See G. Radde, “Aus den Daghestanischen Hochalpen,” in Petermanns Mitteilungen, Ergänzungsheft, No. 85, 1887, and, with E. König, “Der Nordfuss des Daghestan,” in Petermanns Mitteil., Ergänzungsheft, No. 117, 1895. (P. A. K.; J. T. Be.)
DAGO, a name given somewhat contemptuously to Spanish, Portuguese and Italian sailors, as “Dutchman” is similarly applied to Germans and Scandinavians as well as to natives of Holland. In America the word is generally confined to the poorer class of Italian immigrants. In the South Wales mining districts the casual labourers, who are only engaged when work is plentiful, are so called. The word is apparently a corruption of the common Spanish and Portuguese Christian name “Diego.”
DAGOBERT I. (d. 639), king of the Franks, was the son of Clotaire II. In 623 his father established him as king of the region east of the Ardennes, and in 626 revived for him the ancient kingdom of Austrasia, minus Aquitaine and Provence. As Dagobert was yet but a child, he was placed under the authority of the mayor of the palace, Pippin, and Arnulf, bishop of Metz. At the death of Clotaire II. in 629, Dagobert wished to re-establish unity in the Frankish realm, and in 629 and 630 made expeditions into Neustria and Burgundy, where he succeeded in securing the recognition of his authority. In Aquitaine he gave his brother Charibert the administration of the counties of Toulouse, Cahors, Agen, Périgueux, and Saintes; but at Charibert’s death in 632 Dagobert became sole ruler of the whole of the Frankish territories south of the Loire. Under him the Merovingian monarchy attained its culminating point. He restored to the royal domain the lands that had been usurped by the great nobles and by the church; he maintained at Paris a luxurious, though, from the example he himself set, a disorderly court; he was a patron of the arts, and delighted in the exquisite craftsmanship of his treasurer, the goldsmith St Eloi. His authority was recognized through the length and breadth of the realm. The duke of the Basques came to his court to swear fidelity, and at his villa at Clichy the chief of the Bretons of Domnoné promised obedience. He intervened in the affairs of the Visigoths of Spain and the Lombards of Italy, and was heard with deference. Indeed, as a sovereign, Dagobert was reckoned superior to the other barbarian kings. He entered into relations with the eastern empire, and swore a “perpetual peace” with the emperor Heraclius; and it is probable that the two sovereigns took common measures against the Slav and Bulgarian tribes, which ravaged in turn the Byzantine state and the German territories subject to the Franks. Dagobert protected the church and placed illustrious prelates at the head of the bishoprics—Eloi (Eligius) at Noyon, Ouen (Audoenus) at Rouen, and Didier (Desiderius) at Cahors. His reign is also marked by the creation of numerous monasteries and by renewed missionary activity in Flanders and among the Basques. He died on the 19th of January 639, and was buried at St Denis. After his death the Frankish monarchy was again divided. In 634 he had been obliged to give the Austrasians a special king in the person of his eldest son Sigebert, and at the birth of a second son, Clovis, in 635, the Neustrians had immediately claimed him as king. Thus the unification of the realm, which Dagobert had re-established with so much pains, was annulled.
See the Chronicon of Fredegarius; “Gesta Dagoberti I. regis Francorum” in Mon. Germ. hist. Script. rer. Meroving. vol. ii. edited by B. Krusch; J. H. Albers, König Dagobert in Gesch., Legende, und Sage (2nd ed., Kaiserslautern, 1884); E. Vacandard, Vie de Saint Ouen, évêque de Rouen (Paris, 1901); and H. E. Bonnell, Die Anfänge des karoling. Hauses (Berlin, 1866). (C. Pf.)
DAGON, a god of the Philistines who had temples at Ashdod (1 Sam. v. 1), and Gaza (Judg. xvi. 21, 23); the former was destroyed by Jonathan, the brother of Judas the Maccabee (1 Macc. x. 84; 148 B.C.). But Dagon was more than a mere local deity; there was a place called Beth-Dagon in Judah (Josh. xv. 41), another on the borders of Asher (ib. xix. 27), and a third underlies the modern Bēt Dejān, south-east of Nāblus. Dagon was in all probability an old Canaanite deity; it appears in the name of the Canaanite Dagantakala as early as the 15th century, and is possibly to be identified with the Babylonian god Dagan. Little is known of his cult (Judg. xvi. 23 seq.), although as the male counterpart of Ashtoreth (see Astarte) his worship would scarcely differ from that of the Baalim (see Baal). The name Dāgōn seems to come from dāg “fish,” and that his idol was half-man half-fish is possible from the ichthyomorphic representations found upon coins of Ascalon and Arvad, and from the fact that Berossus speaks of an Assyrian merman-god.
