Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 1.djvu/300

Rh 275 A G A A G E stones are dipped in sulphuric acid, and immediately exposed in a covered earthenware crucible to a red heat : the whole is allowed to cool slowly, and when cold the stones are removed and washed. 3. Mocha stones, originally brought from the East, are clear grayish calcedonies, with clouds and dashes of rich brown of various shades. They probably owe their colour chiefly to art. 4. Moss agates are such as contain arborisations or den- drites of oxide of iron, some of which seem to be petrifac tions of real vegetable forms. 5. Bloodstone is a dark-green agate containing bright red spots like blood-drops. 6. Plasma, a grass-green stone, found engraved in ruins at Rome, on the Schwartzwald, and on Mount Olympus, appears to be calcedony coloured by chlorite. 7. Ckrysoprase, found in Silesia, is an agate coloured apple-green by oxide of nickel. The agate can be cut or sawed easily, and is used for making cups, rings, seals, handles for knives and forks, sword-hilts, rosary beads, and a great variety of trinkets. Many stones of this kind are marked with representations of men, animals, or inanimate natural objects; but there can be no question that a very large proportion of these are to be regarded as productions of art. AGATHARCHIDES, a celebrated Greek grammarian and geographer who nourished about 140 years B.C., was born at Cnidos. His works are lost, except those passages quoted by Diodorus Siculus and other authors, in which he describes the gold mines of Upper Egypt, and gives the first philosophical explanation of the inundations of the Nile, which he ascribed to the rains on the mountains of Ethiopia. (Hudson s Greek Geographers.) AGATHARCHUS, a Greek painter, commemorated by Vitruvius for having first applied the laws of perspective to architectural painting, which he used successfully in prepar ing scenery for the plays of yEschylus. He nourished about 480 years B.C. AGATHIAS, a Greek historian and poet, born at Myrina in Asia Minor, about 536 A.D. He was educated at Alex andria, and in 554 went to Constantinople, where, after studying Roman law for some years, he practised as an advo cate. The title &quot; Scholasticus,&quot; generally given to Agathias, was that by which advocates were known in Constanti nople. Of the poetry by Agathias but little remains; his Daphniaea (Aa(/)i/taKa), a collection of erotic poems, being entirely lost, and only the introduction to his Kv/cAos, or anthology from earlier and contemporary writers, being extant. A number of his epigrams may be found in the Anthologia Groeca. His principal work is his history, which begins, where Procopius ends, with the 2Gth year of the reign of Justinian (553), and carries on the narrative of events until 558. It is valuable as a chronicle, but the style is turgid, and great ignorance is shown of the history and geography of western Europe. It was printed in Greek, with a Latin translation by Bonaventura Vulcanius, at Leyden in 1594. The best edition is that of Niebuhr (Bonn, 1828). A French translation is included in the second volume of Louis Cousin s History of Constantinople. AGATHO, an Athenian tragic poet, the disciple of Pro- dicus and Socrates, celebrated by Plato in his Protagoras for his virtue and his beauty. A tragedy of his obtained the prize in the fourth year of the 90th Olympiad, and he was crowned, in the presence of upwards of 30,000 persoii.s, when a little over thirty years of age. There are no remains of his works, except a few quotations in Aristotle, Athenseus, and others. AGATHOCLES, a famous tyrant of Sicily, was the son of a potter at Rhegium. By his singular vigour and abilities he raised himself through various gradations of rank till he finally made himself tyrant of Syracuse, and then of nearly all Sicily. He defeated the armies of the Carthaginians several times, both in Sicily and Africa; but at length he met with a reverse, and his soldiers pay being in arrears, they mutinied, forced him to fly his camp, and murdered his sons. Recovering himself, he relieved Corcyra, which was besieged by Cassander; burnt the Macedonian fleet; and revenged the death of his chil dren by putting the murderers, with their wives and fami lies, to the sword. After ravaging the sea-coast of Italy he took the city of Hipponium. The last years of his life were greatly harassed with ill-health and the turbulence of his grandson Archagathus. He died in the seventy-second year of his age, B.C. 290, after a reign of twenty-eight years. AGDE, a town of France, in the department of Heraiilt, on the left bank of the river of that name, 30 miles S.W. of Montpellier. It is a place of great antiquity, and is said to have been founded, under the name of Agathe, by the Greeks. In the neighbourhood there is an extinct volcano, and the town is built of black volcanic basalt, which gives it a grim and forbidding aspect. It has a fine old Gothic cathedral, a college, and a school of navigation. The Canal du Midi, or Languedoc canal, uniting the Garonne with the Mediterranean Sea, passes under the walls of the town, and the mouth of the He&quot;rault forms a convenient harbour, which is protected by a fort. Thus advantageously situated, the place commands an extensive coasting trade, more than 400 vessels annually entering the port. Soap and verdigris are manufactured, and the staple productions of southern France are largely exported. Population, 9747. AGE, a term denoting generally any fixed period of time, is used more definitely in a variety of senses. Classi cal mythology divided the whole history of the earth into a number of periods. Hesiod, for example, in his poem Works and Days, describes minutely five successive ages, during each of which the earth was peopled by an entirely distinct race. The first or golden race lived in perfect happiness on the fruits of the untilled earth, suffered from no bodily infirmity, passed away in a gentle sleep, and became after death guardian daemons of this world. The second or silver race was degenerate, and refusing to worship the immortal gods, was buried by Jove in the earth. The third or brazen race, still more degraded, was warlike and cruel, and perished at last by internal violence. The fourth or heroic race was a marked advance upon the preceding, its members being the heroes or demi-gods who fought at Troy and Thebes, and who were rewarded after death by being permitted to reap thrice a-year the free produce of the earth. The fifth or iron race, to which the poet supposes himself to belong, is the most degenerate of all, sunk so low in every vice that any new change must be for the better. Ovid, in his Metamorphoses, follows Hesiod exactly as to nomenclature and very closely as to substance. He makes the degeneracy continuous, however, by omitting the heroic race or age, which, as Grote points out, was probably introduced by Hesiod, not as part of his didactic plan, but from a desire to conciliate popular feeling by including in his poem the chief myths that were already current among the Greeks. A definite period in history distinguished by some special characteristic, such as great literary activity, is generally styled, with some appropriate epithet, an age. It is usual, for example, to speak of the age of Pericles, the Augustan age, the Elizabethan age; of the age of the crusades, the dark ages, the middle ages, the age of steam. Such isolated periods, with no continuity or necessary con nection of any kind, arc obviously quite distinct from the ages or organically-related periods into which certain