Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 1.djvu/196

180 to intercede for Greece and his prayer was answered. The ancients also imagined that yEacus, on account of his im partial justice, was chosen by Pluto one of the three judges of the dead, and that it was his province to judge the Europeans.

yEDILE ((edUis), in Roman Antiquity, a magistrate whose chief business was to superintend buildings of all kinds, but more especially public ones, as temples, aque ducts, bridges, &c. To the sediles likewise belonged the care of the highways, public places, weights and measures, &c. They also superintended the markets, fixed the prices of provisions, took cognisance of breaches of decency and public order, and took charge of police matters generally. The custody of the plebiscita, or decrees of the people, and senatus consulta, or decrees of the senate, was likewise committed to them. They had the inspection of theatres and plays, and Avere obliged to exhibit magnificent games to the people, usually at their own expense, whereby many of them were ruined. They had the power, on certain oc casions, of issuing edicts, and by degrees they procured to themselves a considerable jurisdiction. At first there were only two sediles, viz., the sediles of the people, ccdiles plebeii, or minores. They were first created in the same year as the tribunes, B.C. 494; for the tribunes, finding themselves oppressed with the multiplicity of affairs, demanded of the senate to have officers to vhoin they might entrust matters of less importance ; and accordingly two sediles were created ; and henceforward the sediles were elected svery year at the same assembly as the tribunes. But these plebeian asdiles having refused, on a signal occasion, to continue the great games for four days instead of three, on account of the expense, the patricians made an offer to do it, provided they were admitted to the honours of the sedileship. Ac cordingly two new sediles were created, from the order of the patricians, in the year of Rome 388. They were called cediles curules, or majores, as having a right to sit on a curule chair when they gave audience ; whereas the plebeian fediles only sat on benches. The curule sediles alone had the right to issue edicts. Otherwise they shared all the ordinary functions of the plebeian sediles; they had 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 assist these first four sediles, Caesar (B.C. 45) created a new kind, called cediles cereales, so named from their being deputed chiefly to take care of the supply of corn, which was called donum Cereris. These sediles cereales were also taken out of the order of patricians. In the municipal cities and colonies there were sediles having much the same authority as at Rome. We also read of an oedilis alimentarius, expressed in abbreviature by cedil. (dim., 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 sedile of the camp, cedilis castrorum.

/EGADES, or AGATES, a group of islands off the west ern coast of Sicily, between Trapani and Marsala, consisting of Maretimo, Levanzo, and Favignana. These islands are rendered historically famous by the great naval victory gained there by the Romans over the Carthaginians in B.C. 241, which put an end to the first Punic war

AEGEAN SEA, a part of the Mediterranean, now more usually called the Archipelago or Grecian Archipelago, bounded on the north by Thrace and Macedonia, on the west by Greece, and on the east by Asia Minor. The origin of the name is uncertain. Various derivations are given by the ancient grammarians one from the town of yEgse; another from yEgea, queen of the amazons, who perished in this sea ; and a third from yEgeus, the father of Theseus, who threw himself headlong into it. See ARCHIPELAGO.

yEGEUS, in Fabulous History, the son of Pandion, was king of Athens, and the father of Theseus. He was one of the Athenian heroes, but is notable chiefly for the man ner of his death. The Athenians having killed Androgeus, the son of Minos, king of Crete, for carrying away the prize for wrestling from them, Minos made war upon them; and being victorious, imposed this severe condition on yEgeus, that he should annually send into Crete seven of the noblest of the Athenian youths and as many maidens, 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 came back victorious he should change them for white. When Theseus returned from Crete after killing the Minotaur, he forgot to change the sails in token of his victory, according to the agree ment; and his father, who sat on a rock watching the return of the vessel, imagining from the black sails that his son was dead, cast himself headlong into the sea, which was supposed in consequence to have obtained the name of the JEyean Sea. The Athenians decreed divine honours to yEgeus, and sacrificed to him as a marine deity and an adopted son of Neptune.

yEGINA, in Fabulous History, the daughter of Asopus, king of Boeotia, was beloved by Jupiter, who carried her from Epidaurus to a desert island called (Enone or (Enopia, which was afterwards called by her name. See vEACus.

yEGINA, or EGINA, or ENGIA, an island in the Saronic gulf, 20 miles distant from the Piraeus, 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 native country and kingdom of yEacus, who called it jEgina, from his mother's name. (Ovid.) The inhabitants were called ^Eginetce and jEgincnses. yEgina is triangular in shape, and is about 8 miles long from N.W. to S.E., and about 6 broad, with an area of about 41 square miles. Strabo states its circumference at 180 stadia, or about 22.1- English miles. Its western side consists of stony but fertile plains, which are well cultivated, and produce luxuriant crops of grain, with some cotton, vines, almonds, and figs. The rest of the island is mountainous, and rather barren. The southern end rises in the conical Mount Oros, and the Panhellenian ridge stretches to the north, from which fertile narrow valleys descend on either hand. From the absence of marshes, and its insularity, the climate is mild, and the most salubrious of Greece. The ruins of the ancient yEgina extend along two small ports, still protected by well-built ancient moles, and the shores of an open bay, defended by an ancient breakwater, near the N.W. cape of the island. On the land side the city Avails are still distinctly traceable, 10 feet in thickness, strengthened by towers at unequal distances, and pierced by three gates. They abutted on those of the ports, which Avere thus included Avithin the line of fortifications, as at Athens and elsewhere in ancient Greece. Two elegant Doric columns and substructures are all that remain of the buildings noticed by Pausanias within the precincts of a city that was long the greatest and most opulent mari time power of Greece; but the ruins of seventeen Christian churches, still visible, prove that after the glories of the proud city had passed away after Avhat it suffered from the jealousy of its rival Athens, and from an earthquake about the beginning of our era a considerable modern town had occupied its site. Some of these may perhaps only date from the time that yEgina remained under its Venetian masters, as does a tower erected at the entrance