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ABACUS
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A square plate, especially the stone slab that covers the capital of a column (see ARCHITECTURE, ORDERS OF, figs. 1 and 5).
ABACUS A dice-board.
ABACUS A mathematician's table strewn with fine sand, on which figures were drawn with a stilus.
ABACUS A counting-board, on which sums were worked for private and public accounts. The reckoning was done with counters lying on the board (calculi) or with beads sliding in vertical grooves (On the sideboard called Abacus, seeTABLES.)
ABOLLA A thick woollen cloak, worn by Roman soldiers and philosophers.
ABSYRTUS Son of king Aeetes, and brother of Medea, who, in her flight with Jason the Argonaut, cut Absyrtus into pieces, and threw them one by one into the sea, so that her father, stopping to pick them up, might be delayed in his pursuit.
ACADEMY A grove on the Cephissus near Athens, sacred to the hero Academus, and containing a gymnasium. Here Plato, whose country-house was near, delivered his lectures; hence the school of philosophy founded by him received the name of "The Academy."
ACAMAS
ACARNAN AND AMPHOTERUS
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Sons of Alcmaeon and Callirrhoe. Their mother, hearing of her husband's murder by Phegeus and his sons, prays Zeus, who loves her, to let her boys grow up into men at once, so that they can avenge their father. This done, they slay the sons of Phegeus at Tegea and himself at Psophis, offer up at Delphi the Jewels of Harmonia, which they have thus acquired, and then found a kingdom called after the elder of them Acarnania. (See ALPHESIBCEA.)
ACASTUS Son of Pelias, king of Iolcos who joined the Argonautic expedition, though against his father's will, as a friend of Jason. At his father's death be celebrated funeral games which were the theme of ancient poets and artists, and in which Peleus was represented as participating. He took part in the Calydonian boar-hunt. But his wife Astydameia fell in love with Peleus (q.v.), and this brought ruin on the wedded pair. His daughter was Laodameia, renowned for her tender love to Protesilaus (q.v.).
ACCA LARENTIA
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According to the common legend, wife of the herdsman Faustulus, and nurse to Romalus and Remus; according to another, a favourite of Hercules, and wife to a rich Etruscan, Tarutius, whose possessions she bequeathed to Romulus or (according to another account) the Roman people. She is said to have had twelve sons, with whom she sacrificed once a year for the fertilizing of the Roman fields (arva), and who were thence named Arval Brothers (fratres arvales). One of them having died, Romulus took his place, and founded the priesthood so called. (See ARVAL BROTHERS.) She at last disappeared on the spot where, afterwards, at the feast of Larentalia (Dec. 23), the flamen of Quirinus and the pontiffs sacrificed to her while invoking Jupiter. All this, together with her name, meaning "mother of the Lares," shows that she was originally a goddess of the earth, to whose care men entrusted their seed-corn and their dead. (See LARES.) In particular she personified the city lands and their crops. Probably she is the Dea Dia worshipped by the Arval Brothers.
ACCENSI In the older constitution of the Roman army, the accensi were men taken from the lowest assessed class to fill gaps in the ranks of the heavy-armed soldiers. They followed the legion unarmed, simply in their clothes (velati, or accensi velati). In action they stood in the rear rank of the third line, ready to pick up the arms of the fallen and fill their places. They were also used as assistant workmen and as orderlies. This last employment may have caused the term accensus to be applied to the subordinate officer whom consuls and proconsuls, praetors and propaetors, and all officers of consular and praetorian rank had at their service in addition to lictors. In later times officers chose these attendants out of their own freedmen, sometimes to marshal their way when they bad nolictorsor had them marching behind, sometimes for miscellaneous duties. Thus the praetor's accensus had to cry the hours of the day, 3, 6, 9, and 12. Unlike the subordinate officers named apparitors, their term of office expired with that of their superior.
ACCIUS, OR ATTIUS
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A Roman poet, who was born 170 B.C. of a freedman and freedwoman, at Pisaurum in Umbria, and died about 90 B.C. He was the most prolific and, under the Republic, the most highy esteemed of tragic poets, especially for his lofty, impassioned' style and powerful descriptions. His talents seem to have secured him a respectable position in Roman society, which he maintained with full consciousness of his merits. His poetical career can be traced through a period of thirty-six years, from B.C. 140, when he exhibited a drama under the same aedfles as the octogenarian Pacuvius, to B.C. 104. Of his tragedies, the titles and fragments of some fifty are preserved. Two of these treat of national subjects (see PRAeTEXTA), viz., the Brutus and the Decius The former dealt with the expulsion of the Tarquins; the latter with the heroic death of Decius at Sentinum, B.C. 295. The rest, composed after Greek models, embrace almost all cycles of legend, especially the Trojan, which is treated in a great variety of aspects. Accius likewise handled questions of grammar, literary history, and antiquities in the Alexandrine manner and the fashion of his own time and in many different metres. These works (the Didascalica in at least nine books; the Pragmatica on dramatic poetry and acting, etc.) have also perished.
ACHAEUS A Greek tragic poet of Eretria, born about 482 B.C., a contemporary of Sophocles, and especially famous in the line of satyric drama. He wrote about forty plays, of which only small fragments are preserved. Not being an Athenian, he only gained one victory.
ACHELOUS The god of the river of that name between Aetolia and Acarnania; eldest of the 3000 sons of Oceanus and Tethys, and father of the Sirens by Sterope, the daughter of Porthaon. As a water-god he was capable of metamorphosis, appearing now as a bull, then as a snake, and again as a bull-faced man. In fighting with Heracles for the possession of Deianeira, he lost one horn, but got it back in exchange for the horn of Amaltheia (q.v.). As the oldest and most venerable of river-gods, he was worshipped all over Greece and her colonies, especially Rhodes, Italy, and Sicily. The oracle of Dodona, in every answer which it gave, added an injunction to sacrifice to Achelous; and in religious usage his name stood for any stream or running water.
ACHERON
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A river in the lower world. (See HADES, REALM OF.)
ACHILLES Tatius, a Greek mathematician of the 3rd Century A.D. He wrote an introduction to the Phaenomena of Aratus.
ACHILLES Achilles of Alexandria, about 450 A.D., probably a Christian; author of a Greek romance in eight books, the story of Cleitophon of Tyre and Leucippe of Byzantium, two lovers who pass through a long train of adventures before they meet. As the whole story is put in the mouth of the hero, many scenes, being told at secondhand, lose in liveliness; and the flow of the narrative is checked by too many digressions, some interesting enough in themselves, by descriptions of places, natural phenomena, works of art, feelings and passions, in which the author exhibits his vast reading. The style has considerable elegance, though often marred by an affectation of neatness and brevity. The novel continued to be popular until the fall of Byzantium.
ACHILLES
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Son of Peleus (king of the Myrmidons in Thessalian Phthia) by the Nereid Thetis, grandson of Aeacus, great-grandson of Zeus. In Homer he is duly brought up by his mother to man's estate, in close friendship with his older cousin Patroclus, the son of Mencetius, a half-brother of Aeacus; is taught the arts of war and eloquence by Phoenix (q.v.) and that of healing by the centaur Chiron, his mother's grandfatber. But later legends lend additional features to the story of his youth. To make her son immortal, Thetis anoints him with ambrosia by-day, and holds him in the fire at night, to destroy whatever mortal element he has derived from his father, until Peleus, coming in one night, sees the boy baking in the fire, and makes an outcry; the goddess, aggrieved at seeing her plan thwarted, deserts husband and child, and goes home to the Nereids. According to a later story she dipped the child in the river Styx, and thus made him invulnerable, all but the heel by which she held him. Then Peleus takes the motherless boy to Chiron on Mount Pelion, who feeds him on the entrails of lions and boars, and the marrow of bears, and instructs him in all knightly and elegant arts. At the age of six the boy was so strong and swift that he slew wild boars and lions, and caught stage without net or hound. Again, as to his share in the expedition to Troy, the legends differ widely. In Homer, Achilles and Patroclus are at once ready to obey the call of Nestor and Odysseus, and their fathers willingly let them go, accompanied by the old man Phoenix. In later legend, Thetis, alarmed by the prophecy of Calchas that Troy cannot be taken without Achilles, and foreseeing his fall in such a war, conducts the boy of nine to the island of Scyros, where in female dress he grows up among the daughters of king Lycomedes, and by one of them, Deldameia, begets Neoptolemus(q.v.). But Calchas betrays his whereabouts, and Odysseus, in concert with Diomedes, unmasks the young hero. Disguised as a merchant, he spreads out female ornaments before the maidens, as well as a shield and spear; suddenly a trumpet sounds the call to battle, the maidens flee, but Achilles clutches at the arms, and declares himself eager to fight. At the first landing of' the Greeks, on the Asian coast, he wounds Telephus (q.v.); at their second, on the Trojan shore, Cycnus (q.v.). Before Troy, Homer makes him the chief of Greek heroes, whom the favour of Hera and Athena, and his own merit have placed above friend and foe. He is graced with all the attributes of a hero: in birth, beauty, swiftness, strength, and valour, he has not his peer; none can resist him, the very sight of him strikes terror into the foe. His anger may be furious, his grief immoderate; but his nature is at bottom kind, affectionate, and generous, even to his enemies. Touching is his love for his parents, especially his mother, and his devotion to his friends. In the first nine years of the war he leads the Greeks on their many plundering excursions around Troy, and destroys eleven inland and twelve seacoast towns. The events of the tenth year, brought on by the deep grudge he bears Agamemnon for taking away Briseis (daughter of Brises), form the subject of Homer's Iliad. When he and his men withdraw from the fight, the Trojans press on irresistibly; they have taken the camp of the Greeks, and are setting their ships on fire. In this extremity he lends Patroclus the arms his father (see PELEUS) had given him, and lets him lead the Myrmidons to battle. Patroclus drives the Trojans back, but falls by Hector's hand, and the arms are lost, though the corpse is recovered. Grief for his friend and thirst for vengeance at last overcome his grudge against Agamemnon. Furnished by Hephaestus, at the request of Thetis, with splendid new arms, including the shield of wondrous workmanship, he goes out against Hector, well knowing that lie himself must fall soon after him. He makes frightful havoc among the enemy, till at last Hector is the only one that dares await him without the walls, and even he turns in terror at the sight of him. After chasing him three times round the city, Achilles overtakes him, pierces him with his lance, trails his body behind his chariot to the camp, and there casts it for a prey to the birds and dogs. Then with the utmost pomp he lays the loved friend of his youth in the same grave-mound that is to hold his own ashes, and founds funeral games in his honour. The next night Priam comes secretly to his tent, and offers rich gifts to ransom Hector's body; but Achilles, whom the broken-down old king reminds of his own father, gives it up without ransom, and grants eleven days' truce for the burying. After many valiant deeds (see TROJAN WAR), he is overtaken by the fate which he had himself chosen; for the choice had been given him between an early death with undying fame and a long but inglorious life. Near the Scaean Gate he is struck by the shaft of Paris, guided by Apollo. According to a later legend he was wounded in the one vulnerable heel, and in the temple of Thymbraean Apollo, whither he had gone unarmed to be wedded to Priam's daughter Polyxena (q.v.). Greeks and Trojans fight furiously all day about his body, till Zeus sends down a storm to end the fight. Seventeen days and nights the Greeks, with Thetis and the sea-goddesses and Muses, bewail the dead; then amid numerous sacrifices the body is burnt. Next morning the ashes, with those of Patroclus and of Nestor's son, Antilochus, whom Achilles had loved in the next degree, are placed in a golden pitcher, the work of Hephaestus, and gift of Dionysus, and deposited in the famed tumulus that crowns the promontory of Sigeum. The soul of Homer's Achilles dwells, like other souls, in the lower world, and is there seen by Odysseus together with the souls of his two friends. According to later poets Thetis snatched her son's body out of the burning pyre and carried it to the island of Leuke at the mouth of the Danube, where the transfigured hero lives on, sovereign of the Pontus and husband of Iphigeneia. Others place him in Elysium, with Medea or Helena to wife. Besides Leuce, where the mariners of Pontus and Greek colonists honoured him with offerings and games, he had many other places of worship; the most venerable, however, was his tomb on the Hellespont, where he appeared to Homer in the full blaze of his armour, and struck the poet blind. In works of art Achilles was represented as similar to Ares, with magnificent physique, and hair bristling up like a mane. One of his most famous statues is that at Paris (from the Villa Borghese), though many take it for an Ares.
ACONTIUS
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See CYDIPPE.
ACRATISMA
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See MEALS.
ACRISIUS King of Argos, great-grandson of Danaus, son of Abas, and brother of Proetus. An oracle having declared that a son of his daughter Danae would take his life, he shuts her up in a brazen tower; but Zeus falls into her lap in the shape of a shower of gold, and she bears a son named Perseus. Then mother and child are put in a wooden box and thrown into the sea, but they drift to the island of Seriphus, and are kindly received. Perseus, having grown into a hero, sets out with his mother to seek Acrisius, who has fled from Argos for fear of the oracle coming true; he finds him at Larissa, in Thessaly, and kills him unawares with a discus.
ACRO A Roman grammarian of the end of the 2nd century A.D. He wrote commentaries (now lost) on Terence, Horace, and perhaps Persius. The collection of scholia bearing his name dates from the 7th century.
ACROLITHS Statues whose uncovered extremities are made of stone, the covered parts of another material, such as wood.
ACROPOLIS
ACTA The Latin term for official records of transactions, including Acta senatus and Acta populi Romani, both established by Caesar in his first consulship, B.C. 59. (1) Acta senatus. Caesar's law decreed that all transactions of the senate should be regularly written down and published, which had only been done hitherto in exceptional cases. The written reports were continued under the Empire, but Augustus put a stop to their publication. These documents were preserved among the state archives and in the public libraries, where they could only be inspected by permission of the city prefect. At first a temporary duty imposed oil individual senators, the business of reporting grew into a separate office held in rotation, with the title of Ab actis senatus, and the officer holding it had a considerable staff of writers under him, called Actuarii. (2) The Acta (diurna) populi (Romani), or Acta publica, urbana, urbis, diurna populi, or simply Acta or Diurna, were an official daily chronicle, which, in addition to official reports of events in the imperial family, and state and city affairs, contained regulations by the magistrates, transactions and decrees of the senate, accidents, and family news communicated to the editors. They were publicly exhibited on a whitened board (album), which any one might read and copy; and there were men who made a business of multiplying and transmitting such news to the provinces. After a time the originals were placed among the state-archives for the benefit of those who wished to consult them.
ACTAEON Son of Aristaeus by Autonoe, the daughter of Cadmus, of Thebes was trained by Chiron into a finished huntsman. Having either seen Artemis (Diana) when bathing, or boasted his superiority in the chase, he was changed by her into a stag, and torn to pieces by his own hounds on Mount Cithaeron. The hounds looked everywhere for their master, and would not be pacified till Chiron showed them an image of him. His statue was often set up on hills and rocks as a protection against the dangerous heat of the dog-days, of which probably the myth itself is but a symbol.
ADMETUS Son of Pheres, king of Pherae in Thessaly, who took part in the Calydonian boar-hunt and the voyage of the Argo. Apollo served him for a time as a shepherd, either from love and as a reward for his piety, or to expiate a capital crime. When Admetus wooed Alcestis, the daughter of Pelias, and her father would only give her to one who should yoke lions and boars to a chariot, he fulfilled the task with Apollo's help; indeed, the god even prevailed on the Moirai to release him from death, provided that any one would volunteer to die for him. He is at length seized with a mortal sickness, and his aged parents refusing to give up the remnant of their days for him, Alcestis dies for her husband, but is sent back to the upper world by Persephone, or, according to another story, is rescued out of the hands of Hades by Heracles.
ADONIS Sprung, according to the common legend, from the unnatural love of the Cyprian princess Myrrha (or Smyrna) for her father Cinyras, who, on becoming aware of the crime, pursues her with a sword ; but she, praying to the gods, is changed into a myrtle, out of whose bark springs the beautiful Adonis, the beloved of Aphrodite. While yet a youth, he dies wounded by a boar in hunting; the goddess, inconsolable, makes the anemone grow out of his blood. As she will not give up her darling, and Persephone has fallen in love with him, Zeus decrees that he shall pass half the year with one and half with the other goddess. Adonis (- lord) was properly a Syrian god of nature, a type of vegetation, which after a brief blossoming always dies again. The myth was embodied in a yearly Feast of Adonis held by women, which, starting from Byblos in Syria, the cradle of this worship came by way of Cyprus to Asia Minor and Greece, then under the Ptolemies to Egypt and in the imperial age to Rome. When the river Adonis by Byblos ran red with the soil washed down from Lebanon by the autumn rain, they said Adonis was slain by the boar in the mountains, and the water was dyed with his blood. Then the women set out to seek him, and having found a figure that they took to be his corpse, performed his funeral rites with lamentations as wild as the rejoicings that followed over his resurrection were licentious. The feast was held, in the East, with great magnificence. In Greece the celebration was much simpler, a leading feature being the little "Adonis-gardens," viz. pots holding all kinds of herbs that come out quickly and as quickly fade, which were finally thrown into the water. At the court of Alexandria a figure in costly apparel was displayed on a silver bier, and the next morning carried in procession by the women to the sea, and committed to the waves. In most places the feast was held in the hottest season.
ADOPTION At Athens adoption took place either in the adopter's lifetime or by will; or again, if a man died childless and intestate, the State interfered to bring into his house the man next entitled by the Attic law of inheritance asheir and adoptive-son, so that the race and the religious rites peculiar to it might not die out. None but the independent citizen of respectable character could adopt, and he only while he was as yet without male heirs. If there were daughters, one of them was usually betrothed to the adopted son, and the rest portioned off with dowries. If after that a male heir was born, he and the adopted had equal rights.
ADOPTION At Rome there were two kinds of adoption, both requiring the adopter to be a male and childless: Arrogatio and Adoption proper. The former could only take place where the person to be adopted was independent (sui juris), and his adopter had no prospect of male offspring; at the instance of the pontifex, and after full proof of admissibility, it had to be sanctioned by the comitia curiata. Adoption proper applied to those still under paternal rule (patria potestas), the father selling his son by formal muncipatio (q.v.) to the adopter, who then, the paternal power being thus abolished, claimed the son before the court as his own, and the father allowed him to be adjudged to him. By either transaction the person adopted passed completely over into the family and rank of the adopter, and naturally took his name in full, but with the addition of a second cognomen formed from his own former nomen gentile by the suffix -anus, e.g. Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus (son of Lucius Aemilius Paullus). Women too could be adopted, but not arrogated; neither could they adopt. At the latter end of the Republic we find a testamentary Adoption in existence, which at first likewise produced a change of name, but not of status.
ADRASTUS Grandson of Bias, son of Talaus and Lysimache. In a quarrel between the three houses reigning in Argos, the Biantidae, Melampodidae, and Proetidae, he is driven out by Amphiaraus, who also killed his father, flees to his mother's father, king Polybus of Sicyon, and inherits his kingdom. But, reconciled to Amphiaraus, to whom he gives his sister Eriphyle, he returns and rules over Argos. During one stormy night a great scuffle is heard outside the palace: two fugitives, Polyneices son of OEdipus of Thebes, and Tydeus son of OEneus of Calydon (one wrapped in a lion's hide, the other in a boar-skin), have sought refuge in the front-court, and are fighting for a night's lodging. Adrastus, coming forth, recognises the fulfilment of an oracle which had bidden him marry his daughters to a lion and a boar. He gives Argeia to Polyneices and Deipyle to Tydeus, promising to conduct those princes home and reinstate them in their rights. Thus began under his lead the far-famed and fatal expedition of the Seven against Thebes (q.v.). He alone escapes destruction by the help of his divine winged steed Areion. Ten years after, with the sons of the slain, the Epigoni (q.v.), and his own son Aegialeus, he again marches upon Thebes, takes and destroys the town, but loses his son, and dies of grief on his way home at Megara, where, as well as at Sicyon and Athens, he was worshipped as a hero.
ADVOCATUS At Rome, under the Republic, a competent friend who gave his advice in a law-suit and came into court in person, not to speak (the patronus causae did that), but to support the cause by his presence. In the imperial age the term was applied to the counsel who pleaded in court in the presence of the parties, for doing which he was allowed, after the time of Claudius, to take a moderate fee.
ADYTON
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In many Greek temples, a space set apart, sometimes underground, and only entered by the priest, a holy of holies. (See TEMPLE.)
AEA The realm of the mythic Aeetes; afterwards supposed to be Colchis on the Euxine.
AEACUS Ancestor of the heroic Aeacidae; son of Zeus by Aegina, a daughter of the river-god Asopus in Phlius, whom the king of gods, in the form of an eagle, carried off to the island named after her, where her son was born. Asking of Aegina he ruled the Myrmidons, whom Zeus at his request created out of ants (Gr. myrmekes) to people his island, which, according to one story, was uninhabited, according to another, stricken with pestilence. Beloved by the gods for his piety, when a drought desolated Greece, his intercession obtained rain from Zeus; and the grateful Greeks built him in Aegina a temple enclosed by a marble wall. Pindar says he helped Poseidon and Apollo to rear the walls of Troy, erecting that very portion which was afterwards scaled by his son Telemon, and his grandson Neoptolemus. His justice caused him after death to be made a judge in the lower world. At Aegina and Athens he was worshipped as a demigod. His sons by Chiron's daughter Endeis were Telamon and Peleus, the fathers of Ajax and Achilles; another son Phocus, by the Nereid Psamathe; was slain by his half-brothers, for which their father banished them.
AEDILES The two Plebeian Aediles were appointed B.C. 494 at the same time with the Tribuneship of the Plebs, as servants of the Tribunes, and at first probably nominated by them till 471, when, like them and under their presidency, they began to be elected by the whole body of the Plebs. They took their name from the temple (aedes) of the plebeian goddess Ceres, in which their official archives were kept. Beside the Custody of the plebi-scita, and afterwards of the senatus-consulta, it was their duty to make arrests at the bidding of the tribunes; to carry out the death-sentences, which they passed? by hurling thecriminal down from the Tarpeian rock; to look after the importation of corn; to watch the traffic in the markets; and to organize and superintend the Plebeian and Roman Games. Like the tribunes, they could only be chosen from the body of the Plebs, and wore no badge of office, not so much as the toga praetexta, even after they became an authority independent of the tribunes.
AEDILES The Curule Aediles, from B.C. 366, were taken at first from the Patrician body alone, soon after from Patricians and Plebeians by turns, and lastly from either. Elected yearly in the comitia tributa under the presidency of a consul, they were, from the first, officers of the whole people, though low in rank; they sat in the sella curulis, from which they took their name, and wore as insignia the toga praetexta. As in rank so in the extent of their powers they stood above the Plebeian Aediles, being entitled to exercise civil jurisdiction in market business, where the latter could only impose, a fine. The functions of the two were very much alike, comprising: (i) the superintendence of trade in the market, where they had to test weights and measures, and the quality of goods; to keep down the price of provisions, both by prohibitive measures, especially against regraters of care, and by the purchase and liberal distribution of food (cura annonae); and, as regards the money-market, to prosecute those who transgressed the laws of usury; (ii) the care of the streets and buildings within the city and the circuit of a mile outside, by cleansing, paving, and improving the streets, or stirring up those who were bound to do it; by seeing that the street traffic was unimpeded; by keeping in repair the temples, public buildings, and works, such as sewers and aqueducts, and seeing that these latter and the fire-apparatus were in working order; (iii) a superintendence of health and morals, including the inspection of baths, taverns, and low houses, the putting down of all that endangered public order and decency, e.g. games of hazard, breaches of sumptuary laws, introduction of foreign religions, etc.; (iv) the exhibition of Games (of which the Roman and Megalensian devolved on the curule, the Plebeian on the plebeian aediles), the supervision of festivities at the feriae Latinae and at games given by private men. The cost of the games given by themselves they defrayed partly out of a sum set apart by the State, but utterly inadequate to the large demands of later times; partly out of the proceeds of fines which were also spent on public buildings, and partly out of their own resources. Thus the aedileship became an expensive luxury, and its enjoyment less and less accessible to men of moderate means. Ambitious men often spent incredible sums in getting lip games, to win the people's favour with a view to higher honours, though the aedileship was not necessary as a stepping-stone to these. In Cicero's time the legal age for the curule Ledileship was thirty-seven. From B.C. 366 their number was unchanged, till Caesar in B.C. 44 added two more, the Plebeian Aediles Ceriales, to whom alone the cura annonae and the management of the ludi Ceriales were entrusted. Under the Empire the office of aedile lost much in importance by some of its functions being handed over to separate officers, especially by the transference of its jurisdiction and its control of games to the praetors; and it fell into such contempt, that even Augustus had to make a tenure of it, or the tribuneship, a condition of eligibility to the praetorship; and succeeding emperors often had to fill it by compulsion. In the 3rd century A.D. it seems to have died altogether.
AEDITUUS
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The overseer of a temple that had no priest of its own (see PRIESTS); also a major-domo. (See SLAVES.)
AEDON Daughter of Pandareos, wife of the Theban king Zethus, and mother of Itylus. Envious at her sister-in-law, Niobe, having six sons, she tries to kill the eldest, but by mistake kills her own. She is changed by Zeus into a nightingale, and for ever bewails her son. Later legend makes her the wife of an artificer Polytechnus at Colophon in Lydia; she stirs the anger of Hera by boasting that she lives more happily with her husband than the goddess with Zeus. Hera sends Eris ( - strife) to set on foot a wager between husband and wife, that whichever finishes first the piece of work they have in hand (be a chair, she a garment) shall make the other a present of a slave-girl. By Hera's help Aedon wins, and Polytechnus in vexation fetches her sister, Chelidonis, on a false pretext, from her father's house, and having, reduced her to submission oil the way, and bomid her to secrecy on pain of death, presents her to his wife unrecognised as a slave. One day Aedon overhears her sister lamenting her lot at a fountain, and concerts with her to slay Itylus, cook him, and set him before his father to eat. On learning the truth, Polytechnus pursues the sister to her home; but there the gods, to prevent more horrors, turn them all into birds, making Pandareos an osprey, his wife a kingfisher, Polytechnus a pelican, Chelidonis a swallow, and Aedon a nightingale. (Comp.PROCNE.)
AEETES
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Son of Helios and the Ocean nymph Perseis, brother of Circe and Pasiphae, king of Aea, father of Medea and Absyrtus by the ocean nymph Idyia. (See ARGONAUTS and MEDEA.)
AEGEUS Son of Pandion (q.v. 2) and Pelia. Having with the help of his brothers Lycus, Pallas, and Nisus wrested Attica from the sons of his uncle Metion, who had driven out his father he seized the sole sovereignty. Dethroned by his brother Pallas and his sons, he was rescued and restored by his son Theseus (q.v.). Having slain Androgeos, son of Minos (q.v.), he was conquered by that king, and compelled to send seven youths and seven maidens to Crete every nine years as victims to the Minotaur. When Theseus set out to free his country from this tribute, he agreed in case of success to exchange the black sail of his ship for a white; but he forgot to do so, and Aegeus seeing the old sail oil the returning vessel, gave up his son for lost, and threw himself into the sea, which is supposed to have been named after him the Aegean. He had a heroon or shrine at Athens. Childless by his first two marriages, and ascribing the fact to the anger of Aphrodite, he is said to have introduced her worship into Athens. (For his son Medus by Medea, see both.)
AEGIALE Daughter of Adrastus of Argos, wife of Diomedes (q.v.).
AEGIALEUS Son of Adrastus of Argos, and one of the Epigoni (q.v.), who fell before Thebes.
AEGINA a nymph, daughter of the rivergod Asopus, and, by Zeus, mother of Aeacus (q.v.).
AEGINETAN SCULPTURES The marble pediments of Athena's temple at Aegina, discovered in 1811, restored by Thorwaldsen, and preserved in the Glyptothek at Munich. Their great value consists in the full light they throw on the condition of Greek art, especially of the Aeginetan school, in B.C. 480. (Comp.SCULPTURE.) Both groups present, with lifelike accuracy and in strictly symmetrical distribution, combats of the Greeks before Troy, while Athena in the centre, as protectress of the Greeks, retains the rigid attitude of the ancient religious statues. Of the figures, originally twentytwo in number, ten in the west pediment representing the contest for the body of Patroclus, are complete, while the eleventh is preserved in fragments; of those in the east pediment representing Heracles and Telamon shielding the fallen Oicles from Laomedon, five remain and many fragments.
AEGIS The storm-cloud and thunder-cloud of Zeus, imagined in Homer as a shield forged by Hephaestus, blazing brightly and fringed with tassels of gold, in its centre the awe-inspiring Gorgon's head. When Zeus shakes the aegis, it thunders and lightens, and horror and perdition fall upon those against whom it is lifted. It is borne not only by Zeus "the Aegis-bearer," but by his daughter Athena, and occasionally by Apollo. As the same word means a goatskin, it was explained in later times as the skin of the goat which had suckled Zeus in his infancy. At the bidding of the oracle, he drew it over his thunder-shield in the contest with the Giants, and fastened on it the Gorgon's head. When the aegis became a standing attribute of Athena, it was represented as a skin either shaggy or scaly, with a fringe of snakes and the Gorgon's head in the middle, and either serving the goddess as a breastplate, or hanging behind to screen the back and shoulders, or fastened like a shield on the left arm.
AEGISTHUS
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Son of Thyestes and his daughter Pelopia. At his birth he was exposed by his mother, and brought up by shepherds. His uncle Atreus, husband to Pelopia, finds him and brings him to Mycenae, thinking him to be his own son; but Aegisthus and his real father contrive to kill him and seize the sovereignty of Mycenae. (See ATREUS.) This position he loses again by his cousin Agamemnon's return from exile; but during that hero's absence at Troy he seduces his wife Clytaemnestra, and with her help slays him treacherously on his return. In the eighth year after this deed comes young Orestes, and avenges his father's death by slaying Aegisthus.
AEGYPTUS Son of Belus and twin-brother of Danaus (q.v.), who subdued the land of the Melampodes (Blackfeet), and named it after himself. Ignorant of the fate of his fifty sons, he comes to Argos and there dies of grief at their death; another account represents his only surviving son as reconciling him to his brother.
AELIANUS The Tactician, a Greek writer on war, about 100 A.D., composed a work dedicated to Trajan on the Greek order of battle, with special reference to Macedonian tactics (Taktike Theoria), which is extant both in its original and in an enlarged form. The original used falsely to be attributed to Arrian.
AELIANUS Claudius Aelianus, called the Sophist, a Roman of Praeneste, who wrote in Greek, lived at Rome in the 2nd century A.D. as teacher of rhetoric. His surviving works are: (1) 20 insignificant Peasants' Letters, so called because attributed to Attic peasants; (2) Variae Historiae or miscellanies, in 14 books, some preserved only in extracts, and (3) De Natura Animalium. The two last-mentioned are copious and valuable collections of all kinds of curiosities in human and animal life, mostly taken from earlier writings now lost.
AELIUS
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Aelius Catus. See JURISPRUDENCE.
AELIUS Lucius Aelius Stilo Praeconinus, a Roman grammarian born at Lanuvium, about 150 B.C., an eques, and friend of the post Lucilius, to whom lie dedicated his first book of Satires: surnamed Stilo (from stilus, pencil) because he wrote speeches for public men, and Praeconinus because his father was a crier (praeco). He was so strongly attached to the party of Optimates, that in 100 B.C. be voluntarily accompanied Metellus Numidicus into exile. After his return he became the master of Varro and Cicero. Well versed in Greek and Latin literature, he applied himself chiefly to studying the oldest relics of his native tongue, commented on the Liturgies of the Salian priests and the Laws of the Twelve Tables, and earned the honour of having rescued the ancient Latin language from oblivion, and preserved some knowledge of it to posterity. Such scanty remnants of it as have come down to us in glossaries and the like seem to be taken chiefly from his writings, now all lost.
AELIUS and
AELIUS
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Aelius Lampridius and Aelius Spartianus, Roman historians of the Empire. (See SCRIPTORES HIST. AUG.)
AEMILIUS PROBUS
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See CORNELIUS NEPOS.
AENEAS Aeneas, named "the Tactician," a Greek military author, wrote about 350 B.C. a book on the Art of War, of which only a small part on siege-operations, usually entitled Poliorketikon, is preserved; it is clear in exposition, and contains much valuable historical information.
AENEAS Son of Anchises and Aphrodite. Born on the mountains of Ida, he is brought up till his fifth year by his brother-in-law Alcathous, or, according to another story, by the nymphs of Ida, and after his father's misfortune becomes ruler of Dardanos. Though near of kin to the royal house of Troy, he is in no hurry to help Priam till his own cattle are carried off by Achilles. Yet he is highly esteemed at Troy for his piety, prudence, and valour; and gods come to his assistance in battle. Thus Aphrodite and Apollo shield him when his life is threatened by Diomed, and Poseidon snatches him out of the combat with Achilles. But Priam does not love him, for he and his are destined hereafter to rule the Trojans. The story of his escape at the fall of Troy is told in several ways: one is, that he bravely cut his way through the enemy to the fastnesses of Ida; another, that, like Antenor, he was spared by the Greeks because he had always counselled peace and the surrender of Helena; a third, that he made his escape in the general confusion. The older legend represents him as staying in the country, forming a new kingdom out of the wreck of the Teucrian people, and handing it down to his posterity. Indeed several townships on Ida always claimed him as their founder. The story of his emigrating, freely or under compulsion from the Greeks, and founding a new kingdom beyond seas, is clearly of post-Homeric date. In the earlier legend he is represented as settling not very far from home; then they extended his wanderings to match those of Odysseus, always pushing the limit of his voyagings farther and farther west. The poet Stesichorus (about 600 B.C.) is, so far as we know, the first who brings him to Italy. Later, in face of the fast rising power of Rome, the Greeks conceived the notion that Aeneas must have settled in Latium and become the ancestor of these Romans. This had become a settled conviction in their minds by the beginning of the 3rd century B.C., when Timaeeus, in the Roman interest, completed the Legend of Aeneas, making room in it for Latian and Roman traditions; and at Rome it was soon taken up and developed into a dogma of the state religion, representing the antagonism between Greece and Rome, the new Troy. From that time verse and prose endeavoured to bring the various places with which the name of Aeneas was connected into historic and geographic harmony, now building on a bare resemblance of names, now following kindred tables and the holy places of Aphrodite Aineias, a goddess of sea and seafaring, whose temples were generally found on the coasts. Thus by degrees the story took in the main the shape so familiar to us in Vergil's Aeneid. Aeneas flees from the flames of Troy, bearing on his shoulders the stricken Anchises with the Penates, leading his boy Ascanius and followed by his wife Creusa (who is lost on the way), till he comes to Mount Ida. There he gathers the remnant of the Trojans in twenty ships, and sails by way of Thrace and Delos to Crete, imagining that to be the destination assigned him by Apollo. But driven thence by pestilence, and warned in a dream that Italy is his goal, be is first carried out of his course to Epirus, and then makes his way to Sicily, where his father dies. He has just set out to cross to the mainland, when a hurricane raised by his enemy Juno casts him on the coast of Carthage. Here Juno and Venus have agreed that he shall marry Dido; but at Jupiter's command he secretly quits Africa, and having touched at Sicily, Cumae, and Caieta. (Gaeta), arrives, after seven years' wandering, at the Tiber's mouth. Latinus, king of Latium, gives him leave to build a town, and betroths to him his daughter Lavinia. Turnus, king of the Rutuli, to whom she had been promised before, takes up arms in alliance with Mezentius of Caere; in twenty days the war is ended by Aeneas defeating both. According to another version (not Vergil's), he disappeared after the victory on the Numicius, and was worshipped as the god Jupiter Indiges. The Roman version, in its earliest forms, as we see it in Naevius and Ennius, brought Aeneas almost into contact with the founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus being regarded as children of his daughter Ilia by the god Mars. In later times, to fill up duly the space between the Fall of Troy and the Founding of Rome, the line of Alban kings, descended from Silvius, his son by Lavinia, was inserted between him and Romulus.
