or AE, a diphthong compounded of A and E. Authors are by no means agreed as to the use of the ae in English words. Some, out of regard to etymology, insist on its being retained in all words, particularly technical ones, borrowed from the Greek and Latin; while others, from a consideration that it is no proper diphthong in our language (its sound being no other than that of the simple e), contend that it ought to be entirely disused; and in fact the simple e has of late been adopted instead of the Roman ae, as in the word equator, &c.

ÆACEA, in Grecian Antiquity, solemn festivals and games celebrated at Ægina in honour of Æacus.

ÆACUS, the son of Jupiter by Ægina. When the isle of Ægina was depopulated by a plague, his father, in compassion to his grief, changed all the ants upon it into men and women, who were called Myrmidones, from μύρμηξ, an ant. The foundation of the fable is said to be, that when the country had been depopulated by pirates, who forced the few that remained to take shelter in caves, Æacus encouraged them to come out, and by commerce and industry recover what they had lost. His character for justice was such, that, in a time of universal drought, he was nominated by the Delphic oracle to intercede for Greece, and his prayer was answered. See the article ÆGINA. The Pagans also imagined that Æacus, on ac- count of his impartial justice, was chosen by Pluto one of the three judges of the dead; and that it was his province to judge the Europeans.

ÆBUDÆ, a name anciently given to the Western Islands of Scotland.

ÆCHMALOTARCHA, in Jewish Antiquity, a title given to the principal leader or governor of the Hebrew captives residing in Chaldea, Assyria, and the neighbouring countries. This magistrate was called by the Jews rasch-gaduth, i.e. the chief of the captivity; but the above term, of like import in the Greek, is that used by Origen and others who wrote in the Greek tongue.

ÆDES, in Roman Antiquity, besides its more ordinary signification of a house, likewise signified an inferior kind of temple, consecrated to some deity.

ÆDICULA, a term used to denote the inner part of the temple, where the altar and statue of the deity stood.

ÆDILE (aedilis), in Roman Antiquity, a magistrate whose chief business was to superintend buildings of all kinds, but more especially public ones, as temples, aqueducts, bridges, &c. To the aediles likewise belonged the care of the highways, public places, weights and measures, &c. They also fixed the prices of provisions, took cognizance of debauches, punished lewd women and such persons as frequented gaming-houses. The custody of the plebiscita, or orders of the people, was likewise committed to them. They had the inspection of comedies and other pieces of wit; and were obliged to exhibit magnificent games to the people, at their own expense, whereby many of them were ruined. They had the power, on certain occasions, of issuing edicts, and by degrees they procured to themselves a considerable jurisdiction. All these functions, which rendered the aediles so considerable, belonged at first to the aediles of the people, aediles plebeii, or minores. These were only two in number, and were first created in the same year as the tribunes; for the tribunes, finding themselves oppressed with the multiplicity of affairs, demanded of the senate to have officers to whom they might intrust matters of less importance; and accordingly two aediles were created; and hence it was that the aediles were elected every year at the same assembly as the tribunes. But these plebeian aediles having refused, on a signal occasion, to treat the people with shows, pleading that they were unable to support the expense thereof, the patricians made an offer to do it, provided they would admit them to the honours of the ædilitate. On this occasion there were two new aediles created, of the number of the patricians, in the year of Rome 388. They were called aediles curules, or maiores, as having a right to sit on a curule chair, enriched with ivory, when they gave audience; whereas the plebeian aediles only sat on benches. Besides that the curule aediles shared all the ordinary functions with the plebeian, their chief employment was, to procure the celebration of the grand Roman games, and to exhibit comedies, shows of gladiators, &c. to the people; and they were also appointed judges in all cases relating to the selling or exchanging of estates. To ease these first four aediles, Caesar created a new kind, called aediles cereales, as being deputed chiefly to take care of the corn, which was called donum Cereris; for the heathens honoured Ceres as the goddess who presided over corn, and attributed to her the invention of agriculture. These aediles cereales were also taken out of the order of patricians. In the municipal cities there were aediles, and with the same authority as at Rome.

We also read of an ædilis alimentarius, expressed in abbreviation by Ædil. alim. whose business seems to have been to provide diet for those who were maintained at the public charge, though others assign him a different office.

—In an ancient inscription we also meet with ædile of the Edi camp, ædilis castrorum.

ÆDILITIUM Editium, among the Romans, was that whereby a remedy was given to a buyer in case a vicious or unsound beast or slave was sold to him. It was called editium, because the preventing of frauds in sales and contracts belonged especially to the curule ædiles.

ÆDITUUS, in Roman Antiquity, an officer belonging to the temple, who had the charge of the offerings, treasure, and sacred utensils. The female deities had a female officer of this kind called Editua.

