WOBO: Search for words and phrases in the texts here...

, a presbyter of Alexandria, the author of thirty books on physic in the Syriac tongue, which he called the Pandects. They were supposed to be written before 620, and were translated out of the Syriac into Arabic, by Maserjawalh, a Syrian Jew, and a physician in the reign of the calif Merwan, about A. D. 683; for then the Arabians began to cultivate the sciences and to study physic. In these he has clearly described the small-pox, and the measles, with their pathognomonic symptoms, and is the first author that mentions those two remarkable diseases, which probably first appeared and were taken notice of at Alexandria in Egypt, soon after the Arabians made themselves masters of that city, in A. D. 640, in the reign, of Omar Ebnol Chatab, the second successor to Mohammed. But both those original Pandects, and their translation, are now lost; and we have nothing of them remaining, but what Mohammed Rhazis collected from them, and has left us in his Continens; so that we have no certain account where those two diseases first appeared; but it is most probable that it was in Arabia Fcelix, and that they were brought from thence to Alexandria by the Arabians, when they took that city.

The age and country of Abydenus are uncertain, the name Abydos being common to four cities. As Berosus, however, finished his work at Alexandria, under Ptolemy Philadelphia, it may be probable that our Abydenus, who followed him, was an Egyptian priest belonging to the temple of Osiris at Abydos, and that he flourished under the first Ptolemys, while the love of letters was encouraged at the court of Alexandria. Some writers have supposed that he was quoted by Suidas, because he mentions Paloephatus-Abydenus, a historian. This person, however, whose proper name was Palsephatus, was the disciple and friend of Aristotle, and may have written the histories of Cyprus, Delos, and Athens, which Suiclas attributes to him, after Philo of Heraclea, and Theodore of Ilium; but the history of Arabia, which Suidas also attributes to him, from the nature of the' subject, must belong to the author of the history of the Assyrians and Chaldeans, or perhaps been a different title to the same work. Such is the opinion of Malte-Bruu; but Vossius has ventured on another conjecture, although without giving his authority.

, patriarch of Constantinople, succeeded Gennadius in that see in the year 471. He maintained that his see ought to have the pre-eminence over those of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem; and, to compass this design, prevailed on the Emperor Leo to restore and confirm all the privileges which the churches once enjoyed, and especially that of Constantinople. He was afterwards excommunicated by pope Felix III.; and in return he erased the pope’s name out of the sacred diptics, or the list of those bishops whose names were mentioned in the public prayers: but, being supported by the emperor of the east, he enjoyed his bishoprick quietly till his death, which happened in the year 488. There are two letters of his extant in vol. 4 of the Councils; one to Peter the Fuller, or Petrus Fullo, in Gr. and Lat. the other to pope Simplicius, in Lat. respecting 1 the state of the church of Alexandria. Cave entertains a higher opinion of Acacius, than the Editors of the General Dictionary; but the account in the latter is the more copious.

, bishop of Bercea in Syria, in the fourth and beginning of the fifth century, was at the council of Constantinople, held in the year 381, in which were present 150 bishops. He was the friend of Epiphanius Flavianus, and the enemy of John Chrysostom, bishop of Constantinople, whom he caused to be deposed. He also, when 110 years of age, wrote to the emperor Theodosius the younger, to advise him to confirm the sentence pronounced against Cyril, bishop of Alexandria, who had been deposed in a conventicle of schismatics. Notwithstanding these rigorous proceedings, Theodoret assures us that he was eminent both for his wisdom and the sanctity of his life. He died about the year 432.

It was at Anchyala, a town of Cilicia, that he was shewn a monument of Sardanapalus, with this inscription “Sardanapalus built Anchyala and Tarsus in a day Passenger, eat, drink, and enjoy thyself all else is nothing.” This, probably, moved his contempt very strongly, when he compared such petty acquisitions to what he projected. From Cilicia he marched forwards to Phoenicia, which all surrendered to him, except Tyre; and it cost him a siege of seven months to reduce this city. The vexation of Alexander, atbeing unseasonably detained by this obstinacy of the Tyrians, occasioned a vast destruction and carnage; and the cruelty he exercised here is among the deepest stains on his character. After besieging and taking Gaza, he went to Jerusalem, where he was received by the high priest; and, making many presents to the Jews, sacrificed in their temple. He told Jadduas (for that was the priest’s name), that he had seen in Macedonia a god, in appearance exactly resembling him, who had exhorted him to this expedition against the Persians, and given him the firmest assurance of success. Afterwards, entering Ægypt, he went to the oracle of Jupiter Ammon, and upon his return built the city of Alexandria. It was now that he took it into his head to assume divinity, and to pretend himself the son of the said Jupiter Ammon, for which his mother Olympias would sometimes rally him, not unpleasantly, “Pray,” she would say, “cease to be called the son of Jupiter: thou wilt certainly embroil me in quarrels with Juno.” Policy, however, was at the bottom of this: it was impossible that any such belief should be really rooted in his breast, but he found by experience that this opinion inclined the barbarous nations to submit to him; and therefore he was content to pass for a god, and to admit, as he did, of divine adoration. So far, indeed, was he from believing this of himself, that he used among his friends to make a jest of it. Thus, afterwards, when he was bleeding from a wound he had received, “See here,” says he, “this is your true genuine blood, and not that ixpp, or thin fine liquor, which issues, according to Homer, from the wounds of the immortals.” Nay, even his friends sometimes made free with this opinion, which shews that he did not hold it sacred: for once, when it thundered horridly loud, and somewhat terrified the company, the philosopher Anaxarchus, who was present, said to Alexander, “And when wilt thou, son of Jupiter, do the like” “Oh,” said Alexander, “I would not frighten my friends.”

, bishop of Alexandria, succeeded St. Achillas in the year 313. Arius, who had pretensions to this see, resented the preference given to Alexander by attacking his opinions, which were strictly orthodox, and substituting his own, which were at that time new: The bishop at first opposed him only by mild exhortations and persuasions; but, being unable to prevail, he cited him before an assembly or synod of the clergy at Alexandria, and on his refusing to recant his errors, excommunicated him and his followers. This sentence was confirmed by above an hundred bishops in the council of Alexandria, in the year 320; and Alexander signified the same by a circular letter to pope Sylvester, and all the catholic bishops; and his conduct was approved by Osius., who had been employed by the emperor Constantine to inquire into the matter. Alexander afterwards assisted at the council of Nice, to which he was accompanied by St. Athanasius, then only a deacon, and died Feb. 26, 326, appointing Athanasius for his successor. Of his numerous epistles, written against the Arian heresy, two only remain; one, the circular letter already mentioned, in Socrates, lib. I.e. 6; and in Gelasius Cyzicus’ history of the council of Nice, lib. 2. c. 3. The other, addressed to Alexander of Byzantium, is in Theodoret, lib. I. c. 4. In the Bibl. Vindob. Cod. Theol. is a very short letter of his to the presbyters and deacons of Alexandria; this is also in Cotelerius: and he wrote an epistle against the Arians, of which are two fragments in S. Maximus Opus. Theol. et Polem. vol. II. 152, 155.

, bishop of Cappadocia, and afterwards of Jerusalem, in the early part of the third century, was the scholar of Pantaenus and Clement of Alexandria, to whom he acknowledges his obligations. About the year 204, when bishop of Cappadocia, he suffered imprisonment for the profession of the Christian faith, and remained in prison for some years, under the reign of Severus. His faithfulness and constancy in suffering induced the church at Jerusalem, after his release from prison, to appoint him colleague to their bishop Narcissus, who was now an hundred and sixteen years old. The account which Jerom and Eusebius give of his election, and of his arrival, being supernaturally revealed to Narcissus and the clergy, will not now probably obtain belief; but it is certain that he was gladly welcomed thither, and afterwards succeeded Narcissus in the see, over which he presided for the long space of forty years, with zeal, approbation, and success, in his ministry. When Decius revived the persecution of the Christians, Alexander was again cast into prison, where, from ill usage or old age, he died about the year 25 1. None of his writings remain, except some fragments of letters in Eusebius, who also informs us that Alexander founded a library in Jerusalem into which he collected all the Christian epistles and documents that could be procured; and as this was extant in the time of Eusebius, the latter acknowledges his obligations to it in the compilation of his history.

, a philosopher of Alexandria, flourished in the fifth century, and was contemporary with Jamblicus. He was one of the most subtle dialecticians of his time, was much followed, and drew away the hearers of Jamblicus. This occasioned some conferences between them, but no animosity, as Jamblicus wrote his life, in which he praised his virtue and steadiness of mind. Alypius died very old, in the city of Alexandria. In stature he was so remarkably diminutive as to be called a dwarf.

, deacon of Alexandria, the intimate friend and admirer of Origen, was a man of great learning and piety, and worthy of being recorded, although his history has not in all particulars been exactly ascertained. Eusebius says that he followed the Valentinian heresy, but was brought over to orthodoxy by the preaching of Origen. St. Jerome says that he was at first a Marcionite, but being convinced of his error by Origen, he became a deacon of the church, and had the honour of suffering for Christ, as a confessor. To him, he adds, and to Protoctetus, Origen inscribed his book on Martyrdom, and dedicated to him many other volumes which were published at his desire and expence. Ambrose was a man of a good family, and of considerable wit, as his letters to Origen show. He died before Origen, and is blamed by many, because, though he was rich, he did not at his death remember his friend, who was not only poor, but in his old age.

Of these two accounts of Ambrose’s first opinions, Dr. Lardner prefers that of Eusebius, and thinks that Ambrose’s conversion from the heresy of Valentinus, took place about the year 212. Eusebius says nothing of his being a deacon of the church of Alexandria, which we have named him, and Dr. Lardner is inclined to think he held that office in the church of Csesarea. Origen, in a letter of which a fragment only remains, calls him “a man indeed devoted to God,” and speaks of his earnest desire to understand the scriptures, and of his great application to them. He had a wife, named Marcella, by whom he had several children; she is commended by Origen as a true Christian, and faithful wife. Eusebius also informs us, that Ambrose was the person who excited Origen to write commentaries upon the scriptures, and that not only by words and entreaties, but by supplies of all things necessary, furnishing him with amanuenses, whom he paid liberally. With respect to his bequeathing nothing to Origen, Tillemont thinks that Ambrose knew his friend’s mind, and that Origen chose to be poor, and to live in a dependence on providence. St. Jerome speaks of Ambrose’s “Epistles;” but there are none of them extant. It appears by the best conjectures, that he lived nearly to the year 250.

, the elder, a grammarian and divine, was a native of Alexandria, and flourished about the middie of the fourth century. When, under the reign of Julian, the Christians were prohibited the use of the Greek and Roman classics in their schools, he drew up a grammar in a Christian form, and translated the books of Moses, and the whole history of the Hebrews down to the time of Saul, in Greek heroic verse, divided, in imitation of Homer, into twenty-four books. He translated other parts of the Old Testament into verse, which Sozomen has praised, but of which it is now impossible to form a judgment. He was the father of the Apollinarius in the next article.

Apollonius, not meeting at first with that encouragement which he expected at Alexandria, removed to Rhodes, where he set up a school for rhetoric, and gave lectures for a considerable time; thence acquiring the name of Rhodius. Here it was that he corrected and put the finishing hand to his Argonautics, which being publicly recited, met with universal applause, and the author was complimented with the freedom of the city. He is said to have written a book “Concerning Archilochus,” a treatise “Of the origin of Alexandria,” “Cnidos,” and other works. He published his poem of the Argonautics at Alexandria, upon his return thither, when sent for by Ptolemy Euergetes, to succeed Eratosthenes as keeper of the" public library. It is supposed that he died in this office, and that he was buried in the same tomb with his master Callimachus. The ancient Scholia upon his Argonautics are still extant: they are thought to be written by Tarrhscus, Theon, and others.

, was a native of Alexandria, and flourished about the year 138 B.C. He passed his life at Bruchium, a quarter of the city where several men of learning were lodged and maintained at the expence of the kings of Kgypt, but some accounts say that he lived in great poverty. He was the first who reduced grammar to a system, and wrote many works on the subject, which are not now extant, but of which Priscian availed himself in writing his Latin grammar. We have, however, a treatise on “Syntax,” by Apollonius, which has been often printed. The best edition is that of Frederic Sylburgius, with the Latin translation and notes of Portus, Franc fort, 1590, 4to. Jn Ileitzius’s edition of Mattaire’s Greek Dialects, 1738, and in SturtrAus’s edition, 1807, are several extracts from Apollonius’s grammar, which Vossius copied from a ms. in the royal library of Paris, but this manu script is more full, and deserves printing at large. Another work, entirled “Historian Mirabiles,” Gr. and Lat. of which Meursius published the best edition, Leyden, 1620, 4to, is attributed to Apollonius, but upon doubtful authority. Apollonius was the father of Heroaian, the grammarian.

, the founder of the sect of Arians, in the fourth century, was a presbyter, probably a native of Alexandria, and officiated in a church in that city, although it is not certainly known in what capacity. It was, here, however, that he first declared those doctrines which afterwards rendered his name so celebrated, and which have descended to our own times. In an assembly of the presbyters of Alexandria, the bishop of that city, Alexander, in a speech on the subject of the Trinity, maintained, among other points, that the Son was not only of the same eminence and dignity, but also of the same essence with the father. This assertion was opposed by Arius, on account, as he pretended, of its affinity with the Sabellian errors, which had been condemned by the church, and he took this opportunity to assert that the Son was totally and essentially distinct from the Father; that he was the first and noblest of those beings whom God the Father had created out of nothing, the instrument by whose subordinate operation the Almighty Father formed the universe, and therefore inferior to the Father both in nature and dignity. What his opinion was concerning the Holy Ghost, or the other doctrines connected with the orthodox belief, is not known. Alexander, however, in two councils assembled at Alexandria, accused him of impiety, and caused him to be expelled from the communion of the church. This was in the year 319, or 320. The sentence appears to have extended to expulsion from the city, upon which he retired to Palestine, and wrote several letters to the most eminent men of the times, in favour of his doctrine, and exhibiting himself as a martyr for truth. Constantine, the emperor, at first looked upon this controversy as of trivial import, and addressed a letter to the contending parties, in which he advised them not to injure the church by their particular opinions, but, finding this of no avail, and observing the increase of the followers of Arius, in the year 325, he assembled the famous council of Nice in Bithynia, in which the deputies of the church universal were summoned to put an end to this controversy. Here, after much debate, the doctrine of Arius was condemned, and himself banished among the Illyrians. He and his adherents received also the opprobrious name of Porphyrians, his books were ordered to be burnt, and whoever concealed any of them were to be put to death. This severity, however, rather repressed than abolished the tenets, or lessened the zeal of Arius and his friends, who regained their consequence by a trick which marks the unsettled state of public opinion, and the wavering character of the emperor Constantine. A few years after the council of Nice, a certain Arian priest, who had been recommended to the emperor in the dying words of his sister Constantia, found means to persuade Constantine, that the condemnation of Arius was utterly unjust, and was rather owing to the malice of his enemies, than to their zeal for the truth. In consequence of this, the emperor recalled him from banishment, about the year 328, repealed the laws that had been enacted against him, and permitted his chief protector, Eusebius of Nicomedia, and his vindictive faction, to vex and oppress the partisans of the Nicene council in various ways. Athanasius, who was now become bishop of Alexandria, was one of those who suffered most from the violent measures of the Arian party, but invincibly firm in his principles, and deaf to the most powerful solicitations and entreaties, he refused to restore Arius to his former rank and office. On this account he was deposed by the council held at Tyre in the year 335, and was afterwards banished into Gaul, while Arius and his followers were, with great solemnity, reinstated in their privileges, and received into the communion of the church. The people of Alexandria, however, unmoved by these proceedings in favour of Arius, persisted in refusing him a place among their presbyters; on which the emperor invited him to Constantinople in the year 336, and ordered Alexander, the bishop of that city, to admit him to his communion; but before this order could be carried into execution, Arius died suddenly as he was easing nature. As this event happened on the day appointed for his admission, his friends gave out that he was poisoned; and his enemies, that he died by the just, judgment of God. On the latter report, we need make no remark, but the accounts of his death by no means favour the belief that he was poisoned. It is said that as he was Walking, he felt a necessity for retiring to ease nature, and that in the operation his entrails fell out, but no poison could have produced an effect so violent without having produced other and previous effects on the stomach: of his having been so affected, however, or making any complaint, we hear nothing, and as he was proceeding to the solemn act of being reinstated in the church, it is not probable that he felt any indisposition.

With respect to his personal character, he is said to have been grave and serious, yet affable and courteous, with good natural parts, and no inconsiderable share of secular learning of all sorts; he was particularly distinguished by his skill in logic, or the art of disputing. Dr. Lardner, whom we follow in this part of the history of Arius, says that he had at least the outward appearance of piety, and that from all the authorities he was able to recollect, his conduct was unblameable, excepting what relates to his zeal for maintaining his doctrines, and that he is charged with dissembling his real sentiments, upon some occasions, when pressed hard by the prevailing power of his adversaries. His character, however, as may be readily supposed, has been very differently represented by his contemporaries, and will be raised or lowered by succeeding writers as they are more or less disposed to represent his doctrines as truth or error. His works do not appear to have been voluminous, though it is probable he wrote many letters; we have still an epistle written by him to Eusebius of Nicomedia, and another to Alexander, bishop of Alexandria, between whom and him the controversy first arose. He also wrote several little poems, fitted for the use of the common people, in order to promote his peculiar opinions. There is a book called Thalia attributed to him by Athanasius, who speaks of it as being written with softness, pleasantry, or buffoonery.

, an eminent father of the Christian church, of the fourth century, was born at Alexandria, of heathen parents. He was noticed, when very young, by Alexander, bishop of that see, who took care to have him educated in all good learning, and when of age, ordained him deacon. He took him in his company when he attended the council of Nice, where Athanasius distinguished himself as an able and zealous opposer of the Arians. Soon after the dissolution of the council, Alexander died, and Athanasius was appointed to succeed him in the government of the church of Alexandria. This was in the year 326, when Athanasius is supposed to have been about twenty-eight years of age.

After the death of the emperor, he was recalled by his successor Constantine the younger, and restored to his see, and received by his people with great joy. This emperor’s reign was short, and his enemies soon found means to draw down upon him the displeasure of Constantius so that, being terrified with his threats, he sought his safety by flight, and by hiding himself in a secret and obscure place. Julius, at this time bishop of Rome, being greatly affected with the injurious treatment of Athanasius, sought him out in his obscurity, and took him under his protection. He summoned a general council at Sardis, where the Nicene creed was ratified, and where it was determined, that Athanasius, with some others, should be restored to their churches. This decree the emperor shewed great unwillingness to comply with, till he was influenced by the warm interposition of his brother in the west for at this time the empire was divided between the two surviving brothers. Being thus prevailed upon, or rather indeed constrained by necessity, he wrote several letters with his own hand, which are still extant, to Athanasius, to invite him to Constantinople, and to assure him of a safe conduct. He restored him, by an edict, to his bishopric wrote letters both to the clergy and laity of Alexandria to give him a welcome reception and commanded that such acts as were recorded against him in their courts and synods, should be erased.

Photius greatly extols Athanasius as an elegant, clear, and excellent writer. It is controverted among learned men, whether Athanasius composed the creed commonly received under his name. Baronius is of opinion that it was composed by Athanasius when he was at Rome, and offered to pope Julius as a confession of his faith which circumstance is not at all likely, for Julius never questioned his faith. However, a great many learned men have ascribed it to Athanasius as cardinal Bona, Petavius, Bellarmine, and Rivet, with many others of both communions. Scultetus leaves the matter in doubt; but the best and latest critics- make no question but that it is to be ascribed to a Latin author, Vigilius Tapsensis, an African bishop, who lived in the latter end of the fifth century, in the time of the Vandalic Arian persecution. Vossius and Quesnel have written particular dissertations in favour of this opinion. Their arguments are, 1. Because this creed is wanting in almost all the manuscripts of Athanasius’ s works. 2. Because the style and contexture of it do not bespeak a Greek but a Latin author. 3. Because neither Cyril of Alexandria, nor the council of E^phesus, nor pope Leo, nor the council of Chalcedon, have ever mentioned it in all that they say against the Nestorians or Eutychians. 4. Because this Vigilms Tapsensis is known to have published others of his writings under the borrowed name of Athanasius, with which this creed is commonly joined. These reasons have persuaded Pearson, Usher, Cave, and Dupin, critics of the first rank, to come into the opinion, that this creed was not composed by Athanasius, but by a later and a Latin writer.

, patriarch of Constantinople in the beginning of the fifth century, was born at Sebastia, now Soustia, a city of Armenia. He was first educated by the Macedonian monks in the principles of their sect, but when arrived at riper years, he embraced the faith of the Catholic church. In the year 406, being then a priest, he was chosen to succeed St. Chrysostom, who had been deprived of the see of Constantinople, but met with much obstruction from the friends of Chrysostom, and from all the bishops of the East, who considered Chrysostom as unjustly deprived, and refused to communicate with the new patriarch. Atticus, upon this, procured an edict from the emperor to compel them, but finding this produced no other effect than schism and confusion, after the death of Chrysostom he ordered his name to be put in the Diptychs, or ecclesiastical tables, in which were inserted the names of persons who had died in the peace and communion of the church, and those names were read at the altar during divine service. He also wrote to St. Cyril, bishop of Alexandria, earnestly intreating him to do the same, but Cyril answered that he should by that step appear to condemn those who had deposed Chrysostom. Both these letters are extant in Nicephorus Calixtus’s Ecclesiastical History. There is another letter of his extant to Calliopius, by which he appears to have been a man of moderate principles towards those who differed from him in opinion. There are likewise some fragments of a homily on the birth of Christ, in the general collection of the Councils, and a fragment of a letter of his to Eupsychius, quoted by Theodoret. Writers differ much in their estimate of his general character and learning.

