Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/784

Rh 726 O D E O D O factories, rope -works, and carriage - works. The foreign trade, chiefly in corn, has immensely increased of late, since Odessa was brought into railway communication with central Russia. Grain was exported in 1880 to the amount of 1,040,400 quarters (2,445,120 quarters in 1878). This figure is subject, however, to great fluctuations. The other articles of export are flour, wool, tallow, hides, cattle (about 140,000 head), soap, ropes, and spirits, the value of the aggregate amount of exports reaching 42,000,000 roubles in 1880, against 65,000,000 roubles in 1879, and 85,815,000 in 1878. The chief articles of import are tea (1,600,000 in 1881), coffee, rice, cotton, tobacco, coal, oil, leather, paper, fruits, wine, and all kinds of manufactured ware, for an aggregate sum of 47,775,000 roubles in 1880. Odessa also carries on a brisk trade with other seaports of Russia, and, besides the 1508 ships (282 Russian and 650 English) engaged in foreign trade which entered the port of Odessa in 1879, it was visited by 2700 coasting vessels. Odessa is in regular steam communication with all the chief ports of the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, as also with London. The Russian Navigation Company sends its steamers by the Suez Canal to Chinese, Indian, and Russian Pacific ports, and has a numerous fleet on the Dnieper, Dniester, and Bug. The commercial fleet of Odessa in 1880 numbered 101 steamers (44,000 tons) and 178 sailing ships (19,800 tons). The total revenue of the town in 1882 was 1,938,000 roubles, and the expenditure 1,883,000 roubles, the chief items being, for charitable institutions 434,000 roubles, for the army 213,000, for administration and police 309,000, and for public instruction 138,000. History. The bay of Odessa was colonized by Greeks at a very early period, and their ports Istrianorum Portus and Isiacorum Portus on the shores of the bay, and Odessns and the modern Skopeli at the mouth of the Tiligul liman carried on a lively trade with the neighbouring steppes. These towns disappeared in the 3d and 4th centuries, leaving nothing but heaps of ruins ; and for ten cen turies thenceforward no settlements in these tracts are mentioned. All that is known is that in the 6th century the space between the mouths of the Dnieper and the Dniester was occupied by the Antes, and in the 9th century by the Tivertsy, both of Slavonian origin. In the 14th century this region belonged to the Lithuanians, and in 1396 Olgerd defeated in battle three Tatar chiefs, one of whom, Bek- Haji, had recently founded, at the place now occupied by Odessa, a fort which received his name. The Lithuanians, and subsequently the Poles, kept the country under their dominion until the 16th century, when it was seized by the Tatars, who still permitted, how ever, the Lithuanians to gather salt in the neighbouring lakes. Later on the Turks left a garrison at Haji-bcy, and founded in 1764 the fortress Yanidunia. In 1769 the Zaporog Cossacks made a raid on Haji-bey and burned its suburbs, but could not take the fort ; and, after the destruction of the Zaporojskaya Sech, the runaway Zapo- rogians settled close by Haji-bey in what is now the &quot;quarantine ravine.&quot; In 1787 the Cossack leader Chepega again attacked Haji- bey and burned all its storehouses, and two years later the Russians, under the French captain De Ribas, took the fortress by assault. In 1791 Haji-bey and the Otchakoff region were conceded to Russia. De Ribas and the French engineer Voland were entrusted in 1794 with the erection of a town and the construction of a port at Haji- bey ; the former was allowed to distribute about 100,000 acres of land freely to new settlers, and two years later Haji-bey, renamed Odessa, had 3153 permanent inhabitants, besides the military, and was visited by 86 foreign vessels. In 1803 Odessa became the chief town of a separate municipal district or captaincy, the first captain being the duke of Richelieu, who did very much for the development of the young city and its improvement as a seaport. In 1824 Odessa became the seat of the governors-general of Novorossia and Bessarabia. Since that time it has steadily increased its foreign trade and extended its commercial relations. In 1866 it was brought into railway connexion with Kieff and Kharkoff via Balta, and with Jassy in Roumania. (P. A. K. ) ODEYPOOR, or UDAIPUR. See CHUTIA NAGPUR, vol. v. p. 768. ODIN, or WODAN. See GERMANY, vol. x. p. 