AEOLUS In Homer a son of Hippotes, and a favourite of the gods, whom Zeus has appointed keeper of the winds. On his Aeolian island, floating in the far west, its steep cliff encircled by a brazen wall, he lives in unbroken bliss with his wife and his six sons and six daughters, whom he has wedded to one another. He hospitably entertains Odysseus, gives him the unfavourable winds shut up in a leathern bag, and a kindly breeze to waft him on his voyage. But when the hero's comrades open the bag, the winds break out and blow him back to the Aeolian Isle; then Aeolus drives him from his door as one hateful to the gods. In the later legend he dwells on one of the Aeolian isles to the north of Sicily, Lipara, or Strongyle, where, throned on a mountain, he holds the winds imprisoned in the hollow of the same; yet he does not seem to have received real worship. He was, moreover, brought into genealogical connection with Aeolus of Thessaly, whose son Mimas begets Hippotes, and he (by Melanippe) a second Aeolus, king of Aeolis in Aetolia; this Aeolus gives his daughter Arne, the beloved of Poseidon, to a guest-friend from Metapontum in Lucania, where she has two sons by the god, the third Aeolus and Boeotus. These, adopted by the Metapontian, kill his wife Antolyte and run away, Boeotus returning with Arne to his grandfather, and Aeolus settling in the isles named after him, and founding the city of Lipara.
AEORA
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Festival of the swing. See ICARIUS, 1.
AEQUITAS At Rome, the personification of equity or fairness, as opposed to the justice that decides by the letter of the law. She was represented as a stately virgin with her left open, and often with a pair of scales.
AERARII
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By the constitution of Servius Tullius (see CENTURIA), the Aerarii were citizens not settled on land of their own, and therefore not included in any one of the property-classes founded on landownership. The term was also applied to those standing outside of the tribal union, who were excluded from the right of voting and from military service, and were bound to pay a poll-tax in proportion to their means. Citizens in the classes and tribes could be expelled from their tribe by the censors in punishment for any fault, and placed among the Aerarii. But when the latter were likewise admitted into the tribes (B.C. 308), being enrolled in the city tribes (B.C. 304), which were on that account less esteemed than the country ones, a penal transfer to the Aerarii consisted in expulsion from one's proper tribe and removal to one of the city tribes till at least the next census.
AERARIUM The state-treasury of Rome, into which flowed the revenues ordinary and extraordinary, and out of which the needful expenses were defrayed. It was kept in the basement of the temple of Saturn, under the charge of the gumstors. A special reserve fund was the Aerarium sanctius, in which the proceeds of receipts from the manumission-tax (one twentieth of the freed slave's value) were deposited in gold ingots. When Augustus divided the provinces into senatorial and imperatorial, there were two chief treasuries. The senatorial treasury, which was still kept in the temple of Saturn, was left under the control of the senate, but only as a matter of formal right. Practically it passed into the hands of the emperors, who also brought the management of the treasuries under their own eye by appointing, instead of the quaestors, two praefecti aerarii taken from those who had served as praetors. Besides, they diverted into their own Fiscus all the larger revenues, even those that legally belonged to the Aerarium. When in course of time the returns from all the provinces flowed into the imperial treasury, the senatorial Aerarium continued to exist as the city treasury. The Aerarium militare was a pension-fund founded by Augustus in A.D. 6, for disabled soldiers. Its management was entrusted to three praeefecti aerarii militaris. It was maintained out of the interest on a considerable fund, and the proceeds of the heritage and sale duties.
AEROPE Daughter to Catreus of Crete (q.v.), who was given up by her father to Nauplius to be sold abroad. Married to Atreus (q.v.), she bore Agamemnon and Menelaus, but was thrown into the sea by her husband for her adultery with his brother Thyestes.
AESACUS Son of Priam by Arisbe, who had learnt the art of interpreting dreams from his maternal grandfather Merops, and being consulted by his father as to Hecuba's bad dreams before the birth of Paris, advised him to expose a child so clearly doomed to be the destruction of Troy. In despair at having caused the death of his wife Asterope (or Hesperia) he threw himself into the sea, and was changed into a bird, the diver.
AESCHINES Aeschines, the Orator, born at Athens B.C. 389, in a low station. As a youth, he assisted his father in keeping an elementary school, then acted as clerk to several inferior magistrates, was for a time an actor in third-rate parts, till an accident removed him from the stage, when he became secretary to the esteemed orators and statesmen Aristophon and Eubulus, at whose recommendation he was twice elected to a government clerkship. Having thus acquired a sound knowledge of the laws and of legal proceedings, and being gifted with considerable talent, fine elocution and a dignified manner, to which his experience on the stage had contributed, he now came forward as a public speaker, and soon became an important personage. As a member of the embassy sent to Philip of Macedon for the conclusion of peace, B.C. 347, he was won over by the king to second the plans which proved so fatal to Athens, and was therefore accused of high treason by Timarchus and Demosthenes in B.C. 345; but he managed to clear himself by a triumphant attack on the private life of Timarchus. In B.C. 342 Demosthenes, who hated him, the head of the Macedonian party, as bitterly as he was hated by him, renewed the charge in his oration On the False Embassy. Aeschines, however, met it successfully by an equally brilliant speech bearing the same title. His unpatriotic conduct occasioned the war with Philip, which led to the overthrow of the Athenians and Thebans at Chaeronea, 338, and set the seal to the Macedonian supremacy over Greece. His own fall at last was brought on by his hatred of Demosthenes. Aeschines had previously brought a charge of illegality against Ctesiphon for proposing the distinction of a golden crown for Demosthenes. The charge was repeated B.C. 330, in a brilliant oration nominally directed Against Ctesiphon, but really aimed at his old rival. He was completely crushed by Demosthenes' great speech On the Crown, and being condemned to pay a fine of 1,000 drachmas, went into voluntary exile at Rhodes, where he is said to have opened a school of oratory. Thence he removed to Samos, and died B.C. 314. Beside the three orations named (Against Timarchus, On the False Embassy, Against Ctesiphon), we have under his name a collection of twelve letters professing to be written from Rhodes, but really forged by a later hand. Among the orators of his time Aeschines ranks next to Demosthenes. His orations are elaborated with the utmost care and reflexion,they have fulness, force, smoothness, and grace; but lack the terseness, the rhythm, and the moral inspiration of those of Demosthenes. They were spoken of in antiquity as the Three Graces.
AESCHINES The Socratic, son of a sausage-maker at Athens, lived in the most pinching poverty, but would not let it discourage him in his zeal for learning. Some time after the death of Socrates, to whom he had clung with faithful affection, in B.C. 399, Aeschines, probably to mend his fortunes, removed to Syracuse, and there found a patron in the younger Dionysius. On the fall of that tyrant, he returned to Athens, and supported himself by writing speeches for public men. He composed Dialogues, which were prized for their faithful descriptions of Socrates, and the elegance of their style. Three pseudo-Platonic dialogues are conjecturally ascribed to him; That Virtue can be Taught; Axiochus, or on Death, and Eryxias, or on Riches. But it is doubtful whether they are really from his hand.
AESCHYLUS
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The earliest of the three great tragic poets of Greece, son of Euphorion. He was born at Eleusis, near Athens, B.C. 525, of an old and noble stock, fought at Marathon, Salamis and Plataeae, and in his 25th year appeared as a writer of tragedies and rival of Pratinas and Choerilus, though he did not win his first victory till 488 B.C. About 476 he lived in Sicily, at the court of Hiero of Syracuse, and composed his Aetnoeans for the consecration of the city of Aetna, founded by that king in the place of the ancient Catana. On his return to Athens he was beaten by the young Sophocles with his very first play, but vanquished him again the next year with the Tetralogy of which the Seven against Thebes formed a part. After the performance of his Oresteia, B.C. 459, he quitted home once more, perhaps in disgust at the growing power of the democracy; and after three years' residence at Gela in Sicily, was killed, says one story, by an eagle dropping a tortoise on his bare skull. The inhabitants of Gela buried his remains, and honoured them with a splendid monument. At a later time the Athenians, on the motion of the orator Lycurgus, placed a brazen statue of him, as well as of Sophocles and Euripides, in the theatre; by a decree of the people a chorus was granted for every performance of his plays, and the garland of victory voted him as though be were still living among them. His tragedies, like those of the other two, were preserved in a special standard copy, to guard them against arbitrary alterations. His son Euphorion was also an esteemed tragic poet, so was his sister's son Philocles and his descendants for several generations. (See TRAGEDY.) The number of Aeschylus's plays is stated as 90, of which 82 are still known by title, but only 7 are preserved: (1) The Persians, performed in 473 B.C., was named from the chorus. Its subject was the same as that of Phrynichus' Phaenissae, the defeat of Xerxes at Salamis, but was differently treated. (2) The Seven against Thebes, part of a Tetralogy, embracing the cycle of Theban legend, of which Laius and OEdipus formed the first two pieces, and the satyric drama Sphinx the conclusion. (3) The Suppliants, the reception of Danaus and his daughters at Argos, evidently part of another Tetralogy, and, to judge by the simple plot and its old-fashioned treatment, one of his earliest works. (4) Prometheus Bound, part of a Trilogy, the Prometheia, whose first and last pieces were probably Prometheus the Fire-bringer and Prometheus Unbound. Lastly, the Oresteia, the one Trilogy which has survived, consisting of the three tragedies, (5) Agamemnon, the murder of that hero on his return home; (6) The Choephoroe, named from the chorus of captive Trojan women offering libations at Agamemnon's tomb, in which Orestes avenges himself on Aegisthus and Clytaemnestra; and (7) The Eumenides, in which Orestes, pursued by the Furies, is acquitted by the Areopagus at Athens. This Trilogy, composed B.C. 458, and probably the last work exhibited by Aeschylus at Athens, gives us an idea of the whole artistic conception of the poet, and must be looked upon as one of the greatest works of art ever produced. The style is marked by sublimity and majesty, qualities partly attributable to the courageous and serious temper of the time, but chiefly the offspring of the poet's individuality, which took delight in all that is great and grand, and loved to express itself in strong, sonorous words, an accumulation of epithets, and a profusion of bold metaphors and similes. His view of the universe reveals a profoundly philosophic mind, so that the ancients call him a Pythagorean; at the same time he is penetrated by a heartfelt piety, which conceives of the gods as powers working in the interest of morality. However simple the plot of his plays, they display an art finished to the minutest detail. His Trilogies either embraced one complete cycle of myths, or united separate legends according to their moral or mythical affinity; even the satyric dramas attached to the Tragedies Stand in intimate connexion with them. Aeschylus is the true creator of Tragedy, inasmuch as, by adding a second actor to the first, he originated the genuine dramatic dialogue, which he made the chief part of the play by gradually cutting down the lyrical or choral parts. Scenic apparatus he partly created and partly completed. He introduced masks for the players, and by gay and richly embroidered trailing garments, the high buskin, head-dresses, and other means, gave them a grand imposing aspect above that of common men; and he fitted up the stage with decorative painting and machinery. According to the custom of the time, he acted in his own plays, practised the chorus in their songs and dances, and himself invented new dance figures.
AESON
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son of Cretheus by Tyro (see AeOLUS, 1), king of Iolcos in Thessaly, was deposed by his half-brother Pelias, and killed while his son Jason was away on the Argonautic Expedition. (Comp.ARGONAUTS.)
AESOPUS The famous writer of fables, the first author who created an independent class of stories about animals, so that in a few generations his name and person had become typical of that entire class of literature. In course of time, thanks to his plain, popular manner, the story of his own life was enveloped in an almost inextricable tissue of tales and traditions, which represent him as an ugly hunchback and buffoon. In the Middle Ages these were woven into a kind of romance. A Phrygian by birth, and living in the time of the Seven Sages, about 600 B.C., he is said to have been at first a slave to several masters, till Iadmon of Samos set him free. That he next lived at the court of Croesus, and being sent by him on an embassy to Delphi, was murdered by the priests there, is pure fiction. Under his name were propagated in all parts of Greece, at first only by tradition in the mouth of the people, a multitude of prose tales teaching the lessons of life under the guise of fables about animals. We know how Socrates,during his last days in prison, was engaged in turning the fables of Aesop into verse, The first written collection appears to have been set on foot by Demetrius of Phalerum, B.C. 00. The collections of Aesop's Fables that have come down to us are, in part, late prose renderings of the version in choliambics by Babrius (q.v.), which still retain here and there a scrap of verse; partly products of the rhetorical schools, and therefore of very different periods and degrees of merit.
AESYMNETAE A name given in some Greek cities to the ordinary magistrates and judicial functionaries. In earlier times the term was also applied to persons appointed for a definite term (or until the completion of their task) for putting an end, by legislation, to internal quarrels. Sometimes an aesymnetes was voluntarily chosen by the community for life, and entrusted with supreme and unlimited power. The office of aesymnetes may to a certain extent be compared with the Roman dictatorship, though the latter was never conferred without a strict limitation of time.
AETHRA daughter of Pittheus, king of Troezen, mother of Thresus by Aegeus. or, according to another account, by Poseidon. While Homer merely mentions her as a servant of Helen at Troy, later legend adds that, when the Dioscuri took Aphidnae and set free their sister whom Theseus had carried off, they conveyed Aethra to Sparta as a slave, whence she accompanied Helen to Troy; and that on the fall of that city, they brought her grandsons Acamas and Demophoon back to Athens.
AETION A Greek painter in the latter half of the 4th century B.C., especially famed. for his picture of Alexander the Great's wedding with the beautiful Roxana, B.C. 328.
AETIUS Of Amida in Mesopotainia, a Greek physician of the 6th century A.D., who lived at Constantinople as imperial physician in ordinary. He was the author of a great miscellany on pathology and diagnosis in sixteen books.
AFRANIUS
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The chief master of the Fabfula Togata. (See COMEDY.) Flourished B.C. 100. In his pictures of Roman life be took Menander for his model, and with great success. Cicero calls him witty and a master of language. To judge by the number of the titles of his, comedies which have survived (more than forty, with scanty fragments), he was a prolific author; from them we gather that his subjects were mostly taken from family life, His plays kept possession of the stage longer than those of most comic poets, being still acted in Nero's time.
AGAMEDES Son of Erginus of Orchomenus, and a hero of the building art, like his brother Trophonius (q.v.).
AGANIPPE a spring sacred to the Muses on Mount Helicon, near Thespiae in Bceotia, whose water imparted poetic inspiration. Also the nymph of the same, daughter of the river-god Permessus.
AGASIAS
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A Greek artist of Ephesus, probably in the Ist century B.C. The Borghese Gladiator in the Louvre is from his hand. (See SCULPTURE.)
AGATHARCHIDES A Greek grammarian of Cnidus, who lived at Alexandria in the 2nd century B.C. as tutor, and afterwards guardian, of a prince. He composed several historical works (one on the successors of Alexander), a well written performance, and a description of the Red Sea in five books. Of the former only a few fragments remain, of the last some considerable extracts from the first and fifth books.
AGATHARCHUS
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A Greek painter of Samos, the inventor of scene-painting. (See PAINTING.)
AGATHIAS Of Myrina in Asia Minor, Greek poet and historian, born about 530 A.D., lived at Constantinople as a jurist,.and died about 582. By his Kyklos, a collection of his own and contemporary poems, topically arranged in eight books, he helped to originate the Greek ANTHOLOGY (q.v.), which still contains 101 epigrams by him. In his last years he wrote, in a laboured florid style, a history of Justinian in five books, treating of the years A.D. 552-8 in continuation of Procopius.
AGATHODAEMON In Greek mythology a good spirit of the cornfields and vineyards, to whom libations of unmixed wine were made at meals. In works of art be is represented as a youth, holding in one hand a horn of plenty and a bowl, in the other a poppy and ears of corn. (Comp. EVENTUS.)
AGATHON A tragic poet of Athens, born B.C. 448, a friend of Euripides and Plato, universally celebrated for his beauty and refined culture. The banquet he gave in honour of his dramatic victory of B.C. 417 is immortalized in Plato's Symposion. He was, together with Euripides, at the court of Archelaus, king of Macedonia, and probably died there about B.C. 402. He appears to have carried still further the rhetorical manner of Euripides, adopting entirely the views of the sophist Gorgias; and his namby-pamby style is ridiculed by Aristophanes. On the stage he introduced several innovations: he was the first to make the chorus a mere intermezzo, having nothing to do with the action, and in his tragedy of Anthos (=flower) he invented both characters and plot for himself, instead of resorting to old myths.
AGAVE Daugther of Cadmus and wife of Echion. She, with other women, in a bacchanalian frenzy tore to pieces her own son Pentheus (q.v.).
AGELA
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In Crete, an association of youths for joint training; Agelates, the captain of an agela. (See EDUCATION, 1.)
AGELADAS A Greek artist of the first half of the 5th century B.C., famed for his images of gods and Olympian victors, wrought in metal. His reputation was much enhanced by the fact that Phidias, Myron, and Polyclitus were his pupils.
AGEMA The guard in the Macedonian army; in which the cavalry were a troop (ile) formed of noblemen's sons who had grown upas pages in the royal service, while the infantry consisted of the hypaspistae (q.v.), to whom the argyraspides (q.v.), were added later as heavy infantry.
AGENOR Son of Poseidon and Libya, king of Plicenicia, brother to Belus, and father of Cadmus and Europa (q.v.).
AGENOR Son of Antenor by Theano, a priestess of Athena, and one of the bravest heroes of Troy. In Homer he leads the Trojans in storming the Greek entrenchments, rescues Hector when thrown down by Ajax, and even enters the lists with Achilles, but is saved from imminent danger by Apollo. In the post-Homeric legend he dies by the hand of Neoptolemus.
AGER PUBLICUS The Latin name for the State domains, formed of territory taken from conquered states. The Romans made a practice, upon every new acquisition of land, of adding a part of it, usually a third, to the domain. So far as this land was under culture, portions of it were sometimes assigned to single citizens or newly-founded colonies in fee simple, sometimes sold by the quaestors on the condition that, though the purchaser might bequeath and alienate it, it still remained State property. In token of this it paid a substantial or merely nominal rent (vectigal), and was called ager privatus vectigalisque or quaestorius. The greater part was left to the old occupiers, yet not as free property, but as rent-paying land, and was called ager publicus stipendiarius datus assignatus; the rest remained under State management, and was let by the Censors. Of uncultivated districts, the State, by public proclamation, gave a provisional right of seisin, occupatio, with a view to cultivation, in consideration of a tithe of the com raised and a fifth of the fruit, and reserving its right of resumption. Such seisin was called possessio. It could be bequeathed or otherwise alienated, yet never became private property, but remained a rent-paying and resumable property of the State. Though the Plebeians had as good a right to occupy lands won by their aid as the Patricians, yet in the early times of the Republic this right was exercised by the latter alone, partly because they had the greater command of means and men, and partly because by the right of the stronger they excluded the Plebeians from benefiting by the Ager Publicus. Against this usurpation the Plebeians waged a bitter and unbroken warfare, claiming not only a share in newly conquered lands, but a wholesale redistribution of existing possessiones, while the Patricians strained every nerve to maintain their vested interests, and managed to thwart the execution of all the enactments passed from time to time in favour of the Plebeians. Even the law of the tribune Gaius Licinius Stolo (B.C. 377), limiting possessiones to 500 iugera (acres) per man, and ordering the distribution of the remainder, were from the first eluded by the possessores, who now included both Patricians and well-to-do Plebeians. Allpossible means were employed, as pretended deeds of gift and other similar devices. The threatened extinction of the Italian peasantry by the great wars, and the rapid growth of huge estates (latifundia) worked by slaves, occasioned the law of Tiberius Gracchus (B.C. 133), retaining the Licinian limit of 500 acres, but allowing another 250 for each son, and granting compensation for lands resumed by the State. The land thus set free, and all the Ager Publicus that had been leased, except a few domains indispensable to the State, were to be divided among poor citizens, but on the condition that each allotment paid a quit-rent, and was not to be alienated. But again, the the resistance of the nobility practically reduced this law to a dead letter; and the upshot of the whole agrarian movement stirred up by Tiberius and his brother Gaius Gracchus was, that the wealthy Romans were not only left undisturbed in their possessiones, but were released from paying rent. In the civil wars of Sulla the Ager Publicus in Italy, which had been nearly all used up in assignations, received so vast an increase by the extermination of whole townships, by proscriptions and confiscations, that even after all the soldiers had been provided for, there remained a portion undistributed. Under the Empire there was hardly any left in Italy; what there was, whether in Italy or in the provinces, came gradually under the control of the imperial exchequer.
AGES Zeus then created the brazen age, so named because in it all implements were made of brass. The men, furnished with gigantic limbs and irresistible physical strength, destroyed each other by deeds of violence, and perished at their death.
AGES The iron age succeeded. This was the generation of work and laborious agriculture. Care and toil fill up the day and night; truth and modesty are departed; mischief alone survives, and there is nothing to arrest the progress of decay.
AGES The age of gold, in which Kronos or Saturnus was king. During this period mankind enjoyed perpetual youth, joy, and peace undisturbed, reaping in their fulness the fruits which the earth spontaneously brought forth. Death came upon them like a soft slumber; and after it they became good daemones, watching men like guardians in their deeds of justice and injustice, and hovering round them with gifts of wealth.
AGES The golden age was succeeded by that of silver. This was inferior to the golden both in physical and mental force. The people of the silver age remained for a hundred years in the condition of children, simple and weakly. Even if they attained maturity, their folly and arrogance prevented their living long. They continued to exist after death as spirits, living beneath the earth, but not immortal.
AGESANDER
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A Greek artist of the school of Rhodes. The celebrated group of the Laocoon is the joint work of Agesander, Athenodorus, and Polydorus. (See LAOCOON.)
AGGER
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In Roman siege-works, the mound or embankment raised against an enemy's walls. (See SIEGES.)
AGLAIA
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One of the Graces. (See CHARITES.)
AGNATIO
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The Latin name for the relationship of real or adoptive descent from one father, which was necessarily expressed by identity of clan-name (see NAME, 2.) A brother and sister were agnati, but her children were no longer agnati to his. At first agnati alone were entitled to inherit property or act as guardians; it was but gradually that the cognati (q.v.) came to have a place by their side, till Justinian abolished the right of agnates, and brought that of cognates to complete recognition.
AGON
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The Greek name for a musical (=artistic) or gymnastic contest. The umpires who conducted them, and gave away the prizes, were called Agonothetae. (On those who officiated at scenic games in Athens, see DRAMA.) At Rome such contests modelled on those of the Greeks, became frequent before the fall of the Republic; under the Empire they came round at periods of several years, like the great Grecian games. The most famous of all, which held its ground to the end of antiquity, was the Agon Capitolinus, founded by Domitian in 86 A.D., and recurring every four years. He had an Odieum (q.v.) built for the musical performances, and a Stadion for the athletic combats, both in the Campus Martius. Another great Agon was held in 248 A.D. in honour of the city having stood for a thousand years.
AGORA The Greek name for the market-place, a consecrated open space, which in coast towns usually lay on the seaside, in inland towns at the foot of the castle hill. As the centre of the city life, commercial, political, and religious, it was adorned with temples, statues, and public buildings, and planted with trees, especially planes. When newly built or rebuilt in late times, it was generally square, and surrounded by colonnades. In most towns it was the place for assemblies of the people.
AGORACRITUS A Greek artist of Paros, who lived in the latter half of the 5th century B.C., and was a favourite pupil of Phidias. His noblest work was considered to be the statue of Nemesis, 40 feet in height, which some judges, on account of its excellence, took for a production of the elder artist. In any case it was said that Phidias had allowed the name of Agoracritus to be inscribed on several of his works.
AGORANOMUS In many Greek towns a magistrate somewhat resembling the Roman aedile. At Athens ten agoranomi were chosen by lot every year five for the city, and five for the port of Piraeus. They looked especially after the retail trade, gave strangers leave to engage in it, tested weights and measures, as well as the quality of goods confiscating and destroying what was spoilt; they settled disputes between buyers and sellers on the spot, or, if a suit at law was necessary, presided over it [Aristotle's Const. of Athens, c. 51].
AGRAULOS Daughter of Cecrops (q.v.).
AGRICULTURE Agriculture was in Greece a leading industry, at least as early as Homer. The soil was stubborn, fertile plains being comparatively few, and mountains and rocky ground preponderating. But, favoured by a genial climate, agriculture was carried on almost everywhere with a zeal to which the wants of a dense population added their stimulus. That it was regarded as the very groundwork of social life is shown by the fact that its guardian goddess Demeter (Lat. Ceres), presided also over wedlock and law. It was looked upon as the most legitimate way of earning a livelihood. It was carried to the highest pitch in the Peloponnesus, where every scrap of cultivable soil was made to yield its crop, as maybe seen to this day by the artificial terraces that scarp every mountain-slope. Much care was bestowed on irrigation. Scarcity of water was supplemented by artificial means; provision was made against irregular bursts of mountain torrents by embarking and regulating the natural outlets, while moist lands were channelled and stagnant waters drained. Water was distributed everywhere by ditches and canals, under the supervision of State officials; and laws of ancient date guarded against the unfair use of a water-course to a neighbour's damage. The land was mainly cultivated by slaves and serfs, though field-labour was not deemed dishonourable to the freeman, ex- cept where law and custom forbade his engaging in any sort of handicraft, as at Sparta. In some countries, especially Arcadia, the old-world plan of every man tilling his field with his own hand remained in force to the latest times; and even eminent statesmen like Philopoemen would not give it up. Four kinds of grain were chiefly grown: wheat, barley, and two kinds of spelt, to all of which the climate allowed two sowings in the year, beside millet, sesame, various leguminous plants, and several sorts of herbage for fodder. With no less diligence was Greek husbandry applied to gardening, especially to the cultivation of the vine. This, while steadily pursued on the mainland, was developed to an extraordinary extent in the islands, most of which, owing to their mountainous character, did not afford their inhabitants sufficient arable soil. In olive-culture no part of Greece competed with Attica, which also produced the best figs, the fruit most widely cultivated. Kitchen-gardening was practised on the largest scale in Boeotia. Considering the enormous consumption of flowers in wreaths, the rearing of them, especially of the rose, lily, narcissus, and violet, must have been a lucrative business, at least in the neighbourhood of great towns. Meadow-farming was of next to no importance, few districts having a soil adapted for it, and such meadows as there were being used for pasture rather than haymaking.
AGRICULTURE
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In Italy. In Italy also the existence of the community was regarded as based upon agriculture. This is proved by the practice of marking the site of the future walls of a new town by a furrow drawn with the plough. At Rome especially, the body of irremovable peasantry long formed the core of the commonwealth. In political life the free peasant was the only factor held in account, and accordingly in war the object was to increase the number of free peasants by planting them out on as much of borderland as could be wrested from the enemy. In early times agriculture was thought the only respectable calling in which a Roman citizen could engage; and manual labour on the land was held in unqualified esteem and as bringing no disgrace even upon persons in high place. Husbandry was mainly directed to the raising of grain, the ordinary cereal being at first spelt, till, in the 5th century B.C., wheat began to take a place beside it. They also cultivated barley, millet, and leguminous plants, as well as turnips, greens, and herbs for fodder. On irrigation and drainage the Italians bestowed much pains. They had no lack of grass-lands, either for pasture or haymaking; and from an early time these were artificially watered. The cultivation of the vine and olive extended as that of grains declined (see below); so did the growth of orchard-fruit, which, under the late Republic and the early Empire, received a vast expansion both from the improvement of native kinds and the introduction and naturalization of many foreign fruits. In earlier times the prime favourite among fruit trees had been, as in Greece, the nutritious fig. Agriculture proper was ruined by the acquisition of the first extra-Italian possessions, Sicily and Sardinia; for the corn supplied by the provincials as tribute in kind began to be used, not only in provisioning the armies, but in feeding the urban population. (See ANNONA.) As the State, to humour the rabble of Rome, sold this corn at the lowest possible prices, sometimes even below its value, the growth of cereals ceased to be profitable; farmers kept it down to a minimum, and took to cattle-breeding or raising wine and oil. These branches of industry not only flourished in the face of competition, but with judicious management were highly remunerative. The death-blow was given to the Italian peasantry by the increasing employment of slaves and the absorption of small farms in large estates (see LATIFUNDIUM). On these, besides the growth of wine, oil, and fruit, the breeding of birds, game, and cattle was carried on, as well as woodcraft, and special industries, pottery, charcoal-burning, and others. Farming implements, in addition to the plough (q.v.) usually drawn by oxen, which was much the same among Greeks and Romans, and always very imperfect, included a great variety of spades, hoes, and mattocks, and among Romans the harrow, the use of which among the Greeks is doubted. The season for sowing all cereals was usually autumn. At harvest the stalks were cut with the sickle about half-way down, and the rest left standing as stubble, to be either burnt or utilized for manure. The process of threshing (q.v.) was very defective. (For ancient works on husbandry, see GEOPONICI.)
AGRIMENSORES The Latin name for land-surveyors, otherwise called gromatici, from groma, their measuring instrument. This consisted of two dioptric rods crossing each other at right angles and fastened on an iron stand so as to turn horizontally; on the four arms stood four upright dioptrae, with threads stretched across the holes, and in taking observations the threads of two opposite dioptrae had to cover each other. The measuring was done on the same principle as the marking-out of a templum by the Augurs (q.v.), viz. by drawing in the centre of the piece of land two lines intersecting at right angles, one from north to south (cardo maximus), the other from east to west (decumanus maximus); the further division of the ground was effected by parallels to these lines (limites). It was not until the imperial period that land-surveying became a separate profession. Then surveyors were prepared in special schools and appointed by the State, both for quarter-master's duty in camp and for measurements under Government; they decided as judges in fixing boundaries, and were consulted as specialists in disputes affecting land. Thus a literature arose, half mathematical, half legal, the remains of which extend over the first six centuries A.D. The earliest of these gromatici, or writers on land-measurement, is Frontinus (q.v.), from whose work, written from 81-96 A.D. and dealing more with the legal side of the subject, extracts are preserved in the commentary of Aggenus Urbicus. Hyginus, Balbus, and probably Siculus Flaccus, flourished in the time of Trajan; later still, Nipsus, Innocentius, and Aggenus.
AGRIPPA Born B.C. 63, died B.C. 12. He was the friend, son-in-law, general, and minister of Augustus. He was also a speaker and writer of some repute. Under his supervision was carried out the great survey of the Roman empire which Caesar had begun in 44 B.C. With the help of the materials thus obtained he constructed a circular Map of the World. About B.C. 7, Augustus had it engraved on a large scale in marble, and set up for public use in the colomnade built by Agrippa's sister Polla (porticus Pollae). It may be regarded as the source and model of all succeeding aids to geography, especially the Itineraries (q.v.) and the Peutinger Table. A book on the results of the survey, which Agrippa had begun writing, was continued and published, by order of Augustus, under the title of Chorographia.
AGYIEUS A title of Apollo (q.v.) as god of streets and highways.
AIAS Son of Telamon of Salamis, and half-brother of Teucer: called the Great Aias, because he stood head and shoulders higher than the other Greek heroes. He brings twelve ships to Troy, where he proves himself second only to Achilles in strength and bravery; and while that hero holds aloof from the fight, he is the mainstay of the Achaeans, especially when the Trojans have taken their camp by storm and are pushing the battle to their ships. In the struggle over the corpse of Patroclus, he and his namesake the son of Oileus cover Menelaus and Meriones while they carry off their fallen comrade. When Thetis offered the arms and armour of Achilles as a prize for the worthiest, they were adjudged, not to Aias, but to his only competitor Odysseus. Trojan captives bore witness that the cunning of Odysseus had done them more harm than the valour of Achilles. Aias thereupon, according to the post-Homeric legend, killed himself in anger, a feeling he still cherished against Odysseus even in the lower world. The later legend relates that he was driven mad by the slight, mistook the flocks in the camp for his adversaries, and slaughtered them, and on coming to his senses again, felt so mortified that he fell on his sword, the gift of Hector after the duel between them. Out of his blood sprang the purple lily, on whose petals could be traced the first letters of his name, Ai, Ai. His monument stood on the Rhoetean promontory, where he had encamped before Troy, and upon which the waves washed the coveted arms of Achilles after the shipwreck of Odysseus. As the national hero of Salamis, he had a temple and statue there, and a yearly festival, the Aianteia; and he was worshipped at Athens, where the tribe Aiantis was named after him. He too was supposed to linger with Achilles in the island of Leuce. By Tecmessa, daughter of the Phrygian king Teuthras, whom he had captured in one of the raids from before Troy, he had a son Eurysaces, who is said to have removed from Salamis to Attica with his son or brother Phihaeus, and founded flourishing families, which produced many famous men, for instance Miltiades, Cimon, Alcibiades, and the historian Thucydides.
