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clothed, and female; 2. advancing or fighting combatants; 3. kneeling, or archers; 4. lying, or wounded. The largest of these figures is Minerva. She is a little above the human size; all the others are rather below this measure. If we consider the style of these works, there prevails in every part of the bodies, the head excepted, a minute imitation of nature, without the least traces of the ideal. Still the imitation is neither poor nor offensive to the rules of art, but a good copy of beautiful nature, with the most perfect knowledge of the bones and muscles. With respect to proportion, these figures are slender, rather small at the hips, and the legs remarkably long. There is much life in the attitudes, though they are not altogether free from a certain stiffness, such as may be observed in the paintings of Giotto, Masaccio, Perugino, &c. The heads seem to belong to an earlier epoch of art; the eyes project, and are lengthened somewhat in the Chinese fashion; the mouth has prominent lips, with well marked edges; the corners in some are turned up; the nose is rather small; the ears finished with the greatest care; the chin is full, and generally too large. They all look alike, and exhibit not the slightest expression of passion; between conquerors and conquered, gods and men, there is not the least difference. The appearance of the hair is not natural, but stiff and conventional. The arms are rather short; the hands natural to deception; not a wrinkle of the skin is forgotten. The legs are well shaped; the knees masterly; the feet elegant; and the toes, which are rather too long, run out parallel. The drapery is close to the body, with folds artificially arranged. Though the style is hard, the execution is tasteful and elaborate. They were apparently made at the same time, but not by the same artist. No one of them has any support, and they are equally finished on all sides. The number of figures originally amounted to 30 at least. They were symmetrically arranged on both fronts of the temple. The Minerva stood in the middle, the standing warriors next, then the archers, and the lying figures last. The temple was not intentionally destroyed, but was probably thrown down by an earthquake. Since Eacus erected this temple to Jupiter Panhellenius, it is probable that the figures represent the battles of the Eacidæ, under the protection of Minerva. The two contests in which the Æacidæ distinguished themselves most gloriously

were the Trojan war and the naval battle of Salamis: in the latter, the images of the acidæ of Homer, Ajax and Telamon, were displayed, and regarded as supernatural protectors. According to another opinion, the group of the eastern front represented the contest around the body of Laomedon, king of Troy; and the one on the western, that around the body of Patroclus. The figures should probably be assigned to a period between the 60th and 80th Olympiads. Pindar calls Ægina the "well-fortified seat of the

acidæ," probably referring to these images, for no one of the sons of Æacus then remained in the country. The marble of which they are wrought is Parian, of the kind usually called Grechetto. The colors perceptible here and there on the figures are vermilion and azure. All the decorations and foliage of the temple, which are generally carved, were painted. The niches of the fronts in which these figures stood were azure, the partitions red, the foliage green and yellow, and even the marble tiles were painted with a kind of flower. We cannot call this system of painting barbarous; we find it even on the Parthenon. Winckelmann was the first who conjectured the existence of an ancient school of art in Ægina, from the accounts of Pausanias. (See Wagner's Bericht über die Eginetische Bildwerke herausgegeben, und mit kunstgeschichtlichen. Anmerkungen begleitet von Schelling, 1817; Wagner's Report on the Æginetan Remains of Art, &c.) Subsequently, K. Otfr. Müller, in his learned and acute work, Eginaticorum Liber, Leipsic, 1820, attempted to determine their relation to the other monuments still extant; and Thiersch to investigate their mythological signification. Against the idea of a peculiar Æginetan style of art, deduced from these marbles, Henry Meyer wrote in Göthe's Kunst und Alterthum, 3 Bd. 1. Heft., and opposed the derivation of Grecian sculpture from the Egyptian as strenuously as Winckelmann advocated it.

EGINHARD. (See Eginhard.)

EGIS; the shield of Jupiter, who is called by Homer the Ægis-bearer. It derives its name from the she-goat Ægis, which suckled the god in Crete, and with the skin of which the shield was covered. Also the shield of Pallas or Minerva, in the middle of which was the head of Medusa. Sometimes the cuirass of Medusa is thus called. In a figurative sense, Æ. denotes protection.

ÆGISTHUS. (See Agamemnon.)

