ARCHPRIEST, or ARCHPRESBYTER, a priest or presby-
ter established in some dioceses, with a pre-eminence over the rest. Anciently the archpriest was the first person after the bishop: he was seated next to him in the church, and in his absence acted as his vicar in all spiritual matters. In the sixth century there were several archpriests in the same diocese, from which period some believe them to have been called deans. In the ninth century there were two kinds of cures or parishes; the smaller governed by simple priests, and the baptismal churches by archpriests, who, besides the immediate concern of the cure, had the inspection of the other inferior priests, and gave an account of them to the bishop, who governed the chief or cathedral church in person. Archbishops still exist in the Greek church, who are invested with most of the functions and privileges of chorepiscopi or rural deans.
ARCHYTAS of Tarentum was a Pythagorean philosopher, well skilled in mathematics and geography. He lived in the time of Plato, and, according to report, interposed his influence with Dionysius the tyrant, in order to save the life of that philosopher. According to this date, it would appear that Jamblichus is mistaken when he asserts that he was a hearer of Pythagoras; and the testimony of a writer mentioned by Photius would seem more worthy of credit, that he was the eighth successive preceptor of the Pythagorean school. So eminent were his military talents, that, in opposition to an express law of his country, that no man should be chosen more than once the general of its armies, he was elevated to that station no less than seven times. He taught that there is nothing so destructive to man as pleasure; that virtue is to be pursued for its own merit, and that every extreme is incompatible with it. Aristotle, according to some, was indebted to Archytas for his general heads of arrangement entitled his Ten Categories. By discovering the duplication of the cube by means of the conic sections, and the method of finding two mean proportionals between two given lines, he displayed his great knowledge in mathematics. Archytas is reported to have invented several curious hydraulic machines, and his genius is likewise honoured with the invention of the screw and crane. He perished in a shipwreck, and his body was found on the Apulian coast,—an occurrence commemorated in one of Horace's Odes. A treatise on the Categories, bearing his name, was published by J. Camerarius at Leipsic, in 1564. Certain Fragments, also ascribed to him, were published by J. Gramm at Copenhagen, in 4to, in 1707.