Here we have much both of the nervous diction and the fervid fancy which characterize his best works. Ansgar. See ST. ANSGAR. Anson, George, Lord, (1697-1762,) a celebrated naval commander. In 1739 he was appointed commodore of an expedition against the Spanish settlements in the Pacific Ocean. On this journey he doubled Cape Horn, crossed the Southern Ocean for China, and finally sailed for England, where he arrived June 15, 1744, having circumnavigated the world in three years. His chaplain wrote an account of their voyage, which is one of the pleasantest little books in the world's library. Antiochus III., king of "Asia," (238-187,) was the great-great-grandson of the founder of the dynasty. He began to reign at nineteen years of age, and soon displayed sufficient energy and enterprise to warrant his being without ludicrous impropriety addressed in courtly style as "the Great." He succeeded in restoring, in some degree, the integrity of the monarchy. From the ruins of old Troy to the Caucasus and the farthest confines of Media, the whole of Syria, Phoenicia, and Asia Minor belonged to him. He scarcely felt that the Parthians were no longer under his sway; the most beautiful, the most populous and flourishing provinces of the earth obeyed him. The first part of his reign shone with glory, and he was by far the most powerful monarch of Asia. His activity only diminished with increasing age. Antioch was one of the most voluptuous cities in the world; and there the great Antiochus slumbered under the laurels of his earlier years. At this time Hannibal fled to his court, who succeeded in engaging Asia in a contest against the power of Rome. After war was declared, the councils of Hannibal were not listened to with respect to the manner of conducting it. Crowned with garlands, surrounded with eunuchs, by the sound of the flute and lyre, the great Antiochus went forth out of Asia on his elephant covered with splendid trappings, at the head of 400,000 men. In silken and purple tents, before richly covered tables, he expected to triumph over the Romans. In the beginning of spring 191, the Roman staff arrived at Apollonia. The commander-in-chief was Manius Acilius Glabrio, a man of humble origin, but an able general, dreaded both by his soldiers and the enemy. Instead of returning with all speed to Asia, and evacuating the field before an enemy in every respect superior, Antiochus resolved to intrench himself at Thermopyla, which he had occupied, and there to await the arrival of the great army from Asia. Before its arrival, he was attacked by the Romans, and his army was destroyed; with difficulty, a small band reached Demetrias, and the king himself escaped to Chalcis with 500 men. Europe was lost to him. Scipio, the conqueror of Zama, had been selected at Rome to continue the war on the Asiatic continent. In the valley of the Hermus, near Magnesia at the foot of Mount Sipylus, not far from Smyrna, the Roman troops fell in with Antiochus late in the autumn of 190. The force of Antiochus numbered close on 80,000 men; the Romans had not nearly half that number, but they were so sure of victory, that they did not even await the recovery of their general, who had remained behind, sick. The whole Asiatic army dispersed in tumultuous flight; an attempt to hold the camp failed, and only increased the number of the dead and the prisoners. The estimate of the loss of Antiochus at 50,000 men is, considering the infinite confusion, not incredible; the legions of the Romans had not been engaged, and the victory, which gave them a third continent, cost them only twenty-four horsemen and three hundred foot-soldiers. Asia Minor submitted; including even Ephesus, and Sardes the residence of the court. The king sued for peace, and consented to the terms proposed by the Romans, which, as usual, were just the same as those offered before the battle, and consequently included the cession of Asia Minor. Antiochus himself, in his reckless fashion, soon made a jest of losing half his realm; it was in keeping with his character, that he declared himself grateful to the Romans for saving him the trouble of governing too large a kingdom. But with the day of Magnesia, Asia was erased from the list of great States; and never perhaps did a great power fall so rapidly, so thoroughly, and so ignominiously as the kingdom of the Seleucidæ under this Antiochus the Great. He himself was soon afterwards slain by the indignant inhabitants of Elymais (at the head of the Persian Gulf), whilst plundering a temple of Bel, with the treasures of which he had expected to replenish his empty coffers. (187 B. C.) Antoninus Pius, (86-161 a. D.) Roman Emperor. Sprung from a wealthy family, he obtained the friendship and confidence of the Emperor Hadrian, who, in February, 138, adopted him as his successor. His reign was one of the happiest periods the empire enjoyed, and it furnishes few materials for history. A wise ruler and a good man, he has been called a second Numa. Arabs in Sicily. While the empire of the Arabs was falling into a number of small states, they completed the conquest of Sicily, in which they had been engaged for fifty years, by taking the city of Syracuse, (880 a. d.) Of this capture we have the following account from the pen of an eye-wit ness: "Theodosius, the monk, sends his salutation to Leo, the archdeacon. We have held out ten months; during which time we have fought often by day, and many times by night, by water, by land, and under the ground. We have left nothing unattempted against the enemy, and against his works. The grass which grows upon the roofs was our food, and we caused the bones of animals to be powdered in order to use them for meat. At