ELFRIC; archbishop of Canterbury in the 10th century. He composed a Latin Saxon vocabulary, which was printed by Somner, under the title of a Glossary, Oxon. 1659. Æ. translated also most of the historical books of the Old Testament, and canons for the regulation of the clergy, which are inserted in Spelman's Councils. He frequently assisted his country in a spirited resistance of the Danish invaders, and died highly venerated, Nov. 1005.

ELIANUS Claudius; a Greek author who lived at Præneste, about A. D. 221. He was a learned sophist, and has left two works, compiled in a pretty good style-a collection of stories and anecdotes, and a natural history of animals. Of the first work, one of the best critical editions was published by Gronovius, at Leyden, 1731, 2 vols. 4to. Later editions have been published by Kühn, Leipsic, 1780, and Coray, Paris, 1805.

EMILIUS, Paulus, surnamed Macedonicus; a noble Roman of the ancient family of the Æmilii. He conquered Perseus, king of Macedon, and on this occasion obtained a triumph, A. U. C. 586; B. C. 168. During the triumph, two of his sons died. He bore the loss like a hero, and thanked the gods that they had chosen them for victims, to avert bad fortune from the Roman people. He was father of the renowned Scipio Africanus the younger. His father, a brave general in the second Punic war, commanded and was slain at the battle of Cannæ, B. C. 216.

ENEAS; son of Anchises and Venus, next to Hector the bravest among the heroes of Troy. He is the hero of the Eneid, in which his life is thus described: In the night of the capture of Troy by the Greeks, Hector warned him in a dream to fly with the images of his gods. E. rushed, notwithstanding this warning, to the fight, but fought in vain. After Priam was slain, he returned, at the command of his mother, to his home, and carried off his father, his child and his household gods; but lost his wife, Creusa, in the confusion of his flight. With 20 vessels, he sailed for Thrace, where he began to build the city Ænos, but, terrified by a miracle, abandoned the attempt. From thence he went to Delos to consult the oracle. Misunderstanding its reply, he went to Crete, from which he was driven by a pestilence. Thence he directed his course to the promontory of Actium, where he celebrated games in honor of Apollo. In Epirus he found

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Helenus and Andromache. Thence he sailed by Italy, passed the straits of Messina, and circumnavigated Sicily to cape Drepanum on the western coast, where Anchises died. A tempest drove him ou the shore of Africa, where Dido received him kindly in Carthage, and desired to detain and marry him. Jupiter, however, mindful of the fates, sent Mercury to Æ. and commanded him to sail for Italy. Whilst the deserted Dido ended her life on the funeral pile, Æneas set sail with his companions, and was cast by a storm on the shore of Sicily, in the dominions of his Trojan friend Acestes, where he celebrated funeral games in honor of his deceased father. The wives of his companions, weary of a seafaring life, and instigated by Juno, set fire to the ships, on which he resolved to depart, leaving behind the women and the sick. In this resolution he was confirmed by Anchises, who admonished him in a dream to descend, by the aid of the sibyl, into the infernal regions, after his arrival in Italy. He built the city Acesta, and then sailed for Italy, where he found the sibyl, near Cumæ, who foretold his destiny, and aided his descent into the lower world. On his return, he embarked again, and reached the eastern shore of the river Tiber, in the country of the Laurentian king Latinus. His daughter, Lavinia, was destined by an oracle to a stranger, but promised by her mother, Amata, to Turnus, king of the Rutuli. This occasioned a war, after the termination of which, Æ. married Lavinia. Thus Virgil relates the history of Æneas in his Æneid, deviating in many particulars from historical truth. His son by Lavinia, Æneas Sylvius, was the ancestor of the kings of Albalonga, and of Romulus and Remus, the founders of the city of Rome. By his first wife, he had a son, Ascanius, who built Albalonga, from whose son, Iulus, the Romans derived the Julian family. For the dif ferent traditions respecting Æneas, and the probability of their late introduction among the Romans, see Niebuhr's Roman History, chapter entitled Eneas and the Trojans in Latium.

NEID. (See Virgil.)