AIAS Son of the Locrian king Oileus, hence called the Locrian or Lesser Aias in contrast to the Telamonian. In forty ships he led the Locrians to Troy, where, notwithstanding his small stature and light equipment, he distinguished himself beside his gigantic namesake, especially in the battle by the ships and that over the body of Patroclus. He was renowned for hurling the spear, and as the swiftest runner next to Achilles. On his voyage home, to appease the anger of Athena, he suffered shipwreck on the Gyraean rocks off the island of Myconos or (according to another story) on the southernmost point of Euboea. Poseidon indeed rescued him on the rocks; but when he boasted of having escaped against the will of the gods, the sea-king with his trident smote off the rock on which he sat, and he sank in the waves. Later accounts say that the goddess's anger fell upon him because, at the taking of Troy, when Cassandra had taken refuge at her altar and embraced her image, he tore her away by force, so that the statue fell. Though Agamemnon took the maiden from him, the Greeks left the outrage on the goddess unpunished, and on their way home she wreaked her wrath on the whole fleet. He, like other heroes, was said to be still living with Achilles in the island of Leuce. The Locrians worshipped him as a hero, and always left a vacant place for him in the line of battle.
AIDES
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See HADES.
ALA
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A back room in a Roman house. See HOUSE.
ALA
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a wing in the line of battle. Till the extension of the citizenship to the Italian allies, the wings consisted of their contingents, viz. 10,000 foot and 1,800 horse to every consular army of two legions. Thus ala came to mean the allied contingent that composed a wing (see COHORT and LEGION). But it meant more especially, in contrast to the cohorts that made up the infantry of the allies, the cavalry of the contingent, viz. on an average 300 men (5 turmae, of 60 each). During the imperial period, when all the cavalry was raised in the provinces, the name of ala was given to a cavalry division of 500 or else 1,000 men, the one divided into 16, the other into 24 turmae. The alae were commanded by praefecti equitum.
ALASTOR The Greek term for an avenging daemon, who dogs the footsteps of criminals, visiting the sins of fathers on their offspring.
ALBUM
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The Latin word for a board chalked or painted white, on which matters of public interest were notified in black writing. In this way were published the yearly records of the pontifex (see ANNALES), the edicts of praetors (q.v.), the roll of senators, the lists of jurors, etc.
ALCAEUS
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A famous lyric poet of Mytilene in Lesbos, an elder contemporary of Sappho. Towards the end of the 7th century B.C., as the scion of a noble house, he headed the aristocratic party in their contests with the tyrants of his native town, Myrsilus, Melanchrus, and others. Banished from home, he went on romantic expeditions as far as Egypt. When the tyrants were put down, and his former comrade, the wise Pittacus, was called by the people to rule the State, he took up arms against him also as a tyrant in disguise; but attempting to force his return home, he fell into the power of his opponent, who generously forgave him. Of his further life nothing is known. His poems in the Aeolic dialect, arranged in ten books by the Alexandrians, consisted of hymns, political songs (which formed the bulk of the collection), drinking songs, and love songs, of which we have but a few miserable fragments. In the opinion of the ancients, his poems were well constructed, while their tone tallied with the lofty passion and manly vigour of his character. The alcaic strophe, so much used by his admirer and not unworthy imitator, Horace, is named after him. [For a relief representing Alcaeus and Sappho, see SAPPHO.]
ALCAMENES
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A Greek artist of Athens or Lemnos, and a pupil of Phidias, who flourished towards the end of the 5th century B.C. Following his master's ideal tendency, he devoted himself mainly to religious subjects, working like him in various materials, gold and ivory, bronze and marble. His statue of the winner in the Pentathlon was stamped as classic by the epithet of Enkrinomenos, as the Doryphoros of Polyclitus was by that of Kanon. About 436 B.C. he was employed with Phidias in decorating the temple of Zeus at Olympia. The marble groups of the battle of Centaurs and Lapithae in its western pediment are his work. Of these considerable remains have been brought to light by the recent German excavations. (See OLYMPIAN GAMES, fig. 2.)
ALCATHOUS The son of Pelops and Hippodameia. He slew the lion of Cithaeron, which had torn to pieces Euippus, the son of Megareus. Thus he won the daughter of Megareus, Euaechma, and the sovereignty of Megara. With Apollo for his friend and helper, he rebuilt the city walls, and reared one of the two castles, Alcathoe, with temples to Artemis and Apollo. A singing stone in the castle was shown as the one on which the god laid down his lyre when at work. Alcathous' eldest son, Ischepolis, fell in the Calydonian hunt; the second, Callipolis, running in with the news to his father when sacrificing to Apollo, scattered the altar fire, and Alcathous struck him dead with a firebrand for the supposed sacrilege. By his daughters Automedusa and Periboea, the wives of Iphicles and Telamon, he was grandfather to Iolaus and Aias (Ajax).
ALCIDAMAS A Greek rhetorician of Elaea in Aeo1is, pupil and successor of Gorgias, a contemporary and opponent of Isocrates. Two declamations, bearing his name, have come down to us, one an imaginary indictment of Palamedes by Odysseus, the other a speech on the Sophists; but the latter only can with any probability be attributed to him. It is a cleverly written argument, intended to show that the culmination of rhetorical training consists in the power of speaking extempore on any subject from mere notes of the arrangement; not the practice of carefully writing out speeches, and then learning them by heart for public delivery.
ALCIDES A surname of Heracles (q.v.)
ALCINOUS
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King of the Phaeacians (q.v.), with whom Odysseus, and in later legend Jason and Medea, find shelter and aid. (See ODYSSEUS and ARGONAUTS.)
ALCIPHRON A Greek rhetorician of the 2nd century A.D., author of a collection of 118 fictitious Letters in three books. These, written in tolerably pure style and tasteful form, profess to be from sailors, peasants, parasites, and hetaerae. They are sketches of character, ingeniously conceived and carried out, which give us a vivid picture of the then state of culture, especially at Athens; the letters from hetaerae are particularly interesting, as their plots are taken from the New Attic Comedy, especially the lost plays of Menander.
ALCMAEON of Argos. Son of Amphiaraus (q.v.) and Eriphyle. As his father, in departing on the expedition of the Seven against Thebes, has bound him and his brother Amphilochus, then mere boys, to avenge him on their faithless mother, Alcmaeon refuses to take part in the second expedition, that of the Epigoni (q.v.), till he has first fulfilled that filial duty; nevertheless his mother, bribed by Thersander with the garment of Harmonia, persuades him to go. The real leader at the siege of Thebes, he slays the Theban king, Laodamas, and is the first to enter the conquered city. On returning home, he, at the bidding of the Delphian Apollo, avenges his father by slaying his mother, with, or according to some accounts, without, his brother's help; but immediately, like Orestes; he is set upon by the Erinyes, and wanders distracted, seeking purification and a new home. Phegeus, of the Arcadian Psophis, half purifies him of his guilt, and gives him his daughter Arsinoe or Alphesiboea to wife, to whom he presents the jewels of Harmonia, which he has brought from Argos. But soon the crops fail in the land, and he falls into his distemper again, till, after many wanderings, he arrives at the mouth of the Achelous, and there, in an island that has floated up, he finds the country promised by the god, which had not existed at the time of his dying mother's curse, and so he is completely cured. He marries Achelous' daughter, Callirrhoe, by whom he has two sons, Acarnan and Amphoterus. Unable to withstand his wife's entreaties that she may have Harmonia's necklace and robe, he goes to Phegeus in Arcadia, and begs those treasures of him, pretending that he will dedicate them at Delphi for the perfect healing of his madness. He obtains them; but Phegeus, on learning the truth, sets his sons to waylay him on his road, and rob him of his treasure and his life; and then Alcmaeon's two sons avenge their father's death on these murderers. Alcmaeon, like his father, received divine honours after death; he had a sanctuary at Thebes, and at Psophis a consecrated tomb.
ALCMAN The founder of Dorian lyric poetry, a Lydian of Sardes. He came to Sparta in his youth as a slave, was set free, and seems even to have received the citizenship; he flourished in the latter half of the 7th century B.C. He abandoned the old nomic or dithyrambic poetry, written in hexameters, and composed in various metres Hymns, Paeans, Prosodia, Parthenia, Scolia, and Erotics, the last of which he was supposed to have invented. His dialect was the Doric, softened by Epic and Aeolic forms. Of his six books of poems a few fragments only are preserved; one, a rather long one, was found in Egypt.
ALCMENE
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Daughter of Electryon, wife of Amphitryon (q.v.), mother of Heracles by Zeus. On her connexion with Rhadamanthys, see RHADAMANTHYS. After her son's translation to the gods she fled from the face of Eurystheus to Athens, but went back to Thebes, and died there at a great age. She was worshipped at Thebes, and had an altar in the temple of Heracles at Athens.
ALCYONE Daughter of Aeolus, wife of Ceyx (q.v. 2).
ALCYONE One ofthe Pleiades.
ALECTO
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One of the Greek goddesses of vengeance. (See ERINYES.)
ALEXANDER Alexander Aetolus (the Aetolian) of Pleuron in Aetolia, lived about 280 B.C. at Alexandria, being employed by Ptolemy in arranging the tragedies and satyric dramas in the Library. He was afterwards at the court of Antigonus Gonatas in Macedonia. As a writer of tragedies he was reckoned one of the so-called Pleiad. He also tried his hand at short epics, at epigrams, elegies, and the like, of which some graceful fragments are preserved.
ALEXANDER A Greek rhetorician of the 2nd century A.D., son of the rhetorician Numenius. He composed a work on figures of speech, of which one extract and a free Latin version by Aquila Romanus have survived.
ALEXANDER Alexander of Aphrodisias in Caria, about 200 A.D., called Exegetes for his services in expounding the doctrine of Aristotle, wrote valuable commentaries on several Aristotelian treatises (especially the Metaphysics) as well as original works on Fate and Free-will, on the Soul, and others.
ALEXANDER Alexander of Tralles in Lydia, a Greek physician, lived in the 6th century A.D. at Rome, and made a careful collection from older writers on therapeutics, in twelve books.
ALEXANDER
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See PARIS.
ALEXIKAKOS An epithet of Apollo and Heracles.
ALEXIS Alexis and Antiphanes were the most prolific and important writers of the Middle Attic Comedy. Alexis was born at Thurii, B.C. 392. He attained the age of 106, writing to the last, and is said to have died on the stage with the crown on his head. He was the reputed author of 245 plays, of which numerous extracts are still extant, showing considerable wit and elegance of language. He was uncle to the poet Menander.
ALIMENTIRII The Latin name, during the imperial period, for children of needy but free-born parents, who, out of the in- terest of funds invested for the purpose, received monthly contributions to their support in goods or money up to a certain age (fixed in the case of boys at eighteen, in that of girls at fourteen). This scheme, the object of which was to encourage people to marry, and so to check the alarming decrease of the free population, was started by the Emperor Nerva (A.D. 96-98), and extended by Trajan to the whole of Italy. Succeeding emperors also, down to Alexander Severus (222-235), founded such bursaries; and private citizens in Italy and the provinces, as, for instance the younger Pliny, vied with them in their liberality.
ALOADAE Sons of Poseidon by Iphimedeia, the wife of Aloeus, son of Canace (see Aeolos, 1) and Poseidon; their names were Ephialtes and Otus. They grew, every year an ell in breadth and a fathom in length, so that in nine years' time they were thirty-six feet broad and fifty-four feet high. Their strength was such that they chained up the god Ares and kept him in a brazen cask for thirteen months, till their stepmother Eriboea betrayed his whereabouts to Hermes, who came by stealth and dragged his disabled brother out of durance. They threatened to storm heaven itself by piling Ossa on Olympus and Pelion on Ossa, and would have done it, says Homer, had not Apollo slain them with his arrows ere their beards were grown. The later legend represents Ephialtes as in love with Hera, and Otus with Artemis. Another myth represents Artemis as slaying them by craft in the island of Naxos. She runs between them in the form of a hind; they hurl their spears, and wound each other fatally. In the later legend they expiate their sins in the lower world by being bound with snakes to a pillar, back to back, while they are incessantly tormented by the screeching of an owl. On the other hand, they were worshipped as heroes in Naxos, and in the Boeotian Ascra were regarded as founders of the city and of the worship of the Muses on Mount Helicon.
ALOPE Daughter of Cercyon of Eleusis, and, by Poseidon, mother of Hippothoon (q.v.); after whose birth her father was going to kill her, but the god changed her into a fountain.
ALPHESIBOEA Daughter of Phegeus and first wife of Alcmaeon, whom, though unfaithful, she continued to love, and was angry with her brothers for killing him. Her brothers shut her up in a box, and brought her to Agapenor, king of Tegea, pretending that she had killed her husband. Here she came by her end, having compassed her brothers' death by the hand of Alcmaeon's sons.
ALTAR
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Originally a simple elevation above the ground, made of earth, fieldstones, or turf; and such altars continued to be used in the country parts of Italy. But altars for constant use, especially in temple service, were, as a rule, of stone, though in exceptional cases they might be made of other materials. Thus, several in Greece were built out of the ashes of burnt-offerings, as that of Zeus at Olympia. One at Delos was made of goats' horns. Their shape was very various, the four-cornered being the commonest, and the round less usual. A temple usually had two altars: the one used for bloodless offerings standing before the deity's image in the cella, and the other for burnt-offerings, opposite the door in front of the temple. The latter was generally a high altar, standing on a platform which is cut into steps. Being an integral part of the whole set of buildings, its shape and size were regulated by their proportions. Some few of these high altars were of enormous dimensions; the one at Olympia had a platform measuring more than 125 feet round, while the altar itself, which was ascended by steps, was nearly 25 feet high. In Italy as well as Greece, beside the altars attached to temples, there was a vast number in streets and squares, in the courts of houses (see cut), in open fields, in sacred groves, and other precincts consecrated to the gods. Some altars, like some temples, were dedicated to more than one deity; we even hear of altars dedicated to all the gods. On altars to heroes, see HEROES.
ALTHAEA Daughter of Thestius, wife of (Eneus, king of Calydon, mother of Tydeus, Meleager (q.v.), and Deianeira.
ALTIS
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The sacred grove near Olympia (q.v.), in which the Olympic Games were celebrated. (See OLYMPIA.)
AMALTHEA A figure in Greek mythology. The name was sometimes applied to a goat, which suckled the newborn Zeus in Crete, while bees brought him honey, and which was therefore set among the stars by her nursling; sometimes to a nymph who was supposed to possess a miraculous horn, a symbol of plenty, and whose descent was variously given. According to one version she is the daughter of the Cretan king Melisseus, and brings up the infant god on the milk of a goat, while her sister Melissa (a bee) offers him honey. The horn of the goat is given to her by Zeus, with the promise that she shall always find in it whatever she wishes. From her the cornucopia passed into the possession of the river-god Achelous, who was glad to exchange it for his own horn, which Heracles had broken off. It is also an attribute of Dionysus, of Plutus, and other gods of earthly felicity.
AMAZONS A mythical nation of women-warriors, whose headquarters are placed by early Greek legend in Themiscyra, on the Thermodon, on the southern shore of the Euxine. In later accounts they also appear on the Caucasus and on the Don, where the nation called Sauromatae was supposed to have sprung from their union with the Scythians. They suffered no men among them; the sons born of their intercourse with neighbouring nations they either killed or sent back to their fathers; the girls they brought up to be warriors, burning the right breast off for the better handling of the bow. Their chief deities were said to be Ares and the Taurian Artemis. Even in Homer they are represented as making long marches into Asiatic territory; an army of them invading Lycia is cut to pieces by Bellerophon; Priam, then in his youth, hastens to help the Phrygians against them. They gained a firm footing in Greek song and story through Arctinus of Miletus, in whose poem their queen Penthesileia, daughter of Ares, as Priam's ally, presses hard on the Greeks, till she is slain by Achilles. After that they became a favourite subject with poets and artists, and a new crop of fable sprang up: Heracles wars against them, to win the girdle of their queen, Hippolyte; Theseus carries off her sister Antiope, they in revenge burst into Attica, encamp on the Areopagus of Athens, and are pacified by Antiope's mediation, or, according to another version, beaten in a great battle. Grave-mounds supposed to cover the bones of Amazons were shown near Megara, and in Euboea and Thessaly. In works of art the Amazons were represented as martial maids, though always with two breasts, and usually on horseback; sometimes in Scythian dress (a tight fur tunic, with a cloak of many folds over it, and a kind of Phrygian cap), sometimes in Grecian (a Dorian tunic tucked up and the right shoulder bare), armed with a half-moon shield, two-edged axe, spear, bow, and quiver, etc. The most famous statues of them in antiquity were those by Phidias, Polyclitus, and Cresilas, to one or other of which, as types, existing specimens are traceable. (See cut.) Among the surviving sculptures representing an Amazonian contest should be especially mentioned the reliefs from the frieze of Apollo's temple at Bassae in Arcadia (in the British Museum, London).
AMBARVALIA The Italian festival of blessing the fields, which was kept at Rome on May 29th. The country people walked in solemn procession three times round their fields in the wake of the su-ove-taur-ilia, i.e. a hog, ram, and bull, which were sacri- ficed after a prayer originally addressed to Mars, afterwards usually to Ceres and other deities of agriculture, that the fruits of the fields might thrive. Comp. ARVAL BROTHERS.
AMBITUS meant at Rome the candidature for a public office, because going round among the citizens was originally the principal means of winning their favour. When unlawful means began to be used, and bribery in every form was, organized into a system, the word came to mean obtaining of office by illegal means. To check the growing evil, laws were passed at an early period, and from time to time made more severe. The penalties, which ranged at different times from fines and inadmissibility to office to banishment for ten years and even for life, produced no lasting effect. At last a special standing criminal court was established for trying such cases, till under the Empire recourse was had to a radical change in the mode of election.
AMBROSIA Anything that confers or preserves immortality: (1) the food of the gods (as nectar was their drink), which doves, according to Homer, bring daily to Zeus from the far west: (2) the anointing oil of the gods, which preserves even dead men from decay: (3) the food of the gods' horses.
AMBURBIUM The Latin name for a solemn procession of the people, with the various orders of priesthood led by the pontifex three times round the boundaries of Rome. It was only resorted to at a time of great distress, and the animals destined to make atonement, viz. a hog, a ram, and a bull (the so called suovetaurilia, see AMBARVALIA), were sacrificed with special prayers outside the city.
AMEIPSIAS A Greek poet of the old comedy, contemporary with Aristophanes, whom he twice overcame. Of his plays only slight fragments remain.
AMMIANUS MARCELLINUS The last Roman historian of any importance, born at Antioch, in Syria, about 330 A.D., of noble Grecian descent. After receiving a careful education, he early entered military service, and fought under Julian against the Alemanni and Persians. In the evening of his days he retired to Rome, and about 390 began his Latin history of the emperors (Rerum Gestarum Libri), from Nerva, A.D. 96, to the death of Valens, in thirty-one books. Of these there only remain books xiv.-xxxi., including the period from 353 to 378 A.D., which he relates for the most part as an eye-witness. As his work may be regarded as a continuation of Tacitus, he seems, on the whole, to have taken that writer for his model. He resembles Tacitus in judgment, political acuteness, and love of truth. A heathen himself, he is nevertheless fair to the Christians. But he is far inferior in literary culture, though he loves to display his knowledge, especially in describing nations and countries. Latin was a foreign language to him; hence a crudeness and clumsiness of expression, which is made even more repellent by affectation, bombast, and bewildering ornamental imagery.
AMMON
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A god native to Libya and Upper Egypt. He was represented sometimes in the shape of a ram with enormous curving horns, sometimes in that of a ram-headed man, sometimes as a perfect man standing up or sitting on a throne. On his head was the royal emblems, with two high feathers standing up, the symbols of sovereignty over the upper and under worlds; in his hands were the sceptre and the sign of life. In works of art his figure is coloured blue. Beside him stands the goddess Muth (the "mother," the "queen of darkness," as the inscriptions call her), wearing the crown of Upper Egypt or the vulture-skin (see cut). His chief temple, with a far-famed oracle, stood in an oasis of the Libyan desert, twelve days' journey from Memphis. Between this oracle and that of Zeus at Dodona a connexion is said to have existed from very ancient times, so that the Greeks early identified the Egyptian god with their own Zeus, as the Romans did afterwards withtheir Jupiter; and his worship found an entrance at several places in Greece, at Sparta, Thebes, and also Athens, whence festal embassies were regularly sent to the Libyan sanctuary (see THEORIA). When the oracle was consulted by visitors, the god's symbol, made of emerald and other stones, was carried round by women and girls, to the sound of hymns, on a golden ship hung round with votive cups of silver. His replies were given in tremulous shocks communicated to the bearers, which were interpreted by a priest.
AMOR
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The god of love. See EROS.
AMPHIARAUS of Argos, the son of Oicles and Hypermnestra, great-grandson of the seer, Melampus. In Homer he is a favourite of Zeus and Apollo, alike distinguished as a seer and a hero, who takes part in the Calydonian boar-hunt, in the voyage of the Argonauts, and the expedition of the Seven against Thebes. Reconciled to Adrastus after a quarrel, and wedded to his sister Eriphyle, he agrees that any future differences between them shall be settled by her. She, bribed by Polyneices with the fatal necklace of his ancestress Harmonia, insists on her husband joining the war against Thebes, though he foresees that it will end fatally for him, and in departing charges his youthful sons Alcmaeon and Amphilochus (q.v.) to avenge his coming death. His wise warnings are unheeded by the other princes; his justice and prudence even bring him into open strife with the savage Tydeus; yet in the fatal closing contest he loyally avenges his death on the Theban Melanippus. In the flight, just as the spear of Periclymenus is descending on him, Zeus interposed to save the pious prophet and make him immortal by cleaving the earth open with his thunderbolt, and bidding it swallow up Amphiaraus, together with his trusty charioteer Baton, like himself a descendant of Melampus. From that time forth Amphiaraus was worshipped in various places as an oracular god, especially at Oropus on the frontier of Attica and Boeotia, where he had a temple and a famous oracle for the interpretation of dreams, and where games were celebrated in honour of him.
AMPHIDROMIA
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At Athens, a family festival, at which newborn infants received religious consecration. See EDUCATION.
AMPHILOCHUS Son of Amphiaraus and Eriphyle, Alcmaeon's brother. He was a seer, and according to some took part in the war of the Epigoni and the murder of his mother. He was said to have founded the Amphilochian Argos (near Neokhori) in Acarnania. Later legend represents him as taking part in the Trojan War, and on the fall of Troy going to Cilicia with Mopsus (q.v.), and there founding a famous oracle at Mallus. At last the two killed each other while fighting for the possession of it.
AMPHITHALAMOS
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A bedroom in a Greek dwelling-house. See HOUSE.
AMPHITHEATRON
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A circular theatre, i.e. a building in which the space for spectators entirely surrounds that where the spectacle is exhibited. These buildings, designed for combats of gladiators and wild beasts (venationes), were first erected in Italy, but in Campania sooner than at Rome. The first known at Rome were temporary wooden structures, like that of Scribonius Curio, who in B.C. 50 made anamphitheatre out of two revolving theatres by joining them back to back, or that of Caesar in 46. The first stone amphitheatre, erected by Statilius Taurus in B.C.29, was burnt down in the fire of Nero, who then built a wooden one again. A second one of stone was begun by Vespasian, consecrated by Titus, A.D. 80, and finished by Domitian (all three of the Flavian gens). The ruins of this Amphitheatrum Flavium, which was 158 feet high, and accommodated 87,000 spectators, are the famous Colosseum. In the provinces too the large towns had their amphitheatres, of which the best preserved are those of Verona and Capua in Italy, Arles and Nimes in France. Of this last our first two illustrations give the elevation and the ground-plan An amphitheatre was usually an oval building, surrounding an arena of like shape, which sometimes, as at Rome and Capua, was a plank floor resting on deep underground walls, the spaces underneath containing cages and machinery for transformations. The exterior was formed of several arcades, one above the other, the lowest one admitting to a corridor, which ran round the building, and out of which staircases led up to the various rows of seats. In the Colosseum this first arcade is adorned with Doric, the second with Ionic, the third with Corinthian "engaged" columns; the fourth is a wall decorated with Corinthian pilasters, and pierced with windows (see ARCHITECTURE, figs. 8-10). Immediately round the arena ran a high, massive wall, with vaults for the animals and for other purposes. On it rested the podium, protected by its height and by special contrivances from the wild beasts when fighting; here were the seats of honour, e.g. at Rome, those of the imperial family, the officers of state, and the Vestal Virgins. Above the podium rose the seats of other spectators in concentric rows, the lowest ones being for senators and magistrates, the next for knights, and the rest for citizens. Women sat in the highest part of the building, under a colonnade, parts of which were portioned off for the common people. The whole space for seats could be sheltered from sun and rain by an awning supported on masts, which were let into corbels of stone that jutted out of the upper circumference. The arena could also be laid under water for the exhibition of sea-fights, the so-called naumachiae (q.v.).
AMPHITRITE daughter of Nereus and Doris, is the wife of Poseidon and queen of the sea. Poseidon saw her dancing with the Nereids on the island of Naxos, and carried her off. According to another account she fled from him to Atlas, when the god's dolphin spied her out and brought her to him. In Homer she is not yet called Poseidon's wife, but a sea-goddess, who beats the billows against the rocks, and has the creatures of the deep in her keeping. Her son is the sea-god Triton. She had no separate worship. She is often represented with a net confining her hair, with crabs' claws on the crown of her head, being carried by Tritons, or by dolphins and other marine animals, or drawn by them in a chariot of shells. As the Romans identified Poseidon with their Neptune, so they did Amphitrite with Salacia, a goddess of the salt waves.
AMPHITRYON Son of Alcaeus, grandson of Perseus, and king of Tiryns. His father's brother, Elektryon, king of Mycenae, had occasion to go out on a war of vengeance against Pterelaus, king of the Taphians and Teleboans in Acarnania and the neighbouring isles, whose sons had carried off his cattle, and have slain his own sons, all but young Licymnius. He left Amphitryon in charge of his kingdom, and betrothed to him his daughter Alcmene. On his return Amphitryon killed him, in quarrel or by accident, and, driven away by another uncle, Sthenelus, fled with his betrothed and her brother Licymnius to Creon, king of Thebes, a brother of his mother Hipponome, who purged him of blood-guilt, and promised, if he would first kill the Taumessian fox, to help him against Pterelaus; for Alcmene would not wed him till her brethren were avenged. Having rendered the fox harmless with the help of Cephalus (q.v.) he marched, accompanied by Creon, Cephalus, and other heroes, against the Teleboans, and conquered their country. Pterilaus' daughter Comaetho had first killed her father by plucking out the golden hair, to whose continual possession was attached the boon of immortality bestowed on him by Poseidon. He slew the traitress, and, handing over the Taphian kingdom to Cephalus, he returned to Thebes and married Alcmene. She gave birth to twins; Iphicles by him, and Heracles by Zeus. At last he falls in the war with Erginus (q.v.), the Minyan king of Orchomenus.
AMPHORA
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A two-handled, big-bellied vessel, usually of clay, with a longish or shortish neck, and a mouth proportioned to the size, sometimes restingfirmly on a foot, but often ending in a blunt point, so that in the store-room it had to lean against the wall, or be sunk in sand, and when brought out for use, to be put in a basket, wine-cooler, or hollow stand. (See VESSELS, fig. 2, a and b). It served to keep oil, honey, and more especially the wine drawn off from the big fermenting vats. It was fastened with a clay stopper, plastered over with pitch, loam, or gypsum, and had a ticket stating the kind, the year, and the quantity of the wine it contained. The Greek amphoreus was a large liquid measure, holding nearly 9 gallons (see METRETES), the Roman measure called amphora held 6 gallons and 7 pints.
AMPLIATIO The Latin term for a delay of verdict pending the production of further evidence in a case not clear to the judges. Comp. COMPERENDINATIO.
AMYCUS Son of Poseidon; a gigantic king of the Bebrycians on the Bithynian coast, who forced every stranger that landed there to box with him. When the Argonauts wished to draw water from a spring in his country, he forbade them, but was conquered and killed in a match with Polydeuces (Pollux).
AMYMONE A daughter of Danaus (q.v.), and mother of Nauplius by Poseidon.
ANACREON A Greek lyric poet, born about 550 B.C. at Teos, an Ionian town of Asia, whose inhabitants, to escape the threatened yoke of Persia, migrated to Abdera in Thrace B.C. 540. From Abdera Anacreon went to the tyrant Polycrates, of Samos, after whose death (B.C. 522) he removed to Athens on the invitation of Hipparchus, and lived there, till the fall of the Peisistratidae, on friendly terms with his fellow poet Simonides and Xanthippus, the father of Pericles. He is said to have died at Abdera, in his eighty-sixth year, choked by the stone of a dried grape. A statue of him stood in the Acropolis at Athens in the guise of an aged minstrel inspired by the wine-god. For Anacreon was regarded as the type of a poet who, in spite of age, paid perpetual homage to wine and love. Love and wine and merry company formed the favourite subjects of his light, sweet, and graceful songs, which were cast in the metres of the Aeolic poets, but composed in the Ionic dialect. Beside fragments of such songs and of elegies, we have also a number of epigrams that bear his name, His songs were largely imitated, and of such imitations we have under his name a collection of about sixty love-songs and drinking-songs of very various (partly much later) dates, and of different degrees of merit.
ANACRISIS In Attic law, the preliminary examination of the parties to a suit.
ANAXAGORAS A Greek philosopher, of Clazomenae in Asia Minor, born about 500 B.C. Sprung from a noble family, but wishing to devote himself entirely to science, he gave up his property to his kinsmen, and removed to Athens, where he lived in intimacy with the most distinguished men, above all with Pericles. Shortly before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War he was charged by the political opponents of Pericles with impiety, i.e. with denying the gods recognised by the State; and though acquitted through his friend's influence, he felt compelled to emigrate to Lampsacus, where he died soon after, aged 72. He not only had the honour of giving philosophy a home at Athens, where it went on flourishing for quite a thousand years, but he was the first philosopher who, by the side of the material principle, introduced a spiritual, which gives the other life and form. He laid down his doctrine in a work On Nature in the Ionic dialect, of which only fragments are preserved. Like Parmenides, he denied the existence of birth or death; the two processes were rather to be described as a mingling and unmingling. The ultimate elements of combination are indivisible, imperishable primordia of infinite number, and differing in shape, colour, and taste, called by himself "seeds of things," and by later writers (from an expression of Aristotle) homaeomere, i.e. particles of like kind with each other and with the whole that is made up of them. At first these lay mingled without order; but the divine spirit -- simple, pure, passionless reason -- set the unarranged matter into motion, and thereby created out of chaos an orderly world. This movement, proceeding from the centre, works on for ever, penetrating farther and farther the infinite mass. But the application of the spiritual principle was rather indicated than fully carried out by Anaxagoras; he himself commonly explains phenomena by physical causes, and only when he cannot find these, falls back on the action of divine reason.
ANAXANDRIDES A Greek poet of the Middle Comedy, a Rhodian, flourished in 376 B.C. He is stated to have been the first who made love affairs the subject of comedy. His plays were characterized by brightness and humour, but only fragments of them are preserved.
ANAXIMANDER A Greek philosopher of Miletus; born B.C. 611; a younger contemporary of Thales and Pherecydes. He lived at the court of Polycrates of Samos, and died B.C. 547. In his philosophy the primal essence, which he was the first to call principle, was the immortal-imperishable, all-including infinite, a kind of chaos, out of which all things proceed, and into which they return. He composed, in the Ionic dialect, a brief and somewhat poetical treatise on his doctrine, which may be regarded as the earliest prose work on philosophy; but only a few sentences out of it are preserved. The advances he had made in physics and astronomy are evidenced by his invention of the sun-dial, his construction of a celestial globe, and his first attempt at a geographical map.
ANAXIMENES A Greek sophist of Lampsacus, a favourite of Philip of Macedon and Alexander the Great. He composed orations and historical works, some treating of the actions of those two princes. Of these but little remains. On the other hand, he is the author of the Rhetoric dedicated to Alexander, the earliest extant work of this kind, which was once included among the works of Aristotle.
ANAXIMENES A Greek philosopher of Miletus, a younger contemporary and pupil of Anaximander, who died about 502 B.C. He supposed air to be the fundamental principle, out of which everything arose by rarefaction and condensation. This doctrine he expounded in a work, now lost, written in the Ionian dialect.
ANCHISES Son of Capys, of the royal house of Troy by both parents, ruler of Dardanus on Mount Ida. Aphrodite loved him for his beauty, and bore him a son, Aeneas. But having, in spite of her warnings, boasted of her favour, he is (according to various versions of the story) paralysed, killed; or struck blind by the lightning of Zeus. Vergil represents the disabled chief as borne out of burning Troy on his son's shoulders, and as sharing his wanderings over the sea, and aiding him with his counsel, till they reach Drepanum in Sicily, where he dies, and is buried on Mount Eryx.
ANCILE The small oval sacred shield, curved inwards on either side, which was said to have fallen from heaven in the reign of Numa. There being a prophecy that the stability of Rome was bound up with it, Numa had eleven others made exactly like it by a cunning workman, Mamurius Veturius, so that the right one should not be stolen. The care of these arms, which were sacred to Mars was entrusted to the Salii (q.v.), who had to carry them through the city once a year with peculiar ceremonies. At the conclusion of their songs Mamurius himself was invoked, and on March 14th they held a special feast, the Mamuralia, at which they sacrificed to him, beating on a hide with staves, probably to imitate a smith's hammering. It is likely that the name Mamurius conceals that of the god Mars (or Mamers) himself.
ANDOCIDES The second in order of time in the roll of Attic orators. He was born B.C. 439, and belonged by birth to the aristocratic party, but fell out with it in 415, when he was involved in the famous trial for mutilating the statues of Hermes, and, to save his own and his kinsmen's lives, betrayed his aristocratic accomplices. Having, in spite of the immunity promised him, fallen into partial atimia (loss of civic rights), he left Athens, and carried on a profitable trade in Cyprus. After two fruitless attempts to recover his status at home, he was allowed at last, upon the fall of the Thirty and the amnesty of B.C. 403, to return to Athens, where he succeeded in repelling renewed attacks, and gaining an honourable position. Sent to Sparta in B.C. 390, during the Corinthian War, to negotiate peace, he brought back the draft of a treaty, for the ratification of which he vainly pleaded in a speech that is still extant. He is said to have been banished in consequence, and to have died in exile. Beside the above-mentioned oration, we have two delivered on his own behalf, one pleading for his recall from banishment, B.C. 410; another against the charge of unlawful participation in the mysteries, B.C. 399; a fourth, Against Alcibiades, is spurious. His oratory is plain and artless, and its expressions those of the popular language of the day.
ANDROGEOS Son of Minos, king of Crete by Pasiphae. Visiting Athens at the first celebration of the Panathenaea, he won victories over all the champions, when king Aegeus, out of jealousy, sent him to fight the bull of Marathon, which killed him. According to another account he was slain in an ambush. Minos avenges his son by making the Athenians send seven youths and seven maidens every nine years as victims to his Minotaur, from which Theseus at last delivers them. Funeral games were held in the Ceramicus at Athens in honour of Androgeus under the name of Eurygyes.
