Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 1.djvu/698

Rh 680 CHALCOCONDYLES. impossible to discover from internal evidence whe- ther the author of the translation from Plato was Christian, Jew, or Heathen, or, as Mosheim has very plausibly conjectured, a sort of nondescript combination of all three. He certainly gives no hint that the individual to whom the book is ad- dressed was a dignified ecclesiastic or even a member of the church. This translation was first printed under the inspection of Augustinus Jus- tinianus, bishop of Nebio in Corsica, by Badius Ascensius, Paris, fol. 1520, illustrated by numerous mathematical diagrams very unskilfully executed ; a second edition, containing also the fragments of Cicero's version of the same dialogue, appeared at Paris, 4to. 1563; a third at Leyden, 4to. 1617, with the notes and corrections of Jo. Meursius ; the most recent and best is that of J. A. Fabricius, Hamburg, fol. 1718, placed at the end of the second volume of the works of Saint Hippolytus. The text was improved by the collation of a Bodleian MS., and the notes of Meursius are given entire. (Cave, Histor. Liter. Ecdes. Script, vol. i. p. 199, ed. Basil. ; Barthius, Adv. xxii. 16, xlviii. a ; Funccius, De inerti ac decrepita Linguae Tax- tinae Senectuie^ c. ix. § 5 ; Brucker, Histor. Crit. PkUos. vol. iii. p. 546, iv. p. 1322.) [W. R.] CHALCIOECUS (XoA/ctot/cos), " the goddess of the brazen house," a surname of Athena at Sparta, derived from the brazen temple which the goddess had in that city, and which also contained her statue in brass. This temple, which continued to exist in the time of Pausanias, was believed to have been commenced by Tyndareus, but was not completed till many years later by the Spartan artist Gitiadas. (Paus. iii. 17. § 3, x. 5. § 5 ; C. Nep. Patis. 5 ; Polyb. iv. 22.) Respecting the festival of the Chalcioecia celebrated at Sparta, see Did. of Ant. s. v. XaKKioUia. [L. S.] CHALCrOPE {XaKi6irn). 1. A daughter of Rhexenor, or according to others of Chalcodon, was the second wife of Aegeus. (Apollod. iii. 15. § 6 ; Athen. xiii. p. 556.) 2. A daughter of king Eurypylus in the island of Cos, and mother of Thessalus. (Hom. J I. ii. 679 ; Apollod. ii. 7. § 8.) There is a third mythical personage of this name. (Apollod. i. 9. § 1.) [L.S.] CHALCIS (XoAKt's), one of the daughters of Asopus and Metope, from whom the town of Chalcis in Euboea was said to have derived its name. (Eustath. ad Horn. p. 279.) According to others, Chalcis was the mother of the Curetes and Corybantes, the former of whom were among the earliest inhabitants of Chalcis. (Schol. Vict, ad Hom. II. xiv. 291 ; Strab. x. p. 447.) [L. S.] CHALCOCO'NDV^LES, or, by contraction, CHALCO'NDYLES, LAO'NICUS or NICO- LA'US {l^aoviKos or UiKoKaos XaXKOKovSvKrjs or XaKovSvr)s), a Byzantine historian of the fif- teenth century of the Christian aera, of whose life little is known, except that he was sent by the emperor John VII. Palaeologus, as ambassador to the camp of Sultan JMiirad II. during the siege of Constantinople in a. d. 1 446. VLamherger {Gelehrte Nachrichten von ber'uhmten M'dnnern., ^c. vol. iv. p. 764) shews, that he was still living in 1462, but it is scarcely credible that he should have been alive in 1490, and even later, as Vossius thinks {De Hisioricis Graecis^ ii. 30). Chalcocond^-les, who was a native of Athens, has written a history CHALCOCONDYLES. of the Turks and of the later period of the Byzan- tine empire, which begins with the year 1298, and goes down to the conquest of Corinth and the invasion of the Peloponnesus by the Turks in 1463, thus including the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453. Chalcocondyles, a statesman of great experience and of extensive learning, is a trustworthy historian, whose style is interesting and attractive, and whose work is one of the most important soui'ces for the history of the decline and fall of the Greek empire. His work, however, which is divided into ten books, is not very well arranged, presenting in several instances the aspect of a book composed of different essays, notes, and other materials, written occasionally, and afterwards put together with too little care for their logical and chronological order. Another defect of the author is his display of matters which very often have nothing to do with the chief sub- ject, and which he apparently inserted in order to shew the variety of his knowledge. But if they are extraneous to his historical object, they are valuable to us, as they give us an idea of the knowledge of the Greeks of his time, espe- cially with regard to history, geography, and ethnography. Among these episodes there is a most interesting description of the greater part of Europe, which had been disclosed to the eyes of the Greeks by the political travels of several of their emperors in the fourteenth and fifteenth cen- turies, (ii. pp. 36—50, ed. Paris.) He says that Germany stretches from Vienna to the ocean, and from Prague to the river Tartessus (!) in the Py- renees (!!); but he observes with great justness, that if the Germans were united under one head, they would be the most powerful nation ; that there are more than two hundred free towns flourishing by trade and industry ; that the mechanical arts are cultivated by them with great success ; that they have invented gun-powder, and that they are fond of duelling. The passage treat- ing of Germany is given with a Latin translation and notes in Freherus " Corpus Script. Rer. Germ." As to England, he says that it lies opposite to F'landers — a country but too well known to the Greeks — and is composed of three islands united under one government; he mentions the fertility of the soil, the mildness of the climate, the manu- facture of woollen cloth, and the flourishing trade of the great metropolis, London {hovZvvi]). His description of her bold and active inhabitants is correct, and he was informed of their being the first bowmen in the world ; but when he says that their language has no affinity with that of any other nation, he perhaps confounded the English language with the Irish. He stiites that their manners and habits were exactly like those of the French, which was an error as to the nation at large, but tolerably correct if applied to the nobles ; the great power and turbulence of the aristocracy were well known to him. At that time strangers and visitors were welcomed by the ladies in England with a kiss, a custom which one hundred years later moved the sympathizing heart of the learned Eras- mus Roterodamus, and caused him to express his delight in his charming epistle to Faustus An- drelinus : the Greek, brought up among depraved Jj men, and accustomed to witness but probably to 9 abhor disgraceful usages, draws scandalous and ^ revolting conclusions from that token of kindness. The principal MSS. of Chalcocondyles are those
 * «rson whom we are now discussing, and calls him
 * Ijevitarum Sanctissiraus ;" but in reality it is