length children were eaten, and terrible diseases were the consequences of famine. Confiding in the security of our towers, we hoped to hold out till we received succor; the strongest of our towers was overthrown, and we still resisted for three weeks. In an instant when, exhausted by heat, our soldiers took respite, a general storm was made on a sudden, and the town was taken. We fled into the church of St. Salvator; the enemy followed us, and bathed his sword in the blood of our magistrates, priests, monks, old men, women, and children. Afterward the most noble of our people, a thousand in number, were put to death before the town, with stones, whips, and clubs; the governor, Nicetas of Tarsus, half flayed alive, with his entrails torn out, was beaten to pieces against a stone; all the great houses were burnt, and the capitol pulled down. On the day when they celebrate Abraham's sacrifice many of them wished to burn us with the archbishop, but an old man, who possessed great authority among them, protected us. This is written at Palermo, fourteen feet under the ground, among innumerable captives, Jews, Africans, Lombards, Christian and unchristian people, whites and moors." Arbela, a town of Eastern Adiabene, one of the provinces of Assyria, between the Greater Zab and the Lesser Zab. Arbela has been celebrated as the scene of the last conflict between Darius and Alexander the Great. The battle, however, really took place near the village of Gaugamela, (“the camel's house,") on the banks of the Bumodus, a tributary of the Greater Zab, (331 B. C.) Darius left his baggage and treasures at Arbela, when he advanced to meet Alexander. Archimedes, (139-212,) the most celebrated mathematician among the ancients, was a native of Syracuse. He was equally skilled in the sciences of astronomy, geometry, mechanics, hydrostatics, and optics. The combination of pulleys for raising immense weights, the endless screw, a sphere to represent the motions of the heavenly bodies, etc., were invented by him: but his genius for invention was never more signally displayed than in the defence of Syracuse, when besieged by Marcellus; although the well-known story that among other astonishing novelties he produced a burning glass, composed of reflecting mirrors, by which he fired the enemy's fleet, is most likely a fiction of later times. At length, however, the city was taken by storm, and Archimedes, then in his 74th year, was among the slain. Of the numerous works of Archimedes, nine have come down to us. Ariosto, Ludovico, (1474-1533 A. D.,) one of the greatest poets of Italy. He was set to study law, but abandoned it in disgust, and gave himself up to literature. After a short residence at Rome, where he composed some comedies, he settled in Ferrara, where he was employed in political negotiations. It was amidst the constant pressure of official duties that he wrote his great epic, the "Orlando Furioso," which occupied his leisure for eleven years, and was published in 1516. It celebrates the semimythical achievements of the Paladins of Charlemagne, in the wars between the Christians and the Moors in Spain. It became immediately popular, and has since been translated into all European languages, and passed through innumerable editions. There are several English versions, of which Rose's is most esteemed for fidelity and elegance. Ariosto wrote also some vigorous satires, several comedies, and other poems. Aristagoras, of Miletus, brother-in-law of Histiæus, was left by him, on his occupation of Myrcinus and during his stay at the Persian Court, in charge of the government of Miletus. His misconduct in this situation caused the first interruption of an interval of universal peace, and commenced the chain of events which raised Greece to the level of Persia. In 501 B. C., tempted by the prospect of making Naxos his dependency, he obtained a force for its reduction from the neighboring satrap, Artaphernes. While leading it, he quarrelled with its commander: the Persian, in revenge, sent warning to Naxos, and the project failed. Aristagoras, finding his treasure wasted, and himself embarrassed through the failure of his promises to Artaphernes, began to meditate a general revolt of Ionia. A message from Histiæus determined him. His first step was to seize the several tyrants who were still with the armament, deliver them up to their subjects, and proclaim democracy; himself too, professedly, surrendering his power. He then set sail for Greece, and applied for succor, first at Sparta; but after using every engine in his power to win Cleomenes, the king, he was ordered to depart; at Athens he was better received; and, with the troops from twenty galleys, which he there obtained, and five added by the Eretrians, he sent in 499 an army up the country, which captured and burnt Sardis, but was finally chased back to the coast. These allies now departed: the Persian commanders were reducing the maritime towns; Aristagoras, in trepidation and despondency, proposed to his friends to migrate to Sardinia or Myrcinus. This course he was bent upon himself; and, leaving the Asiatic Greeks to allay as they could the storm he had raised, he fled with all who would join him to Myrcinus. Shortly after, probably in 497, while attacking a town of the neighboring Edonians, he was cut off with his forces by a sally of the besieged. He seems to have been a supple and eloquent man, ready to venture on the boldest steps, as means for mere personal ends, but utterly lacking in address to use them at the right moment; and generally weak, inefficient, and cowardly. Aristides, the Athenian statesman and general. In 477 B. C., as commander of the Athenian contingent in the Greek army