Dictionary
BATHS	100.00%
Warm baths were for a long time only used by the Greeks for exceptional purposes, to take them too often being regarded as a mark of effeminacy. It was only after the introduction of artificial bathing-places, public and private (balaneia) that they came into fashion, especially before meals. Such baths were often attached to the gymnasia. The Greeks, however, never attained, in this matter, to the luxury of the Romans under the Empire. To take a hot dry air-bath, in order to promote perspiration, followed by a cold bath, was a peculiar fashion of the Lacedaemonians. The ancient custom at Rome was to take a bath every week in the lavatrina or wash-house near the kitchen. But after the Second Punic War bathing establishments on the Greek model made their appearance, and the afternoon hour between two and three was given up to the bath, which, with gymnastics, came to be one of the most important proceedings of the day. The public baths were under the superintendence of the aediles. A small fee (balneaticum) was paid for their use: a quadrans (=about half a farthing) for men, and rather more for women. Children were admitted free. The baths were open from 2 p.m. till sunset; but outside the city precincts they were sometimes lighted up after nightfall. Under the Empire the baths became very luxurious. The splendour of the arrangements, especially in private houses, steadily increased, as did the number of public baths. 170 of these were added by Agrippa alone in his aedileship, and in the 4th century A.D. the number was reckoned at 952 in the city of Rome alone. From the time of Agrippa we find thermae or hot baths, fitted up in the style of those attached to the Greek gymnasia, in use in Rome, Italy, and the provinces. No provincial town was without its baths; indeed they were found in many villages, as is proved by the remains scattered over the whole extent of the Roman empire. The baths of later times consisted of at least three chambers, each with separate compartments for the two sexes. (1) The tepidarium, a room heated with warm air, intended to promote perspiration after undressing; (2) the caldarium, where the hot bath was taken in a tub (solium) or basin (piscina); (3) the frigidarium, where the final cold bath was taken. After this the skin was scraped with a strigilis, rubbed down with a linen cloth, and anointed with oil. This took place either in the tepidarium or in special apartments, which were often provided in larger establishments, as were rooms for dressing and undressing. Round the basin ran a passage, with seats for the visitors. The Laconian or dry airbath was a luxury sometimes, but not necessarily, provided. The heating was managed by means of a great furnace, placed between the men's and the women's baths. Immediately adjoining it were the caldaria, then came the tepidaria and the frigidarium. Over the furnace were fixed a cold-water, warm-water, and hot-water cistern, from which the water was conducted into the bath-rooms. The caldaria and tepidaria were warmed with hot air. The heat was conducted from the furnace into a hollow receptacle under the floor, about two feet in height (suspensura, hypocaustum), and thence by means of flues between the double walls. The Romans were so fond of the bath that if the emperor or a rich citizen presented the people with a free bath for a day, a longer period, or in perpetuity, he won the credit of exceptional liberality. It was not uncommon for a person to leave a sum of money in his will for defraying the costs of bathing. Some towns applied their public funds for this purpose. The accompanying cuts give the ground-plan of the hot baths at Pompeii, and of a private Roman bath found at Caerwent (Venta Silurum) in South Wales. (For a restoration of the Baths of Caracalla, see ARCHITECTURE, fig. 13.)
TEPIDARIUM	54.29%
Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 A tepid bath-room. (See BATHS.)
THERMAE	50.00%
Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The name given by the Romans to the public buildings, founded in and after the time of Agrippa, which combined, with warm baths, the arrangements of a Greek gymnasium. These included open and covered colonnades for conversation, instruction, and different exercises, especially the game of ball. The most extensive and splendid establishments of the sort were to be found in Rome, and are still to be seen, though, for the greater part, in ruins. Of the existing remains the most important are those of the Thermoe of Caracalla. (Cp. ARCHITECTURE, fig. 14, p. 56; and see BATHS.)
PISCINA	45.95%
Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 A pool or basin of water in Roman bath-rooms. (See BATHS.)
COCALUS	27.64%
In Greek mythology, the king of Camicus in Sicily, who gave Daeddlus a friendly welcome when flying from the pursuit of Minos. Cocalus (or his daughters, according to another account) suffocated Minos in a hot bath.
EURYCLEA	25.77%
The nurse of Odysseus, who brought up his son Telemachus. When her master had returned home in the disguise of a beggar, she recognised him by a scar while bathing his feet. On a hint from him she kept silence, and afterwards was the first who brought to Penelope the news of her husband's return and of the slaughter of the suitors.