ÆGADES, islands off the western coast of Sicily, between Trapani and Marsala, consisting of Maritimo, Levanso, and Favignana, which were of some note during the first Punic war.

ÆGAGROPILA, a ball composed of hair, generated in the stomach of the chamois goat, which is similar to those found in cows, hogs, &c. There is another species of ball found in some animals, particularly horses, which is a calculus concretion.

ÆGEAN SEA, in Ancient Geography, now the Archipelago, a part of the Mediterranean, separating Europe from Asia Minor; washing, on the one hand, Greece and Macedonia; on the other, Caria and Ionia. The origin of the name is greatly disputed. Festus advances three opinions: one, that it is so called from the many islands therein appearing at a distance like so many goats; another, because Ægea, queen of the Amazons, perished in it; a third, because Ægeus, the father of Theseus, threw himself headlong into it.

ÆGEUS, in fabulous history, was king of Athens, and the father of Theseus. The Athenians having basely killed the son of Minos, king of Crete, for carrying away the prize from them, Minos made war upon them; and being victorious, imposed this severe condition on Ægeus, that he should annually send into Crete seven of the noblest of the Athenian youths, chosen by lot, to be devoured by the Minotaur. On the fourth year of this tribute, the choice fell on Theseus; or, as others say, he himself entreated to be sent. The king, at his son's departure, gave orders, that as the ship sailed with black sails, it should return with the same in case he perished; but, if he became victorious, he should change them into white. When Theseus returned to Crete, after killing the Minotaur, and forgot to change the sails in token of his victory, according to the agreement with his father, the latter, who watched the return of the vessel, supposing by the black sails that his son was dead, cast himself headlong into the sea, which afterwards obtained the name of the Ægean Sea. The Athenians decreed Ægeus divine honours, and sacrificed to him as a marine deity the adopted son of Neptune.

ÆGIAS, among physicians, a white speck on the pupil of the eye, which occasions a dimness of sight.

ÆGIDA, now Capo d'Istria, the principal town on the north of the territory of Istria, situated in a little island, joined to the land by a bridge. In an inscription it is called Aegidis Insula. Long. 14. 20. E. Lat. 45. 50. N. It was afterwards called Justinopolis, after the emperor Justinus.

ÆGILOPS, the name of a tumour in the great angle of the eye, either with or without an inflammation. The word is compounded of αἰξ, goat, and ὄψ, eye; as goats are supposed extremely liable to this distemper. If the agilops be accompanied with an inflammation, it is supposed to take its rise from the abundance of blood which a plethoric habit discharges on the corner of the eye. If it be without an inflammation, it is supposed to proceed from a viscous pituitous humour, thrown upon this part. The ÆGIUS method of cure is the same as that of the ophthalmia. But before it has reached the lachrymal passages, it is managed like other ulcers. If the ægillps be neglected, it bursts, and degenerates into a fistula, which eats into the bone.

ÆGIMURUS, in Ancient Geography, an island in the bay of Carthage, about 30 miles distant from that city, (Livy;) now the Goletta. This island being afterwards sunk in the sea, two of its rocks remained above water, which were called Ara, because the Romans and Carthaginians entered into an agreement or league to limit their respective boundaries by these rocks.

ÆGINA, in fabulous history, the daughter of Asopus, king of Boeotia, was beloved by Jupiter, who debauched her in the similitude of a lambent flame, and then carried her from Epidauros to a desert island called Æthopia, which afterwards obtained her own name.

ÆGINA, in Ancient Geography, an island in the Saronic gulf; 20 miles distant from the Piræus, formerly vying with Athens in naval power, and at the sea-fight of Salamis disputing the palm of victory with the Athenians. It was the country and kingdom of Æacus, who called it Æginia, from his mother's name, it being before called Æthopia. (Ovid.) The inhabitants were called Æginetae, and Æginenses. The Greeks had a common temple dedicated to Jupiter in Ægina, the remains of which still exist. The Æginetae applied themselves to commerce, and were the first who coined money called Νομίμαι Ἀργυράων; hence Æginetum as, formerly in great repute. The inhabitants were called Myrmidones, or a nation of ants, from their great application to agriculture. The island was reckoned 180 stadia, or 22 miles and a half, in circumference. It is now called Ægina; the g soft and the i short, and was generally the seat of the Greek government in 1828 and 1829. The temple above mentioned is situated upon the summit of a mountain called Panhellenius, at some distance from the shore. It was of the Doric order, and had six columns in front. Twenty-one of the exterior columns are yet standing, with two in the front of the pronaos and of the posticum, and five of the number which formed the ranges of the cell. The entablature, except the architrave, is fallen. The stone is of a light brownish colour, much eaten in many places, and indicating a very great age. Some of the columns have been injured by boring to their centres for the metal. In several, the junction of the parts is so exact that each seems to consist of one piece. This ruin Mr Chandler considers as scarcely to be paralleled in its claim to a remote antiquity. The situation, on a lonely mountain at a distance from the sea, has preserved it from total demolition amid all the changes and accidents of numerous centuries. The soil of this island is, as described by Strabo, very stony, especially the bottoms; but in some places not unfertile in grain. Besides corn, it produces olives, grapes, and almonds; and abounds in pigeons and partridges. It has been related, that the Æginetans annually wage war with the feathered race, carefully collecting or breaking their eggs, to prevent their multiplying to such numbers as to produce a famine. They have no hares, foxes, or wolves. The rivers in summer are all dry.