, a Latin poet, flourished under Theodosius the elder, in the fifth century. We have by him a translation in verse of the Phænomena of Aratus, Venice, 1488, 4to, and Madrid, 1634, 4 to of the description of the Earth by Dionysius of Alexandria; and of some fables of Æsop, far inferior to those of Phædrus for purity and elegance of diction. His translation of Æsop in elegiac verses is to be found in the Phaedrus of Paris, 1747, 12mo, and the Variorum edition of Amsterdam, 1731, in 8vo. He also turned all the books of Livy into iambic verse: a very strange undertaking, of which it is not easy to conceive the use at that time, although at present it may supply in part what is wanting of that historian.

Cardinal de Laurea drew up an index to this work for his own private use, which he afterwards left to the public “Index alphabeticus rerum et locorum omnium memorabilium ad Annales Cardinalis Baronii. Opus posthumum Rev. Cardinalis de Laurea,” Rome, 1694, in 4to. This is a posthumous work, for being put to the press during the author’s life, the impression was not finished till after his death, which happened November the 30th, 1693. These annals were begun to be translated into various languages, but probably owing to the vast expense, none of the translators proceeded farther than the iirst volume. Several abridgments, however, have been published. The most extensive is that of Henry Spondanus, Paris, 1612, 1622, 1630, 1639, and often afterwards. They were also abridged byAurelio, Bzovius, Bisciola, Scogli, Sartorius, Schuhingius, &c. &c. and in various languages. The continuators are also numerous. Bzovius published a continuation from 1199 to 1572, Rome, 9 vols. fol. 1616 1672, which, however, are rather the annals of the Dominicans than of the church. Raynaldns’ continuation from 1199 to 1567, also 9 vols. folio, is said to be worse than the former; the best is Spondanus, extending to the year 1639, and printed at Paris in that year, 2 vols. folio. The great fame of Baroaius excited the attention of many Protestant writers, who criticised his work with acuteness. Among the best of these is Isaac Casaubon, in his “Exercitationes contra Baronium,” London, 1614, folio, but perhaps Dupin’s opinion, which we have quoted, is sufficient to point out the leading errors of the work. Besides these annals, Baronius wrote, 1. “Marty rologium Romanum restitutum,” 1586, folio. These notes on the Roman martyrology, for these are all which Baronius contributed, were intended as a prelude to his Annals. This work was often reprinted, and as often corrected by the author, but it is still erroneous in many points. 2. “Tractatus de Monarchia Siciliae,” Paris, 1609, 8vo. 3. “Parsenesis ad RempublicamVenetam,” Rome, 1606, 4to, written on occasion of the interdict of Venice. 4. “Contra ser. Rempublicam Venetam Votum,” not published by Baronius, but containing his opinion in the consistory. 5. “Historica relatio de Legatione Ecelesise Alexanclrinse ad Apostolicam sedem,” 1598, 8vo, respecting the re-union of the church of Alexandria to the see of Home, which did not last long. And some other works of less reputation.

, a learned divine of the seventeenth century, was born in 1607, in the island of Jersey, according to Wood, which an annotator on the Biog. Britannica contradicts without informing us of the place of his nativity. Grey, in his ms notes, says he was born at Rouen, in Normandy, but quotes no authority, nor do we know in what school or university he received his education. For some time, he was master of the college or free-school at Guernsey, and became chaplain to Thomas Morton bishop of Durham, who gave him the rectory of Stanhope, and the vicarage of EgglesclifF, b.oth in the county of Durham. In July 1640, he had the degree of doctor of divinity conferred upon him at Cambridge, by mandate; and was incorporated in the same at Oxford, the November following, about which time he was made chaplain in ordinary to king Charles I.; Dec. 12, 1643, he was installed into the seventh prebend of Durham, to which he was collated by his generous patron bishop Morton. The next year, August 24, he was also collated to the archdeaconry of Northumberland, with the rectory of Howiek annexed. But he did not long enjoy these great preferments, as in the beginning of the civil wars, being sequestered and plundered, he repaired to king Charles at Oxford, before whom, and his parliament, he frequently preached. In 1646, he had a licence granted him under the public seal of the university, to preach the word of God throughout England. Upon the surrender of the Oxford garrison to the parliament, he resolved with all the zeal of a missionary to propagate the doctrine of the EngJish church in the East, among the Greeks, Arabians, &c. Leaving therefore his family in England, he went first to Zante, an island near the Morea, where he made some stay; and had good success in spreading among the Greek inhabitants the doctrine of the English church, the substance of which he imparted to several of them, in a vulgar Greek translation of our church-catechism. The success of this attempt was so remarkable, that it drew persecution upon him from the Latins, as they are called, or those members of the Romish church, throughout the East, who perform their service in Latin. On this he went into the Morea, where the metropolitan of Achaia prevailed upon him to preach twice in Greek, at a meeting of some of his bishops and clergy, which was well received. At his departure, he left with him a copy of the catechism above mentioned. From thence, after he had passed through Apulia, Naples, and Sicily again (in which last, at Messina, he officiated for some weeks on board a ship) he embarked for Syria; and, after some months stay at Aleppo, where he had frequent conversation with the patriarch of Antioch, then resident there, he left a copy of our church-catechism, translated into Arabic, the native language of that place. From Aleppo he went in 1652 to Jerusalem, and so travelled over all Palestine. At Jerusalem he received much honour, both from the Greek Christians and Latins. The Greek patriarch (the better to express his desire of communion with the church of England, declared by the doctor to him) gave him his bull, or patriarchal seal, in a blank, which is their way of credence, and shewed him other instances of respect, while the Latins received him courteously into their convent, though he did openly profess himself a priest of the church of England. After some disputes about the validity of our English ordinations, they procured him entrance into the temple of the sepulchre, at the rate of a priest, that is half of the sum paid by a layman; and, at his departure from Jerusalem, the pope’s vicar gave him his diploma in parchment, under his own hand and public seal, styling him, a priest of the church of England, and doctor of divinity, which title occasioned some surprise, especially to the French ambassador at Constantinople. Returning to Aleppo, he passed over the Euphrates and went into Mesopotamia, where he intended to send the church-catechism in Turkish, to some of their bishops, who were mostly Armenians. This Turkish translation was procured by the care of sir Thomas Bendyshe, the English ambassador at Constantinople. After his return from Mesopotamia, he wintered at Aleppo, where he received several courtesies from the consul, Mr. Henry Riley. In the beginning of 1653, he departed from Aleppo, and came to Constantinople by land, being six hundred miles, without any person with him, that could speak any of the European languages. Yet, by the help of some Arabic he had picked up at Aleppo, he performed that journey in the company of twenty Turks, who used him courteously, because he acted as physician to them and their friends: a study (as he says) to which the iniquity of the times and the opportunity of Padua drove him. After his arrival at Constantinople, the French Protestants there desired him to be their minister, and though he declared to them his resolution to officiate according to the English liturgy (a translation whereof, for want of a printed copy, cost him no little labour) yet they orderly submitted to it, and promised to settle on him, in three responsible men’s hands, a competent stipend: and all this, as they told him, with the express consent of the French ambassador, but still under the roof and protection of the English ambassador. Before he quitted the Eastern parts, he intended to pass into Egypt, in order to take a survey of the churches of the Cophties, and confer with the patriarch of Alexandria, as he had done already with the other three patriarchs, partly to acquire the knowledge of those churches, and partly to publish and give them a true notion of the church of England; but whether he accomplished his design, is not certain. He went next into Transilvania, where he was entertained for seven years by George Ragotzi the Second, prince of that country; who honoured him with the divinity-chair in his new founded university of Alba Julia (or Weissenburg) and endowed him, though a mere stranger to him, with a very ample salary. During his travels he collated the several confessions of faith of the different sorts of Christians, Greeks, Armenians, Jacobites, Maronites, &c. which he kept by him in their own languages. His constant design and endeavour, whilst he remained in the East, was, to persuade the Christians of the several denominations there, to a canonical reformation of some errors; and to dispose and incline them to a communion or unity with the church of England, but his pious intentions were afterwards defeated by the artifices of court of France. Upon the restoration of king Charles II. Dr. Easier was recalled by his majesty to England, in a letter written to prince Ragotzi. But this unfortunate prince dying 'soon after, of the wounds he received in a battle with the Turks at Gyala, the care of his solemn obsequies was committed to the doctor by his relict, princess Sophia, and he was detained a year longer from England. At length returning in 1661 9 he was restored to his preferments and dignities; and made chaplain in ordinary to king Charles II. After quietly enjoying his large revenues for several years, he died on the 12th of Oct. 1676, in the 69th year of his age-, and was buried in the yard belonging to the cathedral of Durham, where a tomb was erected over his grave, with an inscription. His character appears to have been that of a learned, active, and industrious man; a zealous supporter of the church of England; and a loyal subject. His son, John Basire, esq. who had been receiver general for the four western counties, died ou the 2d of June 1722, in the 77th year of his age.

, a member of the national Institute of France, and an astronomer of considerable fame, was born at Vesoul, June 29, 1752. He was originally intended for the church, and in 1767, entered the order of the Bernardines, but his turn for astronomy induced him to become the pupil of Lalande, and one of the ablest of his scholars. His uncle Miroudat, bishop of Babylonia, having-appointed him his vicar-general, he left France in 1781, to exercise the functions of that office in the Levant, and at the same time to take astronomical observations. He went first to Aleppo, thence to Bagdad, Bassora, and Persia. On the eve of the revolution, he returned to France, after having contributed very essentially to the promotion of the sciences of astronomy and geography, as may appear by his communications in the “Journal deaf Savans” for 1782, 1784, 1785, 1787, 1788, and 1790. He remained with his family until 1795, when the then French government appointed him consul at Mascate, a Portuguese settlement in Arabia; but in 1797, we find him at Constantinople, whence he sailed along the Black Sea, making many observations, and rectifying many errors in the charts of that sea. When Bonaparte was appointed commander of the expedition to Egypt, he recalled Beauchamps from Mascate, and added him to the number of scientific men attached to the army. In 1799, Bonaparte sent him on a secret mission to Constantinople, but before he had proceeded far from the port of Alexandria, he was taken by the English, and delivered up to the grand Turk as a spy. By the intercession, however, of the ambassadors of Spain and Russia, his punishment was mitigated to imprisonment in a strong castle on the borders of the Black Sea, and in 1801 he was released. Bonaparte, then first consul, appointed him mercantile commissary at Lisbon, but before he could reach this place, he died at Nice, Nov. 19, 1801, to the great regret of his friends, and particularly of the learned world.

Boethius was advanced a second time to the dignity of consul, in the eighteenth year of the reign of king Theodoric. Power and honour could not have been conferred upon a person more worthy of them for he was both an excellent magistrate and statesman, as he faithfully and assiduously executed the duties of his office and employed, upon every occasion, the great influence he had at court, in protecting the innocent, relieving the needy, and in procuring the redress of such grievances as gave just cause of complaint. The care of public affairs did not however engross his whole attention. This year, as he informs us himself, he wrote his commentary upon the Predicaments, or the Ten Categories of Aristotle. In imitation of Cato, Cicero, and Brutus, he devoted the whole of his time to the service of the commonwealth, and to the cultivation of the sciences. He published a variety of writings, in which he treated upon almost every branch of literature. Besides the commentary upon Aristotle’s Categories, he wrote an explanation of that philosopher’s Topics, in eight books; another, of his Sophisms, in two books; and commentaries upon many other parts of his writings. He translated the whole of Plato’s works: he wrote a commentary, in six books, upon Cicero’s Topics: he commented also upon Porphyry’s writings he published a discourse on Rhetoric, in one book a treatise on Arithmetic, in two books and another, in five books, upon Music he wrote three books upon Geometry, the last of which is lost he translated Euclid and wrote a treatise upon the quadrature of the circle neither of which performances are now extant he published also translations of Ptolomy of Alexandria’s works and of the writings of the celebrated Archimedes: and several treatises upon theological and metaphysical subjects, which are still preserved.

, the illustrious Roman general and historian, was of the family of the Julii, who pretended they were descended from Venus by Æneas. The descendants of Ascanius son offlLneas and Creusa, and surnamed Julius, lived at Alba till that city wns ruined by Tullus Hostilius, king of Rome, who carried them to Rome, where they flourished. We do not find that they produced more than two branches. The first bore the name of Tullus, the other that of Cæsar. The most ancient of the Caesars were those who were in public employments in the llth year of the first Punic war. After that time we find there was always some of that family who enjoyed public offices in the commonwealth, till the time of Caius Julius Cæsar, the subject of this article. He was born at Rome the 12th of the month Quintilis, year of the city 653, and lost his father anno 669, and the year after he was made priest of Jupiter. Sylla was aware of his ambition, and endeavoured to remove him but Cæsar understood his intentions, and, to avoid discovery, changed every day his lodgings. He was received into Sylla’s friendship some time after; and the dictator told those who solicited the advancement of young Cæsar, that they were warm in the interest of a man who would prove some day or other the ruin of their country and of their liberty. When Cæsar went to finish his studies at Rhodes, under Apollonius Molo, he was seized by pirates, who offered him his liberty for thirty talents. He gave them forty, and threatened to revenge their insults; and he no sooner was out of their power than he armed a ship, pursued them, and crucified them all. His eloquence procured him friends at Rome; and the generous manner in which he lived, equally served to promote his interest. He obtained the office of high priest at the death of Metellus; and after he had passed through the inferior employments of the state, he was appointed over Spain, where he signalized himself by his valour and intrigues. At his return to Rome he was made consul, and soon after he effected a reconciliation between Crassus and Pompey. He was appointed for the space of five years over the Gauls, by the interest of Pompey, to whom he had given his daughter Julia in marriage. Here he enlarged the boundaries of the Roman empire by conquest, and invaded Britain, which was then unknown to the Roman people. He checked the Germans, and soon after had his government over Gaul prolonged to five other years, by means of his friends at Rome. The death of Julia and of Crassus, the corrupted state of the Roman senate, and the ambition of Cassar and Pompey, soon became the causes of a civil war. Neither of these celebrated Romans would suffer a superior, and the smallest matters were sufficient ground for unsheathing the sword. Cæsar’s petitions were received with coldness or indifference bjr the Roman senate; and by the influence of Pompey, a decree was passed to strip him of his power. Antony, who opposed it as tribune, fled to Cæsar’s camp with the news; and the ambitious general no sooner heard this, than he made it a plea of resistance. On pretence of avenging the violence which had been offered to the sacred office of tribune in the person of Antony, he crossed the Rubicon, which was the boundary of his province. The passage of the Rubicon was a declaration of war, and Cæsar entered Italy sword in hand. Upon this, Pompey, with all the friends of liberty, left Rome, and retired to Dyrrachium and Cæsar, after he had subdued all Italy, in sixty days, entered Rome, and provided himself with money from the public treasury. He went to Spain, where he conquered the partizans of Pompey, under Petreius, Afranius, and Varro; and at his return to Rome was declared dictator, and soon after consul. When he left Rome he went in quest of Pompey, observing that he was marching against a general without troops, after having defeated troops without a general in Spain. In the plains of Pharsalia, B.C. 48, the two hostile generals engaged, Pompey was conquered, and fled into Egypt, where he was basely murdered. Cæsar, after he had made a noble use of victory, pursued his adversary into Egypt, where he sometime forgot his fame and character in the arms of Cleopatra, by whom he had a son. His danger was great while at Alexandria but he extricated himself with wonderful success, and made Egypt tributary to his power. After several conquests in Africa, the defeat of Cato, Scipio, and Juba, and that of Pompey‘a sons in Spain, he entered Rome, and triumphed over five different nations, Gaul, Alexandria, Pomus, Africa, and Spain, and was created perpetual dictator. But now his glory was at an end, his uncommon success created him enemies, and the chiefest of the senators, among whom was Brutus his most intimate friend, conspired against him, and stabbed him in the seriate house on the ides of March. He died, pierced with tuenty-tliree wounds, the 15th of March, B. C. 44, in the fifty-sixth year of his age. Casca gave him the first blow, and immediately he attempted to make some resistance; but when he saw Brutus among the conspirators, he submitted to his fate, and fell down at tlu-ir feet, muffling up his mantle, and exclaiming, M Tu quoque Brute 1*’ Cæsar might have escaped the sword of the conspirators if he had listened to the advice of his wife Calpurnia, whose dreams, on the night previous to the day of his murder, were alarming. He also received, as he went to the senatehouse, a paper from Artemidorus, which discovered the whole conspiracy to him; but he neglected the reading of what might have saved his life. When he was in his first campaign in Spain, he was observed to gaze at a statue of Alexander, and even he shed tears at the recollection that that hero had conquered the world at an age in which he himself had done nothing. The learning of Cæsar deserves commendation, as well as his military character. He reformed the calendar. He wrote his commentaries on the Gallic wars on the spot where he fought his battles, and the composition has been admired for the elegance as well as the correctness of its style. This valuable book was nearly lost and when Cæsar saved his life in the bay of Alexandria, he was obliged to swim from his ship, with his arms in one hand and his commentaries in the other. Besides the Gallic and civil wars, he wrote other pieces which are now lost. The history of the war in Alexandria and Spain is attributed to him, and by others to Hirtius. Cæsar has been blamed for his debaucheries and expences, and the first year he had a public office, his debts were rated at 830 talents, which his friends discharged yet, in his public character, he must be reckoned one of the few heroes that rarely make their appearance among mankind. His qualities were such, that in every battle he could not be but conqueror* and in every republic, master; and to his sense of his superiority over the rest of the world, or to his ambition, we are to attribute his saying, that he wished rather to be first in a little village, than second at Rome. It was after his conquest over Pharnaces in one day, that he made use of these remarkable words, to express the celerity of his operations, “Veni, vidi, vici.” Conscious of the services of a man, who in the intervals of peace beautified and enriched the capital of his country with pubiic buildings, libraries, and porticoes, the senate permitted the dictator to wear a laurel crown on his bald head; and it is said, that, to reward his benevolence, they were going to give him the title or authority of king all ovftr the Roman empire, except Italy, when he was murdered. In his private character, Cæsar has been accused of seducing one of the Vestal virgins, and suspected of being privy to Catiline’s conspiracy and it was his fondness for dissipated pleasures, which made his countrymen say, that he was the husband of all the women at Rome. It is said that he conquered 300 nations, took 800 cities, and defeated three millions of men, one of which fell in the field of battle. Pliny says?, that he could employ at the same time, his ears to listen, his eyes to read, his hand to write, and his mind to dictate. His death was preceded, as many authors mention, by uncommon prodigies and immediately after his death, a large comet made its appearance. Cæsar when young, was betrothed to Cossutia, a rich heiress, whom he dismissed to marry Cornelia, the daughter of Cinna, by whom he had Julia. His attachment to Cornelia was so great, that he never could be prevailed upon by the arts or threats of Sylla to divorce her; but her attachment he boldly preferred to his own personal safety. After her early death, which he lamented with great bitterness of grief, he married Pompeia, the grand-daughter of Sylla; and for his fourth wife he took Calpurnia, the daughter of the consul Piso, a connection formed from political motives. The best editions of Cesar’s Commentaries, are the magnificent one by Dr. Clarke, Lond. 1712, Hoi.; that of Cambridge, with a Greek translation, 1727, 4to; that of Oudendorp, 2 vols. 4to, L. Bat. 1737; that of Elzevir, 8vo, L. Bat. 1635; that of Homer, London, 1790, 2 vols. 8vo and of Oberlin, Leipsic, 1805, 8vo.

, or Carpocras, of Alexandria, a famous heretic of the second century, is reported to have carried the Gnostic blasphemies to an enormous degree of extravagance. He maintained that matter was eternal; that the world was created by angels; that God formed human souls, which were imprisoned in bodies of malignant matter; that Jesus was but a mere man, the son of Joseph and Mary, and distinguished from others by his superior greatness of soul; that none can obtain everlasting salvation by him, unless, by committing all manner of crimes, they fill up the measure of their wickedness; that human lusts and passions, being implanted by God, ought to be gratified; that all actions are in themselves indifferent, and become good or evil, only by the opinions of men, or the laws of the state; and that women, and every thing else, ought to be common property. Such are the opinions imputed to him by ecclesiastical historians, which are said to have produced a corresponding practice among his followers. Dr. Lardner only has taken considerable pains to defend Carpocrates; and his conjectures are at least inr genious, although he has not been able to render this heretic an object of much interest or admiration.

, was a celebrated solitary, a native of Scythia, of the fifth century, who spent part of his life in the monastery of Bethlehem with the monk Germain, his friend. They engaged openly in the defence of St. Chrysostom, against Theophilus, patriarch of Alexandria. Cassian went to Rome, and from thence to Marseilles, where he founded two monasteries, one of men, the other of virgins. He ranks among the greatest masters of the monastic life, and died about the year 448. He left “Collations,” or conferences of the fathers of the desert, and “Institutions,” in 12 books, translated iHto French by Nic. Fontaine, 1663, 2 vols. 8vo; and seven books upon the Incarnation. These are all written in Latin, with a clearness and simplicity of style excellently calculated to inspire the heart with virtuous dispositions. They were printed at Paris, 1642, and at Leipsic, 1722, folio, and are in the library of the fathers. St. Prosper has written against the “Conferences.” Cassian is reckoned among the first of the Semi-Pelagians, of which sect Faustus of Riez, Vincent of Lerins, Gennadius of Marseilles, Hilerias of Aries, and Arnobius the younger, were the principal defenders. The semi-pelagians were opposed by the whole united forces of St. Augustin and Prosper, without being extirpated, or overcome by them. This sect was condemned by some synods, and was rejected by the church.

In 1598 he produced a comedy entitled “The Blind Beggar of Alexandria, most pleasantly discoursing his various humours in disguised shapes, full of conceit and pleasure,” 4to, but not divided either into acts or scenes, and dedicated to the earl of Nottingham, lord high admiral. The following year he published another comedy in 4to, called “Humorous Day’s Mirth,” which was acted by the earl of Nottingham’s servants. He is said to have been much countenanced and encouraged by sir Thomas Walsingham, who, as Wood informs us, had a son of the same name, “whom Chapman loved from his birth.” Henry, prince of Wales, and Carr, earl of Somerset, also patronized him; but the former dying, and the latter being disgraced, Chapman’s hopes of preferment by their means were frustrated. His interest at court was likewise probably lessened by the umbrage taken by king James at some reflections cast on the Scotch nation in a comedy _ called “Eastward Hoe,” written by Chapman, in conjunction with Ben Jonson and John Marston. He is supposed, however, to have had some place at court, either under king James, or his queen Anne.