ENESIDEMUS; a sceptical philosopher, born at Gnossus, who flourished a little later than Cicero, and taught scepticism, in Alexandria, to a greater extent than had been done before. He placed truth in the general agreement of men as to the impressions produced by external objects.

ENIGMA; a proposition put in ob

scure, ambiguous, and generally contradictory terms, to puzzle or exercise the wit in finding out its meaning; or an obscure discourse covering some common and well known thing under remote and uncommon terms. Many distinguished poets have written ænigmas in verse. In the East, they have been in vogue, both in ancient and modern times. Every nation has shown a fondness for them in the infancy of its cultivation. A great part of the Egyptian learning is said to have been comprised in ænigmas. In these, too, the ancient oracles often spoke. But the symbols of the ancient religions should not, as is often the case, be confounded with ænigmas. (See Hieroglyphics.) They were in vogue among the Jews.

EOLIAN HARP, or EOLUS' HARP, was introduced into England about the middle of the last century. It is generally a simple box of thin, fibrous wood (often of deal), to which are attached a number of fine catgut strings, sometimes as many as 15, of equal size and length, and consequently unisons, stretched on low bridges at each end. Its length is made to correspond with the size of the window or other aperture in which it is intended to be placed; its width is about five or six inches, its depth two or three. It must be placed with the strings uppermost, under which is a circular opening in the centre as in the belly of the guitar. When the wind blows athwart the strings, it produces the effect of a choir of music in the air, sweetly mingling all the harmonic notes, and swelling or diminishing the sounds according to the strength or weakness of the blast. A more recent Eolian harp, invented by Mr. Crossthwaite, has no sounding-board, but consists merely of a number of strings extended between two deal boards. The invention of the Eolian harp has been generally ascribed to father Kircher, but the fact is, that it was known and used at a much earlier date in the East, as Mr. Richardson has proved (Dissertation on the Manners and Customs of the East).

EOLIANS; a Greek tribe in Thessaly, who took their name from Æolus, son of Hellen, and grandson of Deucalion, spread themselves there, and established several small states. A portion of them went to Asia Minor, and possessed themselves of the ancient Troas, giving the territory the name of Eolis. While united in a confederacy, which held its yearly meetings, with much solemnity, at Cuma, they long continued free; afterwards, they came under

the dominion of the Lydians, then of the Persians. After they had thrown off the Persian yoke, with the help of Athens, they were again subdued by Darius Hystaspes, and, as the Greeks had afforded them repeated aid, the famous Persian war arose, B.C.500. They regained their liberty, but once more came under the Persian dominion, and so remained till the time of Alexander; and at length, after they had been freed by the Romans from the yoke of the Syrian kings, successors of Ålexander in this portion of his vast em pire, they were totally subdued by Sylla, because they had assisted Mithridates. Their language, the Eolian dialect, was one of the three principal dialects of the Greek; their country was one of the most fertile in the world; agriculture and the raising of cattle were their chief occupations.

ÆOLIPILE; a spherical vessel of metal, with a pipe of small aperture, through which the vapor of heated water in the ball passes out with considerable noise. The ancient philosophers thought to explain by this experiment the origin of the winds. In Italy, it is said that the æolipile is used to remedy smoky chimneys.

EOLUS; in Homer, the son of Hippotas, and king of the island Lipara, to the north of Sicily. He is described as pious and just, hospitable to strangers, and the inventor of sails; having, moreover, foretold the course of the winds, with the utmost exactness, from his own observation, he was said to have the power of directing their course. His history was afterwards still more embellished with fiction; the poets made him a son of Jupiter or Neptune, and god of the winds. He is represented as an old man, with a long beard, holding a sceptre in his hand, sitting on a rock, or smiting the rock with his sceptre, at which signal the winds rush out. He is represented, also, standing in a grotto with a muscle in his mouth, and a pair of bellows under his feet.