ÆGINA, the capital of the above island. Its site has been long forsaken. Instead of the temples mentioned by Pausanias, there are 13 lonely churches, all very mean; and two Doric columns supporting their architrave. These stand by the sea-side, towards the low cape; and, it has been supposed, are a remnant of a temple of Venus, which was situated by the port principally frequented. The walls belonging to the ports and arsenal were of excellent masonry, and may be traced to a considerable extent, above, or nearly even with the water. At the entrance Ægineta of the mole, on the left, is a small chapel of St Nicholas; and opposite, a square tower with steps before it, detached from which a bridge was laid across, to be removed on any alarm. This structure, which is mean, was erected by the Venetians while at war with the Turks in 1693.

ÆGINETA, PAULUS, a celebrated surgeon of the island of Ægina, from whence he derived his name. According to M. le Clerc's calculation, he lived in the fourth century; but Abulfaragius the Arabian, who is allowed to give the best account of those times, places him with more probability in the seventh. His knowledge in surgery was very great, and his works are deservedly famous. Fabricius ab Aquapendente has thought fit to transcribe him in a great variety of places. Indeed, the doctrine of Paulus Ægineta, together with that of Celsus and Albucasis, make up the whole text of this author. He is the first writer who takes notice of the cathartic quality of rhubarb; and, according to Dr Milward, is the first in all antiquity who deserves the title of man-midwife.

ÆGINHARD, the celebrated secretary and supposed son-in-law of Charlemagne. He is said to have been carried through the snow on the shoulders of Imma, to prevent his being traced from her apartments by the emperor her father; a story which the elegant pen of Addison has copied and embellished in the third volume of the Spectator. There is a letter of Æginhard's still extant, lamenting the death of his wife, written in the tenderest strain of conubial affliction: but it does not say that this lady was the affectionate princess; and indeed some late critics have proved that Imma was not the daughter of Charlemagne. He was a native of Germany, and educated by the munificence of his imperial master, of which he has left the most grateful testimony in his preface to the life of that monarch. Æginhard, after the loss of his wife, is supposed to have passed the remainder of his days in religious retirement, and to have died soon after the year 840. His life of Charlemagne, his annals from 741 to 889, and his letters, are all inserted in the 2d volume of Duchesne's Scriptores Francorum. An improved edition of this valuable historian, with the annotations of Hermann Schmincke, in 4to, was published in 1711.

ÆGIPAN, in Heathen Mythology, a denomination given to the god Pan, because he was represented with the horns, legs, feet, &c. of a goat.

ÆGIPHILA, in Botany, GOAT-FRIEND.

ÆGIS, in Ancient Mythology, a name given to the shield or buckler of Jupiter and Pallas. The goat Amalthea, which had suckled Jove, being dead, that god is said to have covered his buckler with the skin; whence the appellation ægis, from αἰγός, she-goat. Jupiter afterwards restored the animal to life, covered it with a new skin, and placed it among the stars. He made a present of his buckler to Minerva; whence that goddess's buckler is also called ægis. Minerva having killed the Gorgon Medusa, nailed her head in the middle of the ægis, which henceforth had the faculty of converting into stone all those who looked upon it; as Medusa herself had during her life. Others suppose the ægis not to have been a buckler, but a cuirass or breastplate; and it is certain that the ægis of Pallas, described by Virgil, Aen. lib. viii. ver. 435, must have been a cuirass, since that poet says expressly that Medusa's head was on the breast of the goddess. But the ægis of Jupiter, mentioned a little higher, ver. 354, seems to have been a buckler. The words—

...... Cum sepe nigrantem. Ægida concutierit dextra, are descriptive of a buckler, but not at all of a cuirass or Ægisthus breastplate. Servius makes the same distinction on the two passages of Virgil; for on verse 354 he takes the aegis for the buckler of Jupiter, made, as above mentioned, of the skin of the goat Amalthea; and on verse 485 he describes the aegis as the armour which covers the breast, and which in speaking of men is called cuirass, and aegis in speaking of the gods. Many authors have overlooked these distinctions for want of going to the sources.

