Dicuil

Dicuilus (or the more vernacular version of the name Dicuil) was an Irish monk and geographer, born during the second half of the 8th century.

Background

The exact dates of Dicuil's birth and death are unknown. Of his life nothing is known except that he belonged probably to one of the numerous Irish monasteries of the Frankish Kingdom, became acquainted, by personal observation, with islands near England and Scotland. From 814 and 816 Dicuil taught in one of the schools of Louis the Pious, where he wrote an astronomical work, and in 825 a geographical work.

Dicuil’s reading was wide; he quotes from, or refers to, thirty Greek and Latin writers, including the classical Homer, Hecataeus, Herodotus, Thucydides, Virgil, Pliny and King Juba, the late classical Solinus, the patristic St Isidore and Orosius, and his contemporary the Irish poet Sedulius. In particular, he professes to utilize the alleged surveys of the Roman world executed by order of Julius Caesar, Augustus and Theodosius II.