, a French mathetician and engineer, was born at Lyons July 24, 1657, and educated there in the college of Jesuits, from whence he removed to Paris in 1675. He first made an acquaintance with du Hamel, secretary to the academy of sciences; who, observing his genius to lie strongly towards astronomy, presented him to Cassini. Cassini took him with him to the observatory, and employed him under him, where he made a very rapid progress in the science. In 1683, the academy carried on the great work of the meridian to the north and south, begun in 1670, and Cassini having the southern quarter assigned him, took in the assistance of Chazelles. In 1684, the duke of Montemart engaged Chazelles to teach him mathematics, and the year after procured him the preferment of hydrography-professor for the gallies of Marseilles, where he set up a school for young pilots designed to serve on board the gailies. In 1686, the gallies made four little campaigns, or rather four courses, for exercise, during which Chazelles always went on board, kept his school on the sea, and shewed the practice of what he taught. He likewise made a great many geometrical and astronomical observations, which enabled him to draw a new map of the coast of Provence. In 1687 and 1688 he made two other sea campaigns, and drew a great many plans of ports, roads, towns, and forts, which were so much prized as to be lodged with the ministers of state. At the beginning of the war which ended with the peace of Ryswick, Chazelles and some marine officers fancied the gailies might be so contrived as to live upon the ocean, and might serve to tow the men of war when the wind failed, or proved contrary; and also help to secure the coast of France upon the ocean. He was sent to the western coasts in July 1689 to prove this scheme; and in 1690 fifteen gailies, new-built, set sail from Rochefort, cruised as far as Torbay in England, and proved serviceable at the descent upon Tinmouth. Here he performed the functions of an engineer, and shewed the courage of a soldier. The general officers he served under declared that when they sent him to take a view of any post of the enemy, they could rely entirely upon his intelligence. The gallies, after their expedition, came to the mouth of the Seine into the basons of Havre de Grace and Honfleur; but could not winter because it was necessary to empty these basons several times, to prevent the stagnation and stench of the water. He proposed to carry them to Rohan; and though all the pilots were against him, objecting insuperable difficulties, he succeeded in the undertaking* While he was at Rohan he digested into order the observations which he had made on the coasts, and drew distinct maps, with a portulan to them, viz. a large description of every haven, of the depth, the tides, the dangers and advantages discovered, &c. which were inserted in the “Neptune Francois,” published in 1692, in which year he was engineer at the descent at Oneille. In 1693 M. de Pontchartrain, then secretary of state for the marine, and afterwards chancellor of France, resolved to get the “Neptune François” carried on to a second volume, which was also to include the Mediterranean. Chazelles desired that he might have a year’s voyage in this sea, for making astronomical observations; and, the request being granted, he passed by Greece, Egypt, and the other parts of Turkey, with his quadrant and telescope in his hand. When he was in Egypt he measured the pyramids, and found that the four sides of the largest lay precisely against the four quarters of the world. Now as it is highly probable that this exact position to east, west, north, and south, was designed 3000 years ago by those that raised this vast structure, it follows, that, during so long an interval, there lias been no alteration in the situation of the heavens; or, that the poles of the earth and the meridians have all along continued the same. He likewise made a report of his voyage in the Levant, and gave the academy all the satisfaction they wanted concerning the position of Alexandria: upon which he was made a member of the academy in 1695. Chazelles died Jan. 16, 1710, of a malignant fever. He was a very extraordinary and useful man; and, besides his great genius and attainments, was also remarkable for his moral and religious endowments.

He was ordained deacon by Meletius, in the year 381, and now began to compose and publish many of his works. Five years after, he was ordained a priest by Flavian, in which office he acquitted himself with so much reputation, that, upon the death of Nectarius, bishop of Constantinople, in the year 397, he was unanimously chosen to fill that see. The emperor Arcadius, however, was obliged to employ all his authority, and even to use some stratagem, before he could seduce Chrysostom from his native Antioch, where he was held in so much admiration and esteem. He sent in the mean time, a mandate to Theophilus, bishop of Alexandria, to consecrate Chrysostom bishop of Constantinople; which was done in the year 398, notwithstanding the secret and envious attempts of Theophilus to prevent it. But Chrysostom was no sooner at the head of the church of Constantinople, than that zeal and ardour, for which he was afterwards famous, was employed in endeavouring to effect a general reformation of manners. With this disposition, he begun with the clergy, and next attacked the laity, but especially the courtiers, whom he soon made his enemies; and his preaching is said to have been eminently successful among the lower classes. Nor was his zeal confined altogether within the precincts of Constantinople; it extended to foreign parts, as appears from his causing to be demolished some temples and statues in Phoenicia; but all writers are agreed that his temper, even in his best duties, was violent, and afforde'd his enemies many advantages.

In the year 400, he went into Asia, at the request of the clergy of Ephesus; and by deposing thirteen bishops of Lydia and Phrygia, endeavoured to settle some disorders which had been occasioned in that church. But while he was here, a conspiracy was formed against him at home, by Severian, bishop of Gabala, to whom Chrysostom had committed the care of his church in his absence, and who endeavoured to insinuate himself into the favour of the nobility and people, at Chrysostom’s expence. He had even formed a confederacy against him with his old adversary, Theophilus of Alexandria, which the empress Eudoxia encouraged, for the sake of revenging some liberties which Chrysostom had taken in reproving her. By her intrigues, chiefly, the emperor was prevailed upon to call Theophilus from Alexandria, and he, who wanted an opportunity to ruin Chrysostom, came immediately to Constantinople, and brought several Egyptian bishops with him. Those of Asia, also, whom Chrysostom had deposed for the tumults they raised at Ephesus, appeared upon this occasion at Constantinople against him. Theophilus now arrived, but instead of taking up his quarters with his brother Chrvsostom, as was usual, he had apartments in the empress’s palace, where he called a council, and appointed judges. Chrysostom, however, with much spirit, excepted against the judges, and refused to appear before the council; declaring that he was not accountable to strangers for any supposed misdemeanour, but only to the bishops of his own and the neighbouring provinces. Notwithstanding this, Theophilus held a synod of bishops, to which he sumtnoned Chrysostom to appear, and answer to various articles of accusation. But Chrysostom sent three bishops and two priests to acquaint Theophilus and his synod, that though he was very ready to submit himself to the judgment of those who should be regularly assembled, and have a legal right to judge him, yet he absolutely refused to be judged by him and his synod; and having persisted in this refusal four several times, he was in consequence deposed in the beginning of the year 403. The news of his deposition was no sooner spread about Constantinople, than all the city was in an uproar, and when the emperor ordered him to be banished, the people determined to detain him by force. In three days, however, to prevent any further disturbance, he surrendered himself to those who had orders to seize him, and was conducted by them to a small town in Bithynia, as the residence of his banishment. His departure made the people more outrageous than ever: they prayed the emperor that he might be recalled; they even threatened him; and Eudoxia was so frightened with the tumult, that she herself solicited for it. A numerous synod, assembled at Constantinople, now rescinded all former proceedings, and Chrysostom was recalled in triumph; but his troubles were not yet at an end. The empress about the latter end of this year had erected her own statue near the church; and the people, to do honour to her, had celebrated the public games before it. This Chrysostom thought indecent; and the fire of his zeal, far from being extinguished by his late misfortunes, urged him to preach against those who were concerned in it. His discourse provoked the empress, who still retained her old enmity to him; and made her resolve once more to have him deposed from his bishopric. He irritated her not a little, as soon as he was apprized of her machinations against him, by most imprudently beginning one of his sermons with these remarkable words: “Behold the furious Herodias, insisting to have the head of John Baptist in a charger!” We are not to wonder, therefore, that a synod of bishops was assembled, who immediately deposed him, alleging that he stood already deposed, by virtue of the former sentence given against him; which, they said, had never been reversed, nor himself re-established in hk see, in that legal and orderly manner which the canons required. In consequence of that judgment, the emperor forbade him to enter the church any more, and ordered him to be banished. His followers and adherents were now insulted and persecuted by the soldiery, and stigmatized particularly by the name of Johannites. He had, indeed, a strong party among the people, who would now have armed themselves in his defence; but he chose rather to spend the remainder of his days in banishment, than be the unhappy cause of a civil war to his country; and therefore surrendered himself a second time to those who were to have the care of him. He set out in June 404, under a guard of soldiers, to Nicca, where he did not make any long stay, but pursued his jourrjey to Cucusus, the destined place of his banishment, at which he arrived in September. It is remarkable that the very day Chrysostom left Constantinople, the great church was set on fire and burnt, together with the palace, which almost adjoined to it, entirely to the ground. The same year there fell hail-stones of an extraordinary size, that did considerable damage to the town; which calamity was also followed by the death of the empress Eudoxia, and of Cyrinus, one of Chrysostom’s chief enemies. All these were considered by the partisans of Chrysostom, as so many judgments from heaven upon the country which thus persecuted Chrysostom.

, a Spanish author of considerable celebrity, a Dominican, and titular patriarch of Alexandria, was born in 1540 at Baec,a in Andalusia, and died at Rome in February 1599, but some writers say that he was living in 1601. A great number of his works remain; the most considerable among which is entitled “Vitse et gesta Romanorum pontificum et cardinalium;” which, with the continuation, was printed at Rome, 1676, 4 vols. folio; the sequel down to Clement XII. was published by ]\larie Guarnacci, Rome, 1751, 2 vols. folio; “Bibliotheca Scriptorum ad annum 1383,” Paris, 1731, folio, and Amsterdam, 1732, folio. This last consists of the Paris edition, which the Dutch bookseller had bought, with some additions by the editors, and goes no farther than E. Kte wrote also " Historja utriusque Belli Dacici, in columna Trajana expressi, cum figuris;rneis/* Rome, 1616, oblong folio. In this work he betrays no little superstition, by labouring to prove that the soul of Trajan was delivered out of hell at the iutercession of St. Gregory.

The only manuscript copy of this epistle, which exists in the world, as far as we know, is in the British Museum, written on vellum, and bound up with the Alexandrian Bible. It is said to have been written by Thecla, a woman of rank, in the fourth century, which shows how highly it was esteemed as far down as. the council of Nice. When Cyril, patriarch of Alexandria, was translated to the patriarchate of Constantinople, in the seventeenth century, he brought with him out of Egypt a valuable collection of manuscripts, and among them this copy of the Bible and Clemens’s Epistle, which he generously sent as a most valuable present to king Charles I. by sir Thomas Roe, at that time his majesty’s ambassador at the Porte. The first edition of it was printed at Oxford, by P. Junius, Gr. and Lat. 1633, 4to, again by Dr. Fell, Gr. and Laf. ibid. 1677, and at London, 1687, 8vo, by Paul Colornesius; but the best is said to be that by Wotton, Gr. and Lat. Cambridge, 1718, 8vo. The first English translation was by William Burton in 1647, and afterwards by abp. Wake, a fourth edition of which was printed in 1737, with the epistles of the other apostolic fathers. We know of no other English translation, unless a very scarce and beautifully printed one, by an anonymous author, Aberdeen, 1768, 12mo, more literal than Wake’s, and with a very sensible preface. Other writings are attributed to Clemens, particularly a second epistle, but none of them are considered as genuine.

, an eminent father of the church in the end of the second and beginning of the third century, was an Athenian, or according to others an Alexandrian on which account he is usually called Clemens Alexandrines, by way of distinguishing him from Clemens Romanus. When Pantsenus was sent by Demetrius, bishop of Alexandria, to preach the gospel to the Indians, at th6 request of their ambassadors, about the year 191 Clemens succeeded him in the catechetical school. He acquitted himself admirably well in this employment, and had many eminent pupils, as Origen and Alexander bishop of Jerusalem. Clemens’s method of instructing the catechumens is said to have been this. He pointed out to them, and explained all that was good in the pagan philosophy; and then led them on insensibly to Christianity. In his philosophic character, which he too much preserved, he was an eclectic; that is, not attached to any particular sect of philosophers, but a selector of what he thought good and sound in them all.

, the celebrated queen of Egypt, was the daughter of Ptolemy Auletes, king of that country; who, dying in the year 51 B. C. bequeathed his crown to the eldest of his sons and the eldest of his daughters; ordering them to be joined to each other in marriage, according to the usage of their family, and jointly to govern. They were both of them very young, Cleopatra the eldest being only seventeen; and therefore he committed them to the tuition of the Roman senate. They, however, could not agree, either to be married, or to reign together, and Ptolemy, the brother, having deprived Cleopatra of that share in the government which was left her by Auletes’s will, and driven her out of the kingdom, she raised an army in Syria and Palestine, and commenced a war with him. At this time Julius Caesar, who was in pursuit of Pompey, came to Alexandria, and began to arbitrate between Ptolemy and his sister Cleopatra. But Cleopatra, considering that Cossar was extravagantly addicted to women, laid a plot to attach him first to her person, and next to her cause: and requested that she might be peiv mitted to plead her cause in person before him. This being granted, she came secretly into the port of Alexandria in a small skiff towards the dusk of the evening; and contrived to be carried to Caesar’s apartment, who was too sensible of the charms of beauty not to be touched with those of Cleopatra. She was then in the prime of her youth, about the twentieth year of her age; a perfect beauty, with a commanding address, and a voice harmonious and bewitching. All these charms she prostituted immediately to Caesar, who next morning sent for Ptolemy, and pressed him to receive his sister again upon her own terms: but Ptolemy appealed to the people, and a war commenced, in which Ptolemy lost a battle, and his life, in endeavouring to escape. Caesar then settled the kingdom upon Cleopatra, and the surviving Ptolemy, her younger brother, as king and queen. This Ptolemy, however, was at this time only eleven years old, and Cleopatra, when he was grown up, and capable of sharing the royal authority, causeu him to be poisoned, and thus reigned alone in Egypt. However, she followed Caesar to Rome, and was there when he was killed in the senatehouse; but being terrified by that accident, and the subsequent disorders of the city, she made her escape with great precipitation.

, of Alexandria in Egypt, called Indopleustj-:S or Indicopleustes, on account of a voyage which he made to the Indies, was at first a merchant, afterwards a monk, and author, and is supposed to have flourished about the year 547. He wrote several things, particularly the “Christian Topography, or the opinion of Christians concerning the World, in 12 books still extant, and published by Montfaucon in 1707, in the” Nova collectio Patrum,“vol. II. Cosmas performed his voyage in 522, and pub^ lished his book at Alexandria in 547: it contains some very curious information, but contrary to the sentiments of all astronomers, he denies the earth to be spherical, and endeavours to prove his opinion from reason, scripture, and Christian writers, who lived before him. As his testimony to the authenticity of the scriptures, however, is very considerable, Lardner has selected many passages from” The Christian Topography,“in his” Credibility."

, a learned French writer, was born at Nantes, Dec. 4, 1661. His father, who was a merchant, was also a man of letters, and bestowed much pains on the education of his son, who answered his expectations by the proficiency he made in classical studies. He had, however, provided him with a private tutor, who happened to disgust him by the severity of his manners, and upon this account partly, at the age of fourteen, he desired to take a voyage to some of the West India islands, to which his father traded; but his principal inducement was what he had read in books of voyages, and the conversation of persons who had been in America, all which raised his curiosity to visit the new world. He embarked on board a French ship, with no other books than Erasmus’s Colloquies, and the Gradus ad Parnassum. His passage was not unpleasant, and during his residence at Guadeloupe he borrowed all the Latin books he could discover, and read them with avidity; but the chief advantage he seems to have derived here was an opportunity to learn the English, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese San^uasres. To these he afterwards added an acquaintance with the German, Sclavonic, and AngloSaxon; and studied with much attention the ancient and modern Greek, the Hebrew, Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Hebrew, Arabic, and even the Chinese. On his return to Nantes in 1677, he found his father’s affairs somewhat deranged, and was obliged to take a part in the business. Medicine appears to have been first suggested to him as a profession, but he found little inclination for that study; and some conferences he happened to have with the Benedictines of the congregation of St. Maur determined him to enter their society. He accordingly made his noviciate in 1673, and applied himself to the study of theology. In 1682 he formally became a member of the congregation. His residence at Paris, in the abbey of St. Germain des Pres, the vast number of books within his reach, and particularly of manuscripts, increased his knowledge and his thirst for knowledge, and some of his earliest labours were bestowed in preparing materials, collecting Mss. &c. for new editions of the works of St. Clement of Alexandria, and St. Gregory Nazianzen. But these were interrupted by certain differences which occurred in the abbey to which he belonged, and of which we have various accounts. The prior of St. Germain, father Loo, had a great aversion to the study of classical and polite literature, and was for confining the members to the strict religious duties of the house. This could not fail to be disgusting to a man of La Croze’s taste: but, according to other accounts, which seem more prohable, he began to entertain religious scruples about this time (lr.96), which induced him to withdraw himself. It is said that his superiors found among his papers a treatise against transubstantiation in his hand-writing, and which they believed to be his composition; but they discovered afterwards that it uas a translation from the English of Stillingfleet. Some other manuscripts, however, sufficiently proved that he had changed his opinion on religious matters; and the dread of persecution obliged him to make his escape to Basil, which he successfully accomplished in May 1696. Here he renounced the Roman catholic religion, and as his intention was to take up his residence, he was matriculated as a student of the college of Basil. He remained in this place, however, only till September, when he departed, provided with the most honourable testimonies of his learning and character from Buxtorf, the Hebrew professor, and Werenfels, dean of the faculty of theology. He then went to Berlin, where his object was to secure a iixed residence, devote himself to study, and endeavour to forget France. In order to introduce himself, he began with offering to educate young men, the sons of protestant parents, which appears to have answered his purpose, as in 1697 we find him appointed librarian to the king of Prussia; but his biographers are not agreed upon the terms. To this place a pension was attached, but not sufficient to enable him to live without continuing his school; and some assert that he was very poor at this time. The probability is, that his circumstances were improved as he became better known, and his reputation among the learned was already extensive. In June of 1697 he went to Francfort to visit the literati of that place, and their fine library, and visited also Brandenburgh for the same purpose. In November 1697 (or, as Chaufepie says, in 1702), he married Elizabeth Rose, a lady originally of Dauphiny, and thus, adds one of his Roman catholic biographers, completed the abjuration of the true religion. In 1698 he first commenced author, and from time to time published those works on which his fame rests. Soon after he became acquainted with the celebrated Leibnitz, with whom he carried on an intimate correspondence. In 17 13 he went to Hamburgh, where he paid many visits to the learned Fabricius, and in his letters speaks with great warmth of the pleasure this journey afforded; but this year, 17 J 3, was not in other respects a vei'y fortunate one to La Croze, and he formed the design of quitting Germany. He had been appointed tutor to the margrave of Schwel, and this employment terminating in 1714, he lost the pension annexed to it, and was reduced to considerable difficulties, of which he wrote to Leibnitz, as to a friend in whom he could confide. Leibnitz, by way of answer, sent him a copy of a letter which he had written to M. BernsdorfT, prime minister to the elector of Hanover, in his behalf. The object likely to be attained by this interest was a professorship at Helmstadt; but as it required subscription to the articles of the Lutheran church, M. la Croze, notwithstanding the persuasions Leibnitz employed, declined accepting it. His affairs, however, soon after wore a more promising aspect, partly in consequence of a prize he gained in the Dutch lottery. In 1717 he had the honour to be engaged as private tutor to the princess royal of Prussia, afterwards margravine of Bareoth. In 1724, for several months his studies were interrupted by a violent fit of the gravel; and on his recovery, the queen of Prussia, who always patronized La Croze, obtained for him the professorship of philosophy in the French college at Berlin, vacant by the death of M. Chauvin. This imposed on him the necessity of drawing up a course of philosophy, but as he never intended to print it, it is said not to have been executed with the care he bestowed on his other works. In 1713 father Bernard Pez, the Benedictine, made him liberal offers if he would return to the church he had forsaken, but this he declined with politeness, offering the arguments which influenced his mind to remain in the protestant church. In 1739 an inflammation appeared on his leg, which inApril put on appearances of mortification, hut did not prove fatal until May 21. About a quarter of an bour before his death he desired his servant to read the 51st and 77th psalms, during which he expired, in the seventy -first year of his age. He was reckoned one of the most learned men of his time, and was frequently called a living library. So extensive was his reading, and so vast iiis memory, that no one ever consulted him without obtaining prompt information. In dates, facts, and references he was correct and ready. We have already noticed how many languages he had learned, but it appears that he made the least progress in the Chinese, to which Leihnitz, in his letters, is perpetuiiy iirging him. The greater part of his life was employed in study, and he had no other pleasures. There was scarcely a book in his library whicli he had not perused, and he wrote ms notes on most of them. His conversation could not fail to be acceptable to men of literary research, as his memory was stored with anecdotes, which he told in a very agreeable manner. He was conscientiously attached to the principles of the reformed religion. He had always on his table the Hebrew Psalter, the Greek Testament, and Thomas a Kempis in Latin: the latter he almost had by heart, as well as Buchanan’s Psalms. His consistent piety and charity are noticed by all his biographers.

, of Alexandria, a famous mathematician about 120 years B. C. was, it is reported, the first inventor of the pump, which he discovered by accident. On lowering a mirror that was in his father’s shop, he observed that the weight which helped it in moving upwards and downwards, and which was inclosed in a cylinder, made a noise, produced by the friction of the air violently forced by the weight. He set about examining into the cause of this sound, and thought it might be possible to avail himself of it in making an hydraulic organ, in which the air and the water should form the sound; an undertaking which he executed with success. Encouraged by this production, Ctesibius thought of using his mechanical skill in measuring time. He constructed a clepsydra, or waterclock, formed with water, and regulated by cogged wheels; the water by falling turned these wheels, which communicated their motion to a column on which were marked the characters for distinguishing the months and the hours. At the same time that the cogged wheels were put in motion, they raised a little statue, which with a wand pointed to the months and hours marked upon the column. He was also the author of “Geodesia, or the art of dividing and measuring bodies,” which is said to be in the Vatican library; but he must be distinguished from Ctesibius of Chalcis, who was a cynic philosopher, of a sportive disposition and a cheerful temper, who had the art of being agreeable to the great, without submitting to the vile arts of flattery, and made them hearken to truth, and gave them a taste for virtue, under the name of amusement.