ÆGISTHUS, in Ancient History, was the son of Thyestes by his own daughter Pelopea, who, to conceal her shame, exposed him in the woods. Some say he was taken up by a shepherd, and suckled by a goat; whence he was called Ægisthus. He seduced Clytemnestra, the wife of Agamemnon, and lived with her during the siege of Troy. Afterwards with her assistance he slew her husband, and reigned seven years in Mycenae. He was, together with Clytemnestra, slain by Orestes. Pompey used to call Julius Caesar Ægisthus, on account of his having seduced his wife Mutia, whom he afterwards put away, though he had three children by her.

ÆGIUM, in Ancient Geography, a town of Achaia Propria, five miles from the place where Helice stood, and famous for the council of the Acheans, which usually met there, on account probably of the commodious situation of the place.

ÆGOBOLIUM, in Antiquity, the sacrifice of a goat offered to Cybele. The ægobolium was an expiatory sacrifice, which bore a near resemblance to the taurobolium and criobolium, and seems to have been sometimes joined with them.

ÆGOPODIUM, in Botany, Small Wild Angelica, Goatwort, Goatsfoot.

ÆGOSPOTAMOS, in Ancient Geography, a river in the Thracian Chersonesus, falling with a south-east course into the Hellespont, to the north of Sestos; with a town, and a station or road for ships, at its mouth. Here the Athenians under Conon, through the fault of his colleague Isocrates, received a signal overthrow from the Lacedemonians under Lysander, which was followed by the taking of Athens, and put an end to the Peloponnesian war.

ÆGYPTIACUM, in Pharmacy, the name of several detergent ointments; as black, red, white, simple, and compound.

ÆGYPTILLA, in Natural History, the name of a stone described by the ancients, and said by some authors to have the remarkable quality of giving water the colour and taste of wine. This seems a very imaginary virtue, as are indeed too many of those in former ages attributed to stones. The descriptions left us of this remarkable fossil tell us, that it was variegated with, or composed of, veins of black or white, or black and bluish, with sometimes a plate or vein of whitish red. The authors of these accounts seem to have understood by this name the several stones of the onyx, sardonyx, and cameo kind; all which we have at present common among us, but none of which possesses any such strange properties.

ÆGYPTIUS, in fabulous history, was the son of Belus, and brother of Danaus.

AEINAUTÆ, in Antiquity, amavrai, always mariners, a denomination given to the senators of Miletus, because they held their deliberations on board a ship, and never returned to land till matters had been agreed on.

ÆLFRIC, an eminent ecclesiastic of the 10th century, was the son of an earl of Kent, and a monk of the Benedictine order in the monastery of Abingdon. In 963 he was settled in the cathedral of Winchester, under Athelwold the bishop, and undertook the instruction of the youth of the diocese; for which purpose he compiled a Latin-Saxon vocabulary, and some Latin colloquies. He also translated from the Latin into Saxon many of the historical books of the Old Testament. While he resided at Winchester he drew up Canons, which are a kind of charge to be delivered by the bishops to their clergy. He was afterwards abbot of St Albans, bishop of Wilton, and finally, in 994, translated to the see of Canterbury. Here he had a hard struggle for some years in bravely defending his diocese against the incursions of the Danes. He died in 1005, and was buried at Abingdon; but his remains were removed to Canterbury in the reign of Canute. Ælfric is held up as one of the most distinguished prelates of the Saxon church. His learning, for the times, was considerable, his morals pure, and his religious sentiments untainted with many of the corruptions of his age. Besides the works already mentioned, he translated two volumes of Homilies from the Latin Fathers.

ÆLIA, CAPITOLINA, a name given to the city built by the emperor Adrian, A.D. 134, near the spot where the ancient Jerusalem stood, which he found in ruins when he visited the eastern parts of the Roman empire. A Roman colony was settled here, and a temple, in place of that of Jerusalem, was dedicated to Jupiter Capitolinus. Hence the name is derived, to which he prefixed that of his own family.

ÆLIAN, CLAUDIUS, born at Preneste, in Italy. He taught rhetoric at Rome, according to Perizonius, under the emperor Alexander Severus. He was surnamed Μέλιθρασσός, Honey-mouth, on account of the sweetness of his style in his discourses and writings. He was likewise honoured with the title of Sophist, an appellation in his days given only to men of learning and wisdom. He loved retirement, and devoted himself to study. He greatly admired and studied Plato, Aristotle, Isocrates, Plutarch, Homer, Anacreon, Archilochus, &c. and, though a Roman, gives the preference to the writers of the Greek nation. His curious and entertaining work entitled Variae Historiae has been frequently republished. The edition published at Amsterdam in 1731, by Gronovius, cum notis variorum, consists of two 4to volumes. His treatise De Natura Animalium has also been several times reprinted. A very useful edition, in all respects indeed the best, was published by Schneider, at Leipzig, in 1784, in 8vo. Besides the above, the collated edition of his works, published by Gesner, contains his Epistolæ Rusticae.