in Perspective, is that point in the horizontal line where the projections of two lines parallel to each other meet the perspective plane.

**ACCIPENSER.** See Ichthyology Index.

**ACCIPITER,** among the Romans, signified a hawk, which, from its being very carnivorous, they considered as a bird of bad omen:

*Odimus accipirem, quia semper vivit in armis.* OVID.

Pliny, however, tells us, that in some cases, particularly in marriage, it was esteemed a bird of good omen, because it never eats the hearts of other birds; intimating thereby, that no differences in a married state ought to reach the heart. The accipiter was worshipped as a divinity by the inhabitants of Tentyra, an island in the Nile, being considered by them as the image of the sun; and hence we find that luminary represented, in hieroglyphics, under the figure of a hawk.

**ACCIPITRES,** the name of Linnaeus's first order of Birds. See Ornithology.

**ACCISUS** denotes a feigned refusal of something which a person earnestly desires. The word is Latin; or rather Greek, *Axiouros,* supposed to be formed from *Acco,* the name of a foolish old woman noted in antiquity for an affectation of this kind.

Accius is sometimes considered as a virtue; sometimes as a vice, which Augustus and Tiberius practiced with great success. Cromwell's refusal of the crown of England may be brought as an instance of an accisus.

Accisus is more particularly used in Rhetoric, as a species of irony.

**ACCITUM,** in Ancient Geography, a town of Hispania Baetica, now Finiana, as appears from an ancient inscription; situated on an eminence of the mountains Alpujaras, in the province of Granada in Spain.

**ACCIO,** Lucius, a Latin tragic poet, the son of a freedman, and, according to St Jerome, born in the consulship of Hostilius Mancinus and Attilius Serranus, in the year of Rome 583; but there appears somewhat of confusion and perplexity in this chronology. He made himself known before the death of Pacuvius, by a dramatic piece which was exhibited the same year that Pacuvius brought one upon the stage, the latter being then eighty years of age, and Accius only thirty. We do not know the name of this piece of Accius's, but the titles of several of his tragedies are mentioned by various authors. He wrote on the most celebrated stories which had been represented on the Athenian stage; as Andromache, Andromeda, Atreus, Clytemnestra, Medea, Meleager, Philoctetes, the civil wars of Thebes, Tereus, the Troades, &c. He did not always, however, take his subjects from the Grecian story; for he composed one dramatic piece wholly Roman: it was entitled *Brutus,* and related to the expulsion of the Tarquins. It is affirmed by some that he wrote also comedies; which is not unlikely, if he was the author of two pieces, the Wedding and the Merchant, which have been ascribed to him. He did not confine himself to dramatic writing; for he left other productions, particularly his annals, mentioned by Macrobius, Priscian, Feffus, and Nonnius Marcellus. He has been censured for writing in too harsh a style, but in all other respects has been esteemed a very great poet. He was so much esteemed by the public, that a comedian was punished for only mentioning his name on the stage. Cicero speaks with great detestation of one Accius who had written a history; and, as our author had wrote annals, some insist that he is the person censured: but as Cicero himself, Horace, Quintilian, Ovid, and Paterculus, have spoken of our author with so much applause, we cannot think it is the same person whom the Roman orator censures with so much severity.

There was also in this age a pretty good orator of the same name, against whom Cicero defended Cluentius. He was born in Pisaurenum, and perhaps was a relation of our poet.

**ACCIUS,** a poet of the 16th century, to whom is attributed *A Paraphrase of Aesop's Fables,* on which Julius Scaliger bestows great encomiums.

**ACCLAMATION,** a confused noise or shout of joy, by which the public express their applause, esteem, or approbation.