ic. He spent most of his life,
which was mainly devoted to literary pursuits, in London, where he died
on the 22nd of March 1880. Digby's reputation rests chiefly on his
earliest publication, _The Broadstone of Honour, or Rules for the
Gentlemen of England_ (1822), which contains an exhaustive survey of
medieval customs, full of quotations from varied sources. The work was
subsequently enlarged and issued (1826-1827) in four volumes entitled:
_Godefridus_, _Tancredus_, _Morus_ and _Orlandus_ (numerous
re-impressions, the best of which is the edition brought out by B.
Quaritch in five volumes, 1876-1877).

Among Digby's other works are: _Mores Catholici, or Ages of Faith_ (11
vols., London, 1831-1840); _Compitum; or the Meeting of the Ways at
the Catholic Church_ (7 vols., London, 1848-1854); _The Lovers' Seat,
Kathemerina; or Common Things in relation to Beauty, Virtue and Faith_
(2 vols., London, 1856). A complete list is given in J. Gillow's
_Bibliographical Dictionary of English Catholics_, ii. 81-83.

DIGENES ACRITAS, BASILIUS, Byzantine national hero, probably lived in
the 10th century. He is named Digenes (of double birth) as the son of a
Moslem father and a Christian mother; Acritas ([Greek: akra], frontier,
boundary), as one of the frontier guards of the empire, corresponding to
the Roman _milites limitanei_. The chief duty of these _acritae_
consisted in repelling Moslem inroads and the raids of the _apelatae_
(cattle-lifters), brigands who may be compared with the more modern
Klephts. The original Digenes epic is lost, but four poems are extant,
in which the different incidents of the legend have been worked up by
different hands. The first of these consists of about 4000 lines,
written in the so-called "political" metre, and was discovered in the
latter part of the 19th century, in a 16th-century MS., at Trebizond;
the other three MSS. were found at Grotta Ferrata, Andros and Oxford.
The poem, which has been compared with the _Chanson de Roland_ and the
_Romance of the Cid_, undoubtedly contains a kernel of fact, although it
cannot be regarded as in any sense an historical record. The scene of
action is laid in Cappadocia and the district of the Euphrates.

Editions of the Trebizond MS. by C. Sathas and E. Legrand in the
_Collection des monuments pour servir a l'etude de la langue
neohellenique_, new series, vi. (1875), and by S. Joannides
(Constantinople, 1887). See monographs by