474, and MYTHOLOGY, above, p. 156. ODOACER, or ODOVACAR (c. 434-493), the first bar barian ruler of Italy on the downfall of the Western empire, was born in the district bordering on the middle Danube about the year 434. In this district the once rich and fertile provinces of Noricum and Pannonia were being torn piecemeal from the Roman empire by a crowd of German tribes, among whom we discern four, who seem to have hovered over the Danube from Passau to Pesth, namely, the Rugii, Scyrri, Turcilingi, and Heruli. With all of these Odoacer was connected by his subsequent career, and all seem, more or less, to have claimed him as belonging to them by birth ; the evidence slightly pre ponderates in favour of his descent from the Scyrri. His father was ^Edico or Idico, a name which suggests Edeco the Hun, who was suborned by the Byzantine court to plot the assassination of his master Attila. There are, however, some strong arguments against this identification. A certain Edica, chief of the Scyrri, of whom Jordanes speaks as defeated by the Ostrogoths, may more probably have been the father of Odoacer, though even in this theory there are some difficulties, chiefly connected with the low estate in which he appears before us in the next scene of his life, when as a tall young recruit for the Roman armies, dressed in a sordid vesture of skins, on his way to Italy, he enters the cell of Severinus, a noted hermit-saint of Noricum, to ask his blessing. The saint had an inward premonition of his future greatness, and in blessing him said, &quot; Fare onward into Italy. Thou who art now clothed in vile raiment wilt soon give precious gifts unto many.&quot; Odoacer was probably about thirty years of age when he thus left his country and entered the imperial service. By the year 472 he had risen to some eminence, since it is expressly recorded that he sided with the patrician Ricimer in his quarrel with the emperor Anthemius. In the year 475, by one of the endless revolutions which marked the close of the Western empire, the emperor Nepos was driven into exile, and the successful rebel Orestes was enabled to array in the purple his son, a hand some boy of fourteen or fifteen, who was named Romulus after his grandfather, and nicknamed Augustulus, from his inability to play the part of the great Augustus. Before this puppet emperor had been a year on the throne the barbarian mercenaries, who were chiefly drawn from the Danubian tribes before mentioned, rose in mutiny, demand ing to be made proprietors of one-third of the soil of Italy. To this request Orestes returned a peremptory negative. Odoacer now offered his fellow-soldiers to obtain for them all that they desired if they would seat him on the throne. On the 23d August 476 he was proclaimed king ; five days later Orestes was made prisoner at Placentia and be headed ; and on the 4th September his brother Paulus was defeated and slain in the pine-wood near Ravenna. Rome at once accepted the new ruler. Augustulus was compelled to descend from the throne, but his life was spared. Odoacer was forty-two years of age when he thus be came chief ruler of Italy, and he reigned thirteen years with undisputed sway. Our information as to this period is very slender, but we can perceive that the administra tion was conducted as much as possible on the lines of the old imperial government. The settlement of the barbarian soldiers on the lands of Italy probably affected the great landowners rather than the labouring class. To the herd of coloni and servi, by whom in their various degrees the land was actually cultivated, it probably made little differ ence, except as a matter of sentiment, whether the master whom they served called himself Roman or Rugian. We have one most interesting example, though in a small way, of such a transfer of land with its appurtenant slaves and cattle, in the donation made by Odoacer himself to his faithful follower Pierius. 1 Few things bring more vividly before the reader the continuity of legal and social life in the midst of the tremendous ethnical changes of the 5th century than the perusal of such a record. The same fact, from a slightly different point of view, is illustrated by the curious history (recorded by Malchus) of the embassies to Constantinople. The dethroned emperor Nepos sent ambassadors (in 477 or 478) to Zeno emperor 1 Published in Marini s Papiri Diplomatici (Rome, 1815, Nos. 82 and 83) and in Spangenberg s Juris Romani Tabulae (Leipsic, 1822, pp. 164-173), and well worthy of careful study.