Page:Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography Volume 1.pdf/69

AGE  period—Polyclitus, Phidias, and Myron. Some suppose that there were two Ageladas, father and son, and that the first of them was still a strict adherent of the Hieratic school.—R. M.  AGELET,, a French astronomer, was born at Thone-le-long, 1751. He took part in the expedition of La Perouse, in which he perished. He has left some treatises on the aphelion of Venus and the length of the year.  AGELLI or AGELLIUS, appointed bishop of Acerno in 1593, was born at Sorrento, 1532; died, 1608. He superintended the correction of the Vulgate and the Latin version of the Septuagint in the printing-offices of the Vatican.  AGELNOTH, an Anglo-Saxon prelate of the eleventh century, was in the year 1020 nominated archbishop of Canterbury. He is chiefly remembered for refusing to crown Harold, who, in the absence of Hardicanute, had seized upon the kingly power.  AGERIUS or AGER,, was born towards the close of the sixteenth century. He was professor of medicine and botany at Strasburg, and by his botanical discoveries has added something to the materia medica.  AGESANDER, a Greek sculptor, flourishing about 160 ., who, with Athenodorus his son and Polydorus, executed the celebrated group of "Laocoon," now in the Vatican. Certain writers on art assert that this masterpiece is the production of sculptors living at Rome during the reign of Vespasian; but this assumption, based upon a misinterpretation of a passage in Pliny, cannot resist the evidence stamped upon the work itself, which, in every detail, presents all the characteristics of the Rhodian school in its imitation of the great Lysippus. These characteristics are,—the choice of a stirring subject; the extreme pathos of expression in treating it; the elaborate and emphatic style of execution; the peculiar type of the heads, &c., &c., one and all of which point out this group as being one of the greatest productions of Greek sculpture during the bloom of its last period. This is also the opinion of Winkelmann, who wrote a most scientific notice on this group; whilst his rival, Lessing, of the opposite opinion as regards its probable date, has produced the best esthetic essay that has ever been written upon the masterpiece of Agesander and his fellow-labourers.—R. M.  AGESIAS, a Platonist philosopher of Cyrene. Ptolemy ordered his school to be shut, because many of his disciples committed suicide to satisfy themselves of the truth of the doctrine of the immortality of the soul.  AGESILAUS I. This monarch was the seventh king of Sparta. His reign was not distinguished. <section end="69H" /> <section begin="69I" />AGESILAUS II., king of Sparta, born in 445 ., and died in 361. Almost immediately on his accession to power, he was sent, at the head of an army of eight thousand men, into Persia, under pretence of freeing the Grecian cities. He gained a signal victory over Tissaphernes, near the river Pactolus, where he forced the enemy's camp and gained considerable booty. This success induced the Persian monarch to subvert the power of Agesilaus among the Greek states by the influence of bribery, rather than openly to meet him in the field. By this means a confederacy of the other Greek states having been organized against Sparta, Agesilaus found himself obliged, in the midst of his success in Persia, to return home to defend his kingdom from the aggressions of his enemies. Passing through Macedonia and Thessaly, he arrived in Bœotia, where, upon the plains of Coronea, he obtained a considerable victory over the Athenians and their allies, the Argives, Thebans, Corinthians, and Eubeans. This war was carried on with various success for some time, until the Greek states, finding themselves weakened by their mutual jealousies, and tired of a conflict in which none gained advantage, sued for a peace, which was concluded in the ninety-eighth Olympiad, and which, on account of the many stipulations it contained in favour of Persia, Plutarch terms "the reproach and ruin of Greece." Thus freed from the fear of a foreign enemy, the Spartans turned their arms against the lesser states of Greece; humbling the Mantineans, by compelling them to throw down their walls; obliging the Corinthians to withdraw the garrison from Argos; subduing the Olynthians, and finally interfering in a most insulting manner in a domestic quarrel of the Thebans, by placing a garrison of their own in the citadel of which Phædibas had taken possession. For four years after this event the Thebans submitted to the Spartan yoke, but then took occasion by a desperate stroke to throw it off. This was accomplished by a conspiracy between the Theban exiles in Athens, and those well-affected to the cause in the city of Thebes itself. In concert, by means of stratagem, they seized and put to death the principal Spartans