, of Alexandria, another celebrated father of the church, succeeded his uncle Theophilus in the bishopric of that place in the year 412; and as the bishops of Alexandria had long acquired great authority and power in that city, Cyril took every opportunity to confirm and increase it. He was no sooner advanced to this see, than he drove the Novatians out of the city; and, as Dupin says, stripped Theopemptus their bishop of every thing he had. In the year 415 the Jews committed some insult upon the Christians of Alexandria, which so inflamed the zeal of Cyril that he put himself at the head of his people, demolished the synagogues of the Jews, drove them all out of the city, and suffered the Christians to pillage their effects. This, however, highly displeased Orestes, the governor of the town; who began to be sensible that the bishop’s authority, if not timely suppressed, might possibly be found too strong for that of the magistrate. Upon which a kind of war broke but between Orestes and the bishop, and each had his party the inhabitants were inclined to be seditious; many tumults were raised, and some battles fought in the very streets of Alexandria. One day, when Orestes was abroad in an open chariot, he found himself instantly surrounded with about 500 monks, who had left their monasteries to revenge the quarrel of their bishop. They pursued him fiercely, wounded him with stones, and had certainly killed him, if the people had not restrained their fury till his guards came up to his relief. Ammonius, one of these monks, was afterwards seized by the order of Orestes, and, being put upon the rack, died under the operation. Cyril, however, had him immediately canonized, and took every public opportunity of commending his zeal and constancy. About the same time there was at Alexandria a heathen philosophess, named Hypatia, whose fame and character were every where so celebrated, that people came from all parts to see and to consult her. Orestes saw her often, which made the Christians imagine that it was she who inspired the governor with such an aversion to their bishop. This suspicion wrought so strongly upon some of their zealots, that on a certain day they seized upon Hypatia as she was returning home, dragged her violently through the streets, and caused the mob to tear her limb from limb. Damascius, who wrote the life of Isidore the philosopher, charges Cyril himself with being the contriver of this horrid murder.

, a famous patriarch of Alexandria, afterwards of Constantinople, was born November 12, 1572, in the island of Candia. He studied at Venice and Padua, and was pupil to the celebrated Margunius, bishop of Cythera. Cyril went afterwards into Germany, embraced the doctrine of the reformed religion, and attempted to introduce it into Greece; but the Greeks opposed it, and he wrote a confession of faith, in which he defended his principles. Having been archimandrite, he was raised to the patriarchate of Alexandria, and, some time after, elected to that of Constantinople, 1621; but, continuing firm in his connections with the protestants, he was deposed, and confined in the island of Rhodes. Some time after, however, he was restored to his dignity, at the solicitation of the English ambassador; but in 1638 he was carried from Constantinople and put to death near the Black Sea, by order of the grand signior, in the most cruel manner. He had a mind much superior to the slavish condition of his country, and laboured to promote the interests of genuine Christianity, amidst much opposition and danger. He had collected a very excellent library, rich in Greek Mss. a specimen of which, the celebrated Codex Alexandrinus, one of the most ancient and valuable manuscripts in the world, he presented to king Charles I. by his ambassador sir Thomas Roe. The fate of his other Mss. was peculiarly lamented. In order to secure them, the Dutch resident at Constantinople sent them by a ship bound for Holland, which was wrecked in sight of land, and all her cargo lost.

, of Alexandria, surnamed “Bowels of Brass,” from his indefatigable application to study, lived in the reign of Augustus, and is said by Seneca to have written 4000 treatises, not one of which has descended to our times but some scholia on Homer are attributed to him, which Schrevelius has joined to an edition of that poet, Amsterdam, 1656, 2 vols. 4to, and they occur in some other editions, but they appear to be the work of a later author.

, of Alexandria, was an ecclesiastical writer of the fourth century, who supplied a very important defect by dint of genius and application. Jerome and Ruffinus assure us that though he lost his eyes at five years of age, when he had scarcely learned to read, yet he applied himself so earnestly to study, that he not only attained in a high degree grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, music, and the other arts, but even was able to comprehend some of the most difficult theorems in mathematics. He was particularly attached to the study of the Scriptures; and was selected as the most proper person to fill the chair in the famous divinity-school at Alexandria. His high reputation drew a great number of scholars to him; among the principal of whom were Jerome, Ruffinus, Palladius, and Isidorus. He read lectures with wonderful facility, answered upon the spot all questions and difficulties relating to the Holy Scriptures, and refuted the objections which were raised against the orthodox faith. He was the author of a great number of works of which Jerome has preserved the titles in his catalogue of ecclesiastical writers; and of many more whose titles are not known. We have yet remaining a Latin translation of his book upon the Holy Spirit, to be found in the works of Jerome, who was the translator; and which is perhaps the best treatise the Christian world ever saw upon the subject. Whatever has been said since that time, in defence of the divinity and personality of the Holy Ghost, seems, in substance, to be foand in this book. His other works extant are, a treatise against the Manichees, in the original Greek, and “Enarrations upon the seven catholic epistles in Latin,” and in the Greek Chains are fragments of some of his commentaries. J. C. Wolff, of Hamburgh, published a large collection of notes and observations of Didymus upon the Acts of the Apostles, taken from a manuscript Greek chain, at Oxford. See Wolfii Anecdot. Graec. 1724. Didymus also wrote commentaries upon Origen’s books of Principles, which he defended very strenuously against all opposers. He was a great admirer of Origen, used to consider him as his master, and adopted many of his sentiments; on which account he was condemned by the fifth general council. He died in the year 395, aged eightyfive years.

, another of the name, was an eminent musician of Alexandria, and, according to Suidas, cotemporary in the first century with the emperor Nero, by whom he was much honoured and esteemed. This proves him to have been younger than Aristoxenus, and more ancient than Ptolemy, though some have imagined him to have preceded Aristoxenus. He wrote upon grammar and medicine, as well as music; but his works are all lost, and every thing we know at present of his barmonical doctrines is from Ptolemy, who, by disputing, preserved them. However, this author confesses him to have been well versed in the canon and harmonic divisions; and if we may judge from the testimony, even of his antagonist, he must have been not only an able theorist in music, but a man of considerable learning. As this musician preceded Ptolemy, and was the first who introduced the minor tone into the scale, and, consequently, the practical major 3d -f, which harmonized the whole system, and pointed out the road to counterpoint; an honour that most critics have bestowed on Ptolemy, he seems to have a better title to the invention of modern harmony, or music in parts, than Guido, who appears to have adhered, both in theory and practice, to the old division of the scale into major tones and limmas. “The best species of diapason,” says Doni, “and that which is the most replete with fine harmony, and chiefly in use at present, was invented by Didymus. His method was this: after the major semitone E F T-f, he placed the minor tone in the ratio of V, between F G, and afterwards the major tone between G A; but Ptolemy, for the sake of innovation, placed the major tone where Didymus placed the minor.” Ptolemy, however, in speaking of Didymus and his arrangement, objects to it as contrary to the judgment of the ear, which requires the major tone below the minor. The ear certainly determines so with us, and it is therefore probable, that in Ptolemy’s time the major key was gaining ground. Upon the whole, however, it appears that these authors only differ in the order, not the quality of intervals.

, a celebrated ancient architect of Macedonia, of whom several extraordinary things are related, lived in the 112th olympiad, or 332 B. C. Vitruvius tells us, that, when Alexander the Great had conquered all his enemies, Dinocrates, full of great conceptions, and relying upon them, went from Macedonia to the army, with a view of acquiring his notice and favour. He carried letters recommendatory to the nobles about him, who received him very graciously, and promised to introduce him to the king; but suspecting, from some delays, that they were not serious, he resolved at length to introduce himself; and for this purpose conceived the following project. He anointed his body all over with oil, and crowned his temples with poplar; then he flung a lion’s skin over his left shoulder, and put a club into his right hand. Thus accoutred, he appeared in the court, where the king was administering justice. The eyes of the people being naturally turned upon so striking a spectacle, for, in addition to his singular garb, he was tall, well proportioned, and very handsome; the king asked him, who he was? “I am,” says he, “Dinocrates the Macedonian architect, and bring to your majesty thoughts and designs that are worthy of your greatness: for I have laid out the mount Athos into the form of a man, in whose left hand I have designed the walls of a great city, and all the rivers of the mount to flow into his right, and from thence into the sea.” Alexander seemed amused with this vast project, but very wisely declined putting it in execution. He kept the architect, however, and took him into Egypt, where he employed him in marking out and building the city of Alexandria. Another memorable instance of Dinocrates’s architectonic skill is his restoring and building, in a more august and magnificent manner than before, the celebrated temple of Diana at Ephesus, after Herostratus, for the sake of immortalizing his name, had destroyed it by fire. A third instance, more extraordinary and wonderful than either of the former, is related by Pliny in his Natural History; who tells us, that he had formed a scheme, by building the dome of the temple of Arsinoe at Alexandria of loadstone, to make her image all of iron hang in the middle of it, as if it were in the air. Dinocrates probably deserves great credit as an architect, but such foolish stories as this last must be placed to the account of the credulity of the times in which Pliny wrote, and of which he largely partook.

, so called from Laerta, or Laertes, a town of Cilicia, where he is supposed to have been born, is an ancient Greek author, who wrote ten books of the Lives of the Philosophers, still extant. In what age he flourished, is not easy to determine. The oldest writers who mention him are Sopater Alexandrinus, who lived in the time of Constantine the Great, and Hesychius Milesius, who lived under Justinian. Diogenes often speaks in terms of approbation of Plutarch and Phavorinus; and therefore, as Plutarch lived under Trajan, and Phavorinus under Hadrian, it is certain that he could not flourish before the reigns of those emperors. Menage has fixed him to the time of Severus; that is, about the year of Christ 200; and from certain expressions in his works, some have fancied him to have been a Christian; however, as Menage observes, the immoderate praises he bestows upon Epicurus will not suffer us to believe this, but incline us rather to suppose that he was an Epicurean. He divided his Lives into books, and inscribed them to a learned lady of the Platonic school, as he himself intimates in his life of Plato. Montaigne was so fond of this author, that, instead of one Laertius, he wishes we had a dozen; and Vossius says, that his work is as precious as old gold. Without doubt we are greatly obliged to him for what we know of the ancient philosophers; and if he had been as exact in the execution, as he was judicious in the choice of his subject, we had been more obliged to him still. Bishop Burnet, in the preface to his Life of sir Matthew Hale, justly speaks of him in the following manner: “There is no hook the ancients have left us,” says he, “which might have informed us more than Diogenes Laertius’s Lives of the Philosophers, if he had had the art of writing equal to that great subject which he undertook: for if he had given the world such an account of them, as Gassendus has done of Peiresc, how great a stock of knowledge might we have had, which by his unskilfulness is in a great measure lost! since we must now depend only on him, because we have no other and better author who has written on that argument.” He is no where observed to be a rigid affecter or favourer of any sect; which makes it somewhat probable, that he was a follower of Potomon of Alexandria, who, after all the rest, and a little before his time, established a sect which were called Eclectics, from their choosing out of every sect what they thought the best. His books shew him to have been a man of universal reading; but as a writer he is very exceptionable, both as to the disposal and the defect of his materials. Brucker, whose opinion must be of sterling value, in estimating the merits of Diogenes Laertius, says, that “he has collected from the ancients with little judgment, patched together contradictory accounts, relied upon doubtful authorities, admitted as facts many tales which were produced in the schools of the sophists, and has been inattentive to methodical arrangement.” Diogenes also composed a book of epigrams, to which he refers. The best edition is that of Meibomius, Amst. 1692, 2 vols. 4to; yet Rossius, in his “Commentationes Laertianae,” has convicted Meibomius of innumerable errors.

, bishop of Alexandria, a man of great renown in the church, was born a heathen, and of an ancient and illustrious family. He was a diligent inquirer after truth, which he looked for in vain among the sects of philosophers; but at last found it in Christianity, in which he was probably confirmed by his preceptor Origen. He was made a presbyter of the church of Alexandria in the year 232; and in the year 247 was raised to that see upon the death of Heracles. When the Decian persecution arose, he was seized by the soldiers and sent to Taposiris, a little town between Alexandria and Canopus; but he escaped without being hurt, of which there is an extraordinary account in the fragments of one of his letters, which Eusebius has preserved. He was less fortunate under the Valerian persecution, which began in the year 257, being then forcibly hurried off in the midst of a dangerous illness, and banished to Cephrus, a most desert and uncultivated region of Libya, in which terrible situation he remained for three years. Afterwards, when Gallienus published an edict of toleration to the Christians, he returned to Alexandria, and applied himself diligently to the offices of his function, as well by converting heathens, as by suppressing heretics. To the Novatian heresy he laboured to put a stop; he endeavoured to quiet the dispute, which was risen to some height, between Stephen and Cyprian, concerning the re-baptization of heretics: both which he attempted with Christian moderation and candour, and it must be acknowledged to his credit, that he seems to have possessed more of that spirit of gentleness and meekness than was usually to be found in those zealous times. He does not indeed appear to have been quite so moderate in the next congress which he had with Sabellius, who had asserted, that “the substance in the trinity was nothing more than one person distinguished by three names;” which Dionysius opposed with such zeal and ardour, as to fall into the Arian opinion, and maintain, that there was “not only a distinction of persons, but of essence or substance also, and even an inequality of power and glory in them.” Cave, however, excuses this error, or “blindness,” as he calls it, in him, because it flowed from his intemperate zeal and hatred of heretics, and because Dionysius was in all other respects a very sound and orthodox bishop. A little before his death he was called to a synod at Antioch, to defend the divinity of Jesus Christ against Paul of Samosata, bishop of Antioch: but he could not appear by reason of his great age and infirmities. He wrote a letter, however, to that church, in which he explained his own opinion of the matter, and refuted Paul, whom he thought so very blameable for advancing such an error, that he did not deign to salute him even by name. He died in the year 267; and though his writings were very numerous, yet scarce any of them are come down to us, except some fragments preserved by Eusebius.

, surnamed Exiguus, or Little, on account of his stature, was a monk by profession, and born in Scythia, where he is supposed to have died about the year 540, as Dupin reckons, or 556, according to Cave. He understood Greek and Latin, and was well acquainted with the holy scriptures. Cassiodorus, who was intimate with him, wrote his panegyric in the 23d chapter of his book on divine learning. At the desire of Stephen, bishop of Salone, he made a collection of canons, which contains, besides those which were in the code of the universal church, the fifty first canons of the apostles, those of the council of Sardica, and 138 canons of the council of Africa. This code of canons was approved and received by the church of Rome, and France, and by the Latin churches; and was printed by Justel in 1628, with a version of the letter of St. Cyril, and of the council of Alexandria against Nestorius, which is also the translation of Dionysius Exiguus. He afterwards joined these with the decretals of the popes from Syricius to Anastasius, to which have been, since added those of Hilary, Simplicius, and other popes, to St. Gregory. This second collection was printed by Justel in his Bibliotheca of Canon law. Dionysius was the first who introduced the way of counting the years from the birth of Jesus Christ, and who fixed it according to the epocha of the vulgar sera. He wrote also two letters upon Easter in the years 525 and 526, which were published by Petavius and Buchevius; and made a cycle of 95 years. Father Mabillon published a letter of his written to Eugippius, about the translation which he made of a work of Gregory Nyssen, concerning the creation of man. With respect to the epoch which he invented, he began his account from the conception or incarnation, usually called the Annunciation, or Lady-day which method obtained in the dominions of Great Britain till 1752, before which time the Dionysian was the same as the English epoch but in that year the Gregorian calendar having been admitted by act of parliament, they now reckon from the first of January, as in the other parts of Europe, except in the court of Rome, where the epoch of the Incarnation still obtains for the date of their bulls.

, a celebrated mathematician of Alexandria, has been reputed to be the inventor of algebra; at least his is the earliest work extant on that science. It is not certain when he lived. Some have placed him before Christ, and some after, in the reigns of Nero and the Antonines; Saxius places him in the fourth century. He appears to be the same Diophantus who wrote the “Canon Astronomicus, which Suidas says was commented on by the celebrated Hypatia, daughter of Theon of Alexandria. His reputation must have been very high among the ancients, since they ranked him with Pythagoras and Euclid in mathematical learning. Bachet, in his notes upon the 5th book” De Arithmeticis," has collected, from Diophantus’s epitaph in the Anthologia, the following circumstances of his life; namely, that he was married when he was thirty-three years old, and had asonbornfive years after; that this son died when he was forty-two years of age, and that his father did not survive him above four years; from which it appears, that Diophantus was eighty-four years old when he died.

, an ancient Christian writer, was born, about the year 320, at Besanduce, a village of Palestine, His parents are said by Cave to have been Jews; but others. are of opinion that there is no ground for this suspicion, since Sozomen affirms, that “from his earliest youth he was educated under the most excellent monks, upon which, account he continued a very considerable time in Ægypt.” It is certain, that, while he was a youth, he went into Ægypt, where he fell into the conversation of the Gnostics, who had almost engaged him in their party; but he soon withdrew himself from them, and, returning to his country, put himself for some time under the discipline of Hilarion, the father of the monks of Palestine. He afterwards founded a monastery near the village where he was born, and presided over it. About the year 367 he was elected bishop of Salamis, afterwards called Constantia, the metropolis of the isle of Cyprus, where he acquired great reputation by his writings and his piety. In the year 382, he was sent lor to Rome by the imperial letters, in order to determine the cause of Paulinus concerning the see of Antioch. In the year 3yi a contest arose between him and John, bishop of Jerusalem. Epipbanius accused John of holding the errors of Origen; and, going to Palestine, ordained Paulinian, brother of St. Jerom, deacon and priest, ill a monastery which did not belong to his jurisdiction. John immediately complained of this action of Epiphanius, as contrary to the canons and discipline of the church, and Epiphanius defended what he had done, in a letter to John. This dispute irritated their minds still more, which were already incensed upon the subject of Origen; and both of them endeavoured to engage Theophilus of Alexandria in their party. That prelate, who seemed at first to favour the bishop of Jerusalem, declared at last against Origen condemned his books in a council held in the year 399 and persecuted all the monks who were suspected of regarding his memory. These monks, retiring to Constantinople, were kindly received there by John Chrysostom; which highly exasperated Theophilus, who, from that time, conceived a violent hatred to Chrysostom. In the mean time Theophilus informed Epiphanius of what he had done against Origen, and exhorted him to do the same; upon which Epiphanius, in the year 401, called a council in the isle of Cyprus, procured the reading of Origen’s writings to be prohibited, and wrote to Chrysostom to do the same. Chrysostom, not approving this proposal, Epiphanius went to Constantinople, at the persuasion of Theophilus, in order to get the decree of the council of Cyprus executed. When he arrived there, he would not have any conversation with Cbrysostom, but used his utmost efforts to engage the bishops, who were then in that city, to approve of the judgment of the council of Cyprus against Origen. Not succeeding in this, he resolved to go the next day to the church of the apostles, and there condemn publicly all the books of Origen, and those who defended them; but as he was in the church, Cbrysostom informed him, by his deacon Serapion, that he was going to do a thing contrary to the laws of the church, and which might expose him to danger, as it would probably raise some sedition. This consideration stopped Epiphanius, who yet was so inflamed against Origen, that when the empress Eudoxia recommended to his prayers the young Theodosius, who was dangerously ill, he answered, that “the prince her son should not die, if she would but avoid the conversation of Dioscorides, and other defenders of Origen.” The empress, surprised at this presumptuous answer, sent him word, that “if God should think proper to take away her son, she would submit to his will that he might take him away as he had given him but that it was not in the power of Epiphanius to raise him from the dead, since he had lately suffered his own archdeacon to die.” Epiphanius’s heat was a little abated, when he had discoursed with Ammourns and his companions, whomTheophilus had banished for adhering to Origen’s opinions; for these monks gave him to understand that they did hot maintain an heretical doctrine, and that he had condemned them in too precipitate a manner. At last he resolved to return to Cyprus, and in his farewell to Chrysostom, he said, “I hope you will not die a bishop;” to which the latter replied, “I hope you will never return to your own country,” and both their hopes were realized, as Chrysostom was deposed from his bishopric, and Epiphanius died at sea about the year 403. His works were printed in Greek at Basil, 1544, in folio, and had afterwards a Latin translation made to them, which has frequently been reprinted. At last Petavius undertook an edition of them, together with a new Latin translation, which he published at Paris, 1622, with the Greek text revised and corrected by two manuscripts. This, which is the best edition, is in two volumes folio, at the end of which are the animadversions of Petavius, which however, are rather dissertations upon points of criticism and chronology, than notes to explain the text of his author. This edition was reprinted at Cologne, 1682, in 2 vols. folio.

, a Greek of Cyrene, librarian of Alexandria under king Euergetes, the son of Ptolemy Philadelphia, was born in the year 275 B. C. He cultivated at once poetry, grammar, philosophy, mathematics, and excelled in the first and the last. He was styled the Cosmographer, the measurer of the universe, the second Plato, and was the first who discovered a method of measuring the bulk and circumference of the earth. He constructed the first observatory, and observed the obliquity of the ecliptic, and found out also a method of knowing the primitive numbers, that is, the numbers that have no common measure but unity, which was named the sieve of Eratosthenes. This philosopher likewise composed a treatise for completing the analysis, and he solved the problem of the duplication of the cube, by means of an instrument composed of several sliders. Having attained the age of eighty, and being oppressed with infirmities, he voluntarily died of hunger, in the year 195 B. C. He described in Greek, the reigns of thirty-eight Theban kings, which had been omitted by Manetho, out of the sacred records of the Egyptians, at Thebes, and this at the command of king Euergetes. Apollodorus transcribed this catalogue out of Eratosthenes, and Sycellus out of Apollodorus. This catalogue or Laterculus of Eratosthenes is generally owned to be the most authentic Egyptian account of all others now extant, and reaches from the beginning of that kingdom after the deluge, till the days of the judges, if not also till the days of Solomon: and by Diccearchus’s connection of one of its kings with an antediluvian king of Egypt on one side, and with the first olympiad of Jphitus on the other, we gain another long and authentic series of heathen chronology during all that time. The little that remains to us of the works of Eratosthenes was printed at Oxford in 1672, 8vo- There are two other editions one in the “Uranologia” of father Petau, 1630; and the other at Amsterdam, in the same size, 1703; and in 1795, John Conr. Schaubach edited the “Catasterismi cutninterpretatione Latina et commentariis,” including a dissertation by the learned Heyne, printed at Gottingen, 1795, 8vo.