under Pausanias, he had the glory of obtaining for Athens the command of the maritime confederacy, and to him was by general consent intrusted the task of drawing up its laws and fixing its assessments. His conduct on this occasion earned him the surname of the Just. In the Gorgias of Plato, he is the example of the virtue, so rare among statesmen, of justice, and is said "to have become singularly famous for it, not only at home, but through the whole of Greece." From 477 until his death in 468, he was the chief political leader of Athens. Aristophanes. The germ of all comedy lies in the common nature of man; but it unfolds itself prominently in literature, only when society has formed intricate relations, and when oddities and humors of individual character are multiplied. It is not surprising that the literature of a people so voluble in speech and so quick-witted as the Athenians should have abounded in the richest combinations of these provocatives to laughter. This branch of dramatic composition was carried to its highest perfection by Aristophanes, who was the contemporary of the tragic poets and historians. Most of his pieces were written within the period of the Peloponnesian War, (431–404 B. C.,) and some of them have direct reference to the state of things which that hideous strife of mutual hatred and jealousy brought about. The corruption of public and private morals in Greece at this epoch gave the amplest scope to the spirit of travesty and satire. Again, political events such as those of the Peloponnesian War, and magnificent projects of universal empire, like that which drove the Athenians out of their senses at the time of the Sicilian expedition, were brought upon the stage in the most amusing manner, and often with more effect than followed the political discussions of the public meeting. Public men were brought upon the stage by name; and the actors, by the aid of portrait masks, and costumes imitated from the dresses actually worn, represented in the most minute particulars the personages themselves. Socrates, whose strange person and grotesque manners offered irresistible temptations to the wits of the comic stage, is said to have been present when he was brought out in the play of "The Clouds," and to have stood up before the audience with imperturbable good-humor, that they might compare the original with the mimic semblance on the stage. The aristocratic and plebeian demagogues are lashed with infinite and impartial humor in "The Knights," where the high-born equestrians deprive Cleon the leather-dresser of the favor of the ward by setting up the claims of a sausage-seller. Aristotle was one of the deepest thinkers that ever lived. The fame of his abilities having reached Philip of Macedon, that prince made him tutor to his son Alexander. When Alexander afterward set out on his expedition to Asia, Aristotle settled himself in Athens, where he established a school of philosophy, which was called, probably from his habit of walking as he lectured, the peripatetic. After the death of his pupil and patron, Alex ander the Great, he was banished from Athens, and retired to Chalcis, where he died in 322, after having accomplished during his life the task of a giant. His genius embraced all the sciences of his time and invented new ones. His extant works include treatises on the whole range of human knowledge, the most valuable of which is his history of animals. His great pupil, Alexander, aided him in his researches, by supplying him with funds, and by having collections of foreign animals made and sent to him for examination. The philosophy of Aristotle attained immense influence, and was supreme in Europe during the Middle Ages. His word was another Bible, and to question his authority was heresy. After the revival of literature and the Reformation, the magic of his name was lost. And now, after that natural reaction and a period of neglect, he is again studied and praised as one of the greatest intellects that have appeared in the world. Armada. See SPANISH ARMADA. Arnold of Brescia, (1155 A. D.,) an Italian monk of the twelfth century, who attracted the confidence of the people and the bitter hatred of the priesthood, by his earnest preaching against the temporal power and possessions of the Church. After an exile from Italy, during which he preached in France and Switzerland, he took the lead in a revolt of the Roman people, and for ten years held his ground as master of the city. At last, terrified by the interdict laid on Rome by Adrian III., the people banished their chosen chief, and shortly after, (1155,) they saw him burnt and his ashes thrown into the Tiber. He was one of the most distinguished early martyrs of political and religious freedom. Arras, Treaty of, in 1435. This was a congress from all Christendom to bring about a general peace. The first question was to inquire whether it were possible to reconcile Charles VII. and Henry VI., the two aspirants to the French crown. Nothing could be done with the English; so they were suffered to leave Arras. All eyes were turned to the Duke of Burgundy, and all besought him to take pity on France and on Christendom, both suffering from these long wars. The duke sacrificed at last his long resentment (on account of the murder of his father, John the Fearless, in 1419, on the bridge of Montereau,) to the interest of France, and became reconciled to his father's murderer, Charles VII. He was exempted from all vassalage during his life; the king ceded to him the counties of Auxerre and Mâcon, with other places. He promised, besides, to disavow the murder of John the Fearless, to deliver up its authors, and to grant an amnesty to all those of his subjects