ANDROMACHE The daughter of Eetion, king of the Cilician Thebes, is one of the noblest female characters in Homer, distinguished alike by her ill-fortune and her true and tender love for her husband, Hector. Achilles, in taking her native town, kills her father and seven brothers; her mother, redeemed from captivity, is carried off by sickness; her husband falls by the hand of Achilles; and when Troy is taken she sees her one boy, Astyanax (or Scamander), hurled from the walls. She falls, as the prize of war, to Neoptolemus, the son of her greatest foe, who first carries her to Epirus, then surrenders her to Hector's brother, Helenus. After his death she returns to Asia with Pergamus, her son by Neoptolemus, and dies there.
ANDROMEDA Daughter of the Aethiopian king Cepheus (a son of Belus) by Cassiopeia. Cassiopeia had boasted of being fairer than the Nereids, and Poseidon to punish the profanity, sent a flood and a sea-monster. As the oracle of Ammon promised a riddance of the plague should Andromeda be thrown to the monster, Cepheus was compelled to chain his daughter to a rock on the shore. At this moment of distress Perseus appears, and rescues her, her father having promised her to him in marriage. At the wedding a violent quarrel arises between the king's brother, Phineus, to whom she had been betrothed before, and Perseus, who turns his rival into stone with the Gorgon's head. Andromeda follows Perseus to Argos, and becomes ancestress of the famous line of Perseidae. Athena set her among the stars.
ANDRONITIS
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The men's apartments in a Greek house. See HOUSE.
ANDROTION
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A Greek historian, an Athenian, and a pupil of Isocrates, who was accused of making an illegal proposal and went into banishment at Megara. (We have the speech composed by Demosthenes for one of the accusers.) At Megara he wrote a history of Attica (see ATTHIS) in at least 12 books, one of the best of that class of writings; but only fragments of it have survived.
ANIUS Son of Apollo by Rhceo or Creusa, whose father, Staphylus of Naxos, a son of Dionysus and Ariadne, committed her to the sea in a box. She was carried to Delos, and there gave birth to her son Anius. Apollo taught him divination, and made him his priest and king of Delos. His son Thasus, like Linus and Actaeon, was torn to pieces by dogs, after which no dogs were allowed in the island. His daughters by the nymph Dorippe, being descendants of Dionysus, had the gift of turning anything they pleased into wine, corn, or oil; but when Agamemnon on his way to Troy wished to take them from their father by force, Dionysus changed them into doves.
ANNA PERENNA An ancient Italian goddess, about whose exact attributes the ancients themselves were not clear. She is probably the moon-goddess of the revolving year, who every month renews her youth, and was therefore regarded as a goddess who bestowed long life and all that contributes to it. About full moon on the Ides (fifteenth) of March (then the first month of the year), in a grove of fruit trees at the first milestone on the Flaminian Way, the Romans held a merry feast under the open sky, wishing each other as many years of life as they drank cups of wine. The learned men of the Augustan age identified Anna with Dido's sister, who, on the death of that queen, had fled from Carthage to Aeneas in Italy, but, having excited Lavinia's jealousy, threw herself into the Numicius, and became the nymph of that river.
ANNALISTS A series of writers on Roman history, older than those usually called the historians, beginning about 200 B.C., and covering about a century and a half. They related their country's story from its first beginnings down to their own times, treating the former briefly, the latter in full detail, and at first always in Greek, like FABIUS PICTOR and CINCIUS ALIMENTUS. With PORCIUS CATO (q.v.) commenced composition in Latin and a livelier interest in native history, which constantly stimulated new efforts to celebrate the deeds of their forefathers. Two main characteristics of these annalists are the free use they made of their predecessors, and an inclination to suppress unfavourable facts, which gradually grew into a habit of flattering the national vanity by exaggerations.
ANNALS Year-books. From early times a record of all important events at Rome had been kept in chronological order by the high priest (pontifex maximus) for the time, who every year exhibited in his official residence a whited board (album), on which, after the names of the magistrates for the year, occurrences of all kinds-war, dearth, pestilence, prodigies-were set down briefly according to their dates. These annales pontificum or annales maximi (supposed to be so called after the pontifex maximus), though destroyed at the burning of Rome by the Gauls, B.C. 389, were restored as far as possible, and continued till B.C. 130. Collected afterwards in eighty books, they were at once utilized and superseded by the so-called ANNALISTS (q.v.).
ANNONA
ANTAE
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A templum in antis was a temple in which the hall at either end was formed by prolongations of the side-walls (Lat. antae), and a row of columns between the terminal pilasters of those prolongations. See TEMPLES, fig. 1.
ANTAEUS Son of Poseidon and Ge (the earth); a huge giant in Libya, who grew stronger every time he touched his mother Earth. He forced all strangers to wrestle with him, and killed them when conquered, till Heracles, on his journey to fetch the apples of the Hesperides, lifted him off the ground, and held him aloft till he had killed him. His tomb was shown near Tingis in Mauretania.
ANTEIA Wife of Prcetus of Tiryns; by slandering Bellerophon (q.v.), who had rejected her offers of love, she caused her husband to attempt his life.
ANTENOR A Trojan of high rank, husband to Athena's priestess Theano, the sister of Hecuba. When Menelaus and Odysseus, after the landing of the Greeks, came as envoys to Troy, demanding the surrender of Helen, he received them hospitably, protected them from Paris, and then as always advised peace. Because of this leaning to the Greeks, it was alleged in later times that he betrayed his native city by opening its gates to the enemy; in return for which his house, known by the panther's hide hung out of it, was spared, and he and his friends allowed to go free. One account was, that he sailed with Menelaus, was driven out of his course to Cyrene, and settled there, where his descendants the Antenoridae were worshipped as heroes. Another, which became the accepted tradition, represented him as leading the Heneti, when driven out of Paphlagonia, by way of Thrace and Illyria, to the Adriatic, and thence to the mouth of the Padus (Po), where he founded Patavium. (Padua), the city of the Veneti.
ANTEROS The god of requited love, brother of Eros (italics>q.v.). <entry>Antesignani.
ANTHESTERIA A feast at Athens held in honour of Dionysus. Comp. DIONYSIA (4).
ANTHOLOGY (-garland of flowers). The Greek word anthologia means a collection of short, especially epigrammatic poems, by various authors; we still possess one such collection dating from antiquity. Collections of inscriptions in verse had more than once been set on foot in early times for antiquarian purposes. The first regular anthology, entitled Stephanos (- wreath), was attempted by Meleager of Gadara in the 1st century B.C.; it contained, beside his own compositions, poems arranged according to their initial letters, by forty-six contemporary and older authors, including Archilochus, Alcaeus, Sappho, Anacreon, Simonides, etc., together with a prologue still extant. This collection was enriched, about 100 A.D., by Philippus of Thessalonica, with select epigrams by about thirteen later authors. Other collections were undertaken soon after by Diogenianus of Heracleia and Straton of Sardis, and in the 6th century by Agathias of Myrina, in whose Kyklos the poems are for the first time arranged according to subjects. Out of these collections, now all lost, Constantinus Cephalas of Constantinople, in the 10th century, put together a new and comprehensive anthology, classified according to contents in fifteen sections. From this collection the monk Maximus Planudes, in the 14th century, made an extract of seven books, which was the only one known till the year 1606. In that year the French scholar Saumaise (Salmasius) discovered in the Palatine Library at Heidelberg a complete manuscript of the anthology of Constantinus Cephalas with sundry additions. This MS., with all the other treasures of the library, was carried off to Rome in 1623, whence it was taken to Paris in 1793, and back to Heidelberg in 1816. The epigrams of the Greek anthology, dating as they do from widely distant ages down to the Byzantine, and being the production of more than three hundred different authors, are of very various merit; but many of them are among the pearls of Greek poetry, and could hardly have survived unless enshrined in such a collection. Taken together with the rich store of epigrams found in inscriptions, the Anthology opens to us a view of the development of this branch of Greek literature such as we can scarcely obtain in the case of any other, besides affording valuable information on Hellenic language, history, and manners, at the most different periods. Roman literature has no really ancient collection of so comprehensive a character, the so-called Latin Anthology having been gathered by modern scholars out of the material found scattered in various MSS. Among these, it is true, Saumaise's MS. of the 7th century, now in Paris, has a collection of about 380 poems, but these, with a few exceptions, are of very late authorship.
ANTICLEIA Daughter of Autolycus, wife of Laertes, and mother of Odysseus (q.v.).
ANTIDOSIS (-exchange of properties). An arrangement; peculiar to the Athenians, by which a citizen summoned to perform one of those services to'the State named leitourgioe (q.v.), if he thought a richer than he had been passed over, could challenge him to exchange possessions, binding himself in that case to discharge the obligation. Each party could then have the other's property put in sequestration and his house sealed up; and within three days they handed in, before the proper authority and under oath, an inventory of their goods. If no amicable agreement was come to, and the judge's decision went against the plaintiff, he was bound to perform the public service; otherwise the defendant submitted either to the exchange or to the service.
ANTIGONE Antigone, daughter of Eurytion and wife of Peleus (q.v.), hanged herself for grief at the supposed infidelity of her husband.
ANTIGONE Daughter of Aedipus and Iocasta, who accompanied her blind father into exile. After his death in Attica she returns to Thebes, and, in defiance of her uncle Creon's prohibition, performs the last honours to her brother Polyneices, fallen in single fight with Eteocles, by strewing his body with dust. For this she is entombed alive in the family vault, and there hangs herself; and her betrothed, Haemon, the son of Creon, stabs himself beside her corpse. Such is the version of Sophocles. Another tradition represents Antigone and Argeia, the widow of Polyneices, as secretly burning his body by night on the funeral pile of Eteocles. When seized by the guards, Creon hands her over to Haemon for execution; but he hides her in a shepherd's hut, and lives with her in secret wedlock. Their son, grown up and engaging in some funeral games at Thebes, is recognised by a birthmark peculiar to the family. To escape Creon's vengeance, Haemon kills both Antigone and himself.
ANTIGONUS A Greek writer of Carystus, about 240 B.C., author of a collection of all kinds of curiosities and fictions in natural history. The work is now extant only in a much abbreviated form, and is of no value but for its numerous quotations and fragments from lost writings.
ANTIGRAPHEUS
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The name of a financial officer at Athens. See GRAMMATEUS.
ANTILOCHUS The son of Nestor, who accompanied his father to the Trojan War, and was distinguished among the younger heroes for beauty and bravery. Homer calls him a favourite of Zeus and Poseidon. The dearest friend of Achilles next to Patroclus, he is chosen by the Greeks to break the news to him of his beloved companion's fall. When Memnon attacks the aged Nestor, Antilochus throws himself in his way, and buys his father's safety with his life. He, like Patroclus, is avenged by Achilles, in whose grave-mound the ashes of both friends are laid; even in the lower world Odysseus beholds the three pacing the asphodel meadow, and in after times the inhabitants of Ilium offered to them jointly the sacrifices due to the dead on the foreland of Sigeum.
ANTIMACHUS A Greek poet and critic of Colophon, an elder contemporary of Plato, about 400 B.C. By his two principal works-the long mythical epic called Thebais and a cycle of elegies named after his loved and lost Lyde, and telling of famous lovers parted by death-he became the founder of learned poetry, precursor and prototype of the Alexandrians, who, on account of his learning, assigned him the next place to Homer amongst epic poets. In striving to impart strength and dignity to language by avoiding all that was common, his style became rigid and artificial, and naturally ran into bombast. But we possess only fragments of his works. As a scholar, he is remarkable for having set on foot a critical revision of the Homeric poems.
ANTINOUS A beautiful youth of Claudiopolis in Bithynia, a favourite and travelling companion of the emperor Hadrian. He drowned himself in the Nile, probably from melancholy. The emperor honoured his memory by placing him among the heroes, erecting statues and temples, and founding yearly games in his honour, while the artists of every province vied in pourtraying him under various forms, human, heroic, and divine; e.g. as Dionysus, Hermes, Apollo. Among the features common to the many surviving portraitures of Antinous are the full locks falling low down the forehead, the large, melancholy eyes, the full mouth, and the broad, swelling breast. Some of these portraits are among the finest works of ancient art, for instance, the colossal statue in the Vatican, and the half-length relief at the Villa Albani. (See cut.) There is also a fine bust in the Louvre.
ANTIOPE A sister of Hippolyte, queen of the Amazons; who, according to one account, fall as a prize of war to Theseus for his share in Heracles' campaign against the Amazons, according to another, was carried off by him and his friend Pirithous. When the Amazons attacked Athens in return, she is variously represented as persuading them to peace, or falling in battle against them by the side of Theseus; or, again, as killed by Heracles, when she interrupted the marriage of her beloved Theseus with Phaedra. Her son by Theseus was Hippolytus.
ANTIOPE
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In Homer a daughter of the Boeotian river-god Asopus, mother by Zeus of Amphion and Zethus. In later legend her father is Nycteus of Hyria or Hysiae. As he threatens to punish her for yielding to the approaches of Zeus under the form of a satyr, she flees to Epopeus of Sicyon. This king her uncle Lycus kills by order of his brother Nycteus, now dead, and leads her back in chains. Arrived on Mount Cithaeron, she gives birth to twins, Amphion by Zeus, Zethus by Epopeus, whom Lycus leaves exposed upon the mountain. After being long imprisoned and illtreated by Dirce, the wife of Lycus, she escapes to Cithaeron, and makes acquaintance with her sons, whom a shepherd has brought up. She makes them take a frightful vengeance upon Dirce (see AMPHION), for doing which Dionysus drives her mad, and she wanders. throught Greece, till Phocus, king of Phocis, heals and marries her.
ANTIPHANES The most prolific and important author, with Alexis, of the Attic Middle Comedy; he came of a family which bad migrated from Larissa in Thessaly; was born B.C. 408, and died at the age of 74. He is said to have written 260 plays, of which over 200 are known to us by their titles and fragments, yet he won the prize only thirteen times. He is praised for dramatic ability, wit, and neatness of form.
ANTIPHILUS A Greek painter born in Egypt in the latter half of the 4th century B.C., a contemporary and rival of Apolles; he probably spent the last part of his life at the court of the first Ptolemy. The ancients praise the lightness and dexterity with which he handled subjects of high art, as well as scenes in daily life. Two of his pictures in the latter kind were especially famous, one of a boy blowing a fire, and another of women dressing wool. From his baving painted a man named Gryllos (- pig) with playful allusions to the sitter's name, caricatures in general came to be called grylloi. [Pliny, H. N., 35. 114, 138].
ANTIPHON The earliest of the ten great Attic orators, born B.C. 480 at Rhamnus in Attica, son of the sophist Sophilus, to whom he owed his training. He was the founder of political eloquence as an art, which he taught with great applause in his own school of rhetoric; and he was the first who wrote out speeches for others to deliver in court, though he afterwards published them under his own name. He also played an active part in the politics of his time as a leading member of the oligarchical party, and the real author of the deathblow which was dealt to democracy in 411 B.C. by the establishment of the Council of Four Hundred. Then he went as ambassador to Sparta, to purchase peace at any price in the interest of the oligarchy. On the fall of the Four Hundred he was accused of high treason, and in spite of a masterly defence-the first speech he had ever made in public-was condemned to death B.C. 411. Of the sixty orations attributed to him, only fifteen are preserved, all on trials for murder; but only three of them are about real cases. The rest (named tetralogies, because every four are the first and second speeches of both plaintiff and defendant on the same subject) are mere exercises. Antiphon's speeches exhibit the art of oratory in its rudimentary stage as regards both substance and form.
ANTISTHENES A Greek philosopher of Athens,born about 440 B.C., but only a half citizen, because his mother was a Thracian. He was in his youth a pupil of Gorgias, and himself taught for a time as a sophist, till, towards middle life, he attached himself to Socrates, and became his bosom friend. After the death of Socrates in B.C. 399 he established a school in the gymnasium Kynosarges, the only one open to persons of half-Athenian descent, whence his followers bore the name of Cynici (Kynikoi). He lived to the age of seventy. Like Socrates, he regarded virtue as necessary, indeed, alone sufficient for happiness, and to be a branch of knowledge that could be taught, and that once acquired could not be lost, its essence consisting in freedom from wants by the avoidance of evil, i.e. of pleasure and desire. Its acquisition needs no dialectic argumentation, only Socratic strength. His pupils, especially the famous Diogenes of Sinope, degraded his doctrine to cynicism by depreciating all knowledge and despising the current morality of the time. His philosophical and rhetorical works are lost, all but two slight declamations on the contest for the arms of Achilles, the Aias and Odysseus; and even their genuineness is disputed.
ANTISTIUS LABEO
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A renowned jurist of Augustus' time, a man of wide scholarship and strict republican views, which lost him the emperor's favour. His writings on law amounted to 400 books, portions of which are preserved in the Pandects of Justinian's Corpus Iuris. Aiming at a progressive development of law, he became the founder of a school of lawyers named Proculians after his pupil Sempronius Proculians. See ATEIUS CAPITO.
ANUBIS An Egyptian god, son of Osiris, conductor and watcher of the dead, whose deeds he and HORUS (q.v.) were supposed to weigh in the balance in presence of their father Osiris. He was represented with the head of a jackal or dog-ape. The worship of Anubis was introduced among the Greeks and Romans (who represented him in the form of a dog), together with that of Serapis and Isis; especially in the time of the emperors, as he was identified with Hermes.
APAGOGE A technical term of Athenian law, meaning the production of a criminal taken in the act before the proper magistrate, who then took him into custody, or made him find bail. The name was also given to the document in which the accuser stated the charge. But if the officer was conducted to the spot where the accused was staying, the process was called ephegesis.
APATURIA The general feast of the PHRATRIES (q.v.) held chiefly by Greeks of the Ionian race. At Athens it lasted three days in the month of Pyanepsion (Oct.-Nov.), and was celebrated with sacrificial banquets. On the third day the fathers brought their children born since the last celebration before the members (phrators) assembled at the headquarters of each phratria, and after declaring on oath their legitimate birth, bad their names inscribed on the roll of phratores. For every child enrolled a sheep or goat was sacrificed, which went to furnish the common feast. On the same day the fathers made their children who were at school give proofs of their progress, especially by reciting passages from poets, and those who distinguished themselves were rewarded with prizes.
APELLES The greatest painter of antiquity, probably born at Colophon or in the Island of Cos, who lived in the latter half of the 4th century B.C. After studying at Ephesus, and receiving theoretical instruction in his art from Pamphilus at Sicyon, he worked in different parts of the Greek world, but especially in Macedonia, at the court of Philip and that of Alexander, who would let no other artist paint him. While doing ready justice to the merits of contemporaries, especially Protogenes, he could not but recognise that no one surpassed himself in grace and balanced harmony. These qualities, together with his wonderful skill in drawing and his perfect and refined mastery of colouring (however simple his means), made his works the most perfect productions of Greek painting. Among the foremost were the Alexander with lightning in his hand, painted for the temple of Artemis at Ephesus, in which the fingers appeared to stand out of the picture, and the thunderbolt to project from the panel; and the Aphrodite Anadyomene (- rising), painted for the temple of Asclepius at Cos, which Augustus brought to Rome and set up in the temple of Caesar, and which, when the lower part was damaged, no painter would attempt to restore. We owe to Lucian a description of an allegorical picture of Slander by this painter. [Pliny, H. N., 35. 79-97.]
APHRODITE
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The Greek goddess of love. Her attributes combine, with Hellenic conceptions, a great many features of Eastern, especially Phoenician, origin, which the Greeks must have grafted on to their native notions in very old times. This double nature appears immediately in the contradictory tales of her origin. To the oldest Greeks she was the daughter of Zeus and Dione (and is sometimes called that name herself); yet from a very early time she appears as Aphro-geneia, the "foamborn" (see URANUS), as Anadyomene, "she who rises" out of the sea, and steps ashore on Cyprus, which had been colonized by Phoenicians time out of mind; even as back as Homer she is Kypris, the Cyprian. The same transmarine and Eastern origin of her worship is evidenced by the legend of the isle of Cythera, on which she was supposed to have first landed out of a sea-shell. Again, the common conception of her as goddess of love limits her agency to the sphere of human life. But she is, at the same time, a power of nature, living and working in the three elements of air, earth, and water. As goddess of the shifting gale and changeful sky, she is Aphrodite Urania, the "heavenly," and at many placesin Greece and Asia her temples crowned the heights and headlands; witness the citadels of Thebes and Corinth, and Mount Eryx in Sicily. As goddess of storm and lightning, she was represented armed, as at Sparta and Cythera; and this perhaps explains why she was associated with Are (Mars) both in worship and in legend, and worshipped as a goddess of victory. The moral conception of Aphrodite Urania as goddess of the higher and purer love, especially wedded love and fruitfulness, as opposed to mere sensual lust, was but slowly developed in the course of ages. As goddess of the sea and maritime traffic, especially of calm seas and prosperous voyages, she was widely worshipped by sailors and fishermen at ports and on seacoasts, often as the goddess of calm, while Poseidon was the god of disturbance Next, as regards the life of the earth, she is the goddess of gardens and groves, of Spring and its bounties, especially tender plants and flowers, as the rose and myrtle; hence, as the fruitful and bountiful, she was worshipped most of all at that season of the year in which her birth from the sea was celebrated at Paphos in Cyprus (comp. cut). But to this, her time of joyful action, is opposed a season of sorrow, when her creations wither and die: a sentiment expressed in her inconsolable grief for her beloved ADONIS (q.v.), the symbol of vegetation perishing in its prime. In the life of gods and men, she shows her power as the golden, sweetly smiling godess of beauty and love, which she knows to kindle or to keep away. She outshines all the goddesses in grace and loveliness; in her girdle she wears united all the magic charms that can bewitch the wisest man and subdue the very gods. Her retinue consists of Eros (Cupid), the Hours, the Graces, Peitho (persuasion), Pothos and Himeros (personifications of longing and yearning). By uniting the generations in the bond of love, she becomes a goddess of marriage and family life, and the consequent kinship of the whole community. As such she had formerly been worshipped at Athens under the name of Pandemos (- all the people's), as being a goddess of the whole country. By a regulation of Solon, the name acquired a very different sense, branding her as goddess of prostitution; then it was that the new and higher meaning was imported into the word Urania. In later times, the worship of Aphrodite as the goddess of mere sensual love made rapid strides, and in particular districts assumed forms more and more immoral, in imitation of the services performed to love-goddesses in the East, especially at Corinth, where large bands of girls were consecrated as slaves to the service of the gods and the practice of prostitution. And later still, the worship of Astarte, the Syrian Aphrodite, performed by eunuchs, spread all over Greece. In the Greek myths Aphrodite appears occasionally as the wife of Hephaestus. Her love adventures with Ares are notorious. From these sprang Eros and Anteros, Harmonia, the wife of Cadmus, and Deimos and Phobos (fear and alarm), attendants on their father. By Anchises she was the mother of Eneas. The head-quarters of her worship were Paphos, Amathus, and Idalion (all in Cyprus), Cnidus in Dorian Asia Minor, Corinth, the island of Cythera, and Eryx in Sicily. As mother of Harmonia, she was a guardian deity of Thebes. Among plants, the myrtle, the rose, and the apple were specially sacred to her as goddess of love; amongst animals, the ram, he-goat, bare, dove, sparrow, and other creatures of amorous nature (the ram and dove being widely-current symbols of great antiquity); as sea-goddess, the swan, mussels, and dolphin; as Urania, the tortoise. In ancient art, in which Aphrodite is one of the favourite subjects, she is represented in a higher or lower aspect, according as the artist's aim was to exhibit Urania or the popular goddess of love. In the earlier works of art she usually appears clothed but in later ones more or less undraped; either as rising from the sea or leaving the bath, or (as in later times) merely as an ideal of female beauty. In the course of time the divine element disappeared, and the presentation became more and more ordinary. While the older sculptures show the sturdier forms, the taste of later times leans more and more to softer, weaker outlines. Most renowned in ancient times were the statue at Cnidus by Praxiteles (a copy of which is now at Munich, see fig. 2), and the painting of Aphrodite Anadyomene by Apelles. Of original statues preserved to us, the most famous are the Aphrodite of Melos (Milo, see fig. 3) now at Paris, and that of Capua at Naples, both of which bring out the loftier aspect of the goddess, and the Medicean Venus at Florence, the work of a late Attic sculptor, Cleomenes, in the delicate forms of face and body that pleased a younger age. On the identification of Aphrodite with the Roman goddess of love, see VENUS.
APHTHONIUS A Greek rhetorician of Antioch, about 400 A.D., a pupil of Libanius, who wrote a schoolbook on the elements of rhetoric, the Progymnasmata, or "First Steps in Style," much used in schools down to the 17th century. This book is really an adaptation of the chapter so named in Hermogenes Rhetoric. A collection of forty fables by Aesop also bears his name.
APICIUS
APION A Greek grammarian of the 1st century A.D., a pupil of Didymus, and president of the philological school at Alexandria. He also worked for a time at Rome under Tiberius and Claudius. A vain, boastful man, he travelled about the Greek cities, giving popular lectures on Homer. Of his many writings we have only fragments left. The glosses on Homer that bear his name are of later origin; on the other hand, the Homeric lexicon of the sophist Apollonius is based on his genuine Homeric glosses. His bitter complaint, Against the Jews, addressed to Caligula at the instace of the Alexandrians, is best known from Josephus' noble reply to it.
APODECTAE The Athenian name for a board of ten magistrates yearly appointed by lot, who kept accounts of the moneys coming in to the State from various sources, took possession in the council's presence of the sums raised by the proper officers, and after cancelling the entries in their register, handed the money over to the several treasuries.
APOGRAPHE An inventory, or register; also, in Attic law, a copy of a declaration made before a magistrate.
APOLLO
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Son of Zeus by Leto (Latona), who, according to the legend most widely current, bore him and his twin-sister Artemis (Diana) at the foot of Mount Cynthus in the island of Delos. Apollo appears originally as a god of light, both in its beneficent and its destructive effects; and of light in general, not of the sun only, for to the early Greeks the deity that brought daylight was Helios, with whom it was not till afterwards that Apollo was identified. While the meaning of his name Apollo is uncertain, his epithets of Phoebus and Lycius clearly mark him as the bright, the life-giving, the former also meaning the pure, holy; for, as the god of pure light, he is the enemy of darkness, with all its unclean, uncouth, unhallowed brood. Again, not only the seventh day of the month, his birthday, but the first day of each month, i.e. of each new-born moon, was sacred to him, as it was to Janus, the Roman god of light; and according to the view that prevailed in many seats of his worship, he withdrew in winter time either to sunny Lycia, or to the Hyperboreans who dwell in perpetual light in the utmost north, and returned in spring to dispel the powers of winter with his beams. When the fable relates that immediately after his birth, with the first shot from his bow he slew the dragon Python (or Delphyne), a hideous offspring of Gaea and guardian of the Delphian oracle, what seems to be denoted must be the spring-god's victory over winter, that filled the land with foul marsh and mist. As the god of light, his festivals are all in spring or summer, and many of them still plainly reveal in certain features his true and original attributes. Thus the Delphinia, held at Athens in April, commemorated the calming of the wintry sea after the equinoctial gales, and the consequent reopening of navigation. As this feast was in honour of the god of spring, so was the Thargelia, held at Athens the next month, in honour of the god of summer. That the crops might ripen, he received firstfruits of them, and at the same time propitiatory gifts to induce him to avert the parching heat, so hurtful to fruits and men. About the time of the sun's greatest altitude (July and August), when the god displays his power, now for good and now for harm, the Athenians offered him hecatombs, whence the first month of their year was named Hecatomboeon, and the Spartans held their Hyacinthia (see HYACINTHUS). In autumn, when the god was ripening the fruit of their gardens and plantations, and preparing for departure, they celebrated the Pyanepsia (q.v.), when they presented him with the firstfruits of harvest. Apollo gives the crops prosperity, and protection not only against summer heat, but against blight, mildew, and the vermin that prey upon them, such as field-mice and grasshoppers. Hence he was known by special titles in some parts of Asia. He was also a patron of flocks and pastures, and was worshipped in many districts under a variety of names referring to the breeding of cattle. In the story of Hermes (q.v.) stealing his oxen, Apollo is himself the owner of a herd, which he gives up to his brother in exchange for the lyre invented by him. Other ancient legends speak of him as tending the flocks of Laomodon and Admetus, an act afterwards represented as a penalty for a fault. As a god of shepherds he makes love to the nymphs, to the fair Daphne (q.v.), to Coronis (see ASCLEPIUS), and to Cyrene, the mother of Aristaeus, likewise a god of herds. Some forms of his worship and some versions of his story imply that Apollo, like his sister Artemis, was regarded as a protector of tender game and a slayer of rapacious beasts, especially of the wolf, the enemy of flocks, and himself a symbol of the god's power, that now sends mischief, and now averts it. Apollo promotes the health and well-being of man himself. As a god of prolific power, he was invoked at weddings; and as a nurse of tender manhood and trainer of manly youth, to him (as well as the fountain-nymphs) were consecrated the first offerings of the hair of the head. In gymnasia and palaestrae he was worshipped equally with Hermes and Heracles; for he gave power of endurance in boxing, with adroitness and fleetness of foot. As a warlike god and one helpful in fight, the Spartans paid him peculiar honours in their Carneia (q.v.), and in a measure the Athenians in their Boedromia. Another Athenian festival, the Metageitnia, glorified him as the author of neighbourly union. In many places, but above all at Athens, he was worshipped as Agyieus, the god of streets and highways, whose rude symbol, a conical post with a pointed ending, stood by streetdoors and in courtyards, to watch men's exit and entrance, to let in good and keep out evil, and was loaded by the inmates with gifts of honour, such as ribbons, wreaths of myrtle or bay, and the like. At sea, as well as on land, Apollo is a guide and guardian, and there, especially under the name Delphinius, taken from his friend and ally the dolphin, the symbol of the navigable sea. Under this character he was widely worshipped, for the most part with peculiar propitiatory rites, in seaports and on promontories, as that of Actium, and particularly at Athens, being also regarded as a leader of colonies. While he is Alexicacus (averter of ills) in the widest sense, he proves his power most especially in times of sickness; for, being god of the hot season, and himself the sender of most epidemics and the dreaded plague, sweeping man swiftly away with his unerring shafts, he can also lend the most effectual aid; so that he and his son Asclepius were revered as the chief gods of healing. As a saviour from epidemics mainly, but also from other evils, the paean (q.v.) was sung in his honour. In a higher sense also Apollo is a healer and saviour. From an early time a strong ethical tinge was given to his purely physical attributes, and the god of light became a god of mental and moral purity, and therefore of order, justice, and legality in human life. As such, he, on the one hand smites and spares not the insolent offender, Tityos for instance, the Aloidae, the overweening Niobe, and the Greeks before Troy; but, on the other hand, to the guilt-laden soul, that turns to him in penitence and supplication, he grants purification from the stain of committed crime (which was regarded as a disease clouding the mind and crushing the heart), and so he heals the spirit, and readmits the outcast into civic life and religious fellowship. Of this he had himself set the pattern, when, after slaying the Delphian dragon, he fled from the land, did seven years' menial service to Admetus in atonement for the murder, and when the time, of penance was past had himself purified in the sacred grove of baytrees by the Thessalian temple, and not till then did he return to Delphi and enter on his office as prophet of Zeus. Therefore he exacts from all a recognition of the atoning power of penance, in the teeth of the old law of vengeance for blood, which only bred new murders and new guilt. The atoning rites propagated by Apollo's worship, particularly from Delphi, contributed largely to the spread of milder maxims of law, affecting not only individuals, but whole towns and countries. Even without special prompting, the people felt from time to time the need of purification and expiation; hence certain expiatory rites had from of old been connected with his festivals. As the god of light who pierces through all darkness, Apollo is the god of divination, which, however, has in his case a purely ethical significance; for he, as prophet and minister of his father Zeus, makes known his will to men, and helps to further his government in the world. He always declares the truth; but the limited mind of man cannot always grasp the meaning of his sayings. He is the patron of every kind of prophecy, but most especially of that which he imparts through human instruments, chiefly women, while in a state of ecstasy. Great as was the number of his oracles in Greece and Asia, all were eclipsed in fame and importance by that of Delphi (q.v.). Apollo exercises an elevating and inspiring influence on the mind as god of Music, which, though not belonging to him alone any more than Atonement and Prophecy, was yet pre-eminently his province. In Homer he is represented only as a player on the lyre, while song is the province of the Muses; but in course of time he grows to be the god, as they are the goddesses, of song and poetry, and is therefore Musagetes Leader of the Muses) as well as master of the choric dance, which goes with music and song. And, as the friend of all that beautifies life, he is intimately associated with the Graces. Standing in these manifold relations to nature and man, Apollo at all times held a prominent position in the religion of the Greeks; and as early as Homer his name is coupled with those of Zeus and Athena, as if between them the three possessed the sum total of divine power. His worship was diffused equally over all the regions in which Greeks were settled; but from remote antiquity he bad been the chief god of the Dorians, who were also the first to raise him into a type of moral excellence. The two chief centres of his worship were the Island of Delos, his birthplace, where, at his magnificent temple standing by the sea, were held every five years the festive games called Delia, to which the Greek states sent solemn embassies; and Delphi, with its oracle and numerous festivals (see PYTHIA, THEOXENIA). Foremost among the seats of his worship in Asia was Patara in Lycia with a famous oracle. To the Romans Apollo became known in the reign of their last king Tarquinius Superbus, the first Roman who consulted the Delphian oracle, and who also acquired the Sibylline Books (q.v.). By the influence of these writings the worship of Apollo soon became so naturalized among them, that in B.C. 431 they built a temple to him as god of healing, from which the expiatory processions (see SUPPLICATIONES) prescribed in the Sibylline books used to set out. In the Lectisternia (q.v.), first instituted in B.C. 399, Apollo occupies the foremost place. In 212 B.C., during the agony of the Second Punic War, the Ludi Apollinares were, in obedience to an oracular response, established in honour of him. He was made one of the chief gods of Rome by Augustus, who believed himself to be under his peculiar protection, and ascribed the victory of Actium to his aid: hence he enlarged the old temple of Apollo on that promontory, and decorated it with a portion of the spoils. He also renewed the games held near it, previously every two years, afterwards every four, with gymnastic and artistic contests, and, regattas on the sea; at Rome he reared a splendid new temple to him near his own house on the Palatine, and transferred the Ludi Soeculares (q.v.) to him and Diana. The manifold symbols of Apollo correspond with the multitude of his attributes. The commonest is either the lyre or the bow, according as he was conceived as the god of song or as the far-hitting archer. The Delphian diviner, Pythian Apollo, is indicated by the Tripod, which was also the favourite offering at his altars. Among plants the bay, used for purposes of expiation, was early sacred to him (see DAPHNE). It was planted round his temples, and plaited into garlands of victory at the Pythian games. The palm-tree was also sacred to him, for it was under a palm-tree that he was born in Delos. Among animals, the wolf, the dolphin, the snow-white and musical swan, the hawk, raven, crow, and snake were under his special protection; the last four in connexion with his prophetic functions. In ancient art he was represented as a long-haired but beardless youth, of tall yet muscular build, and handsome features. Images of him were as abundant as his worship was extensive: there was scarcely an artist of antiquity who did not try his hand upon some incident in the story of Apollo. The ideal type of this god seems to have been fixed chiefly by Praxiteles and Scopas. The most famous statue preserved of him is the Apollo Belvedere in the Vatican (fig. 1), which represents him either as fighting with the Pythian dragon, or with his aegis frightening back the foes who threaten to storm his sanctuary. Other great works, as the Apollo Musagetes in the Vatican, probably from the hand of Scopas, show him as a Citharoedus in the long Ionian robe, or nude as in fig. 2. The Apollo Sauroctonus (lizard-killer), copied from a bronze statue by Praxiteles, is especially celebrated for its beauty. It represents a delicate youthful figure leaning against a tree, dart in hand, ready to stab a lizard that is crawling up the tree. It is preserved in bronze at the Villa Albani in Rome, and in marble at Paris.
