in church-history, a sect who condemned all use of flesh, and marriage, as not instituted by God, but introduced at the instigation of the devil. The word is compounded of the privative *a* and *γυναικα*, woman. They are sometimes also called *Agynnenses*, and *Agynni*; and are said to have appeared about the year 694. It is no wonder they were of no long continuance. Their tenets coincide in a great measure with those of the Abelians, Gnostics, Cerdonians, and other preachers of chastity and abstinence.

**AGYRTÆ**, in antiquity, a kind of strolling impostors running about the country, to pick up money by telling fortunes at rich men's doors, pretending to cure diseases by charms, sacrifices, and other religious mysteries; also to expiate the crimes of their deceased ancestors, by virtue of certain odours and fumigations; to torment their enemies, by the use of magical verses and the like. The word is Greek *ἀγυρταί*, formed of the verb *ἀγυρτεῖν*, I congregate; alluding to the practice of Charlatans, who gather a crowd about them.

**Agyrta**, among the Greeks, amount to the same with *Agricatores* among the Latins, and differ not much from Gypsies among us.