, the celebrated mathematician, according to the account of Pappus and Proclus, was born at Alexandria, in Egypt, where he flourished and taught mathematics, with great applause, under the reign of Ptolemy Lagos, about 280 years before Christ. And here, from his time till the conquest of Alexandria by the Saracens, all the eminent mathematicians were either born, or studied; and it is to Euclid, and his scholars, we are beholden for Eratosthenes, Archimedes, Apollonius, Ptolemy, Theon, &c. &c. He reduced into regularity and order all the fundamental principles of pure mathematics, which had been delivered down by Thales, Pythagoras, Eudoxus, and other mathematicians before him, and added many others of his own discovering: on which account it is said he was the first who reduced arithmetic and geometry into the form of a science. He likewise applied himself to the study of mixed mathematics, particularly to astronomy and optics. His works, as we learn from Pappus and Proclus, are the Elements, Data, Introduction to Harmony, Phenomena, Optics, Catoptrics, a Treatise of the Division of Superficies, Porisms, Loci ad Superficiem, Fallacies, and four books of Conies. The most celebrated of these, is the Elements of Geometry, first published at Basil, 1533, by Simon Grynaeus, of which there have been numberless editions, in all languages; and a fine edition of all his works was printed in 1703, by Dr. David Gregory, SaTilian professor of astronomy at Oxford, which is the most complete, and is illustrated by the notes of sir Henry Savile, and dissertations and discussions on the authenticity of the several pieces attributed to Euclid.

The Elements, as commonly published, consist of 15 books, of which the two last it is suspected are not Euclid’s, but a comment of Hypsicles of Alexandria, who lived 20Q years after Euclid. They are divided into three parts, viz. the Contemplation of Superficies, Numbers, and Solids the first 4 books treat of planes only the 5th of the proportions of magnitudes in general the 6th of the proportion of plane figures the 7th, 8th, and 9th give us the fundamental properties of numbers; the 10th contains the theory of commensurable and incommensurable lines and spaces; the llth, 12th, 13th, 14th, and 15th, treat of the doctrine of solids. There can be no doubt that, before Euclid, Elements of Qeometry were compiled by Hippocrates of Chios, Eudoxus, Leon, and many others, mentioned by Proclus in the beginning of his second book; for he affirms that Euclid new ordered many things in the Elements of Ludoxus, completed many things in those of Theatetus, and besides strengthened such propositions as before were too slightly, or but superficially established, with the most firm and convincing demonstrations.

, the patriarch of Alexandria, a man of learning and piety, succeeded John IV. in that office in the year 581. He exerted himself with great effect against the heresies of his time, and wrote an able exposition of the orthodox faith, in a letter which he addressed to Eutychius, patriarch of Constantinople. He wrote also against the Novatians; but of his works there are only a few fragments remaining. He is said to have died in the year 608.

When the persecution was over, and peace restored to the church, Eusebius was elected bishop of Caesarea, in Palestine, in the room of Agapius, who was dead; and this was about the year 3 13 or 315. He had afterwards a considerable share in the contest relating to Arius, priest of Alexandria; whose cause he, as well as other bishops of Palestine, defended at first, upon a persuasion that Arius had been unjustly persecuted by Alexander, bishop of Alexandria. He not only wrote to that bishop in favour of Arius, but likewise, not being able to procure his restoration, permitted him and his followers to preserve their rank, and to hold in their churches the ordinary assemblies of the faithful, on condition that they should submit to their bishop, and intreat him to restore them to communion. He assisted at the council of Nice, held in the year 325, and made a speech to the emperor Constantine, at whose right hand he was placed, when he came to the council. He at first refused to admit of the term Consubstantial; and the long and formal opposition which he made to it occasioned a suspicion for which there seems to be very good ground, that he was not altogether sincere, when he subscribed, as he did at length, to the Nicene creed. About the year 330 he was present at the council of Antioch, in which Eustathius. bishop of that city, was deposed, but though he consented to his deposition, and was elected to the see of Antioch in his room, he absolutely refused it; and when the bishops wrote to Constantine to desire him to oblige Eusebius to consent to the election, he wrote also to the emperor, to request him that he would not urge him to accept of it; which Constantine readily granted, and at the same time commended his moderation. Eusebius assisted at the council of Tyre held in the year 335 against Athanasius; and at the assembly of bishops at Jerusalem, when the church was dedicated there. He was sent by those bishops to Constantine, to defend what they had done against Athanasius; and it was then that he pronounced his panegyric upon that emperor, during the pubHe rejoicings in the 30th year of his reign, which was the last of his life. He was honoured with very particular marks of Constantine’s esteem: he frequently received letters from him, several of which are inserted in his books; and he was often invited to the emperor’s table, and admitted into private discourse with him. When Constantine wanted copies of the scriptures for the use of those churches which he had built at Constantinople, he conn mitted the care of transcribing them to Eusebius, whom he knew to be well skilled in those affairs; and when Eusebius dedicated to him his book “concerning Easter,” he ordered it immediately to be translated into Latin, and desired our author to communicate as soon as possible the other works of that nature which he had then in hand.

, a Christian author, of the sect of the Melchites, was born at Cairo, in Egypt, in the year 876, and became eminent in the knowledge of physic; which he practised with so much success and reputation, that even the Mahometans reckoned him one of the best physicians in his time. Towards the latter part of his life, he applied himself to divinity; and was chosen in the year 935, patriarch of Alexandria. He then took the name of Eutychius; for his Arabic name was Said Ebn Batrick; Said, meaning happy, in Arabic, as Eutychius does in, Greek. He had the misfortune not to be very acceptable to his people; for there were continual jars between them, from his first accession to the see, to the time of his death, which happened in the year 950, or, according to SaxiuSj in the year 940. He wrote annals from the beginning of the world to the year 900; in which may be found many things which occur no where else; but certainly many which were collected from legends, and are entirely fabulous. An extract from these Annals, under the title of “Annals of the Church of Alexandria,” was published by Selden, in Arabic and Latin, London, 1642, 4td and the Annals entire were published by Pocock, in Arabic and Latin, in 1659, Oxford, 2 vols. 4to, with a preface and notes by Selden. Besides these, Eutycbius wrote a book “De rebus Siciliac,” after Sicily was conquered by the Saracens the manuscript of which is now in the public library at Cambridge, subjoined to the Annals; also “A disputation between the heterodox and the Christians,” together with some small medical performances.

Mr. Evelyn was born at his father’s seat at Wotton, a few miles from Dorking, on Oct. 31, 1620, and was educated at the school of Lewes, under the care of his grandmother Stansfield, where he acknowledges in his own memoirs, that he was too much indulged, and did not make so good use of his time as he ought to have done but for this he made ample amends by his future diligence, and perhaps his neglect here appeared in a more unfavourable light to him in his advanced years than it deserved, for he was only ten when sent to this school. In April 1673 he was entered of the Middle Temple, though then at school; but in the following month, May 9, was admitted fellow commoner of Baliol college, Oxford, where his tutor was a Mr. Bradshaw (which he calls nomen invisum, alluding to serjeant Bradshaw, who presided on the trial of Charles I.) This Bradshaw was a relation of the regicide, and sou of the rector of Ockham. While at college, Mr. Evelyn informs us, that Nathaniel Canopius came thither out of Greece, being sent by the celebrated patriarch Cyrill, and had a pension from archbishop Laud. On the rebellion breaking out, Canopius returned to Constantinople, was made bishop of Smyrna, and, as Mr. Evelyn thinks, patriarch of Alexandria. Having already a turn, for objects of that kind, Mr. Evelyn records in this part of his diary, that Canopius was the first he ever saw or heard of, that drank coffee. Mr. Evelyn’s brother Richard was also -of Baliol college, but his brother George was of Trinity, where he is mentioned by Wood among the benefactors to that house.

, a Jew, was a Greek poet, who wrote tragedies on subjects of the sacred history. Large fragments of a tragedy by him, on the departure of Israel from Egypt, have been preserved by Clemens of Alexandria, and Eusebius. Various opinions are held concerning the time in which he lived. Eusebius introduces a Demetrius as quoting him; and if that was (as an eminent writer of the present day supposes) Demetrius Phalereus, he must have lived near 300 years before the birth of our Saviour. Others bring him down to a century after that period. He must, at all events, have been prior to Clemens, who quotes him; and certain it is, that there are some remarkable expressions concerning the divine Logos in his fragments. 3

Having exhausted all the sources of literature -that could be found at home, he resolved to travel, in order to improve himself among the most able physicians in all parts; intending at the same time to take every opportunity, which his travels would give him, of inspecting on the spot the plants and drugs of the several countries through which he passed. With this view he went first to Alexandria, where he continued some years, induced by the flourishing state of the arts and science^ in that city. From thence he passed into Cilicia; and? J travelling through Palestine, visited the isles of Crete and Cyprus, and other places. Among the rest, he made two voyages to Lemnos, on purpose to view and examine the Lemnian earth, which was spoken of at this time as a considerable medicine. With the same spirit he went into the lower Tyria, to get a thorough insight into the true nature of the Opobalsamum, or balm of Gilead. Having completed his design, he returned home by the way of Alexandria.

, surnamed the Cappadocian,*waa made bishop of Alexandria when Athanasius was driven from that see by the persecutions of the emperor Constantius, about the year 355. He was a native of Epiphania, in Cilicia, where his father pursued the business of a fuller. From this obscure situation the son raised himself, it is said, not bv the most honourable means, to the station of a prelate in the church, and his mean arts and depredations on the public purse became so notorious, that he was obliged to fly from the pursuit of justice, and contrived to take with him his ill-gotten wealth. The place of his retreat was Alexandria, where he professed great zeal for the Arian system of theology, and acquired considerable influence with his disciples in that city. Here he formed a very valuable collection of books, which the emperor Julian, afterwards made the foundation of the noble library established by him in the temple erected in honour of the emperor Trajan, but which was burnt by the connivance of the emperor Jovian. When Athanasius was driven from Alexandria, George was elected bishop by the prevailing party, and persecuted the catholics, and in other respects played the tyrant with such unrelenting cruelty and avarice, that at length the people rose as one man, and expelled him the city. With much difficulty he regained his authority, which he held till the year 362, when he and two other persons who had been ministers of his atrocities, were ignominiously dragged in chains to the public prison, and murdered by the populace. Such a character scarcely merits a place in this work, if it were not necessary to expose the ignorance of those who pretend that he has been transformed into the renowned St. George of England, the patron of arms, of chivalry, and of the garter, a calumny which has been amply refuted by Pegge, Miiner, and others.

, an ancient rhetorician of Alexandria, who flourished about the year 360, has left us an excellent “Lexicon upon the ten Orators of Greece,” for that is the title usually given to it, though Meursius will have it, that the author inscribed it only λεξεις; and he is followed in this opinion by James Gronovius. Harpocration speaks in this work, with much seeming exactness, of magistrates, pleadings at the bar, places in Attica, names of men who had the chief management of affairs in the republic, and of every thing, in short, which has been said to the glory of this people by their orators. Aldus first published this Lexicon in Greek at Venice, 1603, in folio, and many other learned men, as Meursius, Maussac, Valesius, have laboured upon it; James Gronovius published an edition of it at Leyden, 1696, in 4to.

, is the name of two celebrated mathematicians of antiquity, who are usually distinguished by the epithets, Hero the elder, and Hero the younger. The first was a native of Alexandria, and the disciple of Ctesias, who flourished in the reigns of Ptolemy Philadelphia and Euergetes I. He was distinguished by his great skill in mechanics, and particularly in the construction of machinery; as a moralist he was inclined to the tenets of Epicurus. He was author of a treatise “De Constructione et Mensura Manubalistoe,” of which a fragment was published in Greek by Bernardino Baldi “Pe Telis conficiendis jaculandisque Liber,” published with notes by Baldi “Spiralia,” published in 1575 by Frederic Commandine and “De Automatorum Fabrica.” These are all to be found in the Louvre edition of the “Ancient Mathematicians.” The younger Hero is supposed to have flourished under the reign of the emperor Heraclius. He was author of “De Machinis Bellicis Geodcesia;” “Liber de Obsidione repellenda et toleranda” and <c De Vocabulis Geonaetricis et Stereometricis."

was a celebrated grammarian of Alexandria, whom Isaac Casaubon has declared to be, in his opinion, of all the ancient critics, whose remains are extant, the most learned and instructive, for those who would apply themselves in earnest to the study of the Greek language. Who or what Hesychius was, and indeed at what time precisely he lived, are circumstances which there is not light enough in antiquity to determine; as Fabricius himself owns, who has laboured abundantly about them. He has left us a learned lexicon or vocabulary of Greek words, from which we may perceive that he was a Christian, or, at least, that he had a thorough and intimate knowledge of Christianity; for he has inserted in his work the names of the apostles, evangelists, and prophets, as well as of those ancient writers who have commented upon them. Some say that he was a disciple of Gregory of Nazianzen, and that he was extremely well versed in the sacred Scriptures: and Sixtus Sinensis is of opinion that he ought to be placed about the end of the fourth century. The first edition of Hesychius’s lexicon was published in folio by Aldus at Venice in 1513; then appeared one by Schrevelius, at Leyden, in 4to, in 1668, in Greek only. The best edition is in two volumes, folio; the first published by Albert! at Leyden in 1746 the second, completed by Ruhnkenius, after the death of Alberti, and published in 1766. This is a complete and excellent edition, abounding in learned and useful notes. It is reckoned one of the best editions existing of any ancient author. But, after all the labours of the acutest men, much yet remains to be corrected and discovered in this work.

, a great persecutor of the Christians in the beginning of the fourth century, was at first president of Bithynia, and afterwards governor of Alexandria; in both which situations he acted with great cruelty against the Christians. Laotantius relates, that at the time he was teaching rhetoric in Bithynia, and the Christian church under persecution, Hierocles was then one of the judges, and had been the chief promoter of the bloody persecution which the Christians suffered under the emperor Dioclesian; and those whom he could not crush by his power, he endeavoured to destroy with his pen. With this view he composed two small books, not indeed professedly against the Christians, lest he should seem to inveigh against them as an enemy but addressed to the Christians, that he might be thought to advise them kindly as a friend. They were entitled “Aoyoi <piK*Kn8ei$ ts^ X^navaj, Sermones veri amantes ad Chnstianos” in which he endeavoured to prove that the Holy Scripture is false, by shewing it to be inconsistent with itself. He insisted upon some points, which seemed to him to contradict each other; and he collected so many peculiarities relating to Christianity, that, as Lactantius says, he may well appear to have been a Christian himself. He abused Peter and Paul, and the other disciples, as though they had been the contrivers of the cheat; and yet he confessed at the same time, that they wanted skill and learning, for that some of them gained their livelihood by fishing. He attempted also to compare the feigned miracles of Apollonius Tyanaeus with those of Jesus Christ, and pretended to prove that Apollonius had performed even greater wonders. Eusebius undertook, in his book against Hierocles, to confute the latter part of this work; but, as Cave says, “he has done it very indifferently, his confutation being little more than a bare running over of Philostratus’s Life of Apollonius.” Laclantius did not make a particular answer to Hierocles, his design being to establish the foundations of the gospel, and to ruin those of Paganism; and he thought, as he tells us, that this would be answering at once all that the adversaries of Christianity had published, or would publish for the future.

It is reported by Eusebius, that the martyr Ædesms, transported with an holy zeal, ventured to approach Hierocles while he was presiding at the trial of some Christians of Alexandria, and to give him a box on the ear; upbraiding him at the same time with his infamous cruelty. Th6 remains of Hierocles were collected into one volume 8vo, by bishop Pearson, and published at London in 1654, with a learned dissertation upon him and his writings prefixed.

, a Platonic philosopher of Alexandria, flourished about A. D. 450. He was cruelly scourged at Constantinople for his adherence to the Pagan superstitions; and it is said that, in the midst of his torture, when he received some of the blood into his own hand, he threw it upon the face of his judge, repeating, from Homer,

, or Horus Apollo, was a grammarian, according to Suidas, of Panoplus in Egypt, who taught first at Alexandria, and then at Constantinople, under the reign of Theodosius, about the year 380. There are extant under his name two books “concerning the Hieroglyphics of the Egyptians,” which Aldus first published in Greek in 1505, folio. They have often been republished since, with a Latin version and notes; but the best edition is that by Cornelius de Pauw at Utrecht, in 1727, 4to. Meanwhile there are many Rorapollos of antiquity; and it is not certain, that the grammarian of Alexandria was the author of these books. Suidas does not ascribe them to him; and Fabricius is of opinion, that they belong rather to another Horus Apollo of more ancient standing, who flourished about 1500 B. C. and wrote upon Hieroglyphics in the Egyptian language, and from whose work an extract rather than a version has been made of these two books in Greek.

Her scholars were as eminent as they were numerous: one of whom was the celebrated Synesius, who was afterwards bishop of Ptolemais. This ancient Christian Platonist every where bears the strongest, as well as the most grateful testimony to the learning and virtue of his instructress; and never mentions her without the profoundest respect, and sometimes in terms of affection coming little short of adoration. In a letter to his brother Euoptius, “Salute,” says he, “the most honoured and the most beloved of God, the Philosopher”; and that happy society, which enjoys the blessing “of her divine voice.” In another, he mentions one Egyptus, who “sucked in the seeds of wisdom from Hypatia.” In another, he expresses himself thus “I suppose these letters will be delivered by; Peter, which he will receive from that sacred hand.” In a letter addressed to herself, he desires her to direct a hydroscope to be maJe and bought for him, which he there describes. That famous silver astrolabe, which he presented to Peonius, a man equally excelling in philosophy and arms, he owns to have been perfected by the directions of Hypatia. In a long epistle, he acquaints her with his reasons for writing two books, which he sends her; and asks her judgment of one, resolving not to publish it without her approbation. But it was not Synesius only, and the disciples of the Alexandrian school, who admired Hypatia for her great virtue and learning: never woman was more caressed by the public, and yet never woman had a more unspotted character. She was held as an oracle for her wisdom, which made her consulted by the magistrates in all important cases; and this frequently drew her among the greatest concourse of men, without the least censure of her manners. “On account of the confidence and authority,” says Socrates, “which she had acquired by her learning, she sometimes came to the judges with singular modesty. Nor was she any thing abashed to appear thus among a crowd of men; for all persons, by reason of her extraordinary discretion, did at the same time both reverence and admire her.” The same is confirmed by Nicephorus, and other authors, whom we have already cited. Danaascius and Suidas relate, that the governors and magistrates of Alexandria regularly visited her, and paid their court to her; and, when Nicephorus intended to pass the highest compliment on the princess Eudocia, he thought he could not do it better, than by calling her “another Hypatia.”

While Hypatia thus reigned the brightest ornament of Alexandria, Orestes was governor of the same place for the emperor Theodosius, and Cyril bishop or patriarch. Orestes, having had a liberal education, admired Hypatia, and frequently consulted her. This created an intimacy between them that was highly displeasing to Cyril, who had a great aversion to Orestes: which intimacy, as it is supposed, had like to have proved fatal to Orestes, as we may collect from the following account of Socrates. “Certain of the Monks,” says he, “living in the Nitrian mountains, leaving their monasteries to the number of about five hundred, flocked to the city, and spied the governor going abroad in his chariot: whereupon approaching, they called him by the names of Sacrificer and Heathen, using many other scandalous expressions. The governor, suspecting that this was a trick played him by Cyril, cried out that he was a Christian; and that he had been baptized at Constantinople by bishop Atticus. But the monks giving no heed to what he said, one of them, called Ammonius, threw a stone at Orestes, which struck him on the head; and being all covered with blood from his wounds, his guards, a few excepted, fled, some one way and some another, hiding themselves in the crowd, lest they should be stoned to death. In the mean while, the people of Alexandria ran to defend their governor against the monks, and putting the rest to flight, brought Ammonius, whom they apprehended, to Orestes; who, as the laws prescribed, put him publicly to the torture, and racked him till he expired.”

, of Alexandria, a disciple of Isidorus, flourished under M. Aurelius, and Lucius Verus, in the second century. He has been supposed to be the author of a certain work called “Anaphoricus,” or a book of ascensions, which was written in opposition to the doctrines of some astronomer. It was published in Greek, with the Latin version of Mentelius, and in conjunction with the Optics of Heliodorus, at Paris, in 1680, 4to. Vossius, in his book “de Scientiis Mathematicis,” has erroneously supposed him to have lived at a much earlier period.

Josephus’s “Jewish Antiquities,” in 20 books, written in Greek, is also a very noble work; their history is deduced from the origin of the world to the 12th year of Nero, when the Jews began to rebel against the Romans. At the conclusion of the “Antiquities,” he subjoined the “History of his own Life,” although in the editions of his Works it has usually been considered as a distinct production. He wrote also two books against Apion, a grammarian of Alexandria, and a great adversary of the Jews. These contain many curious fragments of ancient historians. We have also a discourse of his “upon the Martyrdom of the Maccabees,” which is a master-piece of eloquence; but its authenticity has been doubted, and Whiston would not admit it in his translation. The works of Josephus, with Latin versions, have been often published but the best editions are those of Hudson, Oxford, 1720, 2 vols. fol. and of Havercatnp, at Amsterdam, 1727, in 2 vols. folio. They have also been translated into modern languages; into English by L'Estrange, and again by Whiston, in 2 Vol$. fol.

