means it passed into the European cultural mainstream. Dionysius also appears in Dante's Inferno, in which he is referred to as "Dionysius of Sicily" in Canto 12. He is among the many souls named by Chiron that boil in blood for violence against others. The Renaissance alchemist Michael Maier relates a legend about Dionysius II in his book Atalanta Fugiens (1617), where he was shipwrecked at the Gulf of Corinth, and without his swimming skills he could have never reached the shore. At Corinth, although he lived poorly, he became a teacher. Maier uses this legend as an allegory to explain a certain point in the Magnum opus, when the "philosophical subject" (the stone) must ascend to the surface of the "philosophical water". Dionysius also features in Mary Renault's The Mask of Apollo. Notes References |width=25% align=center|Preceded by:Dionysius the Elder |width=25% align=center|Tyrant of Syracuse367 BC356 BC |width=25% align=center|Succeeded by:Dion |- |width=25% align=center|Preceded by:– |width=25% align=center|Tyrant of Locri356 BC346 BC |width=25% align=center|Succeeded by:– |- |width=25% align=center|Preceded by:Nysaeos |width=25% align=center|Tyrant of Syracuse347 BC344 BC |width=25% align=center|Succeeded by:Timoleon |- 390s BC births 343 BC deaths Sicilian tyrants 4th-century BC Syracusans