic verse occurs in Virgil; .Tin . vi. 33.

Bis patriae ceeidere maims : quin protinus bmni'ii.

DAC'PY LI Idjei, [ 17 . d. the Fingers of Mount Ida,] in Pagan mythology, are personages very differently described bv ancientauthois. 'i be Cretans paid divine worship to them, as to thosewho had nursed and brought up the god Jupiter; whence it ap-pears, that they weie the same as the Corybantes and Curetes.Nevertheless Strabo makes them different; and says, that the tra-dition in Phrygia was, that the “ Curetes and Corybantes weredescended from the Dactyli Ida'i: that there were originally 100men in the island, w ho were called Dactyli hhei; from whomsprang nine Curetes, and each of these nine produced ten men, as■many as the lingers of a man’s two hands: and that this gave thename to the ancestors of (lie Dactyli hhei.” He relates anotheropinion, which is, that there were but live Dactyli Idad ; who, ac-cording to Sophocles , were the inventors of iron: that these fivebrothers had live sisters, and that from this number they took thename of lingers of mount Ida, because they were in number ten ;and that thev worked at (he foot of this mountain.

DACTY LH) MANGY, or DACTYLIOMANTIA, [frombixTKX©-, a ring, and ;jlMi iia, divination,] a sort of divination per-formed by means of a ring. It consisted in bolding a ring, sus-pended by a tine thread, over a round table, on the edge whereofwere made divers marks w ith the letters of the alphabet. Thering in shaking, or vibrating over the table, slopped over certaincf the letters, w hich, being joined together, composed the answerrei'uired.

DACTYI.1S, C'ock.’s-Foot Grass, a genus of the digy-ma order, and triamlria class of plants; natural order, Gramma,t alyx hivalved, compressed, with the one valve longer than theother, carinated, or having the rachis prominent and sharp. Thereare seven species.

DACTY L( )GY, [from J4 xtv>.©., a finger, and x'-,©-, a dis-course,] tlie art of communicating our thoughts bv signs made bvthe fingers.

D ACT YLON O MI A, or DACTY LONG MY, [from i«*.and a rule,] the art of numbering by the fingers.

The rule is this : The left thumb is reckoned one ; the index orfore-finger two ; and so on to the right thumb, which stands for thecypher.

DACTY LUS, in antiquity, a dance among the Greeks, chieflyperformed, Hesycbius observes, by the athlctax

Dactyi.us, in poetry. See Dactylic.

DADO, [Lai.] in architecture, the plain part between the baseand cornice of a column : the dye.

DADUCH1, [«i SxSuyjcu, torch-bearers,] in antiquity, priestsof Ceres. The goddess having lost her daughter Proserpine , say ;mythologists, began to make search for her at the beginning of thenight. In order to do this in the dark, she lighted a torch, andUlus set forth on her travels throughout the worl tl: for which reasonshe is represented with a lighted torch in her hand, in com-memoration of this pretended exploit, it became a custom forthe priests, at the feasts and sacrifices of this goddess, to run about ■in the temple, with torches after this maimer ; one of them took alighted torch frdm off the altar, and holding it with his hand, ranwith it to a certain part of the temple, where he gave it to another,saying to him, Tibitrado; this second ran after the like maimerto another part of temple, and gave it to the third, and so of therest.

D.EDALA, two festivals in Boeotia; one of them observed inAlalcomenos by the Plativans in a large grove, where they exposedin the open air pieces of boiled flesh, and carefully observedwhether the crows that came to prey upon them directed theirflight. All the trees upon which any of these alighted wore immedia-ately cut down, and with them statues were made, called Diedala,in honour of Daedalus . The other festival was of a more solemn,kind, It was celebrated every sixty years by all the cities ofBceotia, as a compensation for the intermission of the smaller festi-vals, for that number of years, during the exile of the Plat;vans.

D.EDALL'S, in fabulous history, the son of Eupalamus, de--scended from Erechlheus king of Athens. He was the most in-genious artist of his age; and to him we are indebted for the in-vention of the wedge, with many other mechanical instruments,and the sails of ships. He made statues which moved of them-selves, and seemed to be endowed with life. Talus his sister’s sonpromised to be as great as himself by the ingenuity of his inven-tions; and therefore from envy he threw him down from a win-dow and killed him. After this murder, Dvdalus, with his sonIcarus, fled from Athens to Crete, where Minos gave him a cor-dial reception. Disdains made a famous labyrinth for Minos , andassisted Pusiphae the queen, to gratify her unnatural passion forabull. For this action Dxdalus incurred the displeasure of Minos ,who ordered him to be confined in the labyrinth which lie hadconstructed. Here he made himself wings with feathers andwax, and carefully titled them to his body and (hat of his son, whowas the companion of his confinement. They took their flight inIhe air from Crete ; but the heat of the sun melted the wax on thewings of Icarus , whose flight was loo high, and he fell into thatpart of the ocean, which from him has been called the Icarian Sea.Phe father by a proper management of his wings alighted at Cumy,where he built a temple to Apollo , and thence directed his courseto Sicily, where he was kindly received by Cocalus , who reignedover part of the country.

D.EDIS, [from ■MG, a torch,] in Grecian antiquity, a solemnfestival, that laded three days during which the torches were con-stantly keep burning.

DrEMON, puHWpi,] a name given by the ancients tocertain spirits or genii, which appeared to men. either to do themservice or to hurt them. 'Phe word is derived (according to Plato ,in his Cratylus , p. 398. ed. Serrani, vol. i.) irom tar.y.^ knowingnr intelligent: hut according to others from s-Ayu*., to distribute.Either of these derivations agree with (he office ascribed to daunonsby the ancient heathens, as the spirit entrusted with the inspectionand government of mankind. For, according to the philosophers,dilutions held a middle rank between the celestial gods and men onearth, and carried on all intercourse between them ; conveying theaddresses of men to the gods, and the divine benefits to men. Irwas the opinion of many, that the celestial divinities did notthemselves interpose in human allairs, hut committed the entire-administration of the government of this lower world (p these sub-

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