APOLLODORUS A Greek painter of Athens, about 420 B.C., the first who graduated light and shade in his pictures, whence be received the name of Sciagraphus (shadow-painter). This invention entitled him to be regarded as the founder of a new style, which aimed at producing illusion by pictorial means, and which was carried on further by his younger contemporary Zeuxis. [Pliny, H.N., 35. 60].
APOLLODORUS A Greek architect of Damascus, who lived for a time at Rome, where amongst other things he built Trajan's Forum and Trajan's Column. He was first banished and then put to death under Hadrian, A.D. 129, having incurred that emperor's anger by the freedom of his rebukes. We have a work by him on Engines of War, addressed to Hadrian.
APOLLODORUS A Greek poet of the New Comedy, born at Carystus, between 300 and 260 B.C.s He wrote forty-seven plays, and won five victories. From him Terence borrowed the plots of his Phormio and Hecyra.
APOLLODORUS A Greek grammarian and historian, of Athens, about 140 B.C., a pupil of Aristarchus and the Stoic Panaetius. He was a most prolific writer on grammar, mythology geography, and bistory. Some of his works were written in iambic senarii, e.g. a geography, and the Chronica, a condensed enumeration of the most important data in history and literature from the fall of Troy, which he places in B.C. 1183, down to his own time, undoubtedly the most important of ancient works on the subject. Besides fragments, we have under his name a book entitled Bibliotheca, a great storehouse of mythological material from the oldest theogonies down to Theseus, and, with all its faults of arrangement and treatment, a valuable aid to our knowledge of Greek mythology. Yet there are grounds for doubting whether it is from his hand at all, whether it is even an extract from his great work, On the Gods, in twenty-four books.
APOLLONIUS Apollonius of Perga in Pamphylia. A Greek mathematician named " the Geometer," who lived at Pergamus and Alexandria in the 1st century B.C., and wrote a work on Conic Sections in eight books, of which we have only the first four in the original, the fifth, sixth, and seventh in an Arabic translation, and the eighth in extracts. The method he followed is that still in use.
APOLLONIUS Apollonius, surnamed Dyscolus (- the surly). A Greek scholar, of Alexandria, where he had received his education, and where he ended his days a member of the Museum, after having laboured as a teacher at Rome under Antoninue Pius, about 140 A.D. He is the father of Scientific Grammar, having been the first to reduce it to systematic form. His extant works are the treatises on Pronouns, Adverbs, Conjunctions, and the Syntax of the parts of speech, in four books. He was followed especially by the Latin grammarians, above all by Priscian. His son Herodianus accomplished even more than he did.
APOLLONIUS Apollonius the Sophist, of Alexandria. His precise date A.D. is unknown. He was author of an extant Lexicon of Homeric Glosses, based on Apion's lost glossarial writings.
APOLLONIUS Apollonius, king of Tyre, the hero of a Greek romance (now lost), composed in Asia Minor, in the 3rd century A.D., on the model of the Ephesian History of Xenophon (q.v. 2). We have a free Latin version made by a Christian, about the 6th century, probably in Italy, which was much read in the Middle Ages, and translated into AngloSaxon, English, French, Italian, Middle Greek and German, in prose and verse. Its materials are used in the pseudo-Shakspearian drama of Pericles Prince of Tyre.
APOLLONIUS Apollonius of Tyana in Cappadocia, the most celebrated of the Neo-Pythagoreans, lived about the middle of the 1st century A.D.; by a severely ascetic life on the supposed principles of Pythagoras, and by pretended miracles, he obtained such a hold on the multitude that he was worshipped as a god, and set up as a rival to Christ. The account of his life by the elder Philostratus (q.v.) is more romance than history, and offers little to build upon. Having received his philosophical education, and lived in the temple, of Asclepius at Egae till his twentieth year, he divided his patrimony among the poor, and roamed all over the world; he was even said to have reached India and the sources of the Nile. Twice he lived at Rome; first under Nero till the expulsion of the philosophers, and again in Domitian's reign, when he had to answer a charge of conspiring against the emperor. Smuggled out of Rome during his trial, he continued his life as a wandering preacher of morals and worker of marvels for some years longer, and is said to have died at a great age, master of a school at Ephesus. Of his alleged writings, eight-five letters have alone survived.
APOLLONIUS Apollonius of Tralles. A Greek sculptor of the school of Rhodes, and joint author with his countryman Tauriscus of the celebrated group of Dirce (q.v.). Among other artists of the name, the worthiest of mention is Apollonius of Athens, of the 1st century B.C. From his hand is the Hercules, now only a torso, preserved in the Belvedere at Rome.
APOLLONIUS the Rhodian. A Greek scholar and epic poet of the Alexandrian age, born at Alexandria about 260 B.C., a pupil of Callimachus, wrote a long epic, The Argonautica, in four books, in which, departing from his master's taste for the learned and artificial, he aimed at all the simplicity of Homer. The party of Callimachus rejected the poem, and Apollonius retired in disgust to Rhodes, where his labours as a rhetorician, and his newly revised poem, won him hearty recognition and even admission to the citizenship. Hence his surname. Afterwards, returning to Alexandria, he recited his poem once more, and this time with universal applause, so that Ptolemy Epiphanes, in B.C. 196, appointed him to succeed Eratosthenes as librarian. He probably died during the tenure of this office. His epic poem, which has survived, has a certain simplicity, though falling far short of the naturalness and beauty of Homer; its uniform mediocrity often makes it positively tedious, though it is constructed with great care, especially in its versification. By the Romans it was much prized, and more than once imitated, as by Varro of Atax and Valerius Flaccus. A valuable collection of scholia upon it testifies the esteem in which it was held by the learned of old.
APOTHEOSIS
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The act of placing a human being among the gods, of which the Greeks have an instance as early as Homer, but only in the single case of Leucothea. The oldest notion was that of a bodily removal; then arose the idea of the mortal element being purged away by fire, as in the case of Heracles. There was a kind of deification which consisted in the decreeing of heroic honours to distinguished men after death, which was done from the time of the Peloponnesian War onwards, even in the case of living men (see HEROES). The successors of Alexander the Great, both the Seleucidae and still more the Ptolemies, caused themselves to be worshipped as gods. Of the Romans, whose legend told of the translation of Eneas and Romulus into heaven, Caesar was the first who claimed divine honours, if not by building temples to himself, yet by setting his statue among the gods in every sanctuary at Rome and in the empire, and by having a special flamen assigned to him. The belief in his divinity was confirmed by the comet that shone several months after his death, as long as his funeral games lasted; and under the triumvirate he was formally installed among the deities of Rome, as Divus Iulius, by a decree of the senate and people. His adopted son and successor Octavian persistently declined any offer of public worship, but he accepted the title of Augustus (the consecrated), and allowed his person to be adored in the provinces. On his death the senate decreed divine honours to him under the title of Divus Augustus, the erection of a temple, the founding of special games, and the establishment of a peculiar priesthood. After this, admission to the number of the Divi, as the deified emperors were called, becomes a prerogative of the imperial dignity. It is, however, left dependent on a resolution of the senate moved in honour of the deceased emperor by his successor. Hence it is not every emperor who obtains it, nor does consecration itself always lead to a permanent worship. Empresses too were often consecrated, first Augustus' wife Livia as Diva Augusta, and even other members of the imperial house. The ceremony of Apotheosis used from the time of Augustus was the following. After the passing of the senate's decree a waxen image of the dead, whose body lay hidden below, was exhibited for seven days on an ivory bed of state in the palace, covered with gold-embroidered coverlets; then the bier was borne by knights and senators amidst a brilliant retinue down the Via Sacra to the ancient Forum, where the funeral oration was delivered, and thence to the Campus Martius, where it was deposited in the second of the four stories of a richly decorated funeral pile of pyramid shape. When the magistrates sacred and secular, the knights, lifeguard, and others concerned, had performed the last honours by processions and libations, the pile was set on fire, and as it burned up, an eagle soared from the topmost storey into the sky, a symbol of the ascending soul.
APPARITOR The general name in Latin for all public servants of the magistrates. They all had to he Roman citizens, and were paid a fixed salary out of the public treasury. Though nominated by the respective officers for a year at a time, they were, usually re-appointed, so that practically their situations were secured for life, and they could even sell their places. The most important classes of these attendants were those of scribae, lictores, viatores and proecones (q.v.). These were divided into decurioe of varying strength, which enjoyed corporate rights, and chose foremen from their own body. (Comp. ACCENSI.)
APPELLATIO The Latin term for an appeal to a magistrate to put his veto on the decision of an equal or inferior magistrate. Thus a consul could be appealed to against his colleague and all other magistrates except the tribunes, but a tribune both against his colleagues and all magistrates whatsoever. Another thing altogether was the Provocatio (q.v.) under the Republic, an appeal from a magistrate's sentence to the People as supreme judge. During the imperial period the two processes run into one, for the emperor held united in his person both the supreme judicial function and the plenary power of all magistrates, particularly the tribunician veto, so that an appeal to him was at once an appellatio and a provocatio. This appeal, in our sense of the word, was only permitted in important cases; it had to be made within a short time after sentence was passed, and always addressed to the authority next in order, so that it only reached the emperor if no intermediate authority was competent. If the result was that the disputed verdict was neither quashed nor awarded, but confirmed, the appellant had to pay a fine. As the power of life and death rested with the emperor and senate alone, governors of provinces were bound to send up to Rome any citizen appealing on a capital charge.
APPIANUS A Greek historian, of Alexandria, who lived about the middle of the 2nd century A.D. At first he pursued the calling of an advocate at Rome; in later life, on the recommendation of his friend the rhetorician Fronto, he obtained from Antoninus Pius the post of an imperial procurator in Egypt. He wrote an extensive work on the development of the Roman Empire from the earliest times down to Trajan, consisting of a number of special histories of the several periods and the several lands and peoples till the time when they fell under the Roman dominion. Of the twenty-four books of which it originally consisted, only eleven are preserved complete beside the Preface: Spain (book 6), Hannibal (7), Carthage (8), Syria (11), Mithridates (12), the Roman Civil Wars (13-17) and Illyria (23), the rest being lost altogether, or only surviving in fragments. Appian's style is plain and bald, even to dryness, and his historical point of view is purely Roman. The book is a mere compilation, and disfigured by many oversights and blunders, especially in chronology; nevertheless the use made by the writer of lost authorities lends it considerable worth, and for the history of the Civil Wars it is positively invaluable.
APSINES A Greek rhetorician, of Gadara, who taught at Athens in the first half of the 3rd century A.D., and wrote a valuable treatise on Rhetoric.
APULEIUS Born about 130 A.D. at Madaura in Numidia, of a wealthy and honourable family; the most original Latin writer of his time. Educated at Carthage, he went to Atbens to study philosophy, especially that of Plato; then he travelled far and wide, everywhere obtaining initiation into the mysteries. For sometime he lived in Rome as an advocate. After returning to Africa, he married a lady considerably older than himself, the mother of a friend, Aemilia Pudentilla, whereupon her kinsmen charged him with having won the rich widow's hand by magic, and of having contrived the death of her son: a charge to which he replied with much wit in his oration De Magia (earlier than A.D. 161). He afterwards settled down at Carthage, and thence made excursions through Africa, delivering orations or lectures. Of the rest of his life and the year of his death nothing is known. Beside the Apologia above-mentioned, and a few rhetorical and philosophic writings, another work, his chief one, also survives, which was composed at a ripe age, with hints borrowed from a book of Lucian's. This is a satirical and fantastic moral romance, Metamorphoseon libri XI (de Asino Aureo), the adventures of one Lucius, who is transformed into an ass, and under that disguise has the amplest opportunities of observing, undetected, the preposterous doings of mankind. Then, enlightened by this experience, and with the enchantment taken off him by admission into the mysteries of Osiris, be becomes quite a new man. Of the many episodes interwoven into the story, the most interesting is the beautiful allegorical fairy tale of Cupid and Psyche, so much used by later poets and artists. Throughout the book Apuleius paints the moral and religious conditions of his time with much humour and in lifelike colours though his language, while clever, is often, affected, bombastic, and disfigured by obsolete and provincial phrases.
AQUAELICIUM
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The Roman name for a ceremony for bringing on rain. (See JUPITER.)
AQUEDUCTS were not unfrequently constructed by the Greeks, who collected the spring-water of neighbouring hills, by channels cut through the rock, or by underground conduits of brick and stone work, into reservoirs, and thence distributed it by a network of rills. An admirable work of this kind is the tunnel, more than a mile in length, which was bored through the mountain now called Kastri, by the architect Eupalinus of Megara, probably under Polycrates (in the 6th century B.C.). The Roman aqueducts are among the most magnificent structures of antiquity. Some of these were likewise constructed underground; others, latterly almost all, conveyed the water, often for long distances, in covered channels of brick or stone, over lofty arcades stretching straight through hill and valley. They started from a wellhead (caput aquarum) and ended in a reservoir (castellum), out of which the water ran in Rome into three chambers, lying one above another, the lowest chamber sending it through leaden or clay pipes into the public fountains and basins, the middle one into the great bathing establishments, the uppermost into private houses. Private citizens paid a tax for the water they obtained from these public sources. Under the Republic the construction and repair of aqueducts devolved upon the censors, their management on the aediles, but from the time of Augustus on a special curator aquarum assisted by a large staff of pipe-masters, fountain-masters, inspectors, and others, taken partly from the number of the public slaves. The amount of water brought into Rome by its numerous aqueducts, the first of which, the aqua Appia, was projected B.C. 312, may be estimated from the fact that the four still in use-aqua virgo (now Acqua Vergine, built by Agrippa B.C. 20), aqua Marcia (now Acqua Pia, B.C. 144), aqua Claudia (now Acqua Felice, finished by Claudius A.D. 62), aqua Traiana (now Acqua Paola, constructed by Trajan A.D. 111) are sufficient to supply all the houses and innumerable fountains of the present city in superfluity. Among the provincial aqueducts, one is specially well preserved, that known as Pont du Gard, near Nimes, in the, south of France (see out on p. 48).
ARACHNE (- spider). Daughter of the Lydian purple-dyer Idmon, challenged Athena, of whom she had learnt weaving, to a weaving match. When the offended goddess tore up Arachne's web, which represented the loves of the gods, Arachne hung herself, but Athena changed her into a spider.
ARATUS A Greek poet, of Soli in Cilicia, about 270 B.C., contemporary of Callimachus and Theocritus. At the request of the Macedonian king Antigonus Gonatas, at whose court he lived as physician, he wrote, without much knowledge of the subject, but guided by the works of Eudoxus and Theophrastus, an astronomical poem, Phoenomena and Prognostica (aspects of the sky and signs of weather). Without genuine poetic inspiration, Aratus manages his intractable material with considerable tact, and dignified simplicity. The language, while not always free from stiffness, is choice, and ihe versification correct. The poem enjoyed a high repute with the general public, as well as with poets and specialists: thus the great astronomer Hipparchus wrote a commentary on it in four books. The Romans also took pleasure in reading and translating it, e.g. Cicero, Caesar Germanicus, and Avienus.
ARCADIUS A Greek grammarian of Antioch, who probably flourished in the 2nd century A.D. He was the author of a Doctrine of Accents in 20 books, an abstract of a work by the famous Herodian.
ARCAS
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Son of Zeus by the nymph Callisto, and ancestor of the Arcadians, who was translated to the sky by Zeus as Arcturus - Watcher of the Bear. (See CALLISTO.)
ARCHEMORUS A surname given to Opheltes, the infant son of Lycurgus king of Nemea, who was killed by a snake during the march of the Seven against Thebes (q.v.). It was given him by the seer Amphiaraus, who foresaw the destruction awaiting himself and his confederates; and by it the child was invoked at the Nemean Games originally founded in memory of him.
ARCHESTRATUS of Gela, in Sicily, flourished about 318 B.C., and composed the humorous didactic poem Hedypatheia (- good cheer), supposed to describe a gastronomic tour round the then known world, with playful echoes of Homer and the dogmatic philosophers. The numerous fragments display much talent and wit.
ARCHILOCHUS A Greek lyric poet, especially eminent as a writer of lampoons. Born at Paros, he was the son of Telesicles by a slave-woman, but was driven by poverty to go with a colony to Thasos B.C. 720 or 708. From Thasos he was soon driven by want and by the enmities which his unrestrained passion for invective had drawn upon him. He seems to have roamed restlessly from place to place, until, on his return to Paros, lie was slain in fight by the Naxian Calondas. Long afterwards, when this man visited the Delphian temple the god is said to have driven him from his threshold as the slayer of a servant of the Muses, and refused to admit him till be bad propitiated the soul of the poet at his tomb : a story which expresses the high value set on his art by the ancients, who placed him on a level with Homer, Pindar and Sophocles. For Archilochus had an extraordinary poetical genius, which enabled him to invent a large number of new metres, and to manipulate them with the ease of a master. He brought Iambic poetry, in particular, to artistic perfection. The many misfortunes of his stormy life had bred in his irritable nature a deeply-settled indignation, which, in poems perfect in form and alive with force and fury, vented itself in bitter mockery even if his friends, and in merciless, unpardonable abuse of his foes. Such was the effect of his lampoons, that Lycambes, who had first promised and then refused him his daughter Neobule, hanged himself and his family in the despair engendered by the poet's furious attacks. Of his poems, which were written in the Old-Ionic dialect, and taken by Horace for, his model in his Epodes, only a number of short fragments are preserved.
ARCHIMEDES One of the greatest mathematicians and natural philosophers of antiquity, born B.C. 287 at Syracuse. He lived at the court of his kinsman, king Hiero, and was killed (B.C. 212) by a Roman soldier at the taking of the city which he had largely aided in defending with his engines. Of his inventions and discoveries we need only say, that he ascertained the ratio of the radius to the circumference, and that of the cylinder to the sphere, and the hydrostatic law that a body dipped in water loses as much weight as that of the water displaced by it; that he invented the pulley, the endless screw, and the kind of pump called the "screw of Archimedes"; and that he constructed the so-called "sphere," a sort of orrery showing the motions of the heavenly bodies. Of his works, written in the Doric dialect, the following are preserved: On the sphere and cylinder, On the measurement of the circle, On conoids and spheroids, On spiral lines, The psammites (or sand-reckoner, for the calculation of the earth's size in grains of sand), On the equilibrium of planes and their centres of gravity, and On floating bodies.
ARCHITECTURE, ORDERS OF
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In Greek architecture there were three orders of columns: the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian. (I) Doric: Figures 1 and 2 give instances of the Doric style from the temple at Paestum and the Parthenon at Athens. The Doric column consists (a) of the shaft, which increases in diameter almost invisibly up to about one-quarter of its height, and diminishes slightly after that point. It has no base, but rests immediately on the stylobate. It is surrounded with semi-circular flutings, meeting each other at a sharp angle. These were chiselled with a cedar-wood tool after the separate drums had been put together. (b) The capital (Lat. capitulum). This consists of three parts, (a) the hypotrachelion, or neck of the column, a continuation of the shaft, but separated by an indentation from the other drums. It is wider at the top than at the bottom, and is generally ornamented with several parallel and horizontal rings. (b) The echinus, a circular moulding or cushion, which widens greatly towards the top. (c) The abax or abacus, a square slab supporting the architrave or episylion. The height of the shaft is usually 5 1/2 times, the distance between the columns 1 1/2 times the diameter of the base of the column. The architrave is a quadrangular beam of stone, reaching from pillar to pillar. On this again rests the frieze, zophoros, so called from the metopes which are adorned with sculptures in relief. These metopes are square spaces between the triglyphs: the triglyphs are surfaces out into three concave grooves, two whole grooves in the centre, and two half grooves at the sides. One is placed over each pillar, and one between each pair of pillars. The entablature is completed by a projecting cornice, a slab crowned with a simple heading-course, the lower surface of which is ornamented with sloping corbels (Gk. stagones, Lat. mutuli). (II) Ionic Columns. An instance is given in fig. 3 from the temple on the Ilissus at Athens. These are loftier than the Doric, their height being 8 1/2-9 1/2 times the diameter of the, lower part. The enlargement of the lower part is also less than in the Doric columns, the distance between each column greater (two diameters), the flutings (generally 24 in number) deeper, and separated by small flat surfaces. The Ionic column has a base consisting of a square slab (plinthos), and several cushion like supports separated by grooves. The capital, again, is more artistically developed. The neck, instead of fluting, has five leaves worked in relief. The echinus is very small and ornamented with an egg pattern. Over it, instead of the abacus, is a Four-cornered cushion ending before and behind in spiral volutes, supporting a narrow square slab, which is also adorned with an egg pattern. The architrave is divided into three bands, projecting one above the other, and upon it rises, in an uninterrupted surface, the frieze, adorned with reliefs, continuously along its whole length. Finally, the cornice is composed of different parts. (III) The Corinthian column (fig. 4, from the monument of Lysicrates, at Athens). The base and shaft are identical with the Ionic, but the capital takes the form of an open calix formed of acanthus leaves. Above this is another set of leaves, from between which grow stalks with small leaves, rounded into the form of volutes. On this rests a small abacus widening towards the top, and on this again the entablature, which is borrowed from the Ionic order. On the human figures employed instead of columns to support the entablature, see ATLAS, CANEPHORI, CARYATIDES. The Romans adopted the Greek styles of column, but not always in their pure form. They were fondest of the Corinthian, which they laboured to enrich with new and often excessive ornamentation. For instance, they crowned the Corinthian capital with the Ionic, thus forming what is called the Roman or composite capital. The style known as Tuscan is a degenerate form of the Doric. The Tuscan column has a smooth shaft, in height=7 diameters of the lower part, and tapering up to three-quarters of its lower dimensions. Its base consists of two parts, a circular plinth, and a cushion of equal height. The capital is formed of three parts of equal height. In other styles, too, the Romans sometimes adopted the smooth instead of the fluted shaft, as for instance in the Pantheon (fig. 5). Single columns were sometimes erected by the Greeks, and in imitation of them by the Romans, as memorials to distinguished persons. A good example is the Columna Rostrata, or column with its shaft adorned with the beaks of ships, in the Roman Forum. This was set up in commemoration of the naval victory of Duilius over the Carthaginians (261 B.C.). Among the columns which survive, the most magnificent is that of Trajan, erected in the Forum of Trajan 113 A.D. It rises on a quadrangular pediment to the height of 124 feet; its diameter below is about 10 feet, and a little less in the upper part. An interior spiral staircase of 185 steps leads to the summit. The shaft, formed of twenty-three drums of marble, is adorned with a series of reliefs, 3 feet 3 inches high and 200 feet long, in a series of twenty-two spirals. They represent scenes in Trajan's Dacian campaigns, and contain 2,500 human figures, with animals, engines, etc. On a cylindrical pedestal at the summit there once stood a gilded statue of the emperor, which, since the year 1587, has made way for a bronze figure of St. Peter. A similar column is that of Marcus Aurelius, 122 feet high, on the Piazza Colonna. Since 1589 the statue of St. Paul has been substituted for that of the emperor. The reliefs, in twenty spirals, represent events in the emperor's war with the Marcomanni.
ARCHITECTURE:
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of the Greeks. Of the earliest efforts of the Greeks in architecture, we have evidence in the so-called Cyclopean Walls surrounding the castles of kings in the Heroic Age at Tiryns, Argos, Mycenae (fig. 1), and elsewhere. They are of enormous thickness, some being constructed of rude colossal blocks, whose gaps are filled up with smaller stones; while others are built of stones more or less carefully hewn, their interstices exactly fitting into each other. Gradually they begin to show an approximation to buildings with rectangular blocks. The gates let into these walls are closed at the top either by the courses of stone jutting over from each side till they touch, or by a long straight block laid over the two leaning side-posts. Of the latter kind is the famous Lion-gate at Mycenae, so-called from the group of two lions standing with their forefeet on the broad pedestal of a pillar that tapers rapidly downwards, and remarkable as the oldest specimen of Greek sculpture. The sculpture is carved on a large triangular slab that fills an opening left in the wall to lighten the weight on the lintel (fig. 2). Among the most striking relies of this primitive age are the so-called Thesauroi, or treasuries (now regarded as tombs) of ancient dynasties the most considerable being the Treasure-house of Atreus at Mycenae. Theusual form of these buildings is that of a circular chamber vaulted over by the horizontal courses approaching from all sides till they meet. Thus the vault is not a true arch (fig. 3). The interior seems originally to have been covered with metal plates, thus agreeing with Homer's descriptions of metal as a favourite ornament of princely houses. An open-air building preserved from that age is the supposed Temple of Hera on Mount Ocha (now Hagios Elias) in Euboea, a rectangle built of regular square blocks, with walls more than a yard thick, two small windows, and a door with leaning posts and a huge lintel in the southern side-wall. The sloping roof is of hewn flagstones resting on the thickness of the wall and overlapping each other; but the centre is left open as in the hypaethral temples of a later time. From the simple shape of a rectangular house shut in by blank walls we gradually advance to finer and richer forms, formed especially by the introduction of columns detached from the wall and serving to support the roof and ceiling. Even in Homer we find columns in the palaces to support the halls that surround the courtyard, and the ceiling of the banqueting-room. The construction of columns (see ARCHITECTURE, ORDERS OF) received its artistic development first from the Dorians after their migration into the Peloponnesus about 1000 B.C., next from the Ionians, and from each in a form suitable to their several characters. If the simple serious character of the Dorians speaks in the Doric Order, no less does the lighter, nimbler, and more showy genius of the Ionian race come out in the Order named after them. By about 650 B.C. the Ionic style was flourishing aide by side with the Doric. As it was in the construction of Temples (q.v.) that architecture had developed her favourite forms, all other public buildings borrowed their artistic character from the temple. The structure and furniture of private houses (see HOUSE), were, during the best days of Greece, kept down to the simplest forms. About 600 B.C., in the Greek islands and on the coast of Asia Minor, we come across the first architects known to us by name. It was then that Rhaecus and Theodorus of Samos, celebrated likewise as inventors of casting in bronze, built the great temple of Hera in that island, while Chersiphron of Cnosus in Crete, with his son Metagenes, began the temple of Artemis (Diana) at Ephesus, one of the seven wonders of the world, which was not finished till 120 years after. In Greece Proper a vast temple to Zeus was begun at Athens in the 6th century B.C. (see OLYMPIEUM), and two more at Delphi and Olympia, one by the Corinthian Spintharus, the other by the Elean Libon. Here, and in the Western colonies the Doric style still predominated everywhere. Among the chief remains of this period, in addition to many ruined temples in Sicily (especially at Selinus and Agrigentum), should be mentioned the Temple of Poseidon. at Paestum (Poseidonia) in South Italy, one of the best preserved and most beautiful relies of antiquity (figs. 4, 5). The patriotic fervour of the Persian Wars created a general expansion of Greek life, in which Architecture and the sister art of Sculpture were not slow to take a part. In these departments, as in the whole onward movement, a central position was taken by Athens, whose leading statesmen, Cimon and Pericles, lavished the great resources of the State at once in strengthening and beautifying the city. During this period arose a group of masterpieces that still astonish us in their ruins, some in the forms of a softened Doric, others in the Ionic style, which had now found its way into Attica, and was here fostered into nobler shapes. The Doric order is represented by the Temple of Theseus (fig. 6), the Propylaea built by Mnesicles, the Parthenon, a joint production of Ictinus and Callicrates; while the Erechtheum is the most brilliant creation of the Ionic order in Attica. Of the influence of Attic Architecture on the rest of Greece we have proof, especially in the Temple of Apollo at Bassae in South-Western Arcadia, built from the design of the above-mentioned Ictinus. The progress of the Drama to its perfection in this period led to a corresponding improvement in the building of Theatres (q.v.). A stone theatre was begun at Athens even before the Persian Wars; and the Odeum of Pericles served similar purposes. How soon the highest results were achieved in this department, when once the fundamental forms had thus been laid down in outline at Athens, is shown by the theatre at Epidaurus, a work of Polyclitus, unsurpassed, as the ancients testify, by any later theatres in harmony and beauty. Another was built at Syracuse, before B.C. 420. Nor is it only in the erection of single buildings that the great advance then made by architecture shows itself. In laying out new towns, or parts of towns, men began to proceed on artistic principles, an innovation due to the sophist Hippodamus of Miletus. In the 4th century B.C., owing to the change wrought in the Greek mind by the Peloponnesian War, in place of the pure and even tone of the preceding period, a desire for effect became more and more general, both in architecture and sculpture. The sober Doric style fell into abeyance and gave way to the Ionic, by the side of which a new Order, the Corinthian, said to have been invented by the sculptor Callimachus, with its more gorgeous decorations, became increasingly fashionable. In the first half of the 4th century arose what the ancients considered the largest and grandest temple in the Peloponnesus, that of Athena at Tegea, a work of the sculptor and architect Scopas. During the middle of the century, another of the "seven wonders," the splendid tomb of Mausolus at Halicarnassus was constructed (see MAUSOLEUM). Many magnificent temples arose in that time. In Asia Minor, the temple at Ephesus, burnt down by Herostratus, was rebuilt by Alexander's bold architect Deinocrates. In the islands the ruins of the temple of Athena at Priene, of Apollo at Miletus, of Dionysus at Teos, and others, even to this day offer a brilliant testimony to their former magnificence. Among Athenian buildings of that age the Monument of Lysicrates (q.v.) is conspicuous for its graceful elegance and elaborate development of the Corinthian style. In the succeeding age Greek architecture shows its finest achievements in the building of theatres, especially those of Asiatic towns, in the gorgeous palaces of newly-built royal capitals, and in general in the luxurious completeness of private buildings. As an important specimen of the last age of Attic architecture may also be mentioned the Tower of the Winds (q.v.) at Athens.
ARCHITECTURE:
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Architecture of the Etruscans and Romans. In architecture, as well as sculpture, the Romans were long under the influence of the Etruscans, who, though denied the gift of rising to the ideal, united wonderful activity and inventiveness with a passion for covering their buildings with rich ornamental carving. None of their temples have survived, for they built all the upper parts of wood; but many proofs of their activity in building remain, surviving from various ages, in the shape of Tombs and Walls. The latter clearly show how they progressed from piling up polygonal blocks in Cyclopean style to regular courses of squared stone. Here and there a building still shows that the Etruscans originally made vaultings by letting horizontal courses jut over, as in the ancient Greek thesauroi above mentioned; on the other hand, some very old gateways, as at Volterra (fig. 7) and Perugia, exhibit the true Arch of wedge-shaped stones, the invention of which is probably due to Etruscan ingenuity, and from the introduction of which a new and magnificent development of architecture takes its rise. The most imposing monument of ancient Italian arch-building is to be seen in the sewers of Rome laid down in the 6th century B.C. (See CLOACA MAXIMA.) When all other traces of Etruscan influence were being swept away at Rome by the intrusion of Greek forms of art, especially after the Conquest of Greece in the middle of the 2nd century B.C., the Roman architects kept alive in full vigour the Etruscan method of building the arch, which they developed and completed by the inventions of the Cross-Arch (or groined vault) and the Dome. With the Arch, which admits of a bolder and more varied management of spaces, the Romans combined, as a decorative element, the columns of the Greek Orders. Among these their growing love of pomp gave the preference more and more to the Corinthian, adding to it afterwards a still more gorgeous embellishment in what is called the Roman or Composite capital (see ARCHITECTURE, ORDERS OF). Another service rendered by the Romans was the introduction of building in brick (see POTTERY). A more vigorous advance in Roman architecture dates from the opening of the 3rd century B.C., when they began making great military roads and aqueducts. In the first half of the 2nd century they built, on Greek models, the first Basilica, which, besides its practical utility served to embellish the Forum. Soon after the middle of the century, appeared the first of their more ambitious temples in the Greek style. There is simple grandeur in the ruins of the Tabularium, or Record-Office, built B.C. 78 on the slope of the Capitol next the Forum. These are among the few remains of Roman republican architecture; but in the last decades of the Republic simplicity gradually disappeared, and men were eager to display a princely pomp in public and private buildings; witness the first stone theatre erected by Pompey as early as 55 B.C. Then all that went before was eclipsed by the vast works undertaken by Caesar, the Theatre, Amphitheatre, Circus, Basilica Iulia, Forum Caesaris with its Temple to Venus Genetrix. These were finished by Augustus, under whom Roman architecture seems to have reached its culminating point. Augustus, aided bu his son-in-law Agrippa, a man who understood building, not only completed his uncle's plans, but added many magnificent structures--the Forum Augusti with its Temple to Mars Ultor, the Theatre of Marcellus with its Portico of Octavia, the Mansoleum, and others. Augustus could fairly boast that" having found Rome a city of brick, he left it a city of marble." The grandest monument of that age, and one of the loftiest creations of Roman art in general, is the Pantheon (q.v.) built by Agrippa, adjacent to, but not connected with, his Thermae, the first of the many works of that kind in Rome. A still more splendid aspect was imparted to the city by the rebuilding of the Old Town burnt down in Nero's fire, and by the "Golden House" of Nero, a gorgeous pile, the like of which was never seen before, but which was destroyed on the violent death of its creator. Of the luxurious grandeur of private buildings we have ocular proof in the dwelling-houses of Pompeii, a paltry country-town in comparison with Rome. The progress made under the Flavian emperors is evidenced by Vespasian's Amphitheatre (q.v.) known as the Colosseum (figs. 8, 9, 10), the mightiest Roman ruin in the world, by the ruined Thermae, or Baths, of Titus, and by his Triumphal Arch (q.v.), the oldest specimen extant in Rome of this class of monument, itself a creation of the Roman mind (fig. 11). But all previous buildings were surpassed in size and splendour when Trajan's architect Apollodorus of Damascus raised the Forum Traianum with its huge Basilica Ulpia (fig. 12) and the still surviving Column of Trajan. No less extensive were the works of Hadrian, who, besides adorning Athens with many magnificent buildings, bequeathed to Rome a Temple of Venus and Roma, the most colossal of all Roman temples (fig. 13) and his own Mausoleum (q.v.), the core of which is preserved in the Castle of St. Angelo. While the works of the Antonines already show a gradual decline in architectural feeling, the Triumphal Arch of Severus ushers in the period of decay that set in with the 3rd century. In this closing period of Roman rule the buildings grow more and more gigantic, witness the Baths of Caracalla (fig. 14), those of Diocletian, with his palace at Salona (three miles from Spalatro) in Dalmatia, and the Basilica of Constantine breathing the last feeble gasp of ancient life. But outside of Rome and Italy, in every part of the enormous empire to its utmost barbarian borders, bridges, numberless remains of roads and aqueducts and viaducts, ramparts and gateways, palaces, villas, market-places and judgment-halls, baths, theatres, amphitheatres and temples, attest the versatility, majesty, and solidity of Roman architecture, most of whose creations only the rudest shocks have hitherto been able to destroy.
