(Δικαίαρχος).
1. A celebrated Peripatetic philosopher, geographer, and historian, and a contemporary of Aristotle and Theophrastus. He was the son of one Pheidias, and born at Messana in Sicily, though he passed the greater part of his life in Greece Proper, and especially in Peloponnesus. He was a disciple of Aristotle (Cic. de Leg. 3.6), and a friend of Theophrastus, to whom he dedicated some of his writings. Most of Aristotle's disciples are mentioned also among those of Plato, but as this is not the case with Dicaearchus, Osann (Beiträge zur Griech. u. Röm. Lit. ii. p. 1, &c.) justly infers that Dicaearchus was one of Aristotle's younger disciples. From some allusions which we meet with in the fragments of his works, we must conclude that he survived the year B. C. 296, and that he died about B. C. 285. Dicaearchus was highly esteemed by the ancients as a philosopher and as a man of most extensive information upon a great variety of things. (Cic. Tusc. 1.18, de Off. 2.5; Varro, de Re Rust. 1.2.)