ACTAEON	18.39%
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.
HERMAPHRODITUS	16.52%
In Greek mythology, the son of Hermes and Aphrodite, born on Mount Ida, and endowed with the beauty of both deities. When a grown youth, he was bathing in the Carian fountain of Salmacis; and the Nymph of the fountain, whose love he rejected, prayed the gods that she might be indissolubly united with him. The prayer was answered, and a being sprang into existence which united the qualities of male and female. The fable probably arose from the inclination, prevalent in the Eastern religions, towards confusing the attributes of both sexes. In Cyprus, for instance, a masculine Aphroditos, clad in female attire, was worshipped by the side of the goddess Aphrodite. Figures of hermaphrodites are common in art.
RECITATIONES	16.34%
EGERIA	13.75%
A goddess of fountains, who was also a goddess of birth, and possessed the gift of prophecy. It was from her fountain in the sacred enclosure of the Camenae, before the Porta Capena in Rome, that the Vestal Virgins brought the water necessary for the baths and purifications of their office. There was another fountain of Egeria in the precincts, of Diana at Aricia. In Roman story Egeria was the consort and counsellor of king Numa, who used to meet her in a grotto in the precincts of the Camenae. After the death of her beloved, she fled to the shrine of the Arician Diana, by whom, as her wailings disturbed the worship, she was changed into the fountain which bore her name. Married women worshipped her at Rome, as a goddess of childbirth.
CALLISTO	13.49%
A nymph, the daughter of the Arcadian Lycaon, and a companion of Artemis. She became, by Zeus, the mother of Arcas, the ancestor of the Arcadians. She was'turned into a bear, according to one account by the jealous Hera, according to another by Zeus, who was anxious to protect her from Hera's wrath. In this shape she was slain by Artemis, and set among the constellations by Zeus under the title of the She-Bear. There was another story, according to which Callisto's son was intending to slay his transformed mother while hunting; upon which Zeus set him in the sky under the name of Arcturus (Arktouros), the Watcher of the Bear, and his mother under the name of Arctus (Arktos), the She-Bear. As the stars bearing these names never set, Homer describes them as the only ones which have no share in the bath of the ocean. Later poets, accordingly, invented the further story that Tethys, wishing to gratify Hera, refused to receive her former rival into her waters.
ARCHITECTURE:	13.30%
Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 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.
GYMNASIUM	13.19%
Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The Greek name for the place where the youths who had alreadyreat variety of gymnastic exercises, and the increasing inclination of grown men to look on at them and take part in them, the gymnasia often adorned with beautiful sculptures, grow in extent and splendour of equipment. (Seecut.) The great court comprised a number of spaces serving a variety of purposes: for instance, the ephebeion, or hall where the ephebi practised, rooms for dressing and anointing, sanding or dusting the body, cold-water baths and dry sudatoria, spaces for playing at ball, open and covered passages for running, wrestling, or walking. Attached to the colonnades on the outside were semicircular niches, furnished with stone seats, called exedra,. In these philosophers and rhetoricians would sit and talk with their disciples. A stadion, with a space for spectators to look on, and walksplanted with trees, were often attached to the gymnasium. The whole was under the superintendence of a gymnasiarchos. The conduct of the youths was under the supervision of sophronistoe. At Athens these officers were ten in number, and elected annually. The exercises were directed by the gymnastoe. For similar arrangements under the Roman empire see THERMAe.
ARETHUSA	11.85%
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.
MIDAS	10.91%
An old Phrygian king, son of Gordias and Cybele, in whose honour he is said to have founded a temple and instituted priests at Pessinus. When the drunken Silenus had lost his way and strayed into Midas' rose-gardens, the king brought him back to Dionysus. (According to another legend the king made him drunk by mingling wine with the spring Midas, and so caught him, that he might prophesy to him.) Dionysus granted Midas the fulfillment of his wish, that all he touched might turn to gold. But his very food and drink were changed at his touch, so that he prayed the god to take away the fatal gift. At the god's command he bathed in the Pactolus, which ever after became rich in gold. In the musical contest between Marsyas (or Pan) and Apollo, he decided for the former; on which account the god gave him the ears of an ass. He concealed them beneath a high cap, so that only his barber knew about it. However, he could not keep the secret for any length of time, and at last shouted it into a hole that he had dug into the ground; reeds grew from this hole, and whispered the secret to all the world. While this legend makes Midas himself appear as one of the Sileni belonging to the train of Dionysus (the ass being one of their attributes), the other points to him as the favourite of the divinity, whose first priest he was deemed to be, and who showered riches upon him.