ARCHITHEORIA
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One of the public services called liturgioe at Athens; it was the obligation to furnish forth the sacred embassies (theoriae) to the four great national festivals, also to Delphi and other holy places. (See LEITOURGIA.)
ARCHON
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(=ruler), the Athenian name for the supreme authority established on the abolition of royalty. On the death of the last king, Codrus, B.C. 1068, the headship of the state for life was bestowed on his son Medon and his descendants under the title of Archon. In 752 B.C. their term of office was cut down to ten years, in 714 their exclusive privilege was abolished, and the right to hold the office thrown open to all the nobility, while its duration was diminished to one year; finally in B.C. 683 the power was divided among nine archons. By Solon's legislation, his wealthiest class, the pentacosio-medimni, became eligible to the office; and by Aristides' arrangement after the Persian Wars it was thrown open to all the citizens, Cleisthenes having previously, in the interests of the democracy, substituted the drawing of lots for election by vote. [See Note on p. 706.] The political power of the office, having steadily decreased with time, sank to nothing when democracy was established; its holders had no longer even the right to deliberate and originate motions, their action being limited to certain priestly and judicial functions, relies of their once regal power. The titles and duties of the several Archons are as follows: (1) Their president, named emphatically Archon, or Archon Eponymos, because the civil year was named after him. He had charge of the Great Dionysia, the Thargelia, the embassies to festivals (theoriae), the nomination of choregi; also the position of guardian in chief, and the power to appoint guardians, the presidency in all suits about family rights (such as questions of divorce or inheritance), and in disputes among the choregi. (2) The Archon Basileus (king), called so because on him devolved certain sacred rites inseparably connected with the name of king. He had the care of the Eleusinian Mysteries (and was obliged therefore to be an initiated person), of the Lencae and Anthesteria, of gymnastic contests, to which he appointed a superintendent, and of a number of antiquated sacrifices, some of which fell to the share of his wife, the Basilissa (queen); and lastly, the position of president in all suits touching religious law, including those trials for murder that came within the jurisdiction of the Ephetae (q.v.). (3) The Archon Polemarchos (leader in war) was originally entrusted with the war-department, and, as late as the battle of Marathon, had the right of voting with the ten generals, and the old royal privilege of commanding the right wing. Afterwards he only had charge of the state sacrifices offered to the gods of war and to the shade of Harm6dius, the public funerals of those who fell in war and the annual feasts in honour of them; finally, the jurisdiction in all questions concerning the personal and family rights of resident aliens (metaeci) and strangers. All this rested on the old assumption that foreigner meant enemy. Each of these three superior Archons had two assessors chosen by himself, but responsible. (4) The Six Thesmothetae (literally law-givers) administered justice in all cases not pertaining to the senior Archons or some other authority, revised the laws once a year, and superintended the apportioning of public offices by lot. The several Archons exercised their jurisdiction at different spots in the city; that of the Polemarch alone lay outside the walls. Duties common to all nine were: the yearly appointment by lot of the Heliastae (q.v.), the choice of umpires in the Panathenaae, the holding of elections of the generals and other military officers, jurisdiction in the case of officials suspended or deposed by the people, and latterly even in suits which had previously been subject to the nautodicae. (See NAUTODICAe.) If they had discharged their office without blame, they entered the Areopagus as members for life. The office of Archon lasted even under the Roman rule.
ARCHYTAS OF TARENTUM
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Distinguished as a general, statesman and mathematician, a leading representative of the Pythagorean philosophy, who flourished about 400-366 B.C. (See PYTHAGORAS.)
AREITHOUS
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A Greek epic poet. See EPOS.
AREITHOUS King of Arne in Boeotia, called the " club-swinger " because he fought with an iron mace. Irresistible in the open field, he was waylaid by king Lycurgus of Arcadia in a narrow pass where he could not swing his club, and killed. His son Menesthius fell by the hand of Paris, before Troy.
AREOPAGUS
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An ancient criminal court at Athens, so named because it sat on Ares' Hill beside the Acropolis, where the god of war was said to have been tried for the murder of Halirrothius the son of Poseidon. (See ABES.) Solon's legislation raised the Areopagus into one of the most powerful bodies by transferring to it the greater part of the jurisdiction of the Ephetae (q.v.), as well as the supervision of the entire public administration, the conduct of magistrates, the transactions of the popular assembly, religion, laws, morals and discipline, and giving it power to call even private people to account for offensive behaviour. The "Court of Areopagus," as its full name ran, consisted of life-members (Areopagites), who supplemented their number by the addition of such archons as had discharged their duties without reproach. Not only their age, but their sacred character tended to increase the influence of the Areopagites. They were regarded as in a measure ministers of the Erinyes or Eumenides (Furies), who under the name of Semnae (venerable) had their cave immediately beneath the Areopagus, and whose worship came under their care. The Areopagus proving too conservative for the headlong pace of the Athenian democracy, its general right of supervising the administration was taken from it by the law of Ephialtes, in 462 B.C., and transferred to a new authority, the Nomophylakes (guardians of the laws); but it recovered this right on the fall of the Thirty. Its political powers seem never to have been clearly defined; it often acted in the name of, and with full powers from, the people, which also accepted its decisions on all possible subjects. Under the Roman rule it was still regarded as the supreme authority. Then, as formerly, it exercised a most minute vigilance over foreigners.
ARES
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The Greek name for the god of war, son of Zeus by Hera, whose quarrelsome temper Homer supposes to have passed over to son so effectively that he delighted in nothing but battle and bloodshed. His insatiable thirst for blood makes him hateful to his father and all the gods, especially Athena. His favourite haunt is the land of the wild and warlike Thracians. In form and equipment the ideal of warlike heroes, who are therefore called "Ares-like" and "darlings of Ares," he advances, according to Homer, now on foot, now in a chariot drawn by magnificent steeds, attended by his equally bloodthirsty sister Eris (strife), his sons Deimos and Phobos (fear and fright), and Enyo, the goddess of battle and waster of cities (he himself being called Enyalios), rushing in blind rage through indiscriminate slaughter. Though fighting on the Trojan side, the bloodshed only is dear to his heart. But his unbridled strength and blind valour turn to his disadvantage, and always bring about his defeat in the presence of Athena, the goddess of ordered battalions; he is also beaten by heroes fighting under her leadership, as by Heracles in the contest with Cycnus, and by Diomedes before Troy. And this view of Ares as the bloodthirsty god of battles is in the main that of later times also. As early as Homer he is the friend and lover of Aphrodite, who has borne him Eros and Anteros, Deimos and Phobos, as well as Harmonia, wife of Cadmus the founder of Thebes, where both goddesses were worshipped as ancestral deities. He is not named so often as the gods of peace, but, as Ares or Enyalios, he was doubtless worshipped everywhere, notably in Sparta, in Arcadia and (as father of (Enomaus) in Elis. At Sparta young dogs were sacrified to him under the title of Theritas. At Athens the ancient site of a high court of justice, the Areopagus, was consecrated to him. There, in former days, the Olympian gods had sat in judgment on him and absolved him when he had slain Halirrhothius for offering violence to Alcippe, his daughter, by Agraulus. His symbols were the spear and the burning torch. Before the introduction of trumpets, two priests of Ares, marching in front of the armies, hurled the torch at the foe as the signal of battle. In works of art he was represented as a young and handsome man of strong sinewy frame, his hair in short curls, and a somewhat sombre look in his countenance; in the early style he is bearded and in armour, in the later beardless and with only the helmet on. He is often represented in company with Aphrodite and their boy Eros, who plays with his father's arms. One of the most famous statues extant is that in the Villa Ludovisi, which displays him in an easy resting attitude, with his arms laid aside, and Eros at his feet. (See cut.) On his identification with the Italian Mars, see MARS.
ARETAEUS A Greek physician, born in Cappadocia, towards the end of the 2nd century A.D. He was the author of two valuable works (each in four books), written in the Ionic dialect, on the causes and symptoms of acute and chronic pains, and on their cure.
ARETE Wife of Alcinous king of the Phoeacians (see both), and protectress of Odysseus (q.v.).
ARETHUSA One of the Hesperides (q.v.).
ARETHUSA In Greece a frequent name of springs, especially of one in Elis, and one on the Island of Ortygia in the port of Syracuse, which was supposed to have a subterranean communication with the river Alpheus in Elis. The two fountains were associated by the following legend. As the nymph of Elis, tired with the chase, was bathing in the Alpheus, the river-god fell passionately in love with her; she fled from him to Ortygia, where Artemis hid her in the ground, and lot her gush out of it in the form of a fountain; but Alpheus flowed on under the sea to Ortygia, and so united himself with his beloved one. The story is explained by the likeness of name in the fountains, by the circumstance that Artemis was worshipped both in Elis and Ortygia as Alpheaea, and by the fact that in some places the Alpheus actually does ran underground.
ARGEI The name of certain chapels at Rome, probably twenty-four in number, each of the four tribes of the city having six. To these chapels a procession was made on March 16 and 17, at which the wife of the Flamen Dialis walked with unkempt hair as a sign of mourning. On May 15 the Pontiffs, Vestal Virgins, Praetors, and all citizens who had a right to assist at sacrifices, marched to the wooden bridge over the Tiber (Pons Sublicius), and after sacrificing, threw into the river twenty-four men of straw, likewise named Argei, which had probably been hung up in the chapels at the first procession, and were fetched away at the second. The sacrifice was regarded as expiatory, and the puppets as substitutes for former human victims. The meaning of the name was unknown to the ancients, and so was the deity to whom the sacrifice was offered.
ARGENTEUS
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A Roman silver coin current from the end of the 3rd century A.D. and onwards. See COINAGE.
ARGO The ship of the Argonauts (q.v.), named after her builder Argos.
ARGUS Son of Inachus, Agenor or Arestor; or, according to another account, an earthborn giant, who had eyes all over his body, whence be was called Panoptes, or all-seeing. Hera set him to watch 16, (q.v.) when transformed into a cow; but Hermes, at Zeus' bidding, sent all his eyes. to sleep by the magic of his wand and flute, and cut his head with a sickle-shaped sword, whence his title Argeiphontes was explained to mean " slayer of Argus." Hera set the eyes of her dead watchman in the tail of her sacred bird the peacock.
ARGUS Son of Phrixus and Chalciope, the daughter of Aeetes. He is said to have come to Orchomenus, the home of his father, and to have built the Argo, which was named after him. According to another account he was shipwrecked with his brothers at the Island of Aretias on their way to Greece, and thence carried to Colchis by the Argonauts.
ARGYRASPIDES In the later army of Alexander the Great, the remnant of the Macedonian heavy-armed infantry, who had crossed the Hellespont with the king, were formed into a corps of Guards in the heavy infantry of the line, and named from their shields being over-laid with Indian silver. After Alexander's death the corps was disbanded by Antigonus on account of its overweening pretensions.
ARIADNE The daughter of Minos and Pasiphae, who fell in love with Theseus when he came to Crete to kill the Minotaur, and gave him a clue of yarn, to help him to find his way back to the light of day after slaying the monster in the Labyrinth. She then fled away with him. Homer represents Ariadne as slain by Artemis in the Island of Dia, close to Crete, at the request of Dionysus. But the later legend shifts the scene to the Isle of Naxos, where the slumbering Ariadne is deserted by Theseus. Waking up, she is on the brink of despair, when Dionysus comes and raises her to the dignity of a god's wife. Zeus grants her immortality, and sets her bridal gift, a crown, among the stars. She received divine honours: at Naxos her festivals were held, now with dismal rites recalling her abandonment, now with bacchanalian revelry becoming the happy bride of Dionysus. At Athens in the autumn they held a joyous festival to her and Dionysus, which Theseus was supposed to have founded on his return from Crete. In Italy, where they identified Dionysus with their wine-god Liber, they also took Ariadne for the wine-goddess Libera.
ARION A Greek poet and musician, of Methymna in Lesbos, who flourished about 625 B.C. In the course of a roving life be spent a considerable time at the court of Periander, tyrant of Corinth. Here he first gave the dithyramb (q.v.) an artistic form, and was therefore regarded as the inventor of that style in general. He is best known by the story of his rescue on the back of a dolphin. Returning from an artistic journey through Lower Italy and Sicily to his patron, he trusted himself to a crew of Corinthian sailors, who resolved to kill him on the open sea for the sake of his treasures. As a last favour he extorted the permission to sing his songs once more to the lyre, and then to throw himself into the sea. His strains drew a number of dolphins around him, one of which took him on its back, and carried him safe to land at the foot of the foreland of Taenarum. Thence he hastened to Corinth, and convicted the sailors, who were telling Periander they had left the minstrel safe at Tarentum. A bronze statue of a man on a dolphin, which stood on the top of Taenaron, was supposed to be his thank-offering to Poseidon. [Herodotus, i 24.] A Thanksgiving Hymn to the god of the sea, preserved under his name, belongs to a later time.
ARISTAENETUS A Greek grammarian and rhetorician, of Nicaea in Bithynia, friend of Libanius, who praises him in the highest terms; he was killed in an earthquake at Nicomedia,A.D. 358. His name is erroneously attached to a collection, probably composed in the 5th or 6th century, of Erotic Epistles, feeble imitations of Alciphron, loose in tone and declamatory in style.
ARISTAEUS A beneficent deity worshipped in various parts of Greece, especially in Thessaly, Boeotia, the African colony of Cyrene, and the Islands of Ceos, Corcyra, Sicily and Sardinia. He gives his blessing to herds, hunting, bee-keeping, wine, oil and every kind of husbandry. In particular he defends men, animals and plants from the destructive heat of the dog-days. According to the story most in vogue, he is the son of Apollo by the Thessalian nymph Cyrene, whom the god carried off to the country named after her. She is the daughter of Hypseus, and granddaughter (another story says daughter) of the river-god Peneus. After his birth Hermes took Aristaeus to the Hours and Gaea, the goddess of the earth, who brought him up and made him an immortal god. Sometimes he is called the son of Uranus (Heaven) and Gaea (Earth). In the Theban legend he and Autonoe the daughter of Cadmus are represented as the parents of Actaeon. He brought destruction upon the nymph Eurydice, the beloved of Orpheus; for in fleeing from his persecutions she was killed by a snake. [Vergil, Georg. iv 316-558.]
ARISTARCHUS A tragic poet of Tegea, a contemporary of Euripides; he is said to have lived more than a hundred years. Of his 70 dramas only two titles remain.
ARISTARCHUS A mathematician and astronomer of Samos, who lived and studied at Alexandria about 270 B.C., and with his pupil Hipparchus greatly advanced the science of astronomy. He was the first who maintained the earth's motion round the sun and on its own axis. We still possess a fragment of a treatise by him on the size of the sun and moon, and their distances from the earth.
ARISTARCHUS A scholar, born in Samothrace, and a pupil of Aristophanes of Byzantium. He lived at Alexandria in the first half of the 2nd century B.C. as tutor to the royal princes, and keeper of the library. In the tyrannical reign of his pupil Ptolemy VII (Physcon) he fled to Cyprus, and there died of dropsy about B.C. 153, aged 72. He is the most famous of the Alexandrian Critic, and devoted his attention mainly to the Greek poets, especially Homer, to whom he rendered essential service by his critical edition of the text, which remains in substance the groundwork of our present recension. This edition had notes on the margin, indicating the verses which Aristarchus thought spurious or doubtful, and anything else worthy of remark. The meaning of the notes, and the reasons for appending them, were explained in separate commentaries and excursuses, founded on a marvellously minute acquaintance with the language and contents of the Homeric poems, and the whole of Greek literature. He was the head of the school of Aristarcheans, who continued working on classical texts in his spirit till after the beginning of the Empire. Of his numerous grammatical and exegetical works only fragments remain. An idea of his Homeric studies, and of their character, can best be gathered from the Venetian scholia to the Iliad, which are largely founded on extracts from the Aristarcheans Didymus and Aristonicus.
ARISTIDES Aristides Quintilianus. A Greek musician, who lived probably in the 2nd century A.D., and composed an encyclopoedia of music (De Musica) in three books. The first gave a concise account of harmony, rhythm, and metre, the second dealt with the educating influence of music on the soul, and the third described, on Pythagorean principles, the doctrine of arithmetic intervals, and the harmony of the universe as resting on the same relations. Notwithstanding many defects, the work has the merit of being the completest of its kind which has come down to us from antiquity.
ARISTIDES
ARISTIDES Aristides of Miletus, of the let or 2nd century B.C., was the author of a series of love-stories, called Milesiaca, from Miletus, the scene of the events. These, so far as we know, are the first examples of the prose romance. They were widely read in antiquity, especially among the Romans, for whose benefit they were translated into Latin by the historian Sisenna. Only a few fragments of them have survived.
ARISTIDES Publius Elius Aristides, surnamed Theodorus, was a Greek rhetorician, born at Hadriani in Bithynia A.D 117 or 129. He was educated by the most celebrated rhetoricians of the time, Polemon of Pergamus, and Herodes Atticus of Athens, and made long journeys through Asia, Egypt, Greece and Italy. On his return he was seized with an illness that lasted thirteen years, but which be never allowed to interrupt his studies. His rhetoric, in which he took Demosthenes and Plato for his models, was immensely admired by his contemporaries; he also stood in high favour with the emperors, especially Marcus Aurelius, who at his appeal caused Smyrna to be rebuilt after, an earthquake in 178 A.D. The chief scenes of his activity were Athens and Smyrna, where he died about A.D. 190. Beside two treatises of rhetorical and technical import, we still possess fifty-five of his orations, which he took great pains to elaborate. They are characterized by depth and fulness of thought, and are written in powerful, concise, often difficult and obscure language. Some are eulogies on deities and cities (Rome, for instance, and Smyrna), others are declamations after ancient models, as the Panathenaicus after Isocrates, and the speech against Leptines after Demosthenes. Others treat of his, torical subjects taken from the times of Greek independence. A peculiar interest attaches to the six Sacred Orations, so named because they treat of hints given by Asclepius on the cure of his illness, which he received in a state of somnambulism, and imparted aloud to his friends.
ARISTIPPUS A Greek philosopher, a native of Cyrene, and a pupil of Socrates, after whose death in B.C. 399 he travelled about the Greek cities, imparting instruction for money. He was the founder of the Cyrenaic school, or the system of Hedonism (from hedone=pleasure). His doctrine was, that as a basis for human knowledge the only things real and true are our sensations, not the external objects that produce them; that the aim of life is what all living things strive after, pleasure; and that virtue is only so far a good thing as it tends to the production of pleasure. The wise man shows his wisdom in governing his desires; mental training, indeed, being the only thing which can qualify us for real enjoyment. In pleasure there is no difference of kind, only of degree and duration. Aristippus' writings seem to have disappeared early; five letters in the Doric dialect, which have come down under his name, are undoubtedly spurious.
ARISTOBULUS A Greek historian, who in his youth accompanied Alexander the Great on his campaigns. In his eighty-fifth year, when living at Cassandrea in Thrace, he wrote a work upon Alexander, in which he recorded his careful observations on geography, ethnography, and natural science. The book is highly praised for its trustworthiness, but only fragments of it have reached us. He and Ptolemy were the chief authorities for Arrian's Anabasis.
ARISTOCLES (1) A Greek artist, and like his brother Canadchus, a sculptor in bronze at Sicyon. He flourished about 480 B.C.; and founded a school at Sicyon that lasted for a long time. (2) There was an Athenian sculptor of the same name and of the same period, author of a relief known as The Athenian Hoplite, one of our oldest monuments of Attic art. (See cut under HOPLITES).
ARISTON
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The second breakfast of the Greeks. (See MEALS.)
ARISTOPHANES The comedian, who lived at Athens, B.C. 444-388. His father Philippus is said to have been not a native Athenian, but a settler from Rhodes or Egypt, who afterwards acquired the citizenship. However this may be, the demagogue Cleon, whose displeasure Aristophanes had incurred, tried to call in question his right to the citizenship. His first comedy came out in B.C. 427, but was not performed under his own name because of his youth; and several more of his plays were brought on the stage by Callistratus and Philonides, till in 424 he brought out the Knights in his own person. Forty-four of his plays were known in antiquity, though four of them were considered doubtful. Of these we possess eleven, the only complete Greek comedies which have survived, besides the titles, and numerous fragments, of twenty-six others. The eleven are: (1) The Acharnians, which gained him the victory over Cratinus and Eupolis B.C. 425, written during the great Peloponnesian war to induce the Athonians to make peace. (2) The Knights mentioned above, B.C. 424, also crowned with the first prize, and aimed directly against Cleon. (3) The Clouds, B.C. 423, his most famous and, in his own opinion his most successful piece, though when played it only won the third prize. We have it on] y in a second, and apparently unfinished, edition. It is directed against the pernicious influence of the Sophists, as the representative of whom Socrates is attacked. (4) The Wasps, brought out in B.C. 422 and, like the two following, rewarded with the second prize; it is a satire upon the Athenian passion for lawsuits, (5) The Peace, of the year B.C. 421, recommending the conclusion of peace. (6) The Birds, acted in B.C. 414, and exposing the romantic hopes built on the expedition to Sicily. This is unquestionably the happiest production of the poet's genius, and is marked by a careful reserve in the employment of dramatic resource. (7) The Lysistrate, B.C. 411, a Women's Conspiracy to bring about peace; the last of the strictly political plays. (8) Thesmophoriazusae, probably to be dated 410 B.C. It is written against Euripides dislike of women, for which the women who are celebrating the Thesmophoria drag him to justice. (9) The Frogs, which was acted in 405, and won the first prize. It is a piece sparkling with genius, on the Decay of Tragic Art, the blame of which is laid on Euripides, then recently deceased. (10) Ecclesiazusae, or The National Assembly of Women, B.C. 392. It is levelled against the vain attempts to restore the Athenian state by cut-and-dried constitutions. (11) Plutus, or the God of Wealth. The blind god is restored to sight, and better times are brought about. This play was acted first in 408, then in 388 in a revised form suitable to the time, and dispensing with chorus and parabasis. This play marks the transition to the Middle Comedy. In the opinion of the ancients Aristophanes holds a middle place between Cratinus and Eupolis, being neither so rough as the former nor so sweet as the latter, but combining the severity of the one with the grace of the other. What was thought of him in his own time is evident from Plato's Symposium, where be is numbered among the noblest of men; and an epigram attributed to that philosopher says that the Graces, looking for an enduring shrine, found it in the soul of Aristophanes. He unites understanding, feeling, and fancy in a degree possessed by few poets of antiquity. His keen glance penetrates the many evils of his time and their most hidden causes; his scorn for all that is base, and his patriotic spirit, burning to bring back the brave days of Marathon, urge him on, without respect of persons or regard for self, to drag the faults he sees into daylight, and lash them with stinging sarcasm; while his inexhaustible fancy invents ever new and original materials, which he manipulates with perfect mastery of language and technical skill. If his jokes are often coarse and actually indecent, the fact must be imputed to the character of the Old Comedy and the licentiousness of the Dionysiac festival, during which the plays were acted. No literature has anything to compare with these comedies. Ancient scholars, recognising their great importance, bestowed infinite pains in commenting on them, and valuable relics of their writings are enshrined in the existing collections of Scholia.
ARISTOPHANES Aristophanes the Grammarian (or Scholar) of Byzantium, born about 260 B.C., went in his early youth to Alexandria, and was there a pupil of Zenodotus and Callimachus. On the death of Apollonius of Rhodes, Aristophanes, when past his sixtieth year, was appointed to be chief librarian, and died at the age of 77. His fame was eclipsed by that of his pupil Aristarchus, but he still passed for one of the ablest grammarians and critics of antiquity, distinguished by industry, learning and sound judgment. In addition to the Homeric poems, which formed his favourite study, and of which he was the first to attempt a really critical text, he devoted his labours to Hesiod, the lyric poets, especially Alcaeus and Pindar, and the tragic and comic poets, Aristophanes and Menander in particular. The received Introductions to the plays of the Tragedians and Aristophanes are in their best parts derived from him. He was also the author of a large and much quoted work of a lexicographical character, considerable fragments of which still survive.
ARISTOTLE One of the two greatest philosophers of antiquity, born B.C. 384 at Stageira, a Greek colony in Thrace. He was the son of Nicomachus, who died while acting as physician in ordinary to Amyntas II at Pella in Macedonia. In B.C. 367, after the death of his parents and the completion of his seventeenth year, Axistotle betook himself to Athens, became a pupil of Plato, and remained twenty years, latterly working as a teacher of rhetoric. About his relations with Plato unfavourable rumours were current, which may have had their origin in his subsequent opposition to the Platonic doctrine of ideas. That he arrived pretty early at opposite opinions, and gave emphatic expression to them, is quite credible. This may have been the occasion of Plato's comparing him (so it is said) to a colt that kicks his mother; yet Plato is also said to have called him "the intellect" of his school, and " the reader," on account of his habit of incessant study. Comparing him with Xenocrates, he remarked, that the one wanted a spur, the other a bridle. On the other hand, Aristotle, in one of his writings, combating his former master's theory of ideas, lays down the maxim that friendship, especially among philosophers, must not be allowed to violate the sanctity of truth; and in a fragment of an elegy he calls Plato the first man who showed in word and deed how a man is to become good and happy. After Plato had handed over his school to his sister's son Speusippus, Aristotle quitted Athens, B.C. 347, and repaired to his friend Hermeias, despot of Atarneus in Mysia. When that prince had fallen a prey to Persian intrigues he withdrew, B.C. 345, with his wife Pythias, his friend's sister, to Mitylene in Lesbos; and two years later accepted an invitation to Macedonia to be tutor to Alexander, then thirteen years old. He lived at the court eight years, though his tenure of office seems to have lasted barely half that time. Both Philip and his son esteemed him highly, and most liberally seconded his studies in natural science, for which he inherited his father's predilection. Alexander continued till his death to respect and love him, though the affair of Callisthenes (q.v.) occasioned some coolness between them. When the king undertook his expedition in Asia, Aristotle betook himself once more to Athens, and taught for thirteen years in the Gymnasium called the Lyceum. In the mornings he conversed with his maturer pupils on the higher problems of philosophy, walking up and down the shady avenues, from which practice the school received the name of Peripatetics. In the evenings he delivered courses of lectures on philosophy and rhetoric to a larger audience. After Alexander's death, when all adherents of the Macedonian supremacy were persecuted at Athens, a certain Demophilus brought against him a charge of impiety, where upon Aristotle, "to save the Athenians from sinning a second time against philosophy" so he is reported to have said, alluding to the fate of Socrates retired to Chalcis in Eubcaea. There he died late in the summer of the next year, B.C. 322. Of the very numerous writings of Aristotle, some were composed in a popular, others in a scientific form. A considerable number of the latter kind have come down to us, but of the former, which were written in the form of dialogues, only a few fragments. The strictly scientific works may be classed according to their contents, as they treat of Logic, Metaphysics, Natural Science or Ethics. (1) Those on LOGIC were comprehended by the later Aristotelians under the name of Organon ("instrument"), because they treat of Method, the instrument of research. They in clude the Categories, on the fundamental forms of ideas : the De Interpretatifte, on the doctrine of the judgment and on the proposition, important as an authority on philosophical terminology; the Analytica Priora and Posteriora, each in two books, the former on the syllogism, the latter on demonstration, definition, and distribution; the Topica in eight books, on dialectic inferences (those of probability); on Sophisms, the fallacies of sophists, and their solution. (2) The METAPHYSICS as they were called by late writers, in fourteen books, consist of one connected treatise and several shorter essays on what Aristotle himself calls " first philosophy," the doctrine of Being in itself and the ultimate grounds of Being; a work left unfinished by Aristotle and supplemented by foreign ingredients. The works on NATURAL SCIENCE are headed by the Physics in eight books, treating of the most general bases and relations of nature as a whole. This is followed up by four books on the Heavens or Universe, two on Beginning to be and Perishing, and the Meteorologica in four books, on the phenomena of the air. A short treaties On the Cosmos is spurious: that on the Directions and Names of Winds is a fragment of a larger work on the signs of storms; and the Problems (physical) is a collection gradually formed out of Aristotelian extracts. Of mathematical import are the Mechanical Problems (on the lever and balance) and the book about Indivisible Lines. Natural history is handled in the ten books of Animal History, and in four books on the Parts, five on the Generation, and one on the mode of Progression of Animals. The work on The Motion of Animals is probably spurious, certainly so the one on Plants in two books. Aristotle's treatise on this subject is lost. Turning to Psychology, we have the three books On the Soul and a number of smaller treatises (on the Senses and the Objects of Perception; on Memory and Recollection; on Sleep and Waking; on Dreams; on Divination by Sleep; on the Length and Shortness of Life; on Youth and Age, Life and Death; on Breathing; on Sound and Voice, etc.; that on Physiognomy is probably spurious). (4) Of the three general works on ETHICS, the Nicomachean Ethics in ten books, the Eudemian Ethics in seven, and the so-called Magna Moralia in two, the first alone, addressed to his son Nicomachus, and of marked excellence in matter and manner, is by Aristotle himself. The second is by his pupil Eudemus of Rhodes, and the third a mere abstract of the other two, especially of the second. The essay on Virtues and Vices is spurious. Closely connected with the Ethics is the Politics in eight books, a masterly work in spite of its incompleteness, treating of the aim and elements of a State, the various forms of Government, the ideal of a State and of Education. A valuable work on the Constitution of 158 states is lost, all but a few fragments.1 Of the two books on Aeconomics the first is spurious. Corresponding partly with the Logic, and partly with the Ethics, is the Rhetoric in three books,2 and the Poetics, a work of inestimable worth, not withstanding the ruinous condition in which its text has come clown to us. [The Rhetoric is a masterly treatise on oratory, regarded as an instrument for working upon the various passions and feelings of humanity.] Sundry other prose writings are preserved under Aristotle's name, e.g., that on Colours; the so-called Mirabiles Auscultationes, a collection of memoranda on all sorts of strange phenomena and occurrences, mostly bearing on natural science; on Melissus, Zeno, and Gorgias; six Letters which however are not regarded as genuine, any more than the 63 epigrams out of supposed mythological miscellany entitled Peplos. But we may safely assign to him he beautiful Scolion, or impromptu song, on his friend Hermeias, which takes the form of a Hymn to Virtue. A story dating from antiquity informs us that Aristotle bequeathed his own writings and his very considerable library to his pupil and successor in the office of teacher, Theophrastus, who again made them over to his pupil Mileus, of Scepsis in the Troad. After his death his relations are said to have buried them in a cellar, to guard them against the mania for collecting books which characterized the Pergamene princes. At last they were unearthed by Apellieon of Teos, a rich bibliophile, who brought them to Athens about 100 B.C., and tried to restore them from the wretched state into which they had fallen through the neglect of 130 years. Soon after, at the taking of Athens by the Romans, they fell into Sulla's hands, who brought them to Rome. Here the grammarian Tyrannion took copies of them, and on this basis the Peripatetic Andronicus of Rhodes prepared an edition of Aristotle's works. This would indeed partly account for the wretched condition in which some of them are preserved. At the same time it can be proved that the principal works were known during the 3rd and 2nd centuries B.C., 80 that the story affects only the author's original MSS., among which a number of works till then unpublished may have come to light. Though the writings preserved form rather less than half of the number which he actually wrote, there is quite enough to show the universality of Aristotle's intellect, which sought with equal ardour and acumen to explore and subdue the entire domain of research. He was the originator of many lines of study unknown before him,-Logic, Grammar, Rhetoric in its scientific aspect, Literary Criticism, Natural History, Physiology, Psychology; he was the first to attempt a History of Philosophy and of the forms of government then existing. His method, of which he must be considered the creator, is critical and empirical at once. In all cases he starts from facts, which he collects, sifts and groups as completely as he can, so as to get some general leading points of view, and with the help of these to arrive at a systematic arrangement of the subject, and a knowledge of its in most being, its cause. For to him the Cause is the essential part of knowledge, and the philosophy that searches into ultimate causes for the mere sake of knowing is the best and freest science. The form of Aristotle's works is by no means equal to their contents. Of the beautiful harmony between style and subject, that so charms us in Plato, there is not a trace in Aristotle; his manner of expression, though scientifically exact, lacks flavour, art, and elegance. But of exact scientific terminology he is the true founder. When the ancients celebrate the "golden stream" of his writing, the opinion can only refer to his lost popular works. Aristotle's personality is one of those which have affected the history of the world. His writings, Us those of Plato, were to the Christian centuries of antiquity a most stimulating incentive to scientific inquiry; in the Middle Ages they were for the Christian nations of the West and the Arabs the chief guide to philosophical method; and in the province of logic his authority remains unshaken to this day.
ARISTOXENUS A Greek philosopher and musician, a native of Tarentum, and a pupil of Aristotle, lived about 330 B.C., and was a prolific writer on various subjects, but most particularly on Music. In contrast with the Pythagoreans, who referred everything to the relations of numbers, he regarded music as founded on the difference of tones as perceived by the ear. Of his Elements of Harmony, three books are preserved, but they are neither complete, nor in their original shape. Only a part of his Elements of Rhythm has survived.
