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Rh Syracuse. Mutual discord first sapped the prosperity of Magna Græcia. In 510 Crotona, having defeated the Sybarites in a great battle, totally destroyed their city. Crotona maintained alone the leading position which had belonged jointly to the Achyean cities (Diod., xiv. 103); bat from that time Magna Gnecia steadily declined. Foreign enemies pressed heavily on it. The Lucanians and Bruttians on the north captured one town after another. Dionysius of Syracuse attacked them from the south; and after he defeated the Crotoniate league (389 ), Tarentum remained the only powerful city. Henceforth the history of Magria Græcia is only a record of the vicissitudes of Tarentum (see ), Repeated expeditions from Sparta and Epirus tried in vain to prop up the decaying Greek states against the Lucanians and Bruttians; and when in 282 the Romans appeared in the Tarentine Gulf the end was close at hand. The aid which Pyrrhus brought did little good to the Tarentines, and his final departure in 274 left them defenceless. During these con stant wars the Greek cities had been steadily decaying; and in the second Punic war, when most of them seized the opportunity of revolting from Rome, their very existence was in some cases annihilated. Malaria, which never affects a well-peopled city, increased in strength as the population diminished. We are told by Cicero (De Am., 4), "Magna Græcia mine quidem deleta est." Many of the cities completely disappeared; some, like Tarentum, maintained a feeble existence into modern times.

 GRÆVIUS (1632-1703). Johann Georg Gräfe, Greffe, or Grævius, one of the great classical scholars of the 17th century, was born at Naumburg, Saxony, 29th January 1632, and after receiving the usual school education at the gymnasium of Pforta became a student of law in the university of Leipsic. During a casual visit to Deventer in his eighteenth year, he became acquainted with Gronovius; and this circumstance greatly stimulated a taste for pure scholarship which he had already begun to display somewhat to the detriment of his professional prospects. Finally abandoning jurisprudence shortly afterwards, he studied philology for two years under Gronovius, and subsequently sat under Heinsius at Leyden, and under Morns and Blo:idel at Amsterdam. During his residence in the last-named city he abandoned Lutheranism and joined the Reformed Church; and in 1656 he was called by the elector of Brandenburg to the chair of belles lettres in the university of Duisburg. Two years after wards he was, on the recommendation of Gronovius, chosen to succeed that scholar at Deventer; and in 1662 he was translated to the university of Utrecht, where he occupied first the chair of rhetoric, and afterwards from 1667 until his death (January 11, 1703) that of history and politics. During the later years of his life he enjoyed a great and European reputation, and repeated attempts, which, however, he steadfastly resisted, were made to induce him to transfer his services to other universities and Governments. His lecture-room was crowded by pupils, many of them of distinguished rank, from all parts of the civilized world; and by Louis XIV, as well as by other sovereigns, he was now and again honoured with special recognition.

 GRÄFE, (1828-1870), German oculist, son of Karl Ferdinand von Gräfe, noticed below, was born at Berlin in May 1828. At an early age he manifested a preference for the study of mathematics, but this was gradually superseded by an interest in natural science, which led him ultimately to the study of medicine. After obtaining Government licence at Berlin, he prosecuted his studies at Vienna, Prague, and Paris, devoting special attention to ophthalmology. In 1850 he began practice as an oculist in Berlin, where he founded a private institution for the treatment of the eyes, which became the model of many similar ones in Germany and Switzerland. In 1853 he was appointed teacher of ophthalmology in Berlin university, in 1856 extraordinary professor, and in 1866 ordinary professor. Von Gräfe contributed largely to the perfection of the science of ophthalmology, especially by the establishment in 1855 of his Archiv fur Ophthalmologie, in which he had Arlt and Donders as collaborateurs. Perhaps his two most important discoveries are his method of treatment for glaucoma, until then deemed incurable, and his new method of operation for the extraction of cataract, by which the danger of the operation became minimized. He was also regarded as an authority in diseases of the nerves and brain. He died at Berlin 20th August 1870. See Alfred Gräfe, Ein Wort zur Erinnerung an Albrecht von Gräfe, Halle, 1870.

 GRÄFE, (1802-1868), educationist, was born at Buttstädt in Weimar, 3d May 1802, studied mathematics and theology at Jena, and in 1823 obtained a curacy in the stadtkirche of Weimar. Thence he was transferred to Jena as rector of the town school in 1825; in 1840 he was also appointed extraordinary professor of the science of education (Pädagogik) in that university; and in 1842 he became head of the bürgerschule in Cassel. After reorganizing the schools of the town, he became director of the new realschule in 1843; and, devoting himself with great zeal and energy to the interests of educational reform in electoral Hesse, he became in 1849 a member of the school commission, and also entered the house of representatives, where he attached himself to the democratic party and made himself somewhat formidable as an agitator. In 1852 for having been implicated in the September riots and in the movement against the unpopular minister Hassenpflug (who had dissolved the school commission) he was condemned to three years imprisonment, a sentence which was afterwards reduced to one of twelve months. On his release he withdrew to Geneva, where he engaged in educational work till 1855, when he was appointed director of the school of industry at Bremen. He died in that city 21st July 1868.

 GRÄFE, (1787-1840), German surgeon, was born at Warsaw, 8th March 1787. He studied medicine at Halle and Leipsic, and after obtaining licence from the latter university, he was in 1807 appointed private physician to Duke Alexius of Anhalt-Bernburg. In 1811 he became professor of surgery at Berlin, and during the war with Napoleon he was superintendent of the military hospitals. When peace was concluded in 1815, he resumed his professorial duties. He was also appointed to the medical staff of the army, and he became a director of the Frederick-William Institute, and of the Medico-Chirurgical Academy. He died suddenly, 4th July 1840, at Hanover, whither he had been called to operate on the eyes of the crown-prince. Von Gräfe did much to advance the practice of surgery in Germany, especially in the case of wounds, both by the invention of new instruments and the discovery 