Dione
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Dione. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
1000 Classical Characters (1900)
A female Titan, by Zeus ( Jupiter ), by whom she became the mother of Aphrodite ( Venus ), who is hence called Dionaea, and sometimes even Dione. Hence Caesar is called Dionaeus Caesar, because he claimed descent from Venus. Dionysius the Elder. Was the son of Hermocrates. He signalized himself in the wars which the Syracusans carried on against Carthage, and made himself absolute at Syracuse. His tyranny rendered him odious to his subjects. He made a subterraneous cave in a rock in the form of a human ear, which was called "the Ear of Dionysius." The sounds of this cave were all directed to one common tympanum, which had a communication with IOOO CLASSICAL CHARACTERS an adjoining room, where Dionysius spent part of his time in listening to what was said by those whom he had imprisoned. He died in the sixty-third year of his age, B. c. 368, after a reign of thirty-eight years. Dionysius the Younger. Was son of Dionysius the First and Doris . He succeeded his father, and as soon as he ascended the throne he invited Plato to his court and studied under him for some time. Plato advised him to lay aside the supreme power, in which he was supported by Dion. This highly incensed Dionysius, who banished Dion, who collected forces in Greece, and in three days rendered himself master of Syracuse, and expelled the tyrant, B. c. 357. Dionysius, however, recovered Syracuse ten years afterward, but was soon compelled to retire again by the Corinthians under Timoleon. Dionysius of Halicarnassus. A historian who left his country and came to reside in Rome that he might study all the authors who had written Roman history. He was occupied during twenty-four years on his work on Roman antiquities, which consisted of twenty books.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
di-o'ne, in Greek mythology, a female Titan, daughter of Oceanus and Tethys, and mother by Zeus of Aphrodite.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Both entries treat Dione purely as a minor figure of myth — "a female Titan" and, as Aiton's put it in 1910, "mother by Zeus of Aphrodite" — and on that the accounts still stand, though modern handbooks note that Homer's Iliad makes her Aphrodite's mother while Hesiod does not, and that her parentage varies by source. The one real advance came in 1952, when Michael Ventris showed that the Linear B tablets were Greek: texts from Pylos name a goddess Diwia, a feminine form of Zeus's own name, which scholars now generally connect with Dione and take as evidence that she is a very old consort-figure rather than a late invention. Excavation at Dodona has also confirmed her cult there beside Zeus, which the older entries pass over entirely. Neither account mentions the other Dione a modern reader is likelier to meet: Saturn's moon, found by Cassini in 1684 and photographed at close range by the Cassini spacecraft between 2004 and 2017.
Written for this edition, 2026.