ARMY
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Greek. See WARFARE.
ARMY
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Roman. See LEGION, DILECTUS, SACRAMENTUM, STIPENDIUM, CASTRA.
ARNEIS The festival of lambs. See
ARNOBIUS An African, who won a high reputation as a master of rhetoric at Sicca in Numidia, in the reign of Diocletian. He was at first a heathen and an assailant of Christianity; but on becoming a Christian, to prove the sincerity of his conversion, he wrote (about 295 A.D.) the extant work Adversus Gentes. This is a superficial and rhetorical defence of Christianity and attack on Polytheism, but it is full of instruction with regard to the contemporary heathenism and its various worships.
ARRHEPHORIA The Athenian term for a mystic festival in honour of Athena as goddess of the fertilizing nightdew, held in the mouth of Scirophorion (June-July), in connection with the Scirophoria. It was named after the Hersphoroi = dew-bearers, four maidens between seven and eleven years of age, who were chosen yearly from the houses of noble citizens, and had to spend several months at the temple of Athena in the Acropolis, and take part in its services. Two of them had the task of commencing the cloak or shawl which the women of Athens wove and presented to the goddess at the Panathensea. The other two, on the night of the festival, received from the priestess of Athena certain coffers, with unknown contents, which they carried in procession on their heads to a natural grotto beside the temple of " Aphrodite in the gardens," and delivering them there, received something equally mysterious in exchange, which they carried to the temple on the Acropolis. With this ceremony their office expired.
ARRIANUS A Greek author, who wrote chiefly on philosophy and history, born at Nicomedae in Bithynia towards the end of the 1st century A.D., and a pupil of the Stoic philosopher Epictetus. He lived under the emperors Hadrian, Antoninus Plus and Marcus Aurelius, enjoying a high reputation for culture and ability, which procured him the citizenship of Rome and Athens, and high offices of state, such as the governorship of Cappadocia under Hadrian, A.D. 136, and the consulship under Antoninus. His last years were spent in his native town, where he filled the office of priest to Demeter, and died at an advanced age. From the likeness of his character to that of the famous Athenian, he was nicknamed "Xenophon Junior." Of his philosophical works we have still the first half (four books) of the Discourses of Epictetus, a leading authority for the tenets of that philosopher and the Stoical ethics; and the hand-book called the Encheiridion of Epictetus, a short manual of morality, which on account of its pithy and practical precepts became a great favourite with Pagans and Christians, bad a commentary written on it by Simplicius in the 6th century, and after the revival of learning was long used as a schoolbook. Of his numerous historical writings we possess the chief one, the Anabasis of Alexander in seven book. This is a complete history of that conqueror from his accession to his death, drawn from the best sources, especially Ptolemy and Aristobulus, and modelled on Xenophon, of whom we are reminded by the very title and the number of books, though it has none of Xenophon's charm. It is the best work on Alexander that has survived from antiquity. To this we should add the Indica, a short work on India, written in the Ionic dialect, and especially valuable for its abstract of Nearchus' report of his voyage from the mouth of the Indus to the Persian Gulf; also the description of another coasting voyage, the Periplus Ponti Euxini, and a trifling treatise on hunting, the Cynegeticus. A work on tactics wrongly ascribed to him is probably from the hand of Aelian the Tactician. Of his other Histories, e.g. of the Successors of Alexander, of Trajan's battles with the Parthians, of his own native country till its absorption in the Empire, and the campaign against the Alani during his command in Cappadocia, we have only abstracts or fragments.
ARROGATIO
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one of the kinds of adoption known to the Romans. (For further information see ADOPTION.)
ART
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See ARCHITECTURE, ARCHITECTURE (ORDERS OF), PAINTING, and SCULPTURE; and comp. COINAGE and GEMS.
ARTEMIDORUS The Geographer, of Ephesus, who travelled about 100 B.C. through the countries bordering on the Mediterranean and part of the Atlantic coast, and wrote a long work on his researches, the Geographumena in eleven books, as well as an abstract of the same. Of both works, which were much consulted by later geographers, we have only fragments.
ARTEMIDORUS Artemidorits the Dream-Interpreter, born at Ephesus at the beginning of the 2nd century A.D., surnamed "the Daldian from his mother's birthplace, Daldis in Lydia, wrote a work on the Interpretation of Dreams, the Oneirueritica, in four books. He had gathered his materials from the works of earlier authors, and by oral inquiries during his travels in Asia, Italy and Greece. The book is an acute exposition of the theory of interpreting dreams, and its practical application to examples systemstically arranged according to the several stages of human life. An appendix, counted as a fifth book, gives a collection of dreams that have come true. For the light thrown on the mental condition of antiquity, especially in the 2nd century after Christ, and for many items of information on religious rites and myths relating to dreams, these writings are of value.
ARTEMIS
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The virgin daughter of Zeus and Leto (Latona), by the common account born a twin-sister of Apollo, and just before him, at Delos. The Ortygia (see ASTERIA) named in another tradition as her birthplace, was interpreted to mean Delos, though several other places where the worship of Artemis had long prevailed put forward pretensions to that name and its mythological renown, especially the well-known island of Ortygia off Syracuse. She, as well as her mother, was worshipped jointly with her brother at Delos, Delphi and all the most venerable spots where Apollo was honoured. She is armed, as he is, with bow and arrow, which, like him, and often together with him, she wields against monsters and giants; hence the paean was chanted to her as well as to him. Like those of Apollo, the shafts of Artemis were regarded as the cause of sudden death, especially to maidens and wives. But she was also a beneficent and helpful deity. As Apollo is the luminous god of day, she with her torch is a goddess of light by night, and in course of time becomes identified with all possible goddesses of moon and night. (See SELENE, HECATE, BENDIS, BRITOMARTIS.) Her proper domain is that of Nature, with its hills and valleys, woods, meadows, rivers and fountains ; there amid her nymphs, herself the fairest and tallest, she is a mighty huntress, sometimes chasing wild animals, sometimes dancing, playing, or bathing with her companions. Her favourite haunt was thought to be the mountains and forest of Arcadia, where, in many spots, she had sanctuaries, consecrated hunting-grounds, and sacred animals. To her, as goddess of the forest and the chase, all beasts of the woods and fields, in fact all game, were dear and sacred; but her favourite animal was held all over Greece to be the hind. From this sacred animal and the hunting of it, the month which the other Greeks called Artemision or Artemisios (March-April) was named by the Athenians Elaphe-bolion (deer-shooting), and her festival as goddess of game and hunting, at which deer or cakes in the shape of deer were offered up, Elaphebolia. As goddess of the chase, she had also some influence in war, and the Spartans before battle sought her favour by the gift of a she-goat. Miltiades too, before the battle of Marathon, had vowed to her as many goats as there should be enemies fallen on the field; but the number proving so great that the vow could not be kept, 500 goats were sacrificed at each anniversary of the victory in the month of Boedromion. Again she was much worshipped as a goddess of the Moon. At Amarynthus in Eubaea, the whole island kept holiday to her with processions and prize-fights. At Munychia in Attica, at full moon in the month of Munychion (April-May), large round loaves or cakes, decked all round with lights as a symbol of her own luminary, were borne in procession and presented to her; and at the same time was solemnized the festival of the victory of Salamis in Cyprus, because on that occasion the goddess had shone in her full glory on the Greeks. An ancient shrine of the Moon-goddess at Brauron in Attica was held in such veneration, that the Brauronia, originally a merely local festival, was afterwards made a public ceremony, to which Athens itself sent deputies every five years, and a precinct was dedicated to " Artemis of Brauron" on the Acropolis itself. (See plan of ACROPOLIS.) At this feast the girls between five and ten years of age, clad in saffron-coloured garments, were conducted by their mothers in procession to the goddess, and commended to her care. For Artemis is also a protectress of youth, especially those of her own sex. As such she patronized a Nurses' festival at Sparta in a temple outside the town, to which little boys were brought by their nurses; while the Ionians at their Apaturia presented her with the hair of boys. Almost everywhere young girls revered the virgin goddess as the guardian of their maiden years, and before marriage they offered up to her a lock of their hair, their girdle, and their maiden garment. She was also worshipped in many parts as the goddess of Good Repute, especially in youths and maidens, and was regarded as an enemy of all disorderly doings. With her attributes as the goddess of the moon, and as the promoter of healthy development, especially in the female frame, is connected the notion of her assisting in childbirth (see EILEITHYLA). in early times human sacrifices had been offered to Artemis. A relic of this was the yearly custom observed at Sparta, of flogging the boys till they bled, at the altar of deity not unknown elsewhere and named Artemis Orthia (the upright) probably from her stiff posture in the antiquated wooden image. At Sparta, as in other places, the ancient image was looked upon as the same which Iphigenia and Orestes brought away from Tauris (the Crimea), viz., that of the Tauric Artemis; a Scythian deity who was identified with Artemis because of the human sacrifices common in her worship. The Artemis of Ephesus, too, so greatly honoured by all the Ionians of Asia [Acts xix 28] is no Greek divinity, but Asiatic. This is sufficiently shown by the fact that eunuchs were employed in her worship; a practice quite foreign to Greek ideas. The Greek colonists identified her with their own Artemis, because she was goddess of the moon and a power of nature, present in mountains, woods and marshy places, nourishing life in plants, animals and men. But, unlike Artemis, she was not regarded as a virgin, but as a mother and foster-mother, as is clearly shown by the multitude of breasts in the rude effigy. Her worship, frantic and fanatical after the manner of Asia, was traced back to the Amazons. A number of other deities native to Asia was also worshipped by the Greeks under the name of Artemis. Artemis appears in works of art as the ideal of austere maiden beauty, tall of stature, with bow and quiver on her shoulder, or torch in her hand, and generally leading or carrying a hinds, or riding in a chariot drawn by hinds. Her commonest character is that of a huntress. In earlier times the figure is fuller and stronger, and the clothing more complete; in later works she is represented as more slender and lighter of foot, the hair loose, the dress girt up high, the feet protected by the Cretan shoe. The most celebrated of her existing statues is the Diana of Versailles (see cut). On the identification of Artemis with the Italian Diana, see DIANA.
ARTILLERY The machines used for sending large missiles to a great distance were supposed to have been invented in the East, and appear in Greece since 400 B.C. or thereabouts. They attained their highest perfection in the age of the Diadochi, and were adopted by the Romans after the Punic wars. There were two chief varieties, both imitations of the crossbow; but the elasticity of the bow is exchanged for elasticity in the twist of the cord. Consequently all pieces of heavy artillery were called by the Romans tormenta. The machine consisted of three parts: the stand, the groove for the shot, and the apparatus representing the bow. This consisted of a frame in three divisions, through the midmost of which passed the groove for the shot (fig. 1). In each of the lateral divisions was stretched, in a vertical direction, a set of strong elastic cords, made of the sinews of animals, or the long hair of animals or of women. These were stretched tight, and between each of them was fixed a straight unelastic arm of wood. The arms were joined by a cord, which was pulled back by a winch applied at the end of the groove. On letting this go, the arms, and with them the string and the object in front of it, were driven forward by the twisting of the vertical cords. The effectiveness of the engine thus depended on the power and twist of the cords, which may be said roughly to express its calibre. The engines were divided into two kinds. (1) Catapultae, or scorpions (fig. 2). In these the groove for the shot was horizontal; and they projected missiles of length and thickness varying according to the calibre. (2) Ballistae(fig.3), which shot stones, beams, or balls up to 162 lbs. weight, at an angle of 50 degrees. The calibre of the ballista was at least three times as great as that of the catapult. The average range of the catapult was about 383 yards, that of the ballista from about 295 to 503 yards.
ARUSIANUS MESSIUS A Latin grammarian who lived about 395 A.D., and made an alphabetical collection, for school use, of words that admit of various constructions, with examples from Vergil, Sallust, Terence and Cicero, under the title Exempla Elocutionum.
ARVAL BROTHERS The Latin name for a college of priests consisting of twelve life-members, who performed the worship of Dea Dia, a goddess not otherwise mentioned, but probably identical with the old Roman goddess of cornfields, Acca Larentia (q.v.), who also is said to have founded this fraternity. Our more accurate knowledge of it we owe to its annual reports inscribed on the marble tablets, ninety-six in number, which have been dug up (1570-1869) on the site of its meeting-place, a grove at the fifth milestone from Rome, and which extend from A.D. 14-241. About its condition under the Republic we have no information; but under the Empire its members were persons of the highest rank. The emperors themselves belonged to it, either as ordinary members, or, if the numbers were filled up, as extraordinary. The election was by co-optation on the motion of the president (magister), who himself, together with a flamen, was elected for one year; their badge was a white fillet and a wreath of ears of corn. The Arvales held their chief festival on three days in May, on the 1st and 3rd in Rome, on the 2nd in the grove, with a highly complicated ceremonial, including a dance in the temple of the goddess, to which they sang the written text of a hymn so antiquated that its meaning could scarcely be understood. This Arval Hymn, in which the Lares and Mars are invoked, is one of the oldest monuments we possess of the Latin tongue. Amongst other duties of this priesthood should especially be mentioned the expiatory sacrifices in the grove. These had to be offered if any damage had been done to it through the breaking of a bough, the stroke of lightning, or other such causes; or again if any labour had been performed in it, though ever so necessary, especially if iron tools had been used. The Arval brothers had also to offer solemn vows on behalf of the Imperial House, both statedly on January 3rd, and on extraordinary occasions, and were bound to fulfil them.
AS
ASCANIUS The son of Aeneas and Creusa. According to the ordinary account, he accompanied his father to Italy and, thirty years after the building of Lavinium, founded Alba Longa, where, after his death, his stepbrother Silvius reigned. To him, by his name of Iulus, the gens Iulia. traced its origin.
ASCLEPIADES A Greek poet, a native of Samos, and a younger contemporary of Theocritus. He was the author of thirty-nine Epigrams, mostly erotic, in the Greek Anthology. The well-known Asclepiadean Metre was perhaps named after him.
ASCLEPIODOTUS A Greek writer, pupil of the Stoic Posidonius of Rhodes (who died B.C. 51). On the basis of his lectures Asclepiodotus seems to have written the military treatise preserved under his name on the Macedonian military system.
ASCLEPLUS The Greek god of Medicine, according to the common account a son of the healing god Apollo by Coronis, daughter of a Thessalian prince Phlegyas. Coronis was killed by Artemis for unfaithfulness, and her body was about to be burnt on the pyre, when Apollo snatched the boy out of the flames, and handed him over to the wise centaur Chiron, who instructed him in the cure of all diseases. According to the local legend of Epidaurus, Coronis, having accompanied her father on a campaign to the Peloponnesus, is secretly delivered of the child, and exposes it on a mountain near that town, where it is nourished by a herd of goats. Such was the skill of Asclepius that he brought even dead men to life; so that Zeus, either for fear of his setting men altogether free from death, or at the complaint of Hades, killed him with his thunderbolt. Apollo in revenge slew all the Cyclopes who forged the thunderbolts, as a punishment for which he had to serve Admetus for a time. In Homer and Pindar, Asclepius is still but a hero, a cunning leech, and father of two heroes fighting before Troy, Machaon and Podaleirius. But he was afterwards universally worshipped as the god of healing, in groves, beside medicinal springs, and on mountains. The seats of his worship served also as laces of cure, where patients left thank-offerings and votive tablets describing their complaint and the manner of its cure. Often the cure was effected by the dreams of the patients, who were required to sleep in the sacred building, in which there sometimes stood, as might be expected, a statue of Sleep or Dreaming. His worship extended all over Greece with its islands and colonies; his temples were especially numerous in the Peloponnesus, the most famous being that of Epidaurus, where a great festival with processions and combats was held in his honour every five years. Next in estimation stood the temple at Pergamus, a colony from Epidanrus; that of Tricca in Thessaly enjoyed a reputation of long standing, and in the islands that Cos, the birthplace of the physician Hippocrates. At Rome, the worship of the deity there called Aesculapius was introduced by order of the Sibylline books, on occasion of the plague of 293 B.C., and the god was brought from Epidaurus in the shape of a snake. For in the form of a snake, the symbol of rejuvenescence and of prophecy, he was wont to reveal himself, and snakes were accordingly kept in his temples. He had a sanctuary and a much frequented sanatorium on the island in the Tiber. With him were worshipped his wife Epione ( = soother), his two sons mentioned above, and several daughters, especially Hygieia,(q.v.); also Telesphoros ( = fulness-bringer) the deity of Recovery, who was pictured as a boy. In later times Asclepius was often confounded with the Egyptian Serapis. He is among the most favourite subjects of ancient art; at several places where he was worshipped he had statues of gold and ivory. He is commonly represented with a beard, and resembling Zeus, but with a milder aspect, sometimes with Telesphoros, in a thick veil, or little Hygieia, at his side; his usual attribute is a staff with a serpent coiled round it. The cock was sacrificed to him.
ASCOLIA The second day of the rural Dionysia (q.v.).
ASCONIUS PEDIANUS a Roman grammarian and historian, probably born at Patavium about the year 3 A.D. He lived latterly at Rome, where he enjoyed the favour of men in high place. During the reigns of Claudius and Nero, having carefully studied the literature of the Ciceronian age, and availing himself of state-papers then existing, he composed for the use of his own sons his valuable historical Commentaries on Cicero's Orations, of which only those on five orations (In Pisonem, Pro Scauro, Pro Milone, Pro Cornelio, In toga candida) are preserved, unfortunately in a very fragmentary condition. The commentaries on the Verrine Orations, which bear his name, belong probably to the 4th century A.D. They treat chiefly of grammatical points. No other works by Asconius have survived. He died, after twelve years' blindness, about 88 A.D.
ASELLIO
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A Roman annalist. See ANNALISTS.
ASINIUS POLLIO
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A celebrated Roman poet, orator, and historian. He was born B.C. 75, and made his first public appearance by bringing an impeachment in B.C. 54; in the Civil Wars he fought on Caesar's side at Pharsalus and in Africa and Spain. After the murder of Caesar he at first inclined to the Republicans, but in B.C. 43 joined Antony, and on the break-up of the Triumvirate obtained Gallia Transpadana for his province. In the redistribution of lands there he saved the poet Vergil's paternal estate for him. After negotiating the Peace of Brundisium between Antony and Octavian, B.C. 41, he became consul in 40, conquered the Parthini in Dalmatia in 39, and celebrated a triumph. He then retired from political life, and devoted himself to the advancement of learning. He served the cause of literature not only by his own writings, but by setting up the first public library at Rome, and by introducing the custom of reading new works aloud to a circle of experts, before publication. (See RECITATIO.) He was himself a stern critic of others, as we see by his strictures on Cicero, Sallust and Livy, though it was remarked that he was not always so severe upon himself. He was especially celebrated as an orator; yet his speeches, in spite of careful preparation, were devoid of elegance, and, as Quintilian remarks, might be supposed to have been written a century earlier than Cicero's. He wrote tragedies also, in which the same stiffness and dryness are complained of. And he composed a history of the Civil Waxs in seventeen books, from the first Triumvirate to the battle of Philippi, which seems not to have been published in a complete form till after his death. Not one of his works has survived. [The history of Caesar's African campaign, Bellum Africum, has recently been attributed to him, but on insufficient grounds.] He died 80 years old, A.D. 4.
ASPIS
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The Greek name for a long shield (For further information, see SHIELD.)
ASSARACUS son of Tros, and founder of the collateral line to which Anchises and Aeneas belong in the royal house of Troy. (Comp. DARDANUS.)
ASSIGNATIO
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The Latin term for the assignment of public lands to single citizens or to colonies. See COLONIES and AGER PUBLICUS.
ASTERIA daughter of the Titan Coeus and the Titanid Phoebe; sister of Leto, and mother of Hecate by Perses, son of the Titan Crius. She is said to have turned into an ortyx (=quail) and plunged into the sea to escape the love of Zeus. After her the Island of Delos was named Asteria, and then Ortygia, till it received its ordinary name.
ASTRAEA
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was daughter of Astraeus and Eos, or, according to another account, of Zeus and Themis, and as such was identified with Dike. (See HOURS.) She lived among men in the golden age, and in the brazen age was the last of the gods to withdraw into the sky, where she shines as the constellation of the Virgin with her scales and starry crown.
ASTRAEUS son of the Titan Crius and Eurybia, father by Eos of the winds Argestes, Zephyrus, Boreas and Notus, as well as of Heosphorus and the other stars. In the later legend he is also represented as father of Astraea.
ASTROLOGY in the narrower sense of the word, meaning prediction on the faith of signs given by the stars, was an invention of the Chaldaeans. All but unknown to the Greeks in their best days, it did not come into vogue until after the time of Alexander the Great. In Rome the professional astrologers were called Chaldoei or Mathematici, the latter name referring to the astronomical calculations which they made. In the republican period they were known, but held in utter contempt. In 139 B.C. their unpopularity was so great that they were expelled from Rome and Italy. But in the turbulent times of the civil wars their reputation rose considerably, and still more under the Empire, when the most extensive demands were made upon their science. They were, indeed, repeatedly driven out of Italy and involved in trials for treason (maiestas); but this only enhanced the consideration in which they were held, the more so as they were frequently taken into counsel by the emperors and the members of the imperial family. In later times, all that the Chaldaeeans were forbidden to do was to consult the stars on questions referring to the emperor's life. This was a criminal offence. The Christian emperors (but none before them) issued repeated prohibitions against all consultation of astrologers whatever. In the practice of their art they used calendars written on tablets, in which were set down, for every day, the motion and relative distances of the stars, whether lucky or unlucky. With the help of another set of tablets they proceeded to make their calculations for every hour in detail. They would, for instance, note the hour of a person's birth, ascertaining the relative position of the constellation dominant at the time. According to this they determined the fortunes of the individual who was born at the hour in question. In the same way they ascertained the time favourable to any given undertaking. Among the lucky stars we may mention Venus, Jupiter, and Luna; Saturn and Mars were unlucky; Mercury was lucky or unlucky according to the other circumstances of the case.
ASTROLOGY AND ASTRONOMY were at first synonymous expressions among the ancients, both signifying "the science of the stars." But afterwards Astrology came to mean that part of the science which deals with the supposed influence of the stars on the destinies of men. Among the Greeks, Astronomy, the origin of which they themselves ascribed to the Assyrians, Babylonians and Egyptians, was for centuries the subject of' philosophical speculation without a sufficient groundwork in observation, because mathematics and mechanics had not reached the requisite degree of perfection. The list of observing astronomers opens with Eudoxus of Cnidus in the first half of the 4th century, B.C., who assumed that the earth was spherical, and tried to explain the phenomena of the heavens by a complicated theory of concentric spheres. Aristotle too maintained and proved the spherical form of the earth, which, he took to be the immovable centre of the universe. Astronomy was first raised into a real science after B.C. 300 at Rhodes and Alexandria, in the Museum of which town the first observatory was built, and Aristyllus and Timochares determined the places of the fixed stars with comparative accuracy, though as yet with very rude apparatus. A great step in advance was taken by Aristarchus of Samos, who observed the summer solstice at Alexandria in B.C. 279, maintained the earth's rotation on her axis and revolution round the sun, and made an attempt, by no means contemptible, to ascertain the size and distance of the sun and moon. His successor Eratosthenes also rendered essential service to the progress of the science; thus he came very near to determining the exact obliquity of the ecliptic. The true founder of scientific Astronomy, and the greatest independent observer of antiquity, was Hipparchus of Nicaea(in the 2nd century B.C.), who discovered the precession of the equinoxes, and determined the length of the solar year (at 365 days 5 hours 55' 12") as well as the time of the moon's revolution, and the magnitude and distances of the heavenly bodies. The last important astronomer of antiquity, and the greatest after Hipparchus, is Claudius Ptolemoeus (in the 2nd century A.D.). In his chief work, commonly known by its Arabic name of Almagest, he digested the discoveries of his predecessors, especially Hipparchus, and his own, into a formal system, which passed current all through the Middle Ages. According to it the earth is a sphere resting motionless in the middle of the equally spherical universe, while the sun, moon, planets and fixed stars roll at various distances around her. The Romans regarded Astronomy as an idle speculation, and gave little attention to it. When Caesar reformed the Roman Calendar, he had to bring an astronomer from Alexandria, Sosigenes, to help him.
ASTYANAX Son of Hector and Andromache. After the fall of Troy he was thrown down from the wall by the Greeks, because the prophet Calchas had pointed him out as destined to become the avenger of Troy.
ASTYDAMAS
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A Greek tragedian, son of Morsimus. (See PHILOCLES.) His first appearance was in 399 B.C., and he won the prize fifteen times. He wrote 240 pieces, but a few titles are all that remains of them. His sons Astydamas and Philocles were also tragic poets.
ASTYDAMEIA
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Wife of Acastus of Iolcos. Peleus had rejected her advances, and Astydameia accordingly slandered him to Acastus, who made an attempt on the life of Peleus, to her own destruction and that of her husband. (See ACASTUS and PELEUS.)
ASTYNOMI The title of ten functionaries at Athens, drawn annually by lot from the ten tribes, five for the city and five for Piraeus. They were a kind of city police, responsible for keeping the streets clean, for decency and quiet among the public, and probably for the protection of buildings. They had such powers of jurisdiction as were necessary to enforce their authority. Flute-girls and female performers on the harp or cithara, were subject to their control. [Arist., Const. of Athens, c.50.]
ASYLUM
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A Greek word meaning an inviolable refuge for persons fleeing from pursuit. Among the Greeks all holy shrines were Asylums, and any pursuer who should remove a suppliant by force was regarded as a transgressor against the gods. The term asylum was especially applied to such shrines as secured to the suppliants absolute security within their limits, which were often considerable. The priests and the community in each case watched jealously over this right. The sanctuary of Zeus Lycaeus in Arcadia, of Poseidon in the island of Calauria, and of Apollo in Delos, are excellent examples of such asylums. These sanctuaries were exceptionally numerous in Asia. In Rome there was an asylum of great antiquity, said to have been founded by Romulus, in a grove of oaks on the Capitoline Hill. (See VEIOVIS.) The erection of buildings in its neighbourhood gradually rendered it inaccessible. During the Roman period the right of asylum attaching to Greek sanctuaries was, at first, maintained and even confirmed by Roman commanders. But its abuse led to a considerable reduction of the number of asylums under Tiberius. The right of asylum was now confined to such shrines as could found their claims upon ancient tradition. During the imperial period, however, the custom arose of making the statues of the emperors refuges against momentary acts of violence. Armies in the field used the eagles of the legions for the same purpose.
ATALANTE
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Greek heroine of the type of Artemis. There were two slightly different versions of her story, one current in Arcadia and the other in Boeotia. (1) The Arcadian version. Atalante, daughter of Zeus and Clymene, was exposed by her father, who had desired male offspring only. She was suckled by a bear, until she was found and brought up by a party of hunters. Under their care she grew up to be a huntress, keen, swift and beautiful. She took part in the Calydonian boar-hunt, was the first who struck the boar, and received from Meleager the head and skin of the beast as the prize of victory. (See MELEAGER.) She is also associated with the voyage of the Argonauts. She turned a deaf ear to the entreaties of her numerous suitors; but at last she propitiated the wrath of Aphrodite by returning the faithful love of the beautiful Millanion, who had followed her persistently, and suffered and struggled for her. Their son was Parthenopaeeus, one of the Seven against Thebes. (See SEVEN AGAINST THEBES.) (2) The Boetian version. Atalante was the daughter of Schoeneus, son of Athamas, and distinguished for beauty and swiftness of foot. An oracle warns her against marriage, and she accordingly lives a lonely life in the forest. She meets the addresses of her suitors by challenging them to race with her, overtaking them in the race and spearing them in the back. She is at length beaten by Hippomenes, who during the race drops on the ground three golden apples given him by Aphrodite. Atalante stoops down to pick up the apples, and thus loses the race. Hippomenes forgets to render thanks to Aphrodite, and the goddess in anger causes the pair to wander into a sanctuary of Cybele, where they are changed into lions.
ATE
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According to Homer, the daughter of Zeus; according to Hesiod, of Eris or Strife. She personifies infatuation ; the infatuation being generally held to imply guilt as its cause and evil as its consequence. At first she dwelt on Olympus; but after she had entrapped Zeus himself into his rash oath on the occasion of the birth of Heracles (see HERACLES), he hurled her down to earth. Here she pursues her mission of evil, walking lightly over men's heads, but never touching the ground. Behind her go the Litai ("Prayers"), the lame, wrinkled, squinting daughters of Zeus. The Litai, if called upon, heal the hurts inflicted by Ate; but they bring fresh evil upon the stubborn. In later times Ate is transformed into an avenger of unrighteousness, like Dike, Erinys and Nemesis.
ATEIUS CAPITO A Roman jurist of the age of Augustus and Tiberius, who was born about 30 B.C., and died about 22 A.D. Unlike his contemporary Antistius Labeo (q.v.), he recommended himself to the ruling powers by his submissive attitude. He was rewarded by many tokens of distinction; among others, by the consulship, to which he was elected in 5 A.D., before attaining the legal age. As a jurist (again unlike Antistius) he represented the conservative tendency, and so became the founder of a special school called the Sabiniani, after his pupil Masurius Sabinus.
ATELLANA
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[A farce or comedy, which the ancients supposed was originally acted or invented at the Oscan town of Atella in Campania. Modern scholars incline to the opinion that it was a species of Latin drama representing scenes at Atella, or scenes of country-town life.Its characteristics were (1) that it was performed by free-born youths, not by professional actors; (2) that certain conventional characters, as Bucco ("Fatchaps"), Dossennus ("The Glutton"), Pappus ("The old father"), Maccus ("The fool") always occurred in it; (3) that it contained puzzles to explain, either in the plot or in single lines.] The Atellance came into fashion at Rome as after-pieces (exodia) about the end of the 3rd century B.C., displacing the saturoe. (See SATURA). Till the beginning of the last century of the Republic the Atellana was probably an improvisation; but, in the hands of Pomponius of Bononia and Novius, it was raised to the position of a regular comedy on the Greek model. From about the middle of the 1st century B.C., the Atellana went out of fashion in favour of the mimus, but was revived, probably in the reign of Tiberius, by a certain Mummius. It lived on for some time under the Empire, till at last it became undistinguishable from the mimus.
ATHAMAS
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Son of Aeolus, king of Thessaly, and Enarete; brother of Cretheus, Sisyphus, and Salmoneus; king of the Minyae in the Boeotian Orchomenus. He was the husband of the cloud-goddess Nephele, mother of Phrixus and Helle, who left him on his union with a mortal, Ino the daughter of Cadmus. Nephele, in anger visited the land with a drought, upon which Ino endeavoured, by means of a pretended oracle, to have her stepson Phrixus sacrificed on the altar of Zeus Laphystius. But Nephele conveyed the children away through the air on a golden-fleeced ram. During the passage Helle fell into the sea, which was afterwards, from her name, called the Hellespontus. But her brother arrived safely at the palace of Aeetes, king of Aea, who gave him his daughter Chalciope in marriage. Afterwards Athamas was himself about to be sacrificed by his peogle to Zeus Laphystius; but he was save by the appearance of Phrixus' son Cytissorus, who brought the news that Phrixus was still alive. His escape, however, only brought down the wrath of the god upon his descendants. The first-born of his race was ever afterwards liable to be sacrificed to Zeus Laphystius, if he entered the council-chamber and did not get out of the way in time. Later on Athamas was visited with madness by Hera, because Ino brought up her nephew Dionysus, the son of her sister Semele. In his frenzy he killed his son Learchus, and persecuted Ino, who with her other son Melicertes leaped into the sea. Here she became the sea-goddess Leucothea, and her son the sea-god Palaemon. On recovering from his madness, Athamas was commanded by an oracle to settle in a place where he should be hospitably treated by wild beasts. In the part of Thessaly which was named, after him, the Athamanian plain, he came upon some wolves, who fled from him, and left him the sheep-bones on which they were feeding. He settled here, and wedded Themisto. (See THEMISTO.) The story is no doubt founded upon the old custom which the Minyae had of offering the first-born of the race of Athamas to Zeus Laphystius, in case he failed to make good his escape as Phrixus did.
ATHENAEUM The name of the first public educational institution at Rome, built by Hadrian about 135 A.D. The building was in the form of a theatre, and brilliantly fitted up. There rhetoricians and poets held their recitations, and salaried professors gave their lectures in the various branches of general liberal education, philosophy and rhetorie, as well as grammar and jurisprudence. This continued until late in the imperial age.
ATHENAEUS The engineer, a contemporary of Archimedes, who flourished about 210 B.C. He was the author of a work, still preserved, on engines of war.
ATHENAEUS The Greek scholar, a native of Naueratis in Egypt. He was educated at Alexandria, where he lived about 170-230 A.D. After this he lived at Rome, and there wrote his Deipnosophistoe (or "Doctors at Dinner "), in fifteen books. Of these the first, second, and part of the third, are only preserved in a selection made in the 11th century; the rest survive in a tolerably complete state. The work shows astonishing learning, and contains a number of notices of ancient life which would otherwise have been lost. The author gives us collections and extracts from more than 1,500 works (now mostly lost), by more than 700 writers. His book is thrown into the form of a conversation held in the year 228 A.D. at a dinner given by Larensius, a rich and accomplished Roman, and a descendant of the great antiquarian Varro. Among the guests are the most learned men of the time, including Galen the physician and Ulpian the jurist. The conversation ranges over numberless subjects connected with domestic and social life, manners and customs, trade, art, and science. Among the most valuable things in the book are the numerous passages from prose-writers and poets, especially from the masters of the Middle Comedy.