With these dispositions he came to the empire, and consequently with a determined purpose of subverting the Christian and restoring the pagan worship. His predecessors had left him the repeated experience of the inefficacy of downright force. The virtue of the past times then rendered this effort fruitless, the numbers of the present would have made it now dangerous: he found it necessary, therefore, to change his ground. His knowledge of human nature furnished him with arms; and his knowledge of the faith he had abandoned, enabled him to direct those arms to most advantage. He began with re-establishing paganism by law, and granting a full liberty of conscience to the Christians. On this principle, he restored those to their civil rights who had been banished on account of their religion, and even affected to reconcile to a mutual forbearance the various sects of Christianity. Yet he put on this mask of moderation for no other purpose than to inflame the dissensions in the church. He then fined and banished such of the more popular clergy as had abused their power, either in exciting the people to burn and destroy pagan temples, or to commit violence on an opposite sect: and it cannot be denied, but that in the turbulent and insolent manners of some of them, he found a plausible pretext for this severity. He proceeded to revoke and take away those immunities, honours, and revenues, which his uncle and cousin had granted to the clergy. Neither was his pretence for this altogether unreasonable. He judged the grants to be exorbitant; and, besides, as they were attendant on a national religion, when the establishment came to be transferred from Christianity to paganism, he concluded they must follow the religion of the state. But there was one immunity he took away, which no good policy, even under an establishment, should have granted them and this was an exemption from the civil tribunals. He went still farther he disqualified the Christian laity for bearing offices in the state and even this the security of the established religion may often require. But his most illiberal treatment of the Christians, was his forbidding, the professors of that religion to teach polite letters, and the sciences, in the public schools; and Amm. Marcellinus censures this part of his conduct as a breach in his general character of humanity, (lib. xx. c. 10.) His more immediate design, in this, was to hinder the youth from taking impressions to the disadvantage of paganism; his remoter view, to deprive Christianity of the support of human literature. Not content with this, he endeavoured even to destroy what was already written in defence of Christianity. With this view he wrote to the governor and treasurergeneral of Egypt, to send him the library of George bishop of Alexandria, who, for his cruelty and tyranny, had been ton) in pieces by the people: nay, to such a length did his aversion to the name of Christ carry him, as to decree, by a public edict, that his followers should be no longer called Christians, but Galileans; well knowing the efficacy of a nick-name to render a profession ridiculous. In the mean time, the animosities between the different sects of Christianity, furnished him with the means of carrying on these projects. Being, for example, well assured that the Arian church oi Edessa was very rich, he took advantage of their oppressing and persecuting the Valentinians to seize every tiling belonging to that church, and divided the plunder among his soldiers; scornfully telling the Edessians, he did this to ease them of their burthens, that they might proceed more lightly, and with less impediment, in their journey to heaven. He went farther still, if we may believe the historian Socrates, and, in order to raise money to defray the extraordinary expence of his Persian expedition, he imposed a tax or tribute on all who would not sacrifice to the pagan idols. The tax, it is true, was proportioned to every man’s circumstances, but was as truly an infringement upon his act of toleration. And though he forbore persecuting to death by law, which would have been a direct contradiction to that act, yet he connived at the fury of the people, and the brutality of the governors of provinces, who, during his short reign, brought many martyrs to the stake. He put such into governments, whose inhumanity and blind zeal for their country superstitions were most distinguished. And when the suffering churches presented their complaints to him, he dismissed them with cruel scoffs, telling them, their religion directed them to suffer without murmuring.

, a native of America, of a very enterprising turn, was born at Groton in Connecticut. Having lost his father in his infancy, he was taken undef the care of a relation, who sent him to a grammar-school, and he studied for some time at Dartmouth college, in New Hampshire. Here it appears to have been his intention to apply to theological studies, l>ut the friend who sent him to college being dead, he was obliged to quit it, and by means of a canoe of Ins own const ruction, he found his way to Hartford, and thence to New York, where he went on board ship as a common sailor, and in this capacity arrived at London in 1771. When at college, there were several young Indians there for their education, with whom he used to associate, and learned their manners and hearing of capt. Cook’s intentions to sail on his third voyage, Ledyard engaged himself with him in the situation of a corporal of marines and on his return from that memorable voyage, during which his curiosity was rather excited than gratified, feeling an anxious desire of penetrating from the north-western coast of America, which Cook had partly explored, to the eastern coast, with which he himself was perfectly familiar, he determined to traverse the vast continent from the Pacific to the Atlantic ocean. His first plan for the purpose was that of embarking in a vessel, which was then preparing to sail, on a voyage of commercial adventure, to Nootka sound, on the western coast of America; and with this view he expended in sea-stores the greatest part of the money with which he had been supplied by the liberality of sirJoseph Banks, who has eminently distinguished himself in this way on other occasions for the promotion of every kind of useful science. But this scheme was frustrated by the rapacity of a customhouse officer; and therefore Mr. Ledyard determined to travel over land to Kamtschatka, from whence the passage is extremely short to the opposite coast of America. Accordingly, with no more than ten guineas in his purse, which was all that he had left, he crossed the British channel to Ostend, towards the close of 1786, and by the way of Denmark and the Sound, proceeded to the capital of Sweden. As it was winter, he attempted to traverse the gulf of Bothnia on the ice, in order to reach Kamtschatka by the shortest course; but finding, when he came to the middle of the sea, that the water was not frozen, he returned to Stockholm, and taking his course northward, walked to the Arctic circle, and passing round the head of the gulf, descended on its eastern side to Petersburg, where he arrived in the beginning of March 1787. Here fae was noticed as a person of an extraordinary character; and though he had neither stockings nor shoes, nor means to provide himself with any, he received and accepted an, invitation to dine with the Portuguese ambassador. From him he obtained twenty guineas for a bill, which he took the liberty, without being previously authorized, to draw on sir Joseph Banks, concluding, from his well-known disposition, that he would not be unwilling to pay it. By the interest of the ambassador, as we may conceive to have been probably the case, he obtained permission to accompany a detachment of stores, winch the empress had ordered to be sent to Yakutz, for the use of Mr. Billings, an Englishman, at that time in her service. Thus accommodated, he left Petersburg on the 2 1st of May, and travelling eastward through Siberia, reached Irkutsk in August; and from thence he proceeded to Yakutz, where he was kindly received by Mr. Billings, whom he recollected on board captain Cook’s ship, in the situation of the astronomer’s servant, but who was now entrusted by the empress in accomplishing her schemes of discovery. He returned to Irkutsk, where he spent part of the winter; and in the spring proceeded to Oczakow, on the coast of the Kamtschatkan sea, intending, in the spring, to have passed over to that peninsula, and to have embarked on the eastern side in one of the Russian vessels that trade to the western shores of America; but, finding that the navigation was completely obstructed, he returned to Yakutz, in order to wait for the termination of the winter. But whilst he was amusing himself with these prospects, an express arrived, in January 1788, from the empress, and he was seized, for reasons that have not been explained, by two Russian soldiers, who conveyed him in a sledge through the deserts of Northern Tartary to Moscow, without his clothes, money, and papers. From Moscow he was removed to the city of Moialoff, in White Russia, and from thence to the town of Tolochin, on the frontiers of the Polish dominions. As his conductors parted with him, they informed him, that if he returned to Russia he would be hanged, but that if he chose to go back to England, they wished him a pleasant journey. Distressed by poverty, covered with rags, infested with the usual accompaniments of such clothing, harassed with continual hardships, exhausted by disease, without friends, without credit, unknown, and reduced to the most wretched state, he found his way to Konigsberg. In this hour of deep distress, he resolved once more to have recourse to his former benefactor, and fortunately found a person who was willing to take his draft for five guineas on the president of the royal society. With this assistance he arrived in England, and immediately waited on sir Joseph Banks. Sir Joseph, knowing his disposition, and conceiving, as we may well imagine, that he would be gratified by the information, told him, that he could recommend him, as he believed, to an adventure almost as perilous as that from which he had just returned; and then communicated to him the wishes of the Association for discovering the Inland Countries of Africa. Mr. Ledyard replied, that he had always determined to traverse the continent of Africa, as soon as he had explored the interior of North America, and with a letter of introduction by sir Joseph Banks, he waited on Henry Beaufoy, esq. an active member of the fore-mentioned association. Mr. Beaufoy spread before him a map of Africa, and tracing a line from Cairo to Sennar, and from thence westward in the latitude and supposed direction of the Niger, informed him that this was the route by which he was anxious that Africa might, if possible, be explored. Mr. Ledyard expressed great pleasure in the hope of being employed in this adventure. Being asked when he would set out? “To-morrow morning” was his answer. The committee of the society assigned to him, at his own desire, as an enterprise of obvious peril and of difficult success, the task of traversing from east to west, in the latitude attributed to the Niger, the widest part of the continent of Africa. On the 30th of June 1788, Mr. Ledyard left London; and after a journey of thirty-six days, seven of which were consumed at Paris, and two at Marseilles, he arrived in the city of Alexandria. On die 14th of August, at midnight, he left Alexandria, and sailing up the Nile, arrived at Cairo on the 19th. From Cairo he communicated to the committee of the society all the information which he was able to collect during his stay there: and they were thus sufficiently apprized of the ardent spirit of inquiry, the unwearied attention, the persevering research, and the laborious, indefatigable, anxious zeal, with which he pursued the object of his mission. The next dispatch which they were led to expect, was to be dated at Sennar; the terms of his passage had been settied, and the day of his departure was appointed. The committee, however, after having expected with impatience the description of his journey, received with great concern and grievous disappointment, by letters from Egypt, the melancholy tidings of his death. By a bilious complaint, occasioned probably by vexatious delay at Cairo, and by too free an use of the acid of vitriol and tartar emetic, the termination of his life was hastened. He was decently interred in the neighbourhood of such of the English as had ended their days in the capital of Egypt,

, a Greek author, was born at Samosata, the capital of Comagene; the time of his birth is uncertain, though generally fixed in the reign of the emperor Trajan; but Mr. Moyle, who has taken some pains to adjust the age of Lucian, fixes the fortieth year of his age to the 164th year of Christ, and the fourth of Marcus Antoninus; and consequently, his birth to the 124th year of Christ, and the eighth of Adrian. His birth was mean; and his father, not being able to give him any learning, resolved to breed him a sculptor, and in that view put him apprentice to his brother-in-law; but, taking a dislike to the business, he applied himself to the study of polite learning and philosophy; being encouraged by a dream, which he relates in the beginning of his works, and which evidently was the product of his inclination to letters. He tells us also himself, that he studied the law, and practised some time as an advocate; but disliking the wrangling oratory of the bar, he threw off his gown, and took up that of a rhetorician. In this character he settled first at Antioch; and passing thence into Ionia in Greece, he travelled into Gaul and Italy, and returned at length into his own country by the way of Macedonia. He lived four and twenty years after the death of Trajan, and even to the time of Marcus Aurelius, who made him register of Alexandria in Egypt. He tells us himself, that when he entered upon this office, he was in extreme old age, and had one leg in Charon’s boat. Suidas asserts that he was torn to pieces by dogs. He died, however, in the year 214, aged 90.

, bishop of Cagliari, the metropolis of Sardinia, is known in ecclesiastical history as the author of a schism, the occasion of which was, that Lucifer would not allow the decree made in the council of Alexandria, A. D. 362, for receiving the apostate Arian bishops. This he opposed so resolutely, that, rather than yield, he chose to separate himself from the communion of the rest, and to form a new schism, which bore his name, and -soon gained a considerable footing, especially in the West; several persons no less distinguished for piety than learning, and among the rest Gregory, the famous bishop of Elvira, having adopted his rigid sentiments. As Lucifer is honoured by the church of Rome as a saint, where his festival is kept on the 20th of May, Baronius pretends that he abandoned his schism, and returned to the communion of the church, before his death. But his contemporary, Ruffinus, who probably knew him, assures us, that he died in the schism which he had formed, A D. 370. His works are written in a harsh and barbarous style. According to Lardner, they consist very much of passages of the Old and New Testament, cited one after another, which he quotes with marks of the greatest respect. He farther adds, that the works of this prelate have not yet been published with all the advantage that might be wished. The titles of these works are, “Ad Constantinum Imperatorem, lib. ii.” “De Regibus Apostaticis” “De non conveniendo cum Hereticis” “De non parcendo Delinquentibus in Deum” “Quod moriendurn sit pro Filio Dei” and “Epistola brevis ad Florentium.” They were collected together, and published at Paris by John Till, bishop of Meaux, in 1568, and at Venice about 1780, in fol. with additions.

, the younger, another famous monk, a friend of the former, and a native also of Alexandria, had near 5000 monks under his direction. He was persecuted by the Arians, and banished into an island where there was not a single Christian, but where he converted almost all the inhabitants by his preaching, and as some say, by his miracles. He died in the year 394 or 395. “The Rules of Monks,” in 30 chapters, are attributed to him, and a discourse by him on the “Death of the Just,” was published by Tollius, in his “Insignia Itinerarii Italici.”

Which rightly should possess a poet’s brain." In 1557 he translated Coluthus’s “Rape of Helen” into English rhyme. He also translated the elegies of Ovid, which book was ordered to be burnt at Stationers’-hall, 1599, by command of the archbishop of Canterbury and the bishop of London. Before 1598 appeared his translation of the “Loves of Hero and Leander,” the elegant prolusion of an unknown sophist of Alexandria, but commonly ascribed to the ancient Musseus. It was. left unfinished by Marlow’s death; but what was called a second part, which is nothing more than a continuation from the Italian, appeared by one Henry Petowe, in 1598. Another edition was published, with the first book of Lucan, translated also by Marlow, and in blank verse, in 160O. At length Chapman, the translator of Homer, completed, but with a striking inequality, Marlow’s unfinished version, and printed it at London in 1606, 4to. His plays were, 1. “Tamerlane the great Scythian emperor, two parts,” ascribed by Phillips erroneously to Newton. 2. “The rich Jew of Maltha.” 3. “The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Dr. John Faustus.” 4. “Lnst’s Dominion,” Lond. 1661, 8vo, from which was stolen the greater part of Aphra Behn’s “Abdelazer, or the More’s Revenge,” Lond. 1677. 5. “The Tragedy of King Edward II.” 6. “The Tragedy of Dido, queen of Carthage,” in the composition of which he was assisted by Thomas Nash, who published it in 1594.

, bishop of Lycopolis in Thebais, who is known in church history as the chief of the sect of Mdctiansy was convicted of sacrificing to idols, during the Dioclesian persecution, and imprisoned and degraded by a council held by Peter, bishop of Alexandria. Upon his release, Meletius caused a schism about the year 301, separating himself from Peter, and the other bishops, charging them, but particularly Peter, with too much indulgence in the reconciliation of apostates. By the council of Nice, A. D. 325, he was permitted to remain in his own city, Lycopolis, but without the power either of electing, or prdaining, or appearing upon that account either in the country or city; so that he retained only the mere title of bishop. His followers at this time were united with the Arians. Meletius resigned to Alexander, bishop of Alexandria, the churches over which he had usurped superiority, and died some time after. When he was dying, be named one of his disciples his successor,- Thus the schism began again, and the Meletians subsisted as far as the fifth century, but were condemned by the first council of Nice.

, the patriarch of Alexandria in the seventeenth century, was sent into England by Cyrillus Lucar, to be instructed in the doctrine and discipline of our church, and to learn the English and Latin languages. For these purposes he applied to archbishop Abbot, who procured him admission into Baliol college, Oxford, where he remained until 1622, at which time he was chancellor to the patriarch of Constantinople; but on his return to his own country, was chosen patriarch of Alexandria. On his way home, and while in Germany, he drew up “A Confession of Faith of the Greek Church,” printed at Helmstadt, Gr. and Lat. in 1661. It inclines chiefly to the protestant doctrines; but catholic writers have declared themselves satisfied with some parts of it. The time of his death is not known, but he is said to have been living in 1640.

In 1709 Montfaucon published Philo-Juda&us an a contemplative life, in French, “Le Livre de Philon de la vie contemplative, &c.” translated from the Greek with notes, and an attempt to prove that the Therapeutee of whom Philo- speaks were Christians. Having sent a copy of this to president Bouhier, the latter returned him a polite letter of thanks, but stated that he could not agree with, him in his opinion respecting the religion of the Therapeutse. This brought on a correspondence which was published at Paris in 17 12, 12mo, under the title of “Lettres pour & contre sur la fameuse question, si les solitaires appelles Therapeutes etoient Chretiens.” The learned Gisbert Cuper was also against the opinion of Montfaucon on this question; and it is, we believe, now generally thought that his arguments were more ingenious than convincing. In 1710^ Montfaucon published an “Epistola” on the fact, mentioned by Rufinus, that St. Athanasius baptised children when himself a child. In this work he investigates the date of the death of St. Alexander, bishop of Alexandria, and that of the death of St. Athanasius. This was followed in 1713 by an edition of what remains of the “Hexapla of Origen,” 2 vols. folio, and a fine edition of the works of St. Chrysostom, begun in 1718, and completed in 1738 in 13 vols. folio.

On the morning of the 9th, major-general Moore and lieutenant-colonel Anstruther, the quarter-master-general, went forward with the 92d Highlanders, the Corsican, rangers, and some cavalry, to look fora new position. The country was unequal, sandy, and thickly interspersed with palm and date trees. He posted the 92d at a place about two miles in front, where there was a small redoubt, and where the space became more narrow than any where else, by the sea and lake Madie running up on each side. He then went forward with the cavalry, until they were met by a strong patrole of the" enemy, on which they retired. On reporting to sir Ralph, he directed major-general Moore to take post with the reserve on the ground where he had placed the 92d by noon he had taken possession of the post with the reserve, and placed his out- posts. On the lOth there was some skirmishing with the out-posts of the reserve and the enemy’s cavalry. The main body of the army was detained in their post-position till, by the exertions of the navy, the stores and provisions were landed and forwarded to them. On the llth sir Ralph went to the reserve, the brigade of guards moved forward, and took post half way between them and the rest of the army. The lake Madie was ordered to be examined, with a view to the practicability of conveying the army stores by it, which it was afterwards found could be done. On the 12th the army moved forward in two columns, each composed of a wing. The reserve, in two columns, formed the advanced guard to each column. The enemy’s cavalry retired, skirmishing as the army advanced. The army halted at a tower that they found evacuated, from the top of which a body of infantry was seen advancing. The line was instantly formed, and the army advanced with the utmost regularity and steadiness. The enemy, on seeing this movement, first halted, and afterwards retired to some heights which terminated a plain, where the British army took post for the night, and lay on their arms. Majorgeneral Moore had the direction of the advanced posts; and the 90th and 92d regiments, though not belonging to the reserve, were placed under his orders for the night. The out- posts of the enemy and the advanced guard of the British were so near each other, that it was impossible that either army could move without bringing on a general action. At six o'clock in the morning of the 13th the army moved forward in two columns from the left, each composed of a line. The reserve, in one column from the left, marched on the right of the other two, to cover the flank. Sir Ralph’s intention was to attack the enemy’s right, and, if possible, to turn it. The 90th and 92d regiments formed the advanced guards to the two columns of the army, and, having got too far a-head of the columns, were attacked by the main body of the enemy, and suffered severely before the columns could come to their support. These two regiments, however, maintained their ground, and defeated a body of cavalry that attempted to charge them. The action now became general along the line; the French, being forced back, retreated, covered by a numerous artillery, halting and firing wherever the ground favoured them. The British army advanced rapidly without artillery, as their guns, being dragged through sand by the seamen, could not keep up with the infantry. The reserve remained in column on the right flank covering the two lines, and though mowed down by the enemy’s cannon in front, and exposed to musketry from hussars and light infantry on their flank, continued to move forward with such steadiness and regularity, that at any time during the action and pursuit, they could have been wheeled to a flank without an interval. The two lines advanced with equal order until they reached a rising ground, where there were the ruins of an ancient building of considerable extent; from this height they saw the enemy retreating in confusion through a plain, under cover of the fortified heights in front of Alexandria. Sir Ralph followed them into the middle of the plain, where a consultation was held, and it was then intended that general Hutchinson, with part of the second line, which had been least engaged, should attack the enemy’s right, while major-general Moore, with the reserve supported by the guards, attacked their left near the sea.

