Adytum, the sanctuary or innermost part of an ancient temple, which none but priests could enter, and from which oracles were delivered.
Ædiles, Roman magistrates, who had the care of public buildings (ædes), especially the temples, and also attended to the cleansing and repairing of the streets, the preparations for funerals, public games and spectacles, the inspection of weights and measures, the regulation of markets, &c.—At first there were only two ædiles, who were chosen from the plebeians, and styled Ædiles plebis; afterwards two others, styled Ædiles curules, were chosen from the patricians (366 B.C.), and Julius Cæsar appointed a new order of Ædiles cereales to take charge of the public granaries.
Ædui, one of the most powerful tribes in Gaul at the time of Cæsar's arrival (58 B.C.), whose territory lay between the rivers Liger (Loire) and Arar (Saône). They formed an alliance with Cæsar, who freed them from the yoke of Ariovistus, but they joined the rest of the Gauls under Vercingetorix in the great and final struggle for independence, which was fought round the little hill-town of Alesia. After his victory, Cæsar treated them leniently for the sake of their old alliance. Their principal town was Bibracte.
Ægean Sea, the old name of the gulf between Asia Minor and Greece, now usually called Archipelago (q.v.).
Ægeus, a king of Athens, son of Pandion, and father of Theseus. When the latter sailed to Crete on his venturesome expedition to deliver Athens from the intolerable burden of the tribute due to the Minotaur, he promised his father to hoist white sails on his return as a signal of safety. But the hero forgot his promise in the joy of triumph; and his father, who was anxiously watching for the sign of victory, seeing only the black sails of his son's ship as it approached the coast of Attica, believed that he had perished, and flung himself into the sea, which from him was named the Ægean.
Ægina, a Greek island 33 square miles in area, in the Gulf of Ægina (the ancient Saronicus Sinus). It is mountainous, with deep valleys and chasms. The modern town of Ægina stands on the site of the ancient town, at the NW. end of the island. There are considerable remains still left of the ancient city, and the ruins of solidly built walls and harbour moles still attest its size and importance. The island contains about 6000 inhabitants. The most ancient name of the island was Cnene, and the Myrmidons dwelt in its valleys and caverns. For a century before the Persian war it was a prosperous state; during this period it was also the chief seat of Greek art. Its sailors covered themselves with glory at Salamis. The Athenians in 429 B.C. expelled the original inhabitants, whose language and style of art were Dorian.
ÆGINETAN SCULPTURES.—Ægina holds an important position in the history of Greek art. On an eminence in the eastern part of the island stand the ruins of a temple of Pallas Athene. Among these ruins a series of statues were excavated in 1811, which are now the most remarkable ornaments of the Glyptothek at Munich. One group represents a combat of Greeks and Trojans for the body of Achilles. The figures are true to nature, with the structure of bones, muscles, and even veins, distinctly marked; but there is no individuality, all the faces having that uniform forced smile which is characteristic of all sculpture before the time of Phidias. Probably they date from not more than fifty years before Phidias.
Ægineta, PAULUS. See PAULUS ÆGINETA.
Ægis, the shield of Zeus, which had been fashioned by Hephaestus (Vulcan). When Zeus was angry, he waved and shook the ægis, making a sound like that of a tempest, by which the nations were overawed. It was the symbol of divine protection, and became, in course of time, the exclusive attribute of Zeus and Athene.
Ægisthus, son of Thyestes, and cousin of Agamemnon. He did not accompany the Greeks to Troy, and during the absence of Agamemnon, lived in adultery with Clytæmnestra, his wife. He assisted her in murdering her husband on his return, but was himself put to death seven years later by Orestes, son of Agamemnon. This is the account given by Homer: the tragic poets make Clytæmnestra alone murder Agamemnon, her motive in Æschylus being her jealousy of Cassandra; in Sophocles and Euripides, her wrath at the death of Iphigenia. Later writers also describe Ægisthus as the son of Thyestes by unwitting incest with his daughter Pelopia.
Æglé, a genus of Aurantiaceæ (q.v.), one of which, the Ægle marmelos, produces a fragrant, delicious, and wholesome Indian fruit resembling the orange, called Bael-fruit or Bhel-fruit. In an imperfectly ripened state, it is an astringent of great effect in cases of diarrhoea and dysentery. The root, bark, and leaves are of similar properties. A perfume has been prepared from the rind of the fruit, which also furnishes a yellow dye, while the seed yields a cement.
