Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/564

Rh 504 A R I A R I and Bradamante forms the main subject of the Furioso ; every part of it, except some episodes, depends upon this subject; and the poem ends with their marriage. The first complete edition of the Orlando Furioso was published at Ferrara in 1532, as noted above. The edition of Moral! (Milan, 1818) follows the text of the 1532 edition with great correctness. Of editions published in England, those of Baskerville (Birmingham, 1773), and Panizzi (London, 1834), are the most important. The indifferent translations into English of Harrington and Hoole have been superseded by the spirited rendering of Hose. ARIST/EUS (from apurros, best), a divinity whose worship was widely spread throughout Greece, but con cerning whose origin and career the myths are somewhat obscure. The account most generally received connects him specially with Thessaly. Apollo carried off from Mount Pelion the nymph Gyrene, daughter or grand daughter of Peneus (Peneius), and conveyed her to Libya, where she gave birth to Aristae us. From this circumstance the town of Gyrene took its name. The child was at first handed over to the care of the Hours, or, according to another version, to the nymph Melissa and the centaur Chiron. He afterwards left Libya and came to Thebes, where he received instruction from the Muses in the arts of healing and prophecy, and married Autonoe, daughter of Cadmus, by whom he had several children, among others, the unfortunate Acteeon. He is said to have visited Ceos, where, by erecting a temple to Zeus Icmseus (the giver of moisture), he freed the inhabitants from a terrible drought. The islanders worshipped him, and occasionally identified him with Zeus, calling him Zeus Aristaeus. After travelling through many of the yEgean islands, through Sicily, Sardinia, and Magna Groecia, everywhere conferring benefits and receiving divine honours, Aristaeus came to Thrace, where he was initiated into the mysteries of Dionysos, and finally disappeared near Mt. Hsemus. While in Thrace he is said to have caused the death of Eurydice, who was bitten by a snake while fleeing from him. Aristaeus was essentially a benevolent deity ; he was worshipped as the first who introduced the cultivation of bees, and of the vine and olive ; he was the protector of herdsmen and hunters (and was therefore called vo/xtos and uypevs), he warded off the evil effects of the dog-star ; he possessed the arts of healing and prophecy. In ancient sculptures and coins he is represented as a young man, habited like a shepherd, and sometimes carrying a sheep on his shoulders. Occasionally he is accompanied by a bee or a dove. ARISTANDER, the favourite soothsayer of Alexander the Great, who consulted him on all occasions. After the death of the monarch, when his body had lain unburied for thirty days, Aristander procured its burial by foretelling that the country in which it was interred would be the most prosperous in the world. He is probably the author of a work on prodigies, which is referred to by Pliny and Lucian. ARISTARCHUS, of Samothrace, the most famous of the Greek grammarians and critics, flourished about 160 B.C. He spent the greater part of his life at Alexandria, where he studied in the school of Aristophanes of Byzan tium. He acquired the highest reputation for critical skill, and founded a school for philology, which long nourished at Alexandria and afterwards at Rome. Ptolemy V. (Epiphanes) and Ptolemy VII. (Physcon) are said to have been among his pupils. During the reign of Physcon, who exercised great cruelty towards the learned men in his capital, Aristarchus withdrew to the isle of Cyprus, where, it is said, he suffered from dropsy, and voluntarily starved himself to death. Aristarchus commented on Pindar, Archilochus, /Eschylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes, and Ion ; but his great fame rests on his recension of Homer. His principal object was to secure a thoroughly accurate text, and he carefully removed all supposed interpolations, marking with an obelus lines considered by him to be spurious, and with an asterisk those that seemed particu larly beautiful. His edition was highly valued, and has been the basis of all subsequent recensions. The cri ticism of Aristarchus was not merely verbal ; he attended carefully to metre ; he arranged the Iliad and Odyssey in books, as we now have them ; and he wrote elaborate commentaries, entering into all questions of mythology and geography. He is also said to have been the first to apply accents to the Homeric poems. Of his numerous commentaries, and his longer treatises, particularly that On Analogy, only a few fragments have come down through the later scholiasts. See Matthesius, Disputatio de Aris- tarcho Grammatico ; Villoisson, Proleg. ad. Horn. II.; F. A. Wolf, Proleg. in Horn. ; Lehrs, De Aristarchi Studiis Homericis. ARISTARCHUS, a Greek astronomer of Samos, who lived about 280-264 B.C. He is famous as being the first to maintain that the earth moves round the sun. No mention, indeed, is made of this doctrine in his only surviving work, He/at /iye$o&amp;gt;v KOL a.irocmjfj.a.Ttav, which treats of the Magnitudes and Distances of the Sun and Moon ; but Archimedes, in his Arenarius, quotes from a work written by Aristarchus as a refutation of astrology, which renders it certain that the Samian astronomer had clearly anticipated the grand discovery of Copernicus. That the latter was unacquainted with the doctrine of Aristarchus is equally certain from the fact that the editio princeps of Archimedes had not appeared till after Copernicus s death. The method given by Aristarchus of estimating the relative lunar and solar distances is geometrically correct, though the instrumental means of observation at his command rendered his data erroneous. His work has been published in Latin by G. Valla, Venice, 1498, folio ; in Greek and Latin, with the commentary of Pap pus, by &quot;Wallis, Oxford, 1688 ; and in a French translation by Fortia d Urban, Paris, 1823, 8vo. See Delambre, Hist, de V astronomic ancienne. ARISTEAS, a somewhat mythical personage, said to have been a native of Proconnesus, an island in the Pro- pontis. He travelled extensively, under the inspiration of Apollo, through the countries north and east of the Eux- ine, and visited the Hyperboreans, Issedines, and Arimaspi. His date is uncertain ; Suidas places him in the period of Croesus and Cyrus, others before the time of Homer. Herodotus and those who write of him regarded him as a magician, whose soul could enter and leave his body at pleasure. At Proconnesus he is said to have entered a shop and died there. While the owner of the shop was informing his family of the event, a stranger from Cyzicus told them that he had met and spoken with Aristeas. On going to the shop they did not find him, either dead or alive. Seven years after, he returned, wrote his poem, the Arimaspea, and again disappeared; 340 years later, he is said to have appeared at Metapontuni, and com manded the inhabitants to raise an altar to Apollo, and a statue to himself. Of his poem, about a dozen lines are preserved by Longinus and Tzetzes. It appears to have contained geographical details. Some writers Dionysius of Halicarnassus, for instance do not believe that Aristeas was the author of this poem. ARISTIDES, surnamed the Just, was the son of Lysimachus, a native of Athens, of the tribe Antiochis. His family appears to have been of noble descent ; at least it is known that Callias, the torch-bearer at the Eleusinian mysteries, and reputedly the wealthiest mau in Athens, was a cousin or near kinsman. Plutarch maintains, in opposition to Demetrius Phalereus, that Aristides was