ATHENE
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A Greek goddess, identified with the Roman Minerva. According to the story most generally current, she was the daughter of Zeus, who had swallowed his first wife Metis (" Counsel "), the daughter of Oceanus, in fear that she would bring forth a son stronger than himself. Hephaeestus (or, according to another version, Prometheus) clave open the head of Zeus with an axe, on which Athene sprang forth in full armour, the goddess of eternal virginity. But her ancient epithet Tritogeneia ("born of Triton," or the roaring flood) points to water (that is, to Oceanus); as the source of her being. Oceanus was, according to Homer, the origin of all things and of all deities. The worship of Athene, and the story of her birth, were accordingly connected with many brooks and lakes in various regions, especially in Boeotia, Thessalia, and Libya, to which the name Triton was attached. From the first, Athene takes a very prominent place in the Greek popular religion. The Homeric hymns represent her as the favourite of her father, who refuses her nothing. When solemn oaths were to be taken, they joined her name with those of Zeus and Apollo, in a way which shows that the three deities represent the embodiment of all divine authority. With the exception of the two gods just mentioned, there is no other deity whose original character as a power of nature underwent so remarkable an ethical development. Both conceptions of Athene, the natural and the ethical, were intimately connected in the religion of Attica, whose capital, Athens, was named after Athene, and was the most important seat of her worship. Athens was originally the maiden daughter of the god of heaven; the clear, transparent aether, whose purity is always breaking forth in unveiled brilliancy through the clouds that surround it. As a deity of the sky she, with Zeus, is the mistress of thunder and lightning. Like Zeus, she carries the aegis with the Gorgon's head, the symbol of the tempest and its terrors. In many statues, accordingly, she is represented as hurling the thunder-bolt. But she also sends down, from sky to earth, light and warmth and fruitful dew, and with them prosperity to fields and plants. A whole series of fables and usages, belonging especially to the Athenian religion, represents her as the helper and protector of agriculture. The two deities Erechtheus and Erichthonius, honoured in Attica as powers of the fruitful soil, are her foster-children. She was worshipped with Erechtheus in the temple named after him (the Erechtheum), the oldest sanctuary on the Athenian Acropolis. The names of her earliest priestesses, the daughters of Cecrops, Aglaurus, Pandrosus, and Herse, signify the bright air, the dew, and the rain, and are mere personifications of their qualities, of such value to the Athenian territory. The sowing season was opened in Attica by three sacred services of ploughing. Of these, two were in honour of Athene as inventress of the plough, while the third took place in honour of Demeter. It was Athens, also, who had taught men how to attach oxen to the yoke; above all, she had given them the olive-tree, the treasure of Attica. This tree she had made to grow out of the rock of the citadel, when disputing the possession of the land with Poseidon. Several festivals, having reference to these functions of the goddess, were celebrated in Attica; the Callynteria and Plynteria, the Scirophoria, the Arrhephoria or Hersephoria, and the Oschophoria, which were common to Athens with Dionysus. (See DIONYSIA.) Even her chief feast, the Panathenoea, was originally a harvest festival. It is significant that the presentation of the peplos or mantle, the chief offering at the celebration, took place in the sowing season. But afterwards more was made of the intellectual gifts bestowed by the goddess. Athens was very generally regarded as the goddess of war; an iaea which in ancient times was the prevailing one. It was connected with the fact that, like her father Zeus, she was supposed to be able to send storms and bad weather. In this capacity she appears in story as the true friend of all bold warriors, such as Perseus, Bellerophon, Jason, Heracles, Diomedes and Odysseus. But her courage is a wise courage, not a blind rashness like that of Ares; and she is always represented, accordingly, as getting the better of him. In this connection she was honoured in Athenian worship mainly as a protector and defender; thus (to take a striking example) she was worshipped on the citadel of Athens under the name of Promachos ("champion," "12 protector.") But she was also a goddess of victory. As the personification of victory (Athene Nike) she had a second and especial temple on the Athenian Acropolis. (See Plan of ACROPOLIS.) And the great statues in the temples represented her, like Zeus, with Nike in her outstretched hand. The occupations of peace, however, formed the main sphere of her activity. Like all the other deities who were supposed to dispense the blessings of nature, she is the protectress of growing children; and as the goddess of the clear sky and of pure air, she bestows health and keeps off sickness. Further, she is (with Zeus) the patroness of the Athenian Phratrioe, or unions of kinsfolk. At Athens and Sparta she protects the popular and deliberative assemblies; in many places, and especially at Athens, the whole state is under her care (Athene Polias, Poliachus). Elsewhere she presides over the larger unions of kindred peoples. The festival of Athene Itonia at Coronea was a confederate festival of all Boeotia. Under the title of Panachais she was worshipped as the goddess of the Achaean League. Speaking broadly, Athene represents human wit and cleverness, and presides over the whole moral and intellectual side of human life. From her are derived all the productions of wisdom and understanding, every art and science, whether of war or of peace. A crowd of discoveries, of the most various kinds, is ascribed to her. It has been already mentioned that she was credited with the invention of the plough and the yoke. She was often associated with Poseidon as the inventress of horse-taming and ship-building. In the Athenian story she teaches Erichthonius to fasten his horses to the chariot. In the Corinthian story she teaches Bellerophon to subdue Pegasus. At Lindus in Rhodes she was worshipped as the goddess who helped Danaus to build the first fifty-oared ship. In the fable of the Argonauts it is she who instructs the builders of the first ship, the Argo. Even in Homer all the productions of women's art, as of spinning and weaving, are characterized as "works of Athene." Many a Palladion or statue of Pallas bore a spindle and distaff in its left hand. As the mistress and protectress of arts and handiwork, she was worshipped at the Chalkeia (or Feast of Smiths) under the title of Ergane. Under this name she is mentioned in several inscriptions found on the Acropolis. Her genius covers the field of music and dancing. She is inventor of the flute and the trumpet, as well as of the Pyrrhic war-dance, in which she was said to have been the earliest performer, at the celebration of the victory of the Gods over the Giants. It was Phidias who finally fixed the typical representation of Athens in works of art. Among his numerous statues of her, three, the most celebrated, were set up on the acropolis of Athens. These were (1) The colossal statue of Athene Parthenos, wrought in ivory and gold, thirty feet in height (with the pedestal), and standing in the Parthenon. (See PARTHENON.) The goddess was represented wearing a long robe falling down to the feet, and on her breast was the aegis with the Gorgon's head. A helmet was on her head; in one hand she bore a Victory, six feet in height, in the other a lance, which leaned against a shield adorned with scenes from the battles of the Amazons with the Giants. (2) The bronze statue of Athene Promachos, erected from the proceeds of the spoils taken at Marathon, and standing between the Propylaea and the Erechthteum. The proportions of this statue were so gigantic, that the gleaming point of the lance and the crest of the helmet were visible to seamen, on approaching the Piraeus from Sunium. (3) The Lemnian Pallas, so named because it had been dedicated by the Athenian Cleruchi in Lemnos. The attractions of this statue won for it the name of "the Beautiful." Like the second, it was of bronze; as a representation of Athene as the goddess of peace, it was without a helmet. Throughout the numerous and varying representations of her, Athene has an imposing stature, suggesting a masculine rather than a feminine form; an oval face, with a brow of great clearness and purity; thoughtful eyes, compressed lips, firm chin, and hair carelessly thrown back. (See cut.) Her ordinary attributes are the helmet, the aegis covering the breast or serving as a shield for the arm, the lance, the round shield with the Gorgon's head, the olive branch, and the owl. (On her identification with Minerva, see</italics MINERVA.)
ATHENODORUS
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A Greek sculptor, of the Rhodian school. He was associated with Agesander and Polydorus in the production of the celebrated group of Laocoon. (See SCULPTURE.)
ATHLETAE This was the name given by the Greeks to the professional competitors for the prizes in gymnastic contests, such as boxing and the pancration, a combination of boxing with wrestling. The athletoe practised gymnastics as a means of livelihood, whereas in general Greek society it was regarded as a liberal art, useful for the harmonious development of the body, and as a training for military service. The professional athletes adopted a special regimen, which produced an exceptional development of bodily strength and muscle, but unfitted them for any other kind of life or pursuit. The profession of athlete was accordingly adopted mainly by men of low birth, and was more popular with the multitude than with persons of intelligence and education. Greek athletes did not make their appearance in Rome before 186 B.C. In the republican age they were not regarded with great favour; but under Augustus their contests became quite popular. No social stigma attached to them, as to actors and gladiators, and under the Empire they formed themselves into regular societies, each with its own president, travelling from place to place at the festivals, at which they would appear in pairs, arranged by lot, for a high remuneration. In 86 A.D. Domitian established a contest on the Capitol for musicians and athletes, to recur every four years; and erected a special race-course for the athletes on the Campus Martius. The Capitoline contest survived during the whole of antiquity.
ATHLOTETAE
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The persons who arranged, and acted as umpires in, the various public games of Greece. They were also called Agonothetoe, and at Olympia Hellanodikoe. (See also PANATHENEA.)
ATILIUS FORTUNATIANUS A Latin grammarian who flourished in the first half of the 4th century A.D., and was the author of a school manual of prosody.
ATIMIA
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This Greek word does not imply dishonour in the modern sense, but deprivation of civil rights, whether partial, complete, temporary, or perpetual. Partial atimia at Athens might consist, for instance, in depriving a citizen of the right to appear again as prosecutor, in case he had, in this capacity, failed to obtain a fifth part of the votes; or of the right to propose a law again to the assembly, if he had been three times condemned for making illegal propositions. In cases of complete atimia, a person was excluded from taking part in any public proceeding whatever. He was forbidden access to the agora and the public sanctuaries; he was incapacitated from appearing in court as a prosecutor. In case of very serious offences the atimia might be followed by confiscation of property, and might even be extended to a man's children. Atimia might also be inflicted on debtors to the State, if the debt was not paid within the appointed time. It was then accompanied with a fine equivalent to the amount already owed. The payment of the debt brought the atimia to an end. But where it was inflicted for other offences, it was seldom removed, and then only after a vote of at least six thousand citizens. In Sparta complete atimia was mostly inflicted on persons who had been guilty of cowardice in war. The offender was not only cut off from all civil rights, and from the common meals and exercises, but had to submit to every kind of insult. At the public festivals he had to take a low place. He was obliged to wear a patchwork cloak, to have his hair cut on one side; to give way in the street to every one, even to young men; no one would give him light for his fire, marry his daughter, or give him his daughter to wife. [Plutarch, Agesilaus 30.] Bachelors were also subject to a kind of atimia. They were not allowed to be present at certain festivals, and had no claim to the marks of respect which the young, in other cases, were expected to show. The full possession of civic rights and privileges was called epitimia. (See INFAMIA.)
ATLAS The son of the Titan Iapetus and Clymene (or, according to anotlier account, Asia), brother of Menoetius, Prometheus, and Epimetheus. In Homer [Od. i. 52] he is called "the thinker of mischief," who knows the depths of the whole sea, and has under his care the pillars which hold heaven and earth asunder. In Hesiod [Theog. 517] he stands at the western end of the earth, near where the Hesperides dwell, holding the broad heaven on his head and unwearied hands. To this condition he is forced by Zeus, according to a later version as a punishment for the part which he took in the battle with the Titans. By the Ocean nymph Pleione he is father of the Pleiades, by Aethra of the Hyades. In Homer the nymph Calypso is also his daughter, who dwells on the island Ogygia, the navel of the sea. Later authors make him the father of the Hesperides, by Hesperis. It is to him that Amphitrite flies when pursued by Poseidon. As their knowledge of the West extended the Greeks transferred the abode of Atlas to the African mountain of the same name. Local stories of a mountain which supported the heaven would, no doubt, encourage the identification. In later times Atlas was represented as a wealthy king, and owner of the garden of the Hesperides. Perseus, with his head of Medusa, turned him into a rocky mountain for his inhospitality. In works of art he is represented as carrying the heaven; or (after the earth was discovered to be spherical), the terrestrial globe. Among the statues of Atlas the Farnese, in the Museum at Naples, is the best known. (See also OLYMPIC GAMES, fig. 3.) In Greek architecture, the term Atlantes was employed to denote the colossal male statues sometimes used in great buildings instead of columns to support an entablature or a projecting roof.
ATREUS
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Son of Pelops and Hippodamia, grandson of Tantalus. (See PELOPS.) With the help of his brother Thyestes he murdered his step-brother Chrysippus. To escape the wrath of their father, the pair of brothers took refuge with their brother-in-law Sthenelus, king of Mycenae, who gave them Media to live in. Eurystheus, the brother of their protector, was killed in battle with the Heracleidae. Atreus kept possession of the kingdom of Mycenae, which had been given him in charge by Eurystheus, and maintained it in virtue of possessing a golden lamb, which had been given him by Hermes for the purpose of exciting discord in the house of Pelops and avenging the death of his son Myrtilus. Thyestes debauched his brother's wife Aerope, daughter of the king of Crete, and with her aid got possession of the golden lamb and the kingdom. But, as a sign that right and wrong had been confounded, Zeus turned the sun and the moon back in their course. Atreus accordingly recovered the kingdom and expelled Thyestes. To revenge himself, Thyestes sent Pleisthenes, a son of Atreus whom he had brought up as his own, to Mycenae to murder Atreus. But Atreus slew Pleisthenes, not knowing that he was his son. Atreus replied by bringing back Thyestes and his family from exile, and serving up to Thyestes at table the limbs of his own sons. Thyestes fled away; the land was visited with barrenness and famine. In obedience to an oracle, Atreus goes forth to seek him, but only finds his daughter Pelopia, whom he takes to wife. Egisthus, her son by her father Thyestes, who is destined to avenge him, Atreus adopts and rears as his own child. Thyestes is afterwards found by Agamemnon and Menelaus, who bring him to Mycenae. He is imprisoned, and Aegisthus ordered to murder him. By the sword which Aegisthus carries Thyestes recognises him as his son, and proposes to him to slay Atreus. Meanwhile Pelopia, in horror at the discovery of her son's incestuous origin, drives the sword into her own breast. Aegisthus takes the bloody sword to Atreus as a proof that he has executed his commission, and afterwards falls upon him with Thyestes, while he is engaged in making a thank-offering on the sea-shore. Thyestes and Aegisthus thereupon seize the government of Mycenae, and drive Agamemnon and Menelaus out of the country. The older story knows nothing of these horrors. In Homer Pelops receives the sceptre from Zeus by the ministration of Hermes; he leaves it to Atreus, and Atreus to Thyestes, who hands it down to Agamemnon. Hesiod alludes to the wealth of the Pelopidae, but is silent as to the rest.
ATRIDAE The sons of Astreus, Agamemnon and Menelaus.
ATRIUM
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The original name for a Roman house, the interior of which consisted of a single chamber open at the front. Afterwards the term was applied to the large hall which extended along the whole breadth of the house, and was lighted by an opening in the roof. The atrium was entered by the floor of the house, and the other chambers were attached to it. (See HOUSE.) Other buildings, sacred or profane, possessing halls of this kind with dwelling-rooms attached, were known by the name of atria, from the resemblance of their form to that of an ordinary house. The Atrium Vestoe, or abode of the Vestal Virgins, is an example of a consecrated atrium. The Atrium Libertatis was secular. This was the official residence of the censor, and it was here that Asinius Pollio established the first public library known to have existed at Rome. Auction-rooms were also called atria, and halls of this description were often attached to temples, and used for the meetings and festivals of societies.
ATROPUS
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One of the three Fates. (See MOERAe.)
ATTA
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A Roman dramatic poet, author of togatoe (see COMEDY), who died B.C. 77, and was a contemporary of Afranius. He was celebrated for his power of drawing character, especially in conversational scenes in which women were introduced. Of his comedies only twelve titles remain, with a few insignificant fragments.
ATTHIS A chronicle of Attic history, in which special attention was paid to occurrences of political and religious significance. After the last half of the 4th century A.D., chronicles of this kind were composed by a number of writers (Atthidographi), among whom Androtion and Philochorus (q.v.) deserve special mention. These writings were much quoted by the grammarians.
ATTICUS Herodes Atticus. See HERODES.
ATTICUS T. Pomponius. A Roman of an old and wealthy equestrian family, born 109 B.C. He received a good education in boyhood and youth, and went in the year 88 B.C. to Athens, where he lived until 65, devoting himself entirely to study, and much respected by the citizens for his generosity and cultivated refinement. In 65 he returned to Rome, to take possession of the inheritance left him by his uncle and adoptive father, Q. Caecilius. He now became Q. Caecilius Pomponianus. From this time onward he lived on terms of intimacy with men like Cicero, Hortensius, and Cornelius Nepos, who wrote a life of him which we still possess. He avoided public life and the strife of parties. This fact, in addition to his general amiability and good nature, enabled him during the civil wars to keep on the best of terms with the leaders of the conflicting parties, Cicero, Brutus, and Antonius. He died after a painful illness, of voluntary starvation, in the year 32 B.C. Atticus was the author of several works, the most considerable of which was a history (liber annalis) dedicated to Cicero. This gave a short epitome of the bare events of Roman history down to B.C. 54, arranged according to the series of consuls and other magistrates, with contemporaneous notices. But his most important contribution to Latin literature was his edition of the letters which he had received from Cicero. He also did great service by setting his numerous slaves to work at copying the writings of his contemporaries.
ATTIS A mythical personage in the worship of the Phrygian goddess Cybele-Agdistis. The son of this goddess, so ran the story, had been mutilated by the gods in terror at his gigantic strength, and from his blood sprang the almond-tree. After eating its fruit, Nana, daughter of the river Sangarius, brought forth a boy, whom she exposed. He was brought up first among the wild goats of the forests, and afterwards by some shepherds, and grew up so beautiful that Agdistis fell in love with him. Wishing to wed the daughter of the king of Pessinus in Phrygia, he was driven to madness by the goddess. He then fled to the mountains, and destroyed his manhood at the foot of a pine-tree, which received his spirit, while from his blood sprang violets to garland the tree. Agdistis besought Zeus that the body of her beloved one might know no corruption. Her prayer was heard; a tomb to Attis was raised on Mount Dindymus in the sanctuary of Cybele, the priests of which had to undergo emasculation for Attis' sake. A festival of several days was held in honour of Attis and Cybele in the beginning of spring. A pine-tree, felled in the forest, was covered with violets, and carried to the shrine of Cybele, as a symbol of the departed Attis. Then, amid tumultuous music, and rites of wildest sorrow, they sought and mourned for Attis on the mountains. On the third day he was found again, the image of the goddess was purified from the contagion of death, and a feast of joy was celebrated, as wild as had been the days of sorrow.
AUCYRANUM MONUMENTUM The monument of Ancyra (now Angora), a marble slab, of which the greater part is preserved. It belonged to the temple of Augustus at Ancyra, and contained the Latin text of a Greek translation of the report drawn up by that emperor himself on the actions of his reign (Index Rerum a se Gestarum). By the terms of his will this report, engraved in bronze, was set up in front of his mausoleum at Rome, and copies were made of it for other temples of Augustus in the provinces.
AUGE Daughter of Aleus of Tegea, and mother of Telephus by Heracles.
AUGEAS OR AUGIAS
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Son of Helios, or, according to another account, of Phorbas, and Hermione. He was king of the Epeians in Elis, and one of the Argonauts. Besides his other possessions, for which Agamemnon and Trophonius built him a treasure-house, he was the owner of an enormous flock of sheep and oxen, among which were twelve white bulls, consecrated to the Sun. When Heracles, at the command of Eurystheus, came to cleanse his farmyard, Augeas promised him the tenth part of his flock. But, the task completed, he refused the reward, on the ground that the work had been done in the service of Eurystheus. Heracles replied by sending an army against him, which was defeated in the passes of Elis by Eurytus and Cteatus, sons of Molione. But Heracles appeared on the scene, and slew the Molionidae, and with them their uncle Augeas and his sons. (See MOLIONIDAe.)
AUGURES
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[not probably, from avis, a bird, but from a lost word, aug-o, to tell; so "declarers" or "tellers"]. A priestly collegium at Rome, the establishment of which was traditionally ascribed to Romulus. Its members were in possession of the knowledge necessary to make the arrangements for taking the auspices, and for their interpretation when taken. Their assistance was called in on all those occasions on which the State had to assure itself, through auspices, of the approval of the gods. The collegium originally consisted of three Patricians, of whom the king was one. During the regal period the number was doubled; in B.C. 300 it was raised to nine (four Patricians and five Plebeians); and in the last century of the Republic, under Sulla, to fifteen, and finally by Julius Caesar to sixteen, a number which continued unaltered under the Empire. It can be shown that the college of augurs continued to exist until the end of the 4th century A.D. The office was, on account of its political importance, much sought after, and only filled by persons of high birth and distinguished merit. It was held for life, an augur not being precluded from holding other temporal or spiritual dignities. Vacancies in the collegium were originally filled up by cooptation; but after 104 B.C. the office was elective, the tribes choosing one of the candidates previously nominated. An augurium had to be taken before the augur entered upon his duties. In all probability the augurs ranked according to seniority, and the senior augur presided over the business of the collegium. The insignia of the office were the trabea, a state dress with a purple border, and the lituus, a staff without knots and curved at the top. The science of Roman augury was based chiefly on written tradition. This was contained partly in the Libri Augurales, the oldest manual of technical practice, partly in the Commentarii Augurales, a collection of answers given in certain cases to the enquiries of the senate. In ancient times the chief duty of the augurs was to observe, when commissioned by a magistrate do so, the omens given by birds, and to mark out the templum or consecrated space within which the observation took place. The proceeding was as follows. Immediately after midnight, or at the dawn of the day on which the official act was to take place, the augur, in the presence of the magistrate, selected an elevated spot with as wide a view as was obtainable. Taking his station here, he drew with his staff two straight lines cutting one another, the one from north to south, the other from east to west. Then to each of these straight lines he drew two parallel lines, thus forming a rectangular figure, which he consecrated according to a prescribed form of words. This space, as well as the space corresponding to it in the sky, was called a templum. At the point of intersection in the centre of the rectangle, was erected the tabernaculum. This was a square tent, with its entrance looking south. Here the augur sat down, asked the gods for a sign according to a prescribed formula, and waited for the answer. Complete quiet, a clear sky, and an absence of wind were necessary conditions of the observation. The least noise was sufficient to disturb it, unless indeed the noise was occasioned by omens of terror (diroe), supposing the augur to have observed them or to intend doing so. As he looked south, the augur had the east on his left, the west on his right. Accordingly, the Romans regarded signs on the left side as of prosperous omen, signs on the right side as unlucky; the east being deemed the region of light, the west that of darkness. The reverse was the case in ancient Greece, where the observer looked northwards. In his observation of birds, the augur did not confine himself to noticing their flight. The birds were distinguished as alites and oscines. The alites included birds like eagles and vultures, which gave signs by their manner of flying. The oscines were birds which gave signs by their cry as well as their flight, such as ravens, owls, and crows. There were also birds which were held sacred to particular gods, and the mere appearance of which was an omen of good or evil. The augur's report was expressed in the words aves admittunt, "the birds allow it"; or alio die, "on another day," i.e. "the augury is postponed." The magistrate was bound by this report. The science of augury included other kinds of auspices besides the observation of birds, a cumbrous process which had dropped out of use in the Ciceronian age. (See AUSPICIA.) The augurs always continued in possession of important functions. In certain places in the city, for instance on the arx, and at the meeting place of the comitia, there were permanent posts of observation for taking the regular auspices. These places were put under the care of the augurs. Their boundaries might not be altered, nor the view which they commanded interfered with. The augurs had authority to prevent the erection of buildings which would do this. They had also the power of consecrating priests, as well as of inaugurating a part of the localities intended for religious purposes, and the places where public business was carried on. They were always present at the comitia, and were authorized, if the signs which they saw or which were reported to them justified the proceeding, to announce the fact and postpone the business. If the constitutional character of a public act was called in question, the college of augurs had the exclusive power of deciding whether there was a flaw (vitium) in it, or not. If there were, the act was necessarily annulled. By the end of the republican period the augurs, and the whole business of the auspices, had ceased to be regarded as deserving serious attention.
AUGUSTALES
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A religious association at Rome, formed for the maintenance of the worship paid to the deified Caesars. (See MUNICIPIUM and SODALITAS.)
AUGUSTINUS The greatest of the Latin Christian fathers. He was born 354 A.D. at Tagaste in Numidia. His father was a pagan, his mother, Monica, a zealous Christian. After a wild life as a young man, he became professor of rhetoric in Tagaste, Carthage, Rome, and Milan, where he was converted to Christianity through the influence of Ambrose, and baptized in 387. He returned to Africa, and was ordained presbyter in 391, and bishop of Hippo in Numidia in 396. He died there in 430, after doing much good in the city during its siege by the Vandals. His literary activity was extraordinary. Four years before his death he reckons up the number of his works, exclusive of letters and sermons, as 93, making up 233 books. Among them are six books De Musica, and essays on rhetoric, dialectic, and grammar. These productions, which testify to his interest in learning, were installments of an encyclopaedic work on the seven liberal arts, modelled upon the Disciplinoe of Varro. Among his other writings two attracted especial notice on account of the extra-ordinary effect which they produced in after times. These are The Confessions, a history of his inner life in thirteen books, written in the form of a confession to the Almighty; and the De Civitate Dei, a work in twenty-two books, demonstrating the providential action of God in the development of human history.
AURELIANUS A Latin writer on medicine, a native of Sicca in Numidia, who flourished in the 5th century A.D. He was the author of two works on Acute and Chronic Diseases, the first in three, the second in five books. These are translations, fairly literal, but abridged, of works by the Greek physician Soranus, who lived in the last half of the 2nd century A.D. Caelius also wrote a compendium of the whole science of medicine, in the form of a catechism (Medicinales Responsiones). Of this considerable fragments remain.
AURELIUS VICTOR A Roman historian, born in Africa. He was probably governor of Pannonia under Julian in 361 A.D., and in 389 prefect of Rome. There is a history of the Caesars from Julius to Constantine, written about 360 A.D., which bears his name. This appears, however, to be no more than an extract from a more comprehensive work. The same is the case with an Epitome, continued down to the death of Theodosius. There is also a short but not altogether worthless book, entitled De Viris Illustribus Urbis Romoe, which is attributed to Aurelius Victor. It begins with the Alban king Procas, and comes down to Cleopatra. It is not by Aurelius Victor, nor again is a little book which has been attributed to him, called Origo Gentis Romance. This is full of forged quotations, and belongs to a much later period.
AUREUS
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A Roman coin of the imperial period, originally weighing 1/40 of a Roman pound, and worth from the time of Julius Caesar to Nero, 25 denarii, or 100 sestertii; from 23 to 20 shillings. (See COINAGE.)
AUSONIUS The most remarkable Latin poet of the 4th century A.D.; born about 310 at Burdigala (Bordeaux). He was son of the private physician of Valentinian I, and afterwards prefect of Illyria. Educated thoroughly in grammar, rhetoric, and law, he practised as an advocate in his native city, where he afterwards became professor of grammar and rhetoric. He was then invited by Valentinian to undertake the education of his son Gratian, who, after he had ascended the throne, conferred upon him the consulship and other distinctions. After the assassination of Gratian he retired to his estate near Burdigala, where he continued to reside, in full literary activity, till 390. He became a Christian, probably on accepting the office of tutor to the prince. Besides composing a turgid address of thanks to Gratian, delivered at Treves, Ausonius wrote a series of poems, including verses in memory of deceased relatives (Parentalia), verses commemorating his colleagues (Commemoratio Professorum Burdigalensium), Epitaphia, Eclogoe, Epistuloe, Epigrammata, and a number of miscellaneous pieces, one of which (Mosella), is the narrative of a tour from Bingen on the Rhine to Berncastel (Tabernoe) on the Moselle and then up the Moselle past Neumagen (Noviomagum) to Treves. Its subject has secured the poem some renown. Ausonius is not a real poet; but he tries to make up for lack of genius by dexterity in metre and the manipulation of words, and by ornaments of learning and rhetoric. The consequence is, that his style is generally neither Simple nor natural.
AUSPICIA
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In its proper sense the word means the watching of signs given by birds. But it was also applied to other signs, the observation of which was not intended to obtain answers about future events, but only to ascertain whether a particular proceeding was or was not acceptable to the deity concerned. It must be remembered that, according to Roman ideas, Jupiter gave men signs of his approval or disapproval in every undertaking; signs which qualified persons could read and understand. Any private individual was free to ask for, and to interpret, such signs for his own needs. But to ask for signs on behalf of the State was only allowed to the representatives of the community. The auspicia publica populi Romani, or system of public auspicia, were under the superintendence of the college of augurs. (See AUGUR.) This body alone possessed the traditional knowledge of the ceremonial, and held the key to the correct interpretation of the signs. The signs from heaven might be asked for, or they might present themselves unasked. They fell into five classes: (1) Signs given by birds (signa ex avibus). These, as the name auspicia shows, were originally the commonest sort, but had become obsolete as early as the 1st century B.C. (For the ceremonial connected with them, see AUGUR.) (2) Signs in the sky (ex coelo). The most important and decisive were thunder and lightning. Lightning was a favourable omen if it appeared to the left of the augur, and flashed to the right; unfavourable, if it flashed from right to left. (See AUGUR.) In certain cases, as, for example, that of the assembling of the comitia, a storm was taken as an absolute prohibition of the meeting. (3) Signs from the behaviour of chickens while eating. It was a good omen if the chicken rushed eagerly out of its cage at its food and dropped a bit out of its beak; an unfavourable omen if it was unwilling, or refused altogether, to leave its cage, or flew away, or declined its food. This clear and simple method of getting omens was generally adopted by armies in the field, the chickens being taken about in charge of a special functionary (pullarius). (4) Signs given by the cries or motion of animals, as reptiles and quadrupeds, in their course over a given piece of ground (signa pedestria or ex quadrupedibus). (5) Signs given by phenomena of terror (signa ex diris). These might consist in disturbances of the act of auspicatio, such as the falling of an object, a noise, a stumble, a slip in the recitation of the formula; or a disturbance occurring in the course of public business, such as, for instance, an epileptic seizure taking place in the public assembly; an event which broke up the meeting. The two last-mentioned classes of signs were generally not asked for, because the former were usually, the latter always, unlucky. If they made their appearance unasked, they could not be passed over, if the observer saw them or wished to see them. Every official was expected to take auspices on entering upon his office, and on every occasion of performing an official act. Thus the words imperium and auspicium were often virtually synonymous. The auspicia were further divided, according to the dignity of the magistrate, into maxima ("greatest") and minora ("less"). The greatest auspicia were those which weretaken by the king, dictator, consuls, praetors, and censors; the lesser were taken by aediles and quaestors. If two magistrates, though collegoe (colleagues) were of unequal dignity-supposing, for instance, that a consul and praetor were in the same camp-the higher officer alone had the right of taking the auspices. If the collegoe were equal, the auspices passed from one to the other at stated times. No public act, whether of peace or war (crossing a river, for instance, or fighting a battle), could be undertaken without auspices. They were specially necessary at the election of all officials, the entry upon all offices, at all comitia, and at the departure of a general for war. They had, further, to be taken on the actual day and at the actual place of the given undertaking. The whole proceeding was so abused that in time it sank into a mere form. This remark applies even to the auspices taken from lightning, the most important sign of all. For the flash of lightning, which was in later times regularly supposed to appear when a magistrate entered upon office, was always (after the necessary formalities) set down as appearing on the left side. Moreover, the mere assertion of a magistrate who, had the right of auspicium that he had taken observations on a particular day, and seen a flash of lightning, was constitutionally unassailable; and was consequently often used to put off a meeting of the comitia fixed for the clay in question. Augustus, it is true, tried to rehabilitate, the auspicia, but their supposed religious foundation had been so thoroughly shaken, that they had lost all serious significance.
AUTOLYCUS Son of Hermes and Chione, or (according to another account) Philonis, father of Anticleia, the mother of Odysseus. In Greek mythology he figured as the prince of thieves. From his father he inherited the gift of making himself and all his stolen goods invisible, or changing them so as to preclude the possibility of recognition. He was an accomplished wrestler, and was said to have given Heracles instruction in the art.
AUTOMEDON Son of Diores; the comrade and charioteer of Achilles.
AUTONINUS Antoninus Liberalis, a Greek grammarian of about 150 A.D., perhaps a freedman of Antoninus Pius; he wrote a collection, called Metamorphoses, of forty-one myths dealing with transformations, most of which is based on ancient authorities now lost, and is therefore valuable as a source of mythological knowledge.
AUTONINUS Marcus Aurelius, surnamed Philosophus, born at Rome A.D. 121. His real name was M. Annius Verus; at the desire of the emperor Hadrian he was adopted by his successor T. Aurelius Antoninus Pius, married his daughter Faustina, and became emperor in A.D. 161. During his benevolent reign the empire had to face dire distresses, famine, pestilence, and constant wars with the Parthians in the east, and the Marcomanni and other Germans in the north, during which he proved himself a prudent and active sovereign. In the midst of a new war with the already vanquished Marcomanni he died in A.D. 180, probably at Sirmium in Pannonia. In his youth he was a pupil of the orator Fronto, and loved him warmly to the last, even after giving up rhetoric and devoting himself to the Stoic philosophy. The gentleness and amiability of his nature comes out both in his letters to FRONTO (q.v.) and in his Self-contemplations, which are the moral reflections of a Stoic in clumsy, over-concise, and often obscure Greek.
AUXILIA
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This name was given in the Roman army to the foreign troops serving with the legions, and to the contingents of Italian allies. In some cases, especially that of the slingers and archers, they were raised by free recruiting, in others by a levy in the provinces; in others they were sent as contingents by kings or communities in alliance with Rome. Under the Empire the term auxilia was extended to all the corps stationed in the provinces and not included in the legions; as, for example, the divisions of veterans called vexillarii, and the cohorts called Italian, formed originally of free Italian volunteers. It was, however, employed especially of the corps levied in the provinces, which furnished the material not only of the whole cavalry of the Roman army, but of a number of infantry detachments (cohortes auxiliarioe). Of these, some were armed and trained in Roman fashion, others retained their national equipment. Consequently, a striking variety of troops might be observed in the provincial armies of Rome. (See ALA and COHORS.)
AUXO
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One of the two Charites, or Graces, worshipped at Athens. (See CHARITES.)
AVIANUS A Latin writer of fables. We have a collection of forty-two fables in elegiac metre, written by him, it may be conjectured, in the 4th century A.D. The work is dedicated to a certain Theodosius, with compliments on his acquaintance with Latin literature. He is perhaps to be identified with the well-known scholar Theodosius Macrobius. The dedication is in prose, and states that the author's models were Phaedrus and Babrius. The book was largely used in schools, and consequently was much enlarged, paraphrased, and imitated in the Middle Ages. The result may be seen in the Novus Avianus of Alexander Neckam, written in the 13th century.
AVIENUS A Latin poet, native of Volsinii in Etruria, pro-consul of Africa in 366 and of Achaia in 372 A.D. He was the author of a tasteful and scholarly translation, in hexameters, of the Phoenomena of Aratus, and of the Geography of Dionysius Periegetes (Descriptio Orbis Terrarum); as well as of a piece called Ora maritima, or a description of the coasts of the Mediterranean, Black, and Caspian Seas. This was based on very ancient authorities, and written in iambics. Only a fragment of the first book remains, describing the Mediterranean coast from the Atlantic as far as Marseilles.
AXAMENTA
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The ancient hymns sung by the Salii. (See SALII.)
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