Ægospotamos (Gr., 'goat-river'), in the Thracian Chersonesus, is famous for the defeat of the Athenian fleet by the Lacedæmonians under Lysander, which put an end to the Peloponnesian war, and to the predominance of Athens in Greece, 405 B.C.
Ælfric (called Grammaticus, 'the Grammatician'), a voluminous old English writer about the close of the 10th century, whose history and whose personality even are alike involved in obscurity. It is known that he was a pupil of Æthelwold, most likely at the Benedictine monastery of Abingdon, and it is more than probable that he accompanied his master on his advancement to the see of Winchester. He was appointed to rule over the new monastery at Cerne, and afterwards became abbot of Ensham. He has been sometimes, as by Wright,
Dean Hook, and Mr Freeman, confounded with Ælfric, the Archbishop of Canterbury from 995 to 1005; and by others, as Wharton and Thorpe, with Ælfric, the Archbishop of York from 1032 to 1051. The grammatical works ascribed to Ælfric are his Latin and English grammar and glossary, printed by Somner at Oxford in 1659, included in Professor Zupitz's Sammlung Englischer Denkmäler (Berlin, 1880); and his Colloquium, a series of dialogues containing interesting descriptions of common life, in Latin, with English interlinear translation. His most important work is his collection of Homilies, 80 in number, edited by Thorpe for the Ælfric Society (1844-46). They are short and vigorous, and attracted great attention at the time of the English Reformation. The 'Paschal Homily,' as well as two or three others, has been often appealed to in controversy to prove that the doctrine of the early church in England differed in some important respects from that of the later Roman Church. Among his other works are a treatise on the Old and New Testaments, and an abridgment of the Pentateuch and the Book of Job.
Ælianus, CLAUDIUS, a native of Præneste in Italy, who studied and taught rhetoric in Rome at the end of the 2d century A.D., and was styled the 'Sophist.' Two of his works remain—the Varia Historia, in fourteen books (containing biographical notices, anecdotes, &c.); the other, in seventeen books, De Natura Animalium, on curiosities of animals and animal life.
Æmilian Provinces. See EMILIA.
Æmilius Paulus was the consul who fell in the battle of Cannæ in 216 B.C. His son, Lucius Æmilius Paulus (or Paullus) Macedonicus, inherited his father's valour, and enjoyed an unwonted degree of public esteem and confidence. In 168 B.C. he was elected consul for the second time, and trusted with the war against Perseus, king of Macedon, whom he defeated in the battle of Pydna. The son of the conqueror of Macedon, adopted by Scipio, was known as SCIPIO ÆMILIANUS.
Æue'as, the hero of Virgil's Æneid, was, according to Homer, the son of Anchises and Aphrodite (Venus), and ranked next to Hector among the Trojan heroes. The traditions of his adventures before and after the fall of Troy are various and discordant. Virgil gives the following version: Æneas, though warned by Priam in the night when the Greeks entered Troy, to take his household gods and flee from the city, remained in the contest until Priam fell, when, taking with him his family, he escaped from the Greeks, carrying his aged father on his shoulders, but in the confusion of his hasty flight, lost his wife Creusa. His filial affection to his father earned him the name of the 'pious Æneas.' Having collected a fleet of twenty vessels, he sailed to Thrace, where he began building a city, but was terrified by an unfavourable omen, and abandoned his plan of a settlement there. A mistaken interpretation of the oracle of Delphi now led him to Crete; but from this place he was driven by a pestilence. Passing the promontory of Actium, he came to Epirus, and then continued his voyage to Italy and round Sicily to the promontory of Drepanum on the west, where his father Anchises died. A storm afterwards drove him to the coast of Africa, and landing near Carthage, he was hospitably received and entertained by Queen Dido. His marriage with Dido was prevented only by an express command of Jupiter that he must return to Italy. The hero sailed away, leaving the unhappy queen to despair and death by her own hand. During his stay in Sicily, where he celebrated the funeral of his father, the wives of his companions and seamen, weary of long voyages without certainty of finding a home, set fire to his fleet. After building the city Acesta, he sailed for Italy, leaving behind him the women, and some of the men belonging to his fleet. On landing in Italy, he visited the Sibyl at Cumæ, and received intimations of his future destiny. Then, sailing along the Tiber, and landing on the east side of the river, he found himself in the country of Latinus, king of the Aborigines. Lavinia, the daughter of Latinus, had been destined to marry a stranger; but her mother had promised to give her in marriage to Turnus, king of the Rutuli. A war ensued, which terminated in the marriage of Æneas with Lavinia. His landing in Italy occurred seven years after the fall of Troy. Many of the episodes in the story, as his meeting with Queen Dido at Carthage, are irreconcilable even with mythical chronology. Iulus or Ascanius, son of Æneas and Creusa, was claimed as their eponymous ancestor by the Julian gens at Rome; hence constant allusions to the divine ancestry of Augustus occur in Virgil, Horace, and other poets of his time.