MENANDER	10.91%
The chief representative of the Later Attic Comedy, born in B.C. 342, at Athens, of a distinguished and wealthy family. He received a careful education, and led a comfortable and luxurious life, partly at Athens, and partly at his estate in the Piraeus, the harbour of Athens, enjoying the intimate friendship of his contemporary and the friend of his youth, Epicurus, of Theophrastus, and of Demetrius Phalereus. He declined an invitation of king Ptolemy I of Egypt, so as not to have his comfort disturbed. At the height of his poetic productiveness he was drowned while bathing in the Piraeus, at the age of 52. His uncle Alexis had given him some preparatory training in dramatic composition. As early as 322 he made his first appearance as an author. He wrote above a hundred pieces, and worked with the greatest facility; but he only obtained the first prize for eight comedies, in the competition with his popular rival Philemon. The admiration accorded him by posterity was all the greater: there was only one opinion about the excellence of his work. His principal merits were remarkable inventiveness, skillful arrangement of plots, life-like painting of character, a clever and refined wit, elegant and graceful language, and a copious supply of maxims based on a profound knowledge of the world. These last were collected in regular anthologies and form the bulk of the extant fragments. Unfortunately not one of his plays has survived, although they were much read down to a late date. However, apart from about seventy-three titles, and numerous fragments (some of considerable length), we have transcripts of his comedies (in which, of course, the delicate beauties of the original are lost), in a number of Latin plays by Plautus (Bacchides, Stichus, Poenulus), and Terence (Andria, Eunuchus, Hautontimorumenos, Adelphi). Lucian also, in his Conversations of Hetoeroe, and Alciphron in his Letters, have made frequent use of Menander.
CAMPUS MARTIUS	10.26%
Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 A plain lying to the north of Rome, outside the Pomerium, between the Tiber, the Quirinal and the Capitoline Hills. (See POMERIUM.) During the regal period it was part of the property of the Crown, and, after the expulsion of the kings, was dedicated to Mars. The northern part, on the banks of the Tiber, served as an exercise-ground for the Roman youth for athletics, riding, or military drill. The smaller part, next to the city, was used for the meetings of the Comitia Centuriata, and for holding the lustrum. In the midst of it stood an altar to Mars, which formed the centre of the ceremony of the lustrum, and of some other festivals held on the spot in honour of that deity. (See LUSTRUM.) Until the end of the republican age there was only one building on this part of the Campus, the Villa Publica. This was the residence assigned to foreign ambassadors and Roman generals on their return from war, to whom the senate granted audiences in the neighbouring temple of Bellona. But in B.C. 55 Pompeius erected in the Campus the first stone theatre built in Rome, with a great colonnade adjoining it. Here too Julius Caesar commenced his marble saepta, or inclosures for the Comitia Centuriate, with a great colonnade surrounding the ovile. (See COMITIA.) These were completed by Agrippa in 27 B.C. In B.C. 28, Octavianus Caesar added the Mausoleum, or hereditary burial-place of the Caesars, and Agrippa the Pantheon and the first Thermoe or Baths. Under the succeeding emperors a number of buildings rose here; for instance, Domitian's Race-course (Stadium) and Odeum. The rest of the Campus was left free for gymnastic and military exercises, the grounds being magnificently decorated with statues and colonnades. The altar survived until the last days of ancient Rome.
TEIRESIAS	10.03%
The famous blind soothsayer of Thebes, son of Eueres and Chariclo, and a descendant of the Spartan Udaeus. The cause of his blindness has been variously stated. According to one tradition, the gods took his sight away when he was seven years old, because he revealed to men things which they ought not to have known. According to another, he became blind when, on his seeing Athene in the bath, she splashed water into his eyes. When invoked by his mother, the goddess could not restore his sight, but endued him with a knowledge of the language of birds, and presented him with a staff, by means of which he could walk like a man with perfect vision. According to a third account, he was blinded by Hera, because in a dispute between her and Zeus he decided against her, and Zeus compensated him by granting him the gift of prophecy and a life seven (or nine) times as long as that of other men. He is also said to have been changed into a woman for a short time. He plays an important part in the story of (Edipus and the wars against Thebes. In the wars of the Seven against Thebes he declared that the Thebans would be victorious if Creon's son Menoeceus were to sacrifice himself. In the war of the Epigoni he advised the Thebans to enter into negotiations for peace, and to avail themselves of the opportunity thus afforded to take to flight. During the flight, or else at the conquest of Thebes by the Epigoni, he was made a prisoner, and with his daughter Manto (q.v.), who also possessed the gift of prophecy, was consecrated to the service of the Delphian Apollo. He died at the well Tilphossa, near Haliartus, where his grave was pointed out, while he was also honoured by a cenotaph in Thebes. Homer [Od. xi 90-151] represents him as carrying his golden staff as soothsayer even in the world below, when Odysseus consults him as to his way home; and of all the shades, he alone, by favour of Persephone, possesses unimpaired memory and intellect [Od. x 495]. He had an oracle at Orchomenus in Boeotia, which is said to have ceased to give responses after a plague.