ÆRA is used synonymously with epoch, or epocha, for a fixed point of time, from which any computation of it is made. Era is more correctly the range or circuit of years within certain points of time, and an epoch is one of those points itself. The word ara has been supposed to be derived from the abridgement, or initial letters, of Annus Erat Augusti, A.ER.A., a mode of computing time in Spain from the year of the conquest of that country by the Romans; and Vossius favors this opinion. Various

eras have been given by chronologists as aids in historical research; and it was a long time before all the Christian world agreed to compute time by the Christian æra. Mariana says that the Spanish æra ceased in the year of Christ 1383, under John I, king of Castile. It continued to be used somewhat longer in Portugal. We must subtract 38 from the number of a year of the Spanish æra to get that of the Christian. The Mahometan æra begins with the flight of the prophet, 16th July, 622. This is called the Hegira (q. v.) The ancient Roman æra began with the building of the city, 750 before Christ. The Jewish æra begins with the creation. AERIAL PERSPECTIVE; that branch of the science of perspective, which treats of the relative diminution of the colors of bodies in proportion to their distance from the eye.

AERIANS; the followers of Aerius, an Arian monk and schismatic, who was exiled from Sebaste, in Armenia, because he denied the difference between the of ficial power of a bishop and a presbyter, pronounced prayers and offerings in behalf of the dead to be ineffectual and injurious, rejected the ordinance of fasting, and declared the practice prevailing among Christians, of sacrificing a lamb on the passover, to be contrary to the spirit of their religion. Though guilty, in fact, only of opposing the abuses of the hierarchy, and the corruptions of superstition, the Aerians were condemned as heretics, and soon disappeared. The Protestants were accused of Aërianism by the Catholics, because they maintained propositions of a similar character.

AERODYNAMICS; a branch of aerology, or the higher mechanics, which treats of the powers and motion of elastic fluids. Aerodynamics are often explained in connexion with hydrodynamics, a branch of hydrology. (Šee Mechanics.)

AEROLITES; stones or masses that descend from the air. (See Meteoric Stones.) AERONAUTICS; the art of sailing in or navigating the air. The idea of inventing a machine, which should enable us to rise into the air, appears to have occupied the human mind even in ancient times, but was never realized till the last century. Henry Cavendish, having discovered, about 1766, the great levity of inflammable air or hydrogen gas, Dr. Black, of Edinburgh, was led to the idea that a thin bladder, filled with this gas, must ascend into the air. Cavallo made the requisite experiments in 1782, and found that a bladder was too heavy, and paper

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not air tight. Soap bubbles, on the contrary, which he filled with inflammable air, rose to the ceiling of the room, where they burst.-In the same year, the brothers Stephen and Joseph Montgolfier constructed a machine which ascended by its own power. In Nov. 1782, the elder Montgolfier succeeded, at Avignon, in causing a large bag of fine silk, in the shape of a parallelopiped, and containing 40 cubic feet, to mount rapidly upwards to the ceiling of a chamber, and afterwards, in a garden, to the height of 36 feet, by heating it in the inside with burning paper. The two brothers soon afterwards repeated the experiment at Annonay, where the parallelopiped ascended in the open air 70 feet. A larger machine, containing 650 cubic feet, rose with equal success.-They now resolved to make the experiment on a large scale, and prepared a machine of linen, lined with paper, which was 117 feet in circumference, weighed 430 pounds, and carried more than 400 pounds of ballast. This they sent up, June 5, 1783, at Annonay. It rose in ten minutes to a height of 6000 feet, and fell 7668 feet from the place of ascension. The method used to cause it to ascend was, to kindle a straw fire under the aperture of the machine, in which they threw, from time to time, chopped wool. But, though the desired effect was produced, they had no clear nor correct idea of the cause. They did not attribute the ascension of the vessel to the rarefaction of the air enclosed in it by the operation of the heat, but to a peculiar gas, which they supposed to be developed by the burning of the straw and wool. The error of this opinion was not discovered till a later period.These experiments roused the attention of all the philosophers of Paris. It occurred to some of them, that the same effect might be produced by inflammable air.