Æneas Silvius. See PIUS II.
Æolian Accumulations is the term often applied to formations which are due to the action of the wind, such as the sandhills or dunes of many maritime regions, and the similar hillocks which occur in desiccated areas, such as those of the Sahara, Arabia, Utah, Arizona, &c.
Æolian Harp (i.e. 'the harp of Æolus'), a simple musical instrument which produces harmonic sounds when placed in a current of wind. It is formed by stretching eight or ten catgut strings of various thickness, all tuned in unison, over a wooden shell or box, made generally in a form sloping like a desk. The sounds produced by the rising and falling wind, in passing over the strings, are of a drowsy and lulling character, so that the Æolian harp is most fitly introduced by Thomson into the Castle of Indolence. St Dunstan is said to have invented it; modifications were Schnell's Anemochord (1789), and Herz's Pianoëolien (1851).
Æolian Islands. See LIPARI.
Æolians, one of the principal races of the Greek people, who were originally settled in Thessaly, from which they spread and formed numerous settlements in the northern parts of Greece and in the west of Peloponnus. In the 11th century B.C., some part of them emigrated to Asia Minor, where they founded on the NW. coast in Mysia and the adjacent isles (hence called Æolia) more than thirty cities; among them Smyrna, and Mitylene in the island of Lesbos, where the Æolic dialect of the Greek language chiefly developed itself in the forms employed in the poetry of Alceus and Sappho. The Æolians shared the fate of the other Greek colonies in Asia Minor. First oppressed by the Lydian kings, then deprived of their independence by the Persians, they became a portion of the great empire founded by Alexander, and were ultimately absorbed in the Roman empire.
Æolipile, a hollow metallic ball from which, when heated, steam issues by orifices in two tubes, so as to turn the ball. It was invented by Hero of Alexandria. See HERO, STEAM-ENGINE.
Æolotropy (from Greek words for 'changeful' and 'turning') is the opposite of isotropy, and implies change in the electrical, optical, or other physical properties of bodies in consequence of change of position—as when the refractive property of a transparent body is not the same in all directions. The æolotropy of Iceland spar is a notable instance. A body may not, however, be equally æolotropic in all respects; it may be isotropic in one or more qualities, and æolotropic in others. See REFRACTION, POLARISATION.
Æolus, the ruler and god of the winds, who reigned over the group of islands NE. of Sicily, named from him the Æolian Islands, now the Lipari group. The dominion over the winds was intrusted to him by Zeus, and he kept them inclosed in a cave under a mountain. He must not be confounded with his ancestor of the same name, who was ruler of Thessaly and the mythical founder of the Æolic branch of the Greek race.
Æon, a Greek word properly meaning 'age' or 'eternity,' but used by the Gnostics to mean an emanation from God, which became in some degree a separate spiritual existence, and presided over spheres of the world or phases of the world's history. See GNOTICISM.
Æpyornis (Gr., 'tall bird'), the name given to a great wingless bird, whose remains occur in Post-tertiary deposits in Madagascar. Its sub-fossil eggs are 13 to 14 inches in diameter, and have the capacity of three ostrich eggs. There appear to have been two or three species of æpyornis, one of these being as large as, or larger than, the Dinornis (q.v.).
Æqui, a warlike tribe of ancient Italy who inhabited the upper valley and hills to the SE. of the river Anio, on the eastern border of Latium. Together with the Volsci, a kindred tribe, they waged constant warfare with the young Roman republic, sometimes carrying their raids to the very gates of the city. In 446 B.C. they appeared for the last time before the city, and in 418 they were dispossessed of their great stronghold on Mount Algidus. Their last struggle with Rome began in 304, and ended with their complete subjugation.