The true meaning of the name is doubtful. In 1 Sam. v. 4, Thenius and Wellhausen, followed by Robertson Smith and others, read “only his fish-part (dāgō) was left to him”; against this, see the comm. of H. P. Smith and Budde. The identification of Dagon with the Babylonian Dagan is doubted by G. F. Moore (Encyc. Bib., col. 985), and that of the latter with Odacon and Ea-Oannes is questionable. Philo Byblius (Müller, Fr. Hist. Graec. iii. 567 seq.) makes Dagon the inventor of corn and the plough, whence he was called Ζεὺς Ἀρότριος. This points to a natural though possibly late etymology from the Hebrew and Phœnician dagan “corn.” It is not improbable that, at least in later times, Dagon had in place of, or in addition to, his old character, that of the god who presided over agriculture; for in the last days of paganism, as we learn from Marcus Diaconus in the Life of Porphyry of Gaza (§ 19), the great god of Gaza, now known as Marna (our Lord), was regarded as the god of rains and invoked against famine. That Marna was lineally descended from Dagon is probable in every way, and it is therefore interesting to note that he gave oracles, that he had a circular temple, where he was sometimes worshipped by human sacrifices, that there were wells in the sacred circuit, and that there was also a place of adoration to him situated, as was usual, outside the town. Certain “marmora” in the temple, which might not be approached, especially by women, may perhaps be connected with the threshold which the priests of Dagon would not touch with their feet (1 Sam. v. 5, Zeph. i. 9). See further, the comm. on the Old Testament passages, Moore (loc. cit.), and Lagrange, Relig. sémit. p. 131 seq.
DAGUERRE, LOUIS JACQUES MANDÉ (1789–1851), French, painter and physicist, inventor of the daguerreotype, was born at Cormeilles, in the department of Seine-et-Oise, and died on the 12th of July 1851 at Petit-Brie-sur-Marne, near Paris. He was at first occupied as an inland revenue officer, but soon took to scene-painting for the opera. He assisted Pierre Prévost (1764–1823) in the execution of panoramic views of Rome, Naples, London, Jerusalem, and Athens, and subsequently (July 11, 1822), in conjunction with Bouton, he opened at Paris the Diorama (δίς, double; ὅραμα, view), an exhibition of pictorial views, the effect of which was heightened by changes in the light thrown upon them. An establishment similar to that at Paris was opened by Daguerre in Regent’s Park, London. On the 3rd of March 1839 the Diorama, together with the work on which Daguerre was then engaged, was destroyed by fire. This reverse of fortune was soon, however, more than compensated for by the distinction he achieved as the inventor of the daguerreotype photographic process. J. Nicéphore Niepce, who since 1814 had been seeking a means of obtaining permanent pictures by the action of sunlight, learned in 1826 that Daguerre was similarly occupied. In 1829 he communicated to Daguerre particulars of his method of fixing the images produced in the camera lucida by making use of metallic plates coated with a composition of asphalt and oil of lavender; this, where acted on by the light, remained undissolved when the plate was plunged into a mixture of petroleum and oil of lavender, and the development of the image was effected by the action of acids and other chemical reagents on the exposed surface of the plate. The two investigators laboured together in the production of their “heliographic pictures” from 1829 until the death of Niepce in 1833. Daguerre, continuing his experiments, discovered eventually the process connected with his name. This, as he described it, consists of five operations:—the polishing of the silver plate; the coating of the plate with iodide of silver by submitting it for about 20 minutes to the action of iodine vapour; the projection of the image of the object upon the golden-coloured iodized surface, the development of the latent image by means of the vapour of mercury; and, lastly, the fixing of the picture by immersing the plate in a solution of sodium “hyposulphite” (sodium thiosulphate). On the 9th of January 1839, at a meeting of the Academy of Sciences, Arago dwelt on the importance of the discovery of the daguerreotype; and, in consequence of the representations made by him and Gay Lussac to the French government, Daguerre was on the 15th of June appointed an officer of the Legion of Honour. On the same day a bill was presented to the chambers, according to the provisions of which