M. Charles, professor of natural philosophy, filled a ball of lutestring, 12 feet in diameter, and coated with a varnish of gum-elastic, with such gas. It weighed 25 pounds, rose 3123 feet in two minutes, disappeared in the clouds, and descended to the earth, after three quarters of an hour, at the village of Gonesse, about 15 miles from Paris. Thus we see two original kinds of balloons; those filled with heated air, and those filled with inflammable air.-Meantime, Montgolfier had gone to Paris, and found an assistant in Pilatre de Rozier, the superintendent of the royal museum. They completed, together, in Oct. 1783, a new machine,

74 feet in height and 48 in breadth, in which Rozier ventured for the first time to ascend, though only 50 feet. The balloon was from caution fastened by cords, and soon drawn down. Eventually, the machine, being suffered to move freely, took an oblique course, and at length sunk down gradually about 100 feet from its starting place. By this the world was convinced that a balloon might, with proper management, carry a man through the air; and the first aerial expedition was determined on. Nov. 21, 1783, Pilatre de Rozier and the marquis d' Arlandes ascended from the castle la Muette, in the presence of an innumerable multitude, with a machine containing 6000 cubic feet. The balloon, after having attained a considerable height, came down, in 25 minutes, about 9000 yards from la Muette. But the daring aëronauts had been exposed to considerable danger. The balloon was agitated very violently several times; the fire had burnt holes in it; the place on which they stood was injured, and some cords broken. They perceived that it was necessary to descend without delay; but when they were on the surface of the earth, new difficulties presented themselves. The weak coal fire no longer supported the linen balloon, the whole of which fell into the flame. Rozier, who had not yet succeeded in descending, just escaped being burnt.-M. Charles, who had joined with M. Robert, soon after informed the public that they would ascend in a balloon filled with inflammable air. To defray the necessary expense of 10,000 livres, he opened a subscription. The balloon was spherical, 26 feet in diameter, and consisted of silk coated with a varnish of gum-elastic. The car for the aeronauts was attached to several cords, which were fastened to a net, drawn over the upper part of the balloon. A valve was constructed above, which could be opened from the car, by means of cords, and shut by a spring. This served to afford an outlet to the inflammable air, if they wished to descend, or found it necessary to diminish it. The filling lasted several days; and, Dec. 1, the voyage was commenced from the gardens of the Tuileries. The balloon quickly rose to a height of 1800 feet, and disappeared from the eyes of the spectators. The aeronauts diligently observed the barometer, which never stood at less than 26°, threw out gradually the ballast they had taken in to keep the balloon steady, and descended safely at Nesle. But as soon as Robert stepped out, and it

was thus lightened of 130 pounds, it rose again with great rapidity about 9000 feet. It expanded itself with such force, that it must have been torn to pieces, had not Charles, with much presence of mind, opened the valve to accommodate the quantity of gas to the rarity of the surrounding atmosphere. After the lapse of half an hour, the balloon sunk down on a plain, about three miles from the place of its second ascent.-These successful aërial voyages were soon followed by others. Blanchard had already ascended several times, when he determined to cross the channel between England and France, which is about 23 miles wide, in a balloon filled with inflammable air. He succeeded in this bold attempt, Jan. 7, 1785, accompanied by an American gentleman, Dr. Jeffries. About one o'clock, they left the English coast, and at half past two, were on the French. Pilatre de Rozier, mentioned before as the first aeronaut, attempted, June 14, 1785, in company with Mr. Romain, to pass from the French to the English side; but the attempt was unsuccessful, and the adventurers lost their lives. M. de Rozier had on this occasion united the two kinds of balloons; under one, filled with inflammable air, which did not alone possess sufficient elevating power, was a second, filled by means of a coal fire under it. Rozier had chosen this combination, hoping to unite the advantages of both kinds. By means of the lower balloon, he intended to rise and sink at pleasure, which is not possible with inflammable air; for a balloon filled with this, when once sunk to the earth, cannot rise again with the same weight, without being filled anew; while, on the contrary, by increasing or diminishing the fire under a balloon filled with heated air, it can be made to rise and fall alternately. But this experiment caused the death of the projectors. Probably the coals, which were only in a glowing state near the surface of the ground, were suddenly kindled to a light flame as the balloon rose, and set it on fire. The whole machine was soon in flames, and the two aeronauts were precipitated from on high. The condition of their mangled bodies confirms the conjecture that they were killed by the explosion of the gas.-This unhappy accident did not deter others; on the contrary, the experiments were by degrees repeated in other countries. However important this invention may be, it has as yet led to no considerable results. Its use has hitherto been confined to obser