Beneath an emerald plane
  Sits Diotima, teaching him that died
  Of Hemlock.

Tennyson, The Princess, iii.

DIPLOMATISTS (Prince of), Charles Maurice Talleyrand de Perigord (1754-1838).

DIPSAS, a serpent, so called because those bitten by it suffered from intolerable thirst. (Greek, dipsa, “thirst.”) Milton refers to it in Paradise Lost, x. 526 (1665).

DIPSODES (2 syl.), the people of Dipsody, ruled over by King Anarchus, and subjugated by Prince Pantag’ruel (bk. ii. 28).  Pantagruel afterwards colonized their country with nine thousand million men from Utopia (or to speak more exactly, 9,876,543,210 men), besides women, children, workmen, professors, and peasant-laborers (bk. iii.  I).—­Rabelais, Pantag’ruel (1545).

DIP’SODY, the country of the Dipsodes (2 syl), q.v.

DIRCAE’AN SWAN, Pindar; so called from Dirce, a fountain in the neighborhood of Thebes, the poet’s birthplace (B.C. 518-442.)

DIRLOS or D’YRLOS (Count), a paladin, the embodiment of valor, generosity, and truth.  He was sent by Charlemagne to the East, where he conquered Aliar’de, a Moorish prince.  On his return, he found his young wife betrothed to Celi’nos (another of Charlemagne’s peers).  The matter was put right by the king, who gave a grand feast on the occasion.

DISASTROUS PEACE (The), the peace signed at Cateau-Cambresis, by which Henri II. renounced all claim to Gen’oa, Naples, Mil’an, and Corsica (1559).

DIS’MAS, the penitent thief; Gesmas the impenitent one.

DISTAFFI’NA, the troth-plight wife of General Bombastes; but Artaxaminous, king of Utopia, promised her “half a crown” if she would forsake the general for himself—­a temptation too great to be resisted.  When the general found himself jilted, he retired from the world, hung up his boots on the branch of a tree, and dared any one to remove them.  The king cut the boots down, and the general cut the king down.  Fusbos, coming up at this crisis, laid the general prostrate.  At the close of the burlesque all the dead men jump up and join the dance, promising “to die again to-morrow,” if the audience desire it.—­W.  B. Rhodes, Bombastes Furioso (1790.)

Falling on one knee, he put both hands on his heart and rolled up his eyes, much after the manner of Bombastes Furioso making love to Distaffina.—­E.  Sargent.

DISTRESSED MOTHER (The), a tragedy by Ambrose Philips (1712).  The “distressed mother” is Androm’ache, the widow of Hector.  At the fall of Troy she and her son Asty’anax fell to the lot of Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, Pyrrhus fell in love with her and wished to marry her, but she refused him.  At length an embassy from Greece, headed by Orestes, son of Agamemnon, was sent to Epirus to demand the death of Astyanax, lest in manhood he might seek to avenge his father’s death.  Pyrrhus told Andromache he would protect her son, and defy all Greece, if she would consent to marry him; and she yielded.  While the marriage rites were going on, the Greek ambassadors fell on Pyrrhus and murdered him.  As he fell he placed the crown on the head of Andromache, who thus became queen of Epirus, and the Greeks hastened to their ships in flight.  This play is an English adaptation of Racine’s Andromaque (1667).