Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 1.djvu/495

Rh A L C A L C 457 laying the foundation of his country s empire in the East. He returned home in July 1504, and was well received by King Emmanuel, who entrusted him with the command of a squadron of five vessels in the fleet of sixteen which sailed for India in 1506 under Tristan da Cunha. After a series of successful attacks on the Moorish cities on the east coast of Africa, Albuquerque separated from Da Cunha, and sailed with his squadron against the island of Ormuz, in the Persian Gulf, which was then one of the chief centres of commerce in the East. He arrived on the 25th September 1507, and soon obtained possession of the island, though he was unable long to maintain his position. With his squadron increased by three vessels, he reached the Malabar coast at the close of the year 1508, and im mediately made known the commission he had received from the king empowering him to supersede the governor Almeida. The latter, however, refused to recognise Albu querque s credentials, and cast him into prison, from which he was only released, after three months confinement, on the arrival of the grand marshal of Portugal with a large fleet. Almeida having returned home, Albuquerque speedily showed the energy and determination of his character. An unsuccessful attack upon Calicut in Janu ary 1510, in which the commander-in-chief received a severe wound, was immediately followed by the investment and capture of Goa. Albuquerque, finding himself unable to hold the town on his first occupation, abandoned it in August, to return with reinforcements in November, when he obtained undisputed possession. He next directed his forces against Malacca, which he subdued after a severe struggle. He remained in the town nearly a year in order to strengthen the position of the Portuguese power. In 1512 he sailed for the coast of Malabar. On the voyage a violent storm arose, Albuquerque s vessel, the &quot; Flor de la Mar,&quot; which carried the treasure he had amassed in his conquests, was wrecked, and he himself barely escaped with his life. In September of the same year he arrived at Goa, where he quickly suppressed a serious revolt headed by Idalcan, and took such measures for the security and peace of the town that it became the most flourishing of the Portuguese settlements in India. Albuquerque had been for some tima under orders from the home government to undertake an expedition to the Red Sea, in order to secure that channel of communication exclu sively to Portugal. He accordingly laid siege to Aden in 1513, but was repulsed; and a voyage into the Red Sea, the first ever made by a European fleet, led to no sub stantial results. In order to destroy the power of Egypt, he is said to have entertained the idea of diverting the course of the Nile, and so rendering the whole country barren. His last warlike undertaking was a second attack upon Ormuz in 1515. The island yielded to him without resistance, and it remained in the possession of the Portu guese until 1622. Albuquerque s great career had a pain ful and ignominious close. He had several enemies at the Portuguese court who lost no opportunity of stirring up the jealousy of the king against him, and his own injudicious and arbitrary conduct on several occasions served their end only too well. On his return from Ormuz, at the entrance of the harbour of Goa, he met a vessel from Europe bearing despatches announcing that he was superseded by his personal enemy Soarez. The blow was too much for him, and he died at sea on the 16th December 1515. Before his death he wrote a letter to the king in dignified and affecting terms, vindicating his conduct and claiming for his son the honours and rewards that were justly clue to himself. His body was buried at Goa in the Church of Our Lady, and it is per haps the most convincing proof possible of the justice of his administration, that, many years after, Moors and Hindoos used to go to his tomb to invoke protection against the injustice of his successors. The king of Por tugal was convinced too late of his fidelity, and endeav oured to atone for the ingratitude with which he had treated him by heaping honours upon his natural son Affonso. The latter published a selection from his father s- papers, under the title Commentarios do Grande Affonsa d Alboquerque. ALGOUS, one of the great lyric poets of Greece, was a native of Mitylene in Lesbos, and nourished about the year 600 B.C. From the fragments of his poems which have come down to us we learn that his life was greatly mixed up with the political disputes and internal feuds of his native city. He sided with the nobles, and took an active part against the tyrants, who at that time set themselves up in Mitylene. He was obliged, in conse quence, to quit his native country, and spend the rest of his life in exile. The date of his death is unknown. His poems, which were composed in the ^Eolian dialect, were collected afterwards, and apparently divided into ten books. The subjects, as we can still see from the frag ments, were of the most varied kind : some of his poems were hymns to the gods ; others were of a martial or political character ; others again breathed an ardent love- of liberty and hatred of the tyrants ; and lastly, some were of an erotic kind, and appear to have been particularly remarkable for the fervour of the passion they described. Horace looks upon Alcseus as his great model, and has, in- one passage (Od. ii. 13. 26, et sqq.) given a fine picture of the poetical powers of the ^Eolian bard. The care which Alcfeus bestowed upon the construction of his verses was probably the reason why one kind of metre, the Alcaic, was named after him. Not one of his compositions has- come down to us entire, but a complete collection of all the extant fragments may be found in Bergk s Poetce- Lyrici Greed, Lipsiae, 1852, 8vo. ALCAICS, in Ancient Poetry, a name given to several kinds of verse, from Alcseus, their reputed inventor. The first kind consists of five feet, viz., a spondee or iambic, an iambic, a long syllable, and two dactyles ; the second of two dactyles and two trochees. Besides these, which are called dactylic Alcaics, there is another, simply styled- Alcaic, consisting of an epitrite, two choriambi, and a bacchius; thus Cur timet flavum Tiberim tangere, cur  olivum? The Alcaic ode is composed of several strophes, each^con- sisting of four verses; the first two of which are always alcaics of the first kind; the third verse is an iambic diameter hypercatalectic, consisting of four feet and a long syllable; and the fourth verse is an alca ic of the- second kind. The following strophe is of this species, which Horace calls &quot;Alcaii minaces camence&quot;- Non possidcntcm multa vocnrerii ILccte beatum; rectius occiqmt Nomen beati, qui dcorum Muneribus sapientcr uti. ALCAIDE, or ALCAYDE, a word of Moorish origin^ being derived from the Arabic Jidda, to head, which was- applied by the Spanish, the Portuguese, and the Moors to the military officer appointed to take charge of a fortress- or prison. See ALCALDE. ALGAL A DE GU AD AIR A, a town of Spain, in the province of Seville, Andalusia, situated on the Guadaira, 7 miles E. of Seville. It contains an old castle and other Moorish remains ; but it is now chiefly remarkable for the excellent quality of its bread, whence the epithet de los Panaderos, sometimes applied to it. Nearly the whole of the bread required by the town of Seville is made here. Population, 7000. I. -- 58