General Hutchinson had a considerable circuit to make to get to the ground where he was to make his attack, and the attack of the reserve was to be regulated by his. When he got to his ground, the position of the French was found to be so strongly defended by a numerous artillery, and covered besides by the guns on the fortified heights near Alexandria, that the attempt was given up, and as the army were in their present position exposed to the enemy’s cannon without being able to retaliate, a position on the height in the rear was marked out, to which the army fell back as the evening advanced. This severe action cost the British army 1300 in killed and wounded. The situation of the British army at this period was certainly a very critical one, as it was quite evident that government had been deceived in their estimate of the French forces. Sir Raiph, therefore, was well aware of the difficult task he had to perform. The camp of the British was about four or five miles from Alexandria. In front of the reserve, which, formed the right of the army, was a very extensive ancient ruin, which the French called Caesar’s camp; it was twenty or thirty yards retired from the right flank of the redoubt, and commanded the space between the redoubt and the sea. In this redoubt and ruin major-general Moore had posted the 28th and 58th regiments. On the 21st the attack was made by the French, who were driven back by his troops, but he received a shot in the leg. The result, however, was, that every attack the French made was repulsed with great slaughter. In the early part of the action, and in the dark, some confusion was unavoidable, but wherever the French appeared, the British went boldly up to them, even the cavalry breaking in had not in the least dismayed them. As the day broke, the foreign brU gaJe, under brigadier-general, afterwards sir John Stuart, who fought the battle of Maida, came to the second line to the support of the reserve, shared in the action, and behaved with great spirit. Day-light enabled major-general Moore to get the reserve into order, but there was a great want of ammunition. The guns could not be fired for a very considerable time, otherwise the French must have suffered much more severely, while retreating from their different unsuccessful attacks, than they did. The enemy’s artillery continued to gall the British severely with shot and shells, after the infantry and cavalry had been repulsed. The British could not return a shot. Had the French attacked again, the British had nothing but their bayonets, which they unquestionably would have used, as never was an army more determined to do their duty. But the enemy laad suffered so severely, that the men could not be got to make another attempt. They continued in front at a distant musket-shot, until the ammunition for the English guns was brought up to enable them to fire, when theyvery soon retreated. While the attacks were made on the British right, a column attacked the guards on the left of the reserve, but were repulsed with loss. The French general, Menou, had concentrated the greatest part of the force in Egypt for this attack; the prisoners stated his force in the field at about 13,000 men, of whom between three and four thousand were killed or wounded. The British army lost about 1300 men, of which upwards of 500 belonged to the reserve. This battle commenced at half past four in the morning, and terminated about nine. The French made three different attacks, with superior numbers, the advantage of cavalry, and a numerous and well-served artillery. The British infantry here gave a decided proof of their superior firmness and hardihood. Sir Ralph, who always exposed his person very much, in this last battle carried the practice perhaps farther than he bad e?er done before. Major-general Moore met hjnv early in the anion, close in the rear of the 42d, without any of the officeFS of his family; and afterwards, when the French cavalry charged the second time, and penetrated the 42d, major-general Moore saw him again and waved to him to retire, but he was instantly surrounded by the hussars; he received a cut from a sabre ou the breast, which penetrated his clothes and just grazed the flesh. He received a shot in the thigh, but remained in the field until the battle was over, when he was conveyed on board the Foudroyant. Major-general Moore, at the close of the action, had the horse killed under him that major Honeyroan had lent him. Wnen the battle was over, the wound in his leg became so stiff and painful, that as soon as he could get a hurse, he gave the command of the reserve to coloi ei Spencer, and retired with brigadier-general Oakes, who commanded the reserve under him, and who was wounded in the leg also, to their tents in the rear. Brigadier-general Oakes was wounded nearly at the same time, and in the same part of the leg that major-general Moore was, but they both continued to head the reserve until the battle was over. When the surgeon had dressed their wounds, finding that they must be some time incapable of action, they returned to the Diadem troop-ship. Sir Ralph Abercrombie died of his wound on board the Foudroyant on the 28th day of March, and the command devolved on major-general Hutchinson. It is unnecessary here to detail the operations in Egypt that followed the battle of the 2 1st, as major-general Moore was confined on hoard the Diadem with his wound until the I Oth of May, when he was removed to Rosetta for the benefit of a change of air. He suffered very severely the ball had passed between the two bones of his leg he endured a long confinement and much torment, from inflammation and surgical operations. When at length he could move on crutches, and was removed to Rosetta, where he got a house on the banks of the Nile, agreeably situated, he began to recover rapidly, and afterwards continued to serve in the army of Egypt until after the surrender of Alexandria, when he returned to England, where he received the honour of knighthood, and the order of the bath. On the renewal of the war, the talents and services of sir John Moore pointed him out as deserving of the most important command. It was not, however, until 1808 that he was appointed to the chief command of an army to be employed in Spain, and Gallicia or the borders of Leon were fixed upon as the place for assembling the troops. Sir John was ordered to send the cavalry by land, but it was left to his own discretion to transport the infantry and artillery either by sea or land. He was also assured, that 15,000 men were ordered to Corunna, and he was directed to give such orders to sir David Baird, their commander, as would most readily effect a junction of the whole force. Both, however, soon discovered that little reliance could be placed on the Spaniards; and they had not got far into the country before their hopes were completely disappointed. Sir John Moore soon began to anticipate the result which followed. In the mean time the French army had advanced, and taken possession of the city of Valladolid, which is but twenty leagues from Salamanca. Sir John had been positively informed that his entry into Spain would be covered by 60 or 70,000 men; and that Burgos was the city intended for the point of union for the different divisions of the British army. But already not only Burgos, but Valladolid, was in possession of the enemy; and he found himself with an advanced corps in an open town, at three marches distance only from the French army, without even a Spanish piquet to cover his front He had at this time only three brigades of infantry, without a gun, in Salamanca. The remainder, it is true, vyere moving up in succession, but the whole could not arrive in less than ten days. At this critical time the Spanish main armies, instead of being united either among themselves, or with the British, were divided from each other almost by the whole breadth of the peninsula. The fatal consequences of this want of union were but too soon made apparent; Blake was defeated, and a report reached sir David Baird that the French were advancing upon his division in two different directions, so as to threaten to surround him. He, consequently, prepared to retreat upon Corunna; but sir John Moore, having ascertained that the report was unfounded, ordered sir David to advance, in order, if possible, to form a junction with him. On the 28th of November he received information that there was now no army remaining, against which the whole French force might be directed, except the British; and it was in vain to expect that they, even if they had been united, could have resisted or checked the enemy. Sir John Moore, therefore, determined to fall back on Portugal, to hasten the junction of general Hope, who had gone towards Madrid, and he ordered sir David Baird to regain Corunna as expeditiously as possible; and when he had thus determined upon a retreat, he communicated his design to the general officers, who, with the exception of general Hope, seemed to doubt the wisdom of his decision; he would, however, have carried it into execution, if he had not been induced, by pressing solicitations, and representations of encouragement, to advance to Madrid, which he was told not only held out, but was capable of opposing the French for a considerable length of time. Sir John, therefore, anxious to meet the wishes of his troops, by leading them against the enemy, determined to attack Soult, the French general, who was posted at Saldanha, by which he thought he should draw off the French armies to the north of Spain, and thus afford an opportunity for the Spanish armies to rally and re-unite. Soult was probably posted in that spot with so small a body of men for the purpose of enticing the British army farther into Spain, while Bonaparte, in person, with his whole disposable force, endeavoured to place himself between the British army and the sea. At length the two armies met; and the superiority of the British cavalry was eminently displayed in a most brilliant and successful skirmish, in which 600 of the imperial guards of Bonaparte were driven off the field by half the number of British, Reaving 55 killed and wounded, and 70 prisoners, among whom was general Le Febre, the commander of the imperial guard.

In April 1798, sir Horatio Nelson hoisted his flag in the Vanguard, and as soon as he had rejoined earl St. Vincent, he was dispatched to the Mediterranean, that he might ascertain the object of the great expedition fitting out at Toulon. He sailed with a small squadron from Gibraltar, on the 9th of May, to watch this armament. On the 22 d, a sudden storm in the gulph of Lyons carried away all the top-masts of the Vanguard; the fore-mast went into three pieces, and the bow-sprit was sprung. Captain (afterwards sir Alexander) Ball took the ship in tow, to carry her into St. Pietros, Sardinia. Nelson, apprehensive that this attempt might endanger both vessels, ordered him to cast off; but that excellent officer, possessing a spirit very like that of his commander, replied that he was confident he could save the Vanguard, and by God’s help he would do it. Previously to this, there had been a coolness between these brave seamen but from that moment, Nelson became fully sensibje of the extraordinary merit of captain Ball, and a sincere friendship subsisted between them during the remainder of their lives. Being compelled to refit, the delay enabled him to secure his junction with the reinforcement which lord St. Vincent had sent to join him, under commodore Trowbridge. That officer brought with him no instructions to Nelson, as to the course he was to steer, nor any positive account of the enemy’s destination every thing was left to his own judgment. The first news was, that they had surprised Malta. He formed a plan for attacking them while at Gozo; but on the 22d, intelligence reached him that they had left that island on the 16th, the day after their arrival. He then pursued them to Egypt, but he could not learn any thing of them during his voyage; and when he reached Alexandria, the enemy were not there. He then shaped his course for the coast of Caramania, and steered from thence along the southern side of Candia, carrying a press of sail both night and day, with a contrary wind. Irritated that they should have eluded his vigilance, the tediousness of the night made him impatient, and the officer of the watch was repeatedly called upon to declare the hour, and convince his admiral, who measured time by his own eagerness, that it was not yet break of day. “It would have been my delight,” said he, “to have tried Bonaparte on a wind.” Baffled in his pursuit, Nelson returned to Sicily, took in stores at Syracuse, and then made for the Morea. There, on the 28th of July, he learnt that the French had been seen about a month before, steering to the south-east from Candia. He resolved to return, and immediately, with every sail set, stood again for the coast of Egypt. On the 1st of August, they came in sight of Alexandria; and at four in the afternoon, captain Hood, in the Zealous, made signal for the French fleet. For several preceding days, the admiral had scarcely taken either food or sleep: he now ordered his dinner to be served, while preparations were making for battle; and when his officers rose from, table, and went to their separate stations, he said to them, “Before this time to-morrow I shall have gained a peerage or Westminster- abbey.” It has never been explained, why Bonaparte, having effected his landing, should not have ordered the fleet to return. It is, however, certain, that it was detained by his express command; though after the death of Brueys, he accused 4iim of having lingered there, contrary to his received orders. That admiral, not being able to enter the port of Alexandria, had moored his fleet in Aboukir bay, in a strong and compact line of battle; the headmost vessel being as close as possible to a shoal on the north-west, and the rest of the fleet forming a kind of curve along the line of deep water, so as not to be turned by any means on the south-west. The French admiral had the advantage of numbers in ships, in guns, and in men: he had thirteen ships of the line and four frigates, carrying 1196 guns, and 11,230 men; whereas the English had the same number of ships of the line, and one 50 gun ship, carrying 1012 guns, and 8068 men. They had, however, Nelson for chief-in-command, who, in all cases, was a mighty host in himself. During the whole cruize, it had been Nelson’s practice, whenever circumstances would admit of it, to have his captains on board the Vanguard, and fully explain to them his own ideas of the best modes of attack, whatever might be the situation of the enemy. His officers, therefore, were well acquainted with his principles of tactics and such was his confidence in their abilities and zeal, that the only plan arranged, in case they should find the French at anchor, was for the ships to form as most convenient for their mutual support, and to anchor by the stern. When he had fully explained his intended plan, captain Berry exclaimed with transport, “If we succeed, what will the world say” “There is no if.” replied the admiral “that we shall succeed is most certain: who may live to tell the story is a very different question.”

, from whom the sect of the Nestorians derive their name, was born in Germanica, a city of Syria, in the fifth century. He was educated and baptized at Antioch, and soon after the latter ceremony withdrew himself to a monastery in the suburbs of that city. When he had received the order of priesthood, and began to preach, he acquired so much celebrity by his eloquence and unspotted life, that in the year 429 the emperor Theodosius appointed him to the bishopric of Constantinople, at that time the second see in the Christian church. He had not been long in this office before he began to manifest an extraordinary zeal for the extirpation of heretics, and not above five days after his consecration, attempted to demolish the church in which the Arians secretly held their assemblies. In this attempt he succeeded so far, that the Brians, grown desperate, set fire to the church themselves, and with it burnt some adjoining houses. This fire excited great commotions in the city, and Nestorius was ever afterwards called an incendiary. From the Arians he turned against the Novatians, but was interrupted in this attack by the emperor. He then began to persecute those Christians of Asia, Lydia, and Caria, who celebrated the feast of Easter upon the 14th day of the moon; and for this unimportant deviation from the catholic practice, many of these people were murdered by his agents at Miletum and at Sardis. The time, however, was now come when he was to suffer by a similar spirit, for holding the opinion that “the virgin Mary cannot with propriety be called the mother of God.” The people being accustomed to hear this expression, were much inflamed against their bishop, as if his meaning had been that Jesus was a mere man. For this he was condemned in the council of Ephesus, deprived of his see, banished to Tarsus in the year 435, whence he led a wandering life, until death, in the year 439, released him from farther persecution. He appears to have been unjustly condemned, as he maintained in express terms, that the Word was united to the human nature in Jesus Christ in the most strict and intimate sense possible; that these two natures, in this state of union, make but one Christ, and one person; that the properties of the Divine and human natures may both be attributed to this person; and that Jesus Christ may be said to have been born of a virgin, to have suffered and died: but he never would admit that God could be said to have been born, to have suffered, or to have died. He was not, however, heard in his own defence, nor allowed to explain his doctrine. The zealous Cyril of Alexandria (see Cyril) was one of his greatest enemies, and Barsumas, bishop of Nisibis^ one of the chief promoters of his doctrines, and the co-founder of the sect. In the tenth century the Nestorians in Chaldsea, whence they are sometimes called Chaldaeans, extended their spiritual conquest beyond mount Imaus, and introduced the Christian religion into Tartary, properly so called, and especially into that country called Karit, and bordering on the northern part of China. The prince f that country, whom the Nestorians converted to the Christian faith, assumed, according to the vulgar tradition, the name of John, after his baptism, to which he added the surname of Presbyter, from a principle of modesty; whence it is said, his successors were each of them called Prester John, until the time of Jenghis Khan. But Mosheim observes, that the famous Prester John did not begin to reign in that part of Asia before the conclusion of the eleventh century. The Nestorians formed so considerable a body of Christians, that the missionaries of Rome were industrious in their endeavours to reduce them under the papal yoke. Innocent IV. in 1246, and Nicolas IV. in 1278, used their utmost efforts for this purpose, but without success. Till the time of pope Julius III. the Nestorians acknowledged but one patriarch, who resided first at Bagdat, and afterwards at Mousul; but a division arising among them in 1551, the patriarchate became divided, at least for a time, and a new patriarch was consecrated by that pope, whose successors fixed their residence in the city of Ormus, in the mountainous part of Persia, where they still continue distinguished by the name of Simeon; and so far down as the seventeenth century, these patriarchs persevered in their communion with the church of Rome, but seem at present to have withdrawn themselves from it. The great Nestorian pontiffs, who form the opposite party, and look with a hostile eye on this little patriarch, have, since 1559, been distinguished by the general denomination of Elias, and reside constantly in the city of Mousul. Their spiritual dominion is very extensive, takes in a great part of Asia, and comprehends also within its circuit the Arabian Nestorians, and also the Christians of St. Thomas, who dwell along the coast of Malabar. It is observed, to the honour of the Nestorians, that of all the Christian societies established in the East, they have been the most careful and successful in avoiding a multitude of superstitious opinions and practices that have infected the Greek and Latin churches* About the middle of the seventeenth century the Romish missionaries gained over to their communion a small number of Nestorians, whom they formed into a congregation or church, the patriarchs or bishops of which reside in the city of Amida, or Diarbekir, and all assume the denomination of Joseph. Nevertheless, the Nestorians in general persevere, to our own times, in their refusal to enter into the communion of the Romish church, notwithstanding the earnest entreaties and alluring offers that have been made by the pope’s legate to conquer their inflexible constancy.

, or Novatus, a priest of the church of Carthage, flourished in the third century, and was the author of a remarkable schism called after his name, or rather after the name of his associate Novatian, who, however, is also called Novatus by many ancient writers. He is represented by the orthodox as a person scandalous and infamous for perfidy, adulation, arrogance, and so sordidly covetous, that he even suffered his own father to perish with hunger, and spared not to pillage the goods of the church, the poor, and the orphans. It was in order to escape the punishment due to these crimes, and to support himself by raising disturbances, that he resolved to form a schism; and to that end entered into a cabal with Felicissimus, an African priest, who opposed St. Cyprian Novatus was summoned to appear before the prelate in the year 249; but the persecution, begun by Decius the following year, obliging that saint to retire for his own safety, Novatus was delivered from the danger of that process; and, not long after associating himself with Felicissimws, then a deacon, with him maintained the doctrine, that the lapsed ought to be received into the communion of the church without any form of penitence. In the year 2.51, he went to Rome, about the time of the election of pope Cornelius. There he met with Novatian, a priest, who had acquired a reputation for eloquence, and presently formed an alliance with him; and, although their sentiments with regard to the lapsed were diametrically opposite, they agreed to publish the most atrocious calumnies against the Roman clergy, which they coloured over so artfully, that many were deceived and joined their party. This done, they procured a congregation consisting of three obscure, simple, and ignorant bishops; and, plying them well with wine, prevailed upon them to elect Novatian bisuop of Rome. After this irregular election, Novatian addressed letters to St. Cyprian of Carthage, to Fabiuu of Antioch, and to Dionysius of Alexandria; but St. Cyprian refused to open his letter, and excommunicated his deputies: he had likewise sent to Rome before, ia order to procure the abolition of the schism. Fabius made himself pleasant at Novatian’s expence; and Dionysius declared to him, that the best way of convincing the world, that his election was made against his consent, would be to quit the see, for the sake of peace. On the contrary, Novatian now maintained his principal doctrine, that such as had fallen into any sin after baptism ought not to be re*­ceived into the church by penance; and he was joined in the same by Novatus, although he had originally maintained the contrary while in Africa. Novatian had been a Pagan philosopher before his conversion to Christianity, and it does not appear that he and his party separated from the church, on any grounds of doctrine, but of discipline, and it is certain, from some writings of Novatian still extant, that he was sound in the doctrine of the Trinity. He lived to the time of Valerian, when he suffered martyrdom. He composed treatises upon the “Paschal Festival, or Easter,” of -the “Sabbath,” of “Circumcision,” of the “Supreme Pontiff,” of “Prayer,” of the “Jewish Meats,” and of “the Trinity.” It is highly probable, that the treatise upon the “Trinity,” and the book upon the “Jewish Meats,” inserted into the works of Tertullian, were written by Novatian, and they are well written. There is an edition of his works by Whiston, 1709; one by Welchman; and a third, of 1728, with notes, by Jackson. With respect to the followers of Novatian, at the first separation, they only refused communion with those who had fallen into idolatry: afterwards they went farther, and excluded, for ever, from their communion, all such as had committed crimes for which penance was required; and at last they took away from the church the power of the keys, of binding and loosing offenders, and rebaptised those who had been baptised by the church. This sect subsisted a long time both in the east and west; but chiefly became considerable in the east, where they had bishops, both in the great sees and the small ones, parish-churches, and a great number of followers. There were also Novatians in Africa in the time of St. Leo, and in the east some remains continued till the eighth century.

, an ancient Greek commentator on the Scriptures, was bishop of Trica in Thessaly in the tenth century, but of his personal history nothing is known. His commentaries upon the Acts of the Apostles, and the fourteen epistles of St. Paul, and the seven Catholic episties, contain, besides his own remarks and notes, a cornpilation of the notes and observations of Chrysostom, Cyril of Alexandria, Gregory Nazianzen, Theodoret, and others. He is thought also to have written a commentary upon the four gospels, but this is not now extant. The works of Oecumenius were first published in Greek at Verona in 1532, and in Greek and Latin at Paris in 1631, in two volumes folio. To the second volume of the Paris edition is added the “Commentary” of Arethas upon the book of Revelation.

, a peripatetic philosopher of Alexandria, lived under Theodosius the younger, about the year 430, and wrote Commentaries on part of Aristotle, 1551, fol. and a Life of Plato, which contains many particulars not to be met with in Diogenes Laertius. James "WinJet has translated this Life into Latin, and added notes to it. It seems probable, however, that the commentator on Aristotle, and the author of the life of Plato, were different persons; and there is a third Olympiodorus, a Greek monk, who lived in the fifth or sixth century, and left short and elegant Commentaries on Job and Ecclesiastes, which may be found in the library of the Greek fathers. The little that is known of either of these may be seen in our authorities.

After he had been some lime instructed by his father, other preceptors were sought out for him he had, for his master in philosophy, Ammonius, the famous Christian philosopher; and in divinity the no less famous Clement of Alexandria. From the former he imbibed that Platonic philosophy, with which he afterwards so miserably infected his Christianity, and gave birth to those many singular and heretical opinions which have distinguished him above all the primitive writers; but amidst these philosophical and theological pursuits, ' he found time to cultivate several arts and sciences: and so universal and powerful was his genius, that, as Jerom relates, he acquired very great skill and knowledge in geometry, arithmetic, music, grammar, rhetoric, &c. He was not above seventeen years of age when the persecution under the emperor Severus began at Alexandria in the year 202: and, his father being seized and imprisoned for his faith in Christ, Origen would also have offered himself to the persecutors, out of the great zeal he had to suffer martyrdom. This his mother resolutely opposed; but when he found he was detaiued against his will, he wrote a letter to his father to exhort him to martyrdom, in which he expresses himself thus: “Stand stedfast, my father, and let no regard to us alter your opinion, or shake your resolution;” for he had six sons besides Origen. Leonides, animated by his son, resolved to persist even to martyrdom, and was accordingly beheaded soon after: and though his family fell into extreme poverty, his goods being immediately confiscated, yet Origen, applying himself soon after entirely to human learning, by teaching grammar made a shift to maintain himself, his mother, and his brethren.

While he followed this profession, the chair of the school at Alexandria becoming vacant by the retreat of Clement, and by the flight of all those who were dispersed by the persecution, some of the heathens, who were willing to be converted, made their application to him, though he was not then above eighteen years of age: and at length, the reputation and number of his converts increasing every day, Demetrius, bishop of Alexandria, confirmed him in the employment of catechist, or professor of sacred learning, in that church. He then left off teaching grammar, and sold all his books of profane learning; contenting himself with a small daily allowance of four oboli, which were allowed him by the person who bought them. He now likewise began to lead a most strict and severe life, which contributed no less than his learning to draw a great number of disciples about him; although a violent persecution was then begun at Alexandria under the government of Lsetus, and was continued with equal fury under that of Aquila his successor. Several of his disciples suffered martyrdom there, and he himself was exposed to the rage of the heathens, when he went, as he constantly did, to the assistance and encouragement of the martyrs. He then practised all kind of austerities, and carried the doctrine of mortification so far as even to commit an unnatural act upon his person, taking, contrary to his usual practice, the following text literally, “There be some who make themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven” but he lived to be convinced of his error, and afterwards condemned it.

