Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/91

Rh don, and is in use in a few ships of British and foreign navies. The cable-holder is placed on the fore side of the deck pipe, and is fitted with a grooved pulley M for the cable to pass over, similar to the whelps of the capstan shown in fig. 1. It revolves on a horizontal spindle fixed to the deck by brackets. The interior is made hollow, and contains a double series of disks, which can be screwed together by means of a hand-lever L, thereby causing sufficient friction to let the cable run out slowly, or to stop it entirely, and also to hold the ship when riding at anchor. Means have been devised, and are now being fitted in one of the ships of the British navy for connecting these &quot; cable-holders &quot; with the capstan, so that the cable may be hove up by them without taking it to the capstan. FIG. 4. Cable-bolder.  CAPUA, a large and important city of ancient Italy, capital of Campania, was situated in the midst of a very fertile and valuable territory, two miles from the bank of the Vulturnus, and about half that distance from the mountain Tifata. Much diversity of opinion has prevailed as to the date of its foundation, and the people by whom it was originally inhabited. It is now generally agreed that Capua was one of the twelve cities which the Tuscans were said to have founded in the south of Italy at the beginning of the 9th century B.C. The city soon rose in importance, and its inhabitants became renowned through out the whole peninsula for their wealth, and the luxurious magnificence of their lives. In course of time, as was natural, they degenerated so far that, from having been originally a brave and warlike people, they could no lunger resist the encroachments of the Samnites, who in 424 B.C. made themselves masters of the city, and put the inhabi tants to the sword. The material prosperity of the city remained undiminished under the rule of the Samnites, who in less than a century became as effeminate and degenerate as the Capuans had been. When they in turn were attacked by the mountaineers, they were compelled to apply to Rome for assistance, which was immediately granted. At the close of the Latin war, in which the Capuans had assisted the allies, they were deprived of the Campanus Ager, the most valuable district in Italy, but were admitted to take rank as citizens of Rome. They still continued, however, to select their own rulers. When the second Punic war broke out, the Capuans, elated with the prospect of retrieving their high position, opened their gates to Hannibal, who spent an entire winter with his army in the city. To the enervating contagion of Capuan effeminacy historians have always attributed the want of success which subsequently attended the Carthaginian commander in his Italian compaigns. When the Romans at length made themselves masters of the city, in the seventh year of the war, they took a terrible revenge, and only forbore to raze the city to the ground in consideration of the great natural ad vantages of its site. For its fidelity in the social war, the Romans restored to Capua all its municipal privileges, and the city recovered all its com mercial, though it never regained its political importance. Under Julius Caesar, the Campanus Ager was distributed among 20,000 citizens of Rome, and Capua became a Roman colony. Under the emperors it continued to prosper commercially, and it seems to have been as rich and populous at the downfall of the Western empire as during the time of its political independence. Its wealth marked it out as a special object of attack to the Vandals, who took and nearly destroyed it under Genseric 456 A.D! What was left undone by the Vandals was completed by the Saracens, who burnt the city to the ground in 840. The inhabitants, who had fled for shelter to the neighbour ing mountains, returned on the departure of their eastern invaders, and established themselves at Casilinum, a stronghold on the Vulturnus two miles distant from their ancient home. Casilinum is the modern Capua, formerly one of the strongest forts in the kingdom of the Two Sicilies. The site of the ancient Capua is now occupied by Santa Maria, a thriving town of 16,000 inhabitants, the seat of the tribunals of the southern division of the province of Terra di Lavoro. Outside Santa Maria, on the north-west, are the extensive remains of the old Capuan amphitheatre, second only to the Flavian amphitheatre in size and magnificence, near which are the remains of a triumphal arch; and other ruins may still be traced within the town and in its immediate neighbourhood, but they are not of much interest.

1em  CAPUCHINS. The Capuchin friars are one branch of the great Franciscan order, and their rule is in all essen tials the same as that of the other friars minor, or Minorites. It was in the first decade of the 13th century that St Francis established his order ; but it was not till 1528 that a bull of Clement VII. erected into a separate order the disciples of a certain minorite friar, who had conceived that he was inspired to reform the practices of his order in some respects. This man s name was Mathew da Bassi, a Franciscan of the March of Ancona. The legend of the order states that, having seen a representation of St Francis wearing a square-cut pyramidal hood, he made a similar one for himself, sewed it on to his monastic habit and began to wear it. This was in 1525. This audacious innovation drew down on the author of it much blame, and some persecution on the part of his superiors ; but as usual in similar cases, that did not prevent others from following his example. Specially two brothers Ludovico and Raffaelle of Fossombrone, the first a priest and the second a lay brother of the Franciscan order, joined them selves to Mathew, and underwent punishment from their superiors for so doing. They, however, obtained the countenance and patronage of the Duchess Cibo, a connec tion of the then reigning Pope Clement VII. (Giulio de Medici), and the wife of Giorgio Varano, duke of Camerino. That lady gave her protege s a letter of recom mendation to the pope, armed with which they went to Rome, and, despite the fact that they were disobedient to their superiors and therefore had broken their monastic vows, obtained from the pope the bull known as Religionis Zelus, by which they were permitted to impart their hooded habit to any disciples who might be willing to join them, to live as hermits in wild and desolate places, to go barefoot, to wear beards, and to call themselves &quot; Hermit Friars Minor.&quot; The populace, however, gave them a nickname which has supplanted the more formal one. &quot; Cappuccio &quot; is a hood in Italian ; and the diminutive &quot; Cappuccino,&quot; formed half affectionately, half contemptuously, as is the Italian wont, means &quot; little hooded fellow.&quot; When this bull had been obtained, a place for the first congregation of the new order was soon found in an abandoned convent at Colmenzone, near Camerino, given to them by the duchess. Disciples thronged to the &quot; new religion,&quot; and three other convents wers shortly built. Mathew, the disobedient monk who had rebelled against his superiors and abandoned his con-