in the place; Pelopidas appearing, encompassed by priests, in the midst of the people, proclaimed liberty to the Thebans, and exhorted them to fight for their country and their gods. The Spartans having in this manner been driven from Thebes, still resolved to take the lead in the affairs of Greece, and Agesilaus was selected to command the army which was to humble its separate states. With varying fortune he attacked several of these states in succession, but was not himself present at the battle of Leuctra, at which the Spartans met with the bloodiest defeat their arms had ever sustained. So great, however, was his influence with the citizens, that they gave him power to dispense with, abrogate, or impose such new laws as he might see necessary to save the honour of many citizens, which their cowardice had for ever tarnished. He would neither abolish nor alter the law; but, by suspending its action for a single day, saved the citizens from infamy. Twice after this was Sparta threatened by the victorious Thebans under Epaminondas; but this great general having been killed in the hour of victory at the battle of Mantinea, and his countrymen losing by his death all the courage with which his heroic example had inspired them, a peace was concluded, which, with the exception of an expedition under Agesilaus into Egypt, whither he went to assist Tachos in his usurpation of that kingdom, preserved the quiet of Greece for some years. Agesilaus, from avarice and the hope of being preferred to the chief command, had readily complied with the overtures of Tachos; but on his arrival in Egypt he met with very different treatment from him to what he had expected, being allowed no command but over the mercenaries. This conduct so disgusted Agesilaus that he immediately joined himself to Nectabanus, the nephew of Tachos, who had commenced hostilities against him, and succeeded in seating him peaceably on the throne. For this service he received two hundred and thirty talents of silver, and the most distinguished marks of gratitude and respect. In returning home during the ensuing winter, he was driven into the haven of Menelaus on the coast of Africa, where he was attacked by an acute disease, which carried him off in the eighty-fourth year of his age and fortieth of his reign. He was so sensible of the meanness of his appearance that he would allow no statues to be raised to him in his lifetime, and implored the Spartans to erect none after his death. In youth he was impetuous and ambitious, in age perverse and obstinate. He was capable of enduring immense fatigue and pain, and was scrupulously frugal and temperate in his habits. Undue partiality for his friends may be forgiven in consideration of his generous humanity to his enemies. He was a fastidious observer of the laws, and was actually condemned to a fine by the ephori for making himself too much beloved by the people.—S. <section end="69I" /> <section begin="69J" />AGESILAUS, an Athenian general, and brother of Themistocles, lived about 480. Having fallen into the hands of the Persians, Xerxes ordered him to be sacrificed on the altar of the sun, when he held his right hand in the flames until it was consumed, without exhibiting the faintest evidence of the torture he suffered. His fortitude so excited the admiration of the Persian monarch that he granted him his life.—S. <section end="69J" /> <section begin="69K" />AGETA,, a Neapolitan jurist, lived about the middle of the seventeenth century. He has left some works on the feudal laws. <section end="69K" /> <section begin="69L" />AGEZIO,, who preceded Lavater in the science of physiognomy, lived in the sixteenth century. <section end="69L" /> <section begin="69M" />AGGENUS,, a writer on the science of agriculture, flourished in the latter half of the second century. <section end="69M" /> <section begin="69N" />AGIAS, a poet, often quoted by Greek writers. He wrote a poem in five books, narrating the return of the Greeks from the Trojan war, some fragments of which are found in Proclus. <section end="69N" /> <section begin="69O" />AGIER,, born at Paris, 1748; died, 1823. He became an advocate in 1789, and in 1802 was made vice-president of the tribunal of appeal. Skilled in the doctrines, and imbued with the spirit of the Port Royalists, he distinguished himself on the side of religion, liberty, and justice, through all the period of the Revolution, and the changes subsequent to that event. Besides some legal works, he wrote several works on theology.—J. F. <section end="69O" /> <section begin="69Pnop" />AGILA, the thirteenth king of the Visigoths in Spain. He ascended the throne in 549. His short reign of about five years, like that of his predecessor, who was strangled by his nobles, was very unhappy. Tyrannical and exacting in his administration, he was put to death in 554. <section end="69Pnop" />