It was about this time, in the beginning of Caracalla’s reign, that he went to Rome, under the pontificate of Zepherinus; and began that great celebrated work, called the “Tetrapla.” This was a Bible, in which, by the side of the Hebrew text, he had transcribed in different columns four translations, distinguished by verses; namely, the translation of the Seventy, that of Aquila, that of Symmachus, and that of Theodotion. He afterwards added two other versions, without any author’s name, and a seventh upon the Psalms only, which he found at Jericho: and these versions, with the Hebrew, which is written in Greek as well as Hebrew characters, make up what is called Origen’s “Hexapla,” which was the first attempt to compile those Polyglots to which the Christian world has been so much indebted. He had frequent occasion afterwards to leave Alexandria, first in consequence of the invitation of an Arabian prince to come and instruct him. A little while after, the city of Alexandria being miserably harassed by the emperor Caracalla for some affront put upon him, he retired into Palestine; and, settling in the city of Caesarea, the bishops of that province desired him, though he was not yet a priest, to expound the Scriptures publicly in that church, and to instruct the people in their presence; with which request he complied. But whether his bishop Demetrius secretly envied him this honour, or was really persuaded that they had violated the rules of the church, he wrote to these prelates, and told them, “it was a thing unheard of, and had never been practised till then, that laymen should preach in the presence of bishops:” to which Alexander of Jerusalem and Theoctistus wrote back that “this had been often practised.” Demetrius, however, ordered Origen home, who obeyed, and betook himself to his first employment. Some time after, he was again diverted from it by order of the princess Mammira, who invited him to Antioch, that she might see and discourse with him: but he shortly returned to Alexandria, where he continued till the year 228. He then went again to Csesarea about some ecclesiastical affairs; and, as he passed through Palestine, was ordained priest by Alexander and Theoctistus. This ordination of Origen by foreign bishops so extremely incensed his diocesan Demetrius, that from this time his conduct towards Origen was marked by the most determined enmity. However, Origen returned to Alexandria, where he continued, as he had long ago begun, to write “Commentaries upon the Holy Scriptures;” and he then published five books of “Commentaries upon St. John’s Gospel,” eight upon “Genesis,” “Commentaries upon the first 23 Psalms,” and upon the “Lamentations of Jeremiah” his books “De Principiis,” and his “Stromata;”

All this while the bishop of Alexandria continued to persecute him as fiercely as ever. The truth is, Demetrius had long conceived envy and ill-will against him, on account of his shining merit and extensive reputation, and took this opportunity of giving it full vent. He wrote letters every where against him; he reproached him with the violence he had committed on his person, which he had formerly extolled as flowing from the greatest prudence, zeal, and piety; and in a council which he assembled in the year 231, it was ordained that Origen should not desist only from teaching, but even quit the city. Banished thus from Alexaiidria, he retired to Caesarea, his ordinary place of refuge; where he was kindly received by Theoctistus, bishop of that city, and by Alexander bishop of Jerusalem, who undertook to defend him, and commissioned him to expound the Scriptures publicly, hearing hiiii all the while as if he had been their master. The encouragement he received at Csesarea, seems to have exasperated Demetrius still more; who, not satisfied with the first judgment given against Origen, accused him in a council of the bishops of Egypt; and having caused him to be deposed, and even excommunicated, according to Jerom, wrote at the same time to all parts against him, to procure his being expelled the catholic church. However, the bishops of Palestine, Arabia, Phoenicia, and Achaia, who were particularly acquainted with his high merit, and many of them very intimate with him, determined to support him to the utmost, and encouraged by their zeal and friendship, he continued to explain the Scriptures at Caesarea with great reputation, both in the life- time and after the death of Demetrius, who did not live long after he had condemned Origen. All sorts of persons, not only from that province, but even from remote countries, came to be his disciples; the most famous of which were, Gregory, surnamed afterwards Thaumaturgus, and his brother Athenodorus. But though, after Demetrius’s death the persecution he had raised against Origen abated a little, yet Origen was always considered by the Egyptians as an excommunicated person; and the sentence given against him by Demetrius continued under his successors, Heraclas and Dionysius, although the former had been his disciple, and the latter had a great regard for him.

We will conclude our account of this eminent father with what a learned and candid critic of our own has delivered concerning him. Origen, says Jortin, “was very learned and ingenious, and indefatigably industrious. His whole life, from his early years, was spent in examining, teaching, and explaining, the scriptures; to which he joined the study of philosophy, and all polite literature. He was humble, modest, and patient under great injuries and cruel treatment, which he received from Christians and Pagans: for, though he ever had a considerable number of friends and admirers, on account of his amiable qualities and accomplishments, he was persecuted and calumniated by men, who had neither his learning nor his virtue, degraded from the order of presbyters, driven from his home, and excommunicated by one Demetrius, bishop of Alexandria, who envied him, says Eusebius, for the reputation which he had gained. His inquisitive genius, and his mixing philosophy with Christianity, led him, perhaps, into some learned singularities and ingenious reveries; but he was by temper far from dogmatizing in such points, from fomenting schisms, and setting up himself for the head of a party. He lived in times when Christians were not so shackled with systems and determinations as they were afterwards, nor so much exposed to disingenuous and illiberal objections; and had more liberty to pursue their inquiries, and to speak their mind. He was ever extremely sober and exemplary, practising what 'he preached to others; and he lived and died poor, and destitute even of common conveniences.” It may be necessary to add, that there was a sect of ancient heretics, who resembled, and even surpassed, the abominations of the Gnostics: they were called Origenians, but appear to have derived their name from some person totally distinct from the preceding Origen, whose followers were called Origenists.

, a Christian philosopher, of the Stoic sect, flourished in the second century. Some say he was born in Sicily, others at Alexandria, of Sicilian parents. He is said to have taught the Stoic philosophy in the reign of Commodus, from A. D. 180, in the school of Alexandria; where from the time of St. Mark, founder of that church, there had always been some divine who explained the Holy Scriptures. The Ethiopians having requested Demetrius, bishop of Alexandria, to send a proper person to instruct them in the Christian religion, he sent Pantænus who gladly undertook the mission, and acquitted himself very worthily in it. It is said, that he found the Ethiopians already tinctured with the truth of Christian faith, which had been declared to them by St. Bartholomew; and that he saw the gospel of St. Matthew in Hebrew, which had been left there by that apostle. St. Jerome says, that Pantænus brought it away with him, and that it was still to be seen in his time in the Alexandrian library; but this story is not generally credited, since no good reason can be given, why St. Bartholomew should leave a Hebrew book with the Ethiopians. Pantænus, upon his return to Alexandria, continued to explain the sacred books under the reign of Severus and Antoninus Caracalla, and did great service to the church by his discourses. He composed some “Commentaries” upon the Bible, which are lost. Theodoret informs us that Pantænus first started the remark, which has been followed by many interpreters of the prophecies since, “That they are often expressed in indefinite terms, and that the present tense is frequently used both for the preterite and future tenses.” We may form a judgment of the manner in, which Pantænus explained the Scriptures, by that which Clemens Alexandria as, Origen, and all those have observed, who were trained up in the school of Alexandria. Their commentaries abound with allegories; they frequently leave the literal sense, and find almost every where some mystery or other; in the explaining of which, they usually shew more erudition than judgment. Mil ner observes, that the combination of Stoicism with Christianity must have very much debased the sacred truths; and we may be assured that those who were disposed to follow implicitly the dictates of such an instructor as Pantænus, must have been furnished by him with a clouded light of the gospel. Cave is of opinion that Pantænus’s death occurred in the year 213.

, a very eminent Greek of Alexandria, flourished, according to Suidas, under the emperor Theodosius the Great, from the year 379 to* 395, and acquired deserved fame as a consummate mathematician. Many of his works are lost, or at least have not yet been discovered. Suidas and Vossius mention as the principal of them, his “Mathematical Collections,” in 8 books, of which the first and part of the second are lost; a “Commentary upon Ptolomy’s Almagest;” an “Universal Chorography;” “A Description of the Rivers of Libya;” a treatise or' “Military Engines;” “Commentaries upon Aristarchus of Samos, concerning the Magnitude and Distance of the Sun and Moon,” &c. Of these, there have been published, “The Mathematical Collections,” in a Latin translation, with a large commentary, by Commandine, in 1588, folio; reprinted in 1660. In 1644, Mersenne exhibited an abridgment of them in his <c Synopsis JVIathematica,“in 4to, containing only such propositions as could be understood without figure*. In 1655, Meibomius gave some of the Lemmata of the seventh book, in his” Dialogue upon Proportions.“In 1688, Dr. Wallis printed the last twelve propositions of the second book, at the end of his” Aristarchus Samius.“In 1703, Dr. David Gregory gave part of the preface of the seventh book, in the Prolegomena to his Euclid. And in 1706, Dr. Halley exhibited that preface entire, in the beginning of his” Apollonius." Dr. Ilutton, in his Dictionary, has given an excellent analysis of the “Mathematical Collections.”

, a celebrated Platonic philosopher, was born at Lycopolis, in Egypt, in the year 205, but concerning his family or education, nothing is known. About the age of twenty, he first studied philosophy at the different schools of Alexandria, but attached himself particularly to Ammonius, in whom he found a disposition to superstition and fanaticism like his own. On the death of this preceptor, haying in his school frequently heard the Oriental philosophy commended, and expecting to find in it that kind of doctrine concerning divine natures which he was most desirous of studying, he determined to travel into Persia and India, to learn wisdom of the Magi and Gymnosophists and as the emperor Gordian was at this time undertaking an expedition against the Parthians, Plotinus seized the occasion, and in the year 243 joined the emperor’s army; but the emperor being killed, Plotinus fled to Antioch, and thence came to Rome, where Philip was now emperor.

, brother of the preceding, was the seventh and youngest son of the archbishop of York, and was born at the archiepiscopal pala.ce of Bishopthorp in 1577. In 1588 he was sent to Oxford, and matriculated of St. Mary Hall. Wood is of opinion, that he afterwards removed to Corpus-Christi-coilege. How iang he resided in the university, or whether he took a degree, does not appear. In August 16 10, remarkable for the murder of king Henry IV“. of France, Mr. Sandys set out on his travels, and, in the course of. two years, made an extensive tour, having visited several parts of Europe, and many cities and countries of the East, as Constantinople, Greece, Egypt, and the Holy Land; after which, taking a view of the remote parts of Italy, he went to Rome and Venice, and, on his return, after properly digesting the observations he had made, published, in 1615, his well-known folio, the title of the 7th edition of which, in 1673, is,” Sandys* Travels, containing an history of the original and present state of the Turkish empire; their laws, government, policy, military force, courts of justice, and commerce. The Ma-^ hometan religion and ceremonies. A description of Constantinople, the grand signior’s seraglio, and his manner of living: also of Greece, with the religion and customs of the Grecians. Of Egypt; the antiquity, hieroglyphics, rites, customs, discipline, and religion, of the Egyptians, A voyage on the river Nilus. Of Armenia, Grand Cairo, Rhodes, the Pyramides, Colossus: the former flourishing and present state of Alexandria. A description of the Holy Land, of the Jews, and several sects of Christians Jiving there; of Jerusalem, Sepulchre of Christ, Temple of Solomon, and what else, either of antiquity orworth observation. Lastly, Italy described, and the islands adjoining; as Cyprus, Crete, Malta, Sicilia, the Eolian islands; of Rome, Venice, Naples, Syracusa, Mesena, jEtna, Scylla, and Charybdis; and other places of note. Illustrated with fifty maps and figures.“Most of the plates, especially those relating to Jerusalem and the Holy Land, are copied from the” Devotissimo Viaggio di Zualiardo, Roma,“1587, 4to. Of these travels there have been eight or ten editions published, and it still bears its reputation, his accounts having been verified by subsequent travellers. Mr. Markland has a copy of this work, edit. 1637, with a ms copy of verses by the author, which may be seen in the *' Censura Literaria,” but was first published at the end of his “Psalms,” 1640, 8vo.

A blind man moving in the sphere of a mathematician, seems a phenomenon difficult to be accounted for, and has excited the admiration of every age in which it has appeared. Tuliy mentions it as a thing scarce credible in his own master in philosophy, Diodotus, that “he exercised himself in that science with more assiduity after he became blind; and, what he thought almost impossible to be done without sight, that he described his geometrical diagrams so expressly to his scholars, that they could draw every line in its proper direction.” Jerome relates a more remarkable instance in Didymus of Alexandria, who, “though blind from his infancy, and therefore ignorant of the very letters, appeared so great a miracle to the world, as not only to learn logic, but geometry also, to perfection, which seems the most of any thing to require the help of sight.” But, if we consider that the ideas of extended quantity, which are the chief objects of mathematics, may as well be acquired from the sense of feeling, as that of sight; that a fixed and steady attention is the principal qualification for this study; and that the blind are by necessity more abstracted than others, for which reason Democritus is said to have put out his eyes, that he might think more intensely; we shall perhaps be of opinion, that there is no other branch of science better adapted to their circumstances.

, an ancient fathei: and bishop of the Christian church, flourished at the beginning of the fifth century. He was born at Cyrene in Africa, a town situated upon the borders of Egypt, and afterwards travelled to th neighbouring country for improvement, where he happily succeeded in his studies under the celebrated female philo-r sopher Hypatia, who presided at that time over the Platonic school at Alexandria, where also the eminent mathematicians Theon, Pappus, and Hero taught. Nicephorus, patriarch of Constantinople, who wrote annotations on a piece of Synesius, called “De insomniis,” represents him as a man of prodigious parts and learning and says, that “there was nothing he did not know, no science wherein he did not excel, no mystery in which he was not initiated and deeply versed.” His works are in high esteem with the curious; and his epistles, in Suidas’s opinion, are admirable, and in that of Photius, as well as Evagrius, “elegant, agreeable, sententious, and learned.' 1 Synesius was a man of noble birth, which added no less weight to his learning, than that reflected lustre on his quality; and both together procured him great credit and authority. He went, about the year 400, upon an embassy, which lasted three years, to the emperor Arcadius at Constantinople, on the behalf of his country, which was miserably harassed by the auxiliary Goths and other barbarians; and it was then, as he himself tells \is, that” with greater boldness than any of the Greeks, he pronounced before the emperor an oration concerning government.“About the year 410, when the citizens of Ptolemais applied to Theophilus of Alexandria for a bishop, Synesius was appointed and consecrated, though he took all imaginable pains to decline the honour. He declared himself not at all convinced of the truth of some of the most important articles of Christianity. He was verily persuaded of the existence of the soul before its union with the body; he could not^ conceive the resurrection of the body; nor did he believe that the world should ever be destroyed. He also owned himself to have such an affection for his wife, that he would not consent, either to be separated from her, or to Jive in a clandestine manner with her; and told Theophilus, that, if he did insist upon making him a bishop, he must leave him in possession of his wife and all his notions. Theophilus at length submitted to these singular terms,” upon a presumption,“it is said,” that a man, whose life and manners were in every respect so exemplary, could not possibly be long a bishop without being enlightened with heavenly truth. Nor,“continues Cave,” was Theophilus deceived; for Synesius was no sooner seated in hit bishopric, than he easily acquiesced in the doctrine of the resurrection.“Baronius says in his Annals,” that he does not believe these singularities of Synesius to have been his real sentiments; but only that he pretended them, with a view of putting a stop to the importunities of Theophilus, and of warding off this advancement to a bishopric, which was highly disagreeable to him." That the advancement was highly disagreeable to Synesius, is very certain; but it is likewise as certain, that Baronius’s supposition is without all foundation. There is extant a letter of Synesius to his brother, of which an extract may be given, as illustrative of his character and opinions.

, an ancient Greek writer of Alexandria, is supposed to have lived in the third century, but this is uncertain. According to Suidas, who calls him Statius, he embraced Christianity in the latter part of his life, and became a bishop. He wrote a book “Upon the Sphere,” which seems to have been nothing more than a commentary upon Aratus. Part of it is extant, and has been translated into Latin by father Petavius, under the title of “Isagoge in phænomena Arati.” He wrote also a romance, probably from its licentiousness when he was a heathen, entitled, “Of the Loves of Clitophon and Leucippe,” in eight books, which were first published in JLatin only, at Basil, 1554. This Latin version, made by Annibal Cruceius of Milan, was republished by Commelinus, with the Greek, at Heidelberg, 1608, 8 vo, with Longus and Parthenius, writers of the same class: after which, a more correct edition of the Greek was given by Salmaaius at Leyden, 1640, in 12mo, with Cruceius’ s version. The best edition is that of Boden, Gr. and Lat. Leipsic, 1776, 8vo.

He had great interest with several succeeding emperors. Constantius elected him into the senate in the year 355, ordered a brazen statue to be erected to him in 361, and pronounced his philosophy “the ornament of his reign.” Julian made him prefect of Constantinople in the year 362, and wrote letters to him, some of which are still extant. Jovian, Valens, Valentinian, and Gratian, shewed him many marks of esteem and affection, and heard him with pleasure haranguing upon the most important subjects. Valens in particular, who was inclined to favour the Arians, suffered himself to be diverted byThemistius from persecuting the orthodox; who represented to him the little reason, there was to be surprised at a diversity of opinions among the Christians, when that was nothing in comparison of the differences among the heathens; and that such differences ought never to terminate in sanguinary measures; and by such arguments he is said to have procured universal toleration. Though himself a confirmed heathen, he maintained correspondences and friendship with Christians, and particularly with Gregory of Nazianzen, who, in a letter to him, still extant, calls him “the king of language and composition.” Lastly, the emperor Theodosius made him again prefect of Constantinople in the year 384; and, when he was going into the west, placed his son Arcadius with him as a pupil. He lived to a great age; but the precise time of his death is not recorded. He has Sometimes been confounded with another Themistius, who was much younger than he, a deacon of Alexandria, and the founder of a sect among Christians.

His not meeting with the encouragement he expected in his own country, was in all probability the reason that induced Theocritus to leave Syracuse for the more friendly climate of Alexandria, where Ptolemy Philadelphus then reigned in unrivalled splendour, the treat encourager of arts and sciences, and the patron of learned men. In his voyage to Egypt he touched at Cos, an island in the Archipelago not far from Rhodes, where he was honourably entertained by Phrasidamus and Antigenes, who invited him into the country to celebrate the festival of Ceres, as appears by the seventh Idyllium. There is every reason to imagine that he met with a more favourable reception at Alexandria, than he had experienced at Syracuse, from his encomium on Ptolemy, contained in the 17th Idy Ilium; where he rises above his pastoral style, and shows that he could upon occasion (as Virgil did afterwards) exalt his Sicilian Muse to a sublimer strain, paulo majora: he derives the race of Ptolemy from Hercules, he enumerates his many cities, he describes his great power and immense riches, but above all he commemorates his royal munificence to the sons of the Muses. Towards the conclusion of the 14th Idyllium, there is a short, but very noble panegyric on Ptolemy: in the 15th Idyllium he celebrates Berenice, the mother, and Arsinoe, the wife of Ptolemy. Little else of this poet’s life can be gathered from his works, except his friendship with Aratus, the famous author of the * 4 Phenomena;" to whom he addresses his sixth Idyllium, and whose amours he describes in the seventh. It is mentioned by all his biographers, that he red an ignominious death, and they derive their infuniiation from a distich of Ovid in his Ibis,

, of Alexandria, a celebrated Greek philosopher and mathematician, flourished in the fourth century, about the year 380, in the time of Theodosius the Great; but the time and manner of his death are unknown. His genius and disposition for the study of philosophy were very early improved by a close application to study; so that he acquired such a proficiency in the sciences as to render his name venerable in history; and to procure him the honour of being president of the famous Alexandrian school. One of his pupils was the celebrated Hypatia, his daughter, who succeeded him in the presidency of the school; a trust, which, like, himself, she discharged with the greatest honour and usefulness. (See Hypatia.)

, a celebrated patriarch of Alexandria, who succeeded Timotheus about 385, has the credit of having completely destroyed the remains of idolatry in Egypt, by pulling down the temples and idols of the false deities; and he also terminated happily the disputes which had arisen between Evagrius and Flavianus, both ordained bishops of Antioch. He zealously defended the faith of the Catholic church; but quarrelling afterwards with Chrysostom, caused him to be deposed, and refused to place his name in the Dyptics. Of this violence and injustice Dupin thinks he never repented but some compunction he felt at last, on account of his other failings, for on his death-bed, reflecting on the long penitence of St. Arsenius, he exclaimed, “How happy art thou, Arsenius, to have had this hour always before thine eyes.” We have some of this patriarch’s works in the Library of the fathers, which seem of very little value. Dupin says, he knew better how to manage a court-intrigue than to solve a point in divinity.

Among the translations executed by Trapezuntius, are several parts of the works of Eusebius, Cyril of Alexandria, Gregory Nyssen, Nazianzen, Chrysostom, Aristotle, Plato, Ptolemy, &c., but in many of these he is neither accurate nor faithful, having made unpardonable variations, omissions, or additions.

“The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea,” though usually called Adrian’s, is confessedly not the work of the author of the Voyage of Nearchus. This is avowed by Dr. Vincent, in entering upon the subject. It had probably been imputed to Arrian in later times, from his having written the Periplus of the Euxine Sea. Whether ewn i<<e name properly belonged to this writer is altogether uncertain; and the probability is rather against it: but, from the most accurate examination of the work, Dr. Vincent thinks that the author, whatever was his true name, was a Greek merchant of Alexandria, between the times of the emperors Claudius and Adrian, in the first or second century, and probably by near a century prior to Arrian of Nicornedia. The author was certainly a man who had sailed ora board of a Greek fleet from Egypt to the Gulph of Cambay, if not beyond it. Those who had assigned a different age or character to his author, Dr. Vincent has answered in a manner the most satisfactory.

, a learned German, was born in 1635, at Erfort, in Thuringia, where his father was minister of a Lutheran church. After having studied philosophy and theology at Konigsberg, he put himself under Job Ludolf, in order to learn “the Oriental tongues of that celebrated professor. Ludolf taught him the Ethiopic amorvg others; and then sent him at his own expence into England to print his” Ethiopic Dictionary,“which came out at London in 1661. Ludolf complained of Wansleb for inserting many false and ridiculous things, and afterwards gave a new. edition of it himself. Dr. Edmhnd Castell was at that time employed upon his” Lexicon Heptaglotton," and was much gratified to find in Wansleb a man who could assist him in his laborious undertaking; he received him therefore into his house, and kept him three months. Wansleb was no sooner returned to Germany, tban Ernest the pious, duke of Saxe-Gotha, being informed of his qualifications, sent him to Ethiopia: the prince’s design was, to establish a correspondence between the Protestant Europeans and Abyssines, with a view to promote true religion among the latter. Wansleb set out in June 1663, and arrived at Cairo in Jan. following. He employed the remainder of the year in visiting part of Egypt; but the patriarch of Alexandria, who has jurisdiction over the churches of Ethiopia, dissuaded him from proceeding to that kingdom, and sent his reasons to Ernest in an Arabic letter, which is still extant in the library of the duke of Saxe-Gotha.