VILLA	8.68%
A Latin word signifying a property in the country, consisting of a block of buildings for habitation and for domestic purposes. With the decline of agriculture and with the growing preference in favour of country-houses, there arose he distinction between villa rustica and villa urbana. The former served for agricultural purposes; the latter, so called because built in the town style of architecture, only for pleasure. Many villas were designed only for one of the two objects, others were built for both. The villa rustica included apartments for the vilicus, or steward (a trustworthy slave or freedman, who had to superintend money-matters), the book-keeper (actor), and the slaves, stalls, and store-rooms. In the erection of the villa urbana, efforts were made to unite the charm of beautiful landscape with the greatest comfort and convenience, and to procure advantages which a house in the town hemmed in on all sides by other houses could not always afford. It contained separate rooms and colonnades for summer and winter, the former facing the north, the latter the south; baths, rooms set apart for physical exercises, library, and art collections. Outside were parks, preserves, fish-ponds, aviaries, etc. Towards the end of the Republic, and still more under the Empire, luxury in such establishments reached its highest point. [In Pliny's Letters, v 6, we have an elaborate description of his Tuscan villa; and, in ii 17, a minute account of his villa at Laurentum, on the coast of Latium. The accompanying cuts give a view of a villa marina (fig. 1) and a ground-plan of a villa suburbana (fig. 2)].
MINOS	8.51%
Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 A mythical king of Crete, the centre of the oldest legends of that island. He is the son of Zeus and of Europa; in Homer, brother of Rhadamanthys, father of Deucalion and Ariadne, and grandfather of Idomeneus. Residing at Gnossus as the "familiar friend of Zeus," he had a "nine-yearly" rule over the flourishing island [<italic>Od.</italic> xix 179], an expression which later generations explained as signifying periods of nine years; at the end of which he went into a cave sacred to Zeus, in order to hold converse with his father, and to receive the laws for his island. Just as he was thought to be the framer of the famous older Cretan constitution, so he was also considered a founder of the naval supremacy of Crete before the times of Troy; Hesiod calls him the "mightiest king of all mortals," who rules with the sceptre of Zeus over most of the neighbouring peoples. Later legend gives him another brother, Sarpedon, and a number of children (among others Androgeos, Glaucus, Catreus, and Phaedra) by his wife Pasiphae, a daughter of Helios and Perseis. When after the death of Asterin, the husband of Europa, he has driven away his brothers in consequence of a quarrel, he seizes the kingship of Crete, in which he is supported by Poseidon, who, on his prayer that he should send him a bull for sacrifice, causes a wonderfully beautiful snow-white bull to rise from the sea. But as he, desiring to keep it for his own herd, sacrifices another, the god to punish him inspires his wife Pasiphae (q.v.) with love for the bull. Homer [Od. xi 322] calls Minos the "meditator of evil"; in later times he was represented as a hard-hearted and cruel tyrant, especially on the Attic stage, because of the part he played in Attic legends. On account of the murder of his son Androgeos (q.v.) at Athens, he undertook an expedition of revenge against Attica, captured Megara (see NISUS), and compelled the Athenians to send him once in every nine years seven boys and seven girls to Crete, to be devoured by the Minotaur (q.v.; see also THESEUS). Tradition made him die in Sicily, whither he had pursued Daedalus (q.v.) on his flight, and where king Cocalus or his daughters stifled him in a hot bath. His Cretan followers interred him near Agrigentum, where his grave was shown. In Homer [Od. xi 568] Odysseus sees him in Hades with a golden sceptre in his hand, judging the shades; he does not appear in the legends as judge of the dead by the side of Aeacus and Rhadamanthys till later [Plato, Apol. 41 a, Gorg. 523 e].