nd fermentation, a beautiful purple colour, which is called orchil or archil. Beckmann (History of Inventions) narrates the accidental discovery of the colouring properties of this plant by a Florentine merchant, which serves to explain the fact that this rich dye was so long a secret, known only to the Florentines. It is more than probable, however, that the Phycos thalassius of Theophrastus and Dioscorides, used in their time for dyeing wool, and collected for that purpose in the Greek islands, was one of the species of Roccella. This dyeing material varies very much in price. It has been sold as high as L1,000 per ton; but it now ranges from L30 to L70. The quantity imported in 1857 was 998 tons, the greater part of which was from Portugal and Lima.

(t. c. a.)

ORCHOMENUS, a city of Boeotia, and the capital of the powerful tribe the Minyae, was situated near the western shore of the Copaic Lake, on a hill which overlooked the windings of the Cephissus. Its original inhabitants are said to have been Thessalian emigrants, and its ultimate name was derived from Orchomenus, one of the kings of the Minyans. The city seems to have been powerful and important from the very first. Its wealth was likened by Homer to that of the Egyptian Thebes; its contingent of ships to the Trojan war amounted to thirty; it seems at one time to have had jurisdiction over the towns of the neighbourhood; and even when, shortly after the destruction of Troy, it was forced into the Boeotian confederacy, it was second among the allies to Thebes alone. The decline of Orchomenus may be said to have commenced in 395 B.C., when, averse to the democratic government of the Thebans, it took the field with Sparta in support of oligarchy. It is true that its cause triumphed at the battle of Coronea in 394 B.C., and that its independence was secured by the peace of Antalcidas in 387 B.C. Yet Thebes had contracted a deadly enmity against its former tributary, and only waited for an opportunity to inflict revenge. In 371 B.C. the victory of Leuctra, which restored to the Thebans their supremacy over Boeotia, afforded this opportunity. Orchomenus was destroyed, and its inhabitants were sold for slaves. It rose again not long afterwards, only to be destroyed in 346 B.C., by its implacable foes; and although its walls were rebuilt once more by the command of Philip of Macedon, it had sunk into ruins in the time of Strabo. When visited by Pausanias, the remains of Orchomenus contained a temple of Bacchus; the tomb of Hesiod; the tomb of Minyas, an ancient king of the town, who gave his name to the Minyans; and a temple in which a famous festival in honour of the Graces had been wont to be held. The fortifications can still be traced near the village of Skripú. (Müller's Orchomenos und die Minyer; Leake's Northern Greece; and Mure's Tour in Greece.)

Orchomenus, an ancient city of Arcadia, stood in a plain surrounded by hills which separated its territory from that of Mantinea on the S., and those of Pheneus and Symphalus on the N. Its founder is said to have been Orchomenus, the son of Lycean. Its situation, in the midst of a well-watered valley, and its acropolis, upon a high and impregnable hill, seem to have rendered it in early times a very important city. Homer calls it "rich in flocks;" and several of its kings are said to have spread their rule over all Arcadia. But during the Peloponnesian war, when its acropolis had probably fallen into ruins, and when its last king, Pisistratus, had been murdered by an oligarchical faction, Orchomenus began to decline. About 367 B.C. three of its tributary towns were depopulated to furnish inhabitants to the newly-founded city of Megalopolis; in 313 B.C. it was taken by the Macedonian general Cassander; and ever afterwards it continued to be bandied about between different belligerent powers. Yet, in the time of Pausanias, Orchomenus was still inhabited, and at the present day its ruins are seen near the village of Kalpaki.