who had taken up arms against him. On these conditions Philip swore to forget the past, and signed with his cousin an offensive and defensive alliance in the town of Arras. The French were united, and the maintenance of the English dominion became impossible. Paris, after belonging to the crown of England for seventeen years, opened her gates to her king, and soon the English only remained in Normandy and Guienne. Arsaces I., the founder of the Parthian monarchy, and of the dynasty of the Arsacides, flourished in the 3d century B. C. In revenge for an insult offered to his brother by the governor of a province, he raised the standard of revolt in Parthia against Seleucus; and, having succeeded in emancipating his countrymen, they proclaimed him their king. He reigned prosperously for thirty-three years. Assyrian Empire. See Appendix, page 171. Attila, (453 A. D.,) king of the Huns, and one of the most celebrated leaders king of Sweden as duke of Pomerania. The Confederates declared that they had no intention to attack and no wish to offend any power, but that they were determined to tolerate no infraction of those rights which the Germanic body held under the sanction of public law and public faith. They pledged themselves to stand by each other in case of need, and fixed the amount of force which each member of the league was to furnish if it should be necessary to repel aggression. The name of William of Orange, husband of Mary, presumptive heiress of the English crown, did not appear in this instrument; but all men knew that it was his work, and foresaw that he would in no long time be the leader of a formidable league against France. Between him and King James II., the vassal of France, there could, in such circumstances, be no cordial good-will. There was no open rupture, no interchange of menaces or reproaches; but the fatherin-law and the son-in-law were separated completely and forever. The very thing, however, that estranged William from the Court, endeared him to the English people. Both the great parties began to fix their hopes and their affections on the same leader, and Prince William became the unquestioned chief of the whole of that party which was opposed to the government, a party almost coextensive with the English nation. This league of Augsburg proved to be the prelude to the English Revolution of 1688. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo. See ST. AUGUSTINE I. Augustine, the English Apostle. See ST. AUGUSTINE II. Augustus, (63 B. C.-14 A. D.,) the first Roman emperor, at first named Caius Octavius, was grand-nephew to C. Julius Cæsar, who named him his heir, and on whose murder he went to Rome to claim his property and avenge his death-aiming secretly at the chief power. The victory at Actium, 31, made him master of the Roman world. Gradually all the highest offices of state were united in his hands, and the senate gave him the title "Augustus," B. C. 27. He studiously veiled his supremacy under the old republican forms, kept the people amused, carried on wars only to defend the existing frontiers, promoted agriculture, literature, and the arts, and made immense improvements in the city of Rome. His age was the golden age of literature. Aurelian, (212-275.) Having throughout an active life greatly distinguished himself as a valiant, skilful, and successful general, he was chosen emperor on the death of Claudius II., in 270. He drove the barbarians from Italy, vanquished the celebrated Zenobia, queen of Palmyra, and carried her prisoner to Rome; but while on his march toward Persia, in 275, he was assassinated by his mutinous troops. Besides the brilliant military achievements by which Aurelianus restored for a time the prestige of the Roman name, he undertook many great public works, the principal of which was the building of new walls for the defence of the city. Aurelius Antoninus, Marcus, (121-180,) Roman emperor, was born at Rome. He succeeded Antoninus Pius in 161, having been early adopted by him and married to his daughter Faustina. Lucius Verus was at once associated with him in the empire. Great part of his reign was occupied with wars, the sad necessity of the times. Verus conducted successfully a war with the Parthians; both emperors encountered the barbarians on the Danube, until the death of Verus in 169, and then Aurelius carried on the war, and by his success obtained the surname of Germanicus. It was in the course of this war that the remarkable defeat of the Quadi took place, 174, which was attributed to miracle, and respecting which so much debate has been held. After an expedition to the East to suppress the revolt of his lieutenant there, he had to renew the war in Germany, but, worn out with incessant exertions, died in Pannonia. Marcus Aurelius was not only one of the wisest and best of the Roman emperors, but one of the noblest and most complete characters of the ancient world. In boyhood he was called "Verissimus" (most true), and this chief of virtues distinguished him through life. He was educated by teachers of the Stoic school, and became himself one of the most eminent members of that school. He acquired the title of the "Philosopher," and has left us in his "Meditations" a most precious record of his moral and religious sentiments and opinions, the rules by which he wished to regulate his conduct, etc., set down in detached notes from time to time, as affairs of state gave him leisure. A new English translation of this book was lately published by Mr. George Long. The persecution of Christians in this reign has been urged as a reproach against Aurelius; but it is not known that he ordered it and it is noteworthy that no persecution took place in Rome or Italy. |