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 584 APHRODITE of blight. The number of aphides which ap- pear in spring must, of course, depend on the number of eggs laid in the preceding autumn ; but countless swarms of them being ushered into life at the same time has led to the notion that they are generated by the atmosphere. APHRODITE. See VENUS. APIC1US, the name of three noted Roman epi- cures. L Lived in the earlier part of the 1st century B. C. He spent much of his time at intervals in Latium, on account of its excellent lobsters, but having heard that the African lob- sters were larger, set sail for that continent. Several fishermen came ofl' to his vessel with the finest ; but seeing that they were inferior to those of Minturnse, he ordered the pilot to steer for Italy. He is said to have procured the banishment of Rutilius Rufus in 92. II. Mar- cus Cabins, who lived in the time of Augustus and Tiberius, established a school where the art of good cooking was taught. In the culti- vation of his own appetite and that of his schol- ars, he had expended more than $3,000,000, when he settled up his accounts, and perceiving that but about $300,000 remained, concluded that he could not live as he wished upon that sum, and poisoned himself. He invented several sauces and cakes which long bore his name. Apion, the grammarian, made his life and la- bors the basis of a volume ; and all cooks for centuries belonged to the Apician or anti- Apician faction. III. A contemporary of Tra- jan, who taught the world how to pickle oys- ters. A treatise, De Re Culinaria, or De Obsoniw et Condimentw, &c., bearing the name of Crolius Apicius, by an unknown writer (probably a Crolius who added to his own the famous name of Apicius), is the most ancient cookery book in the world. APIS (Egyp. Hapi) a name closely resem- bling that of the Nile), a bull worshipped by the Egyptians. In their mythology the soul of Osiris, murdered by the evil spirit Typhon, migrated into this bull. It was therefore the symbol of creative productivity and fertil- ity. The calf was born from a cow made pregnant by a ray of the sun and one of the moon. It must be black, with a white triangu- lar or square spot on the forehead, a vulture or an eagle on the back, various other mystical signs on various parts of the body, and a scarabaeus under the tongue. Its principal worship was in Memphis, in the temple of Phthah (He- phaestus, Vulcan, or fire). When such a calf was found, the priest transported him in a chariot with great pomp to Heliopolis, where he was kept in a temple accessible to the worship of the people for 40 days. After tHat lapse of time no one could approach him, and he was transported to Memphis, where he had his own temple, with chapels and courts for exercise, and his own priests. The lifetime of Apis was 25 years, in harmony with one of the theo- logico-astronomical cycles of the Egyptians. After the death of one and before the finding of another Apis, the whole land was in mourn- APOCALYPSE ing. Apis in heaven was placed in the con- stellation of Taurus. APLANATIC LENS (Gr. a privative and irXavri- riK6f, wandering), a lens made in such a way as to correct the spherical aberration. When rays come from a great distance, this may be done by making the curve of a lens parabolic in place of spherical, and in telescopes it is accomplish- ed by careful repolishing by hand and testing, For microscopic and photographic lenses, how- ever, a system of two or even more double achromatic lenses is employed, of which the curves are such that all the rays emitted from one point come to a single focus in a corre- sponding point. Such a microscopic lens is said to consist of an aplanatic system of lenses, and perfection in this respect is the great problem, now being solved by manufacturers of micro- scopes and photographic cameras. APOCALYPSE (Gr. aitonfavfyis, unveiling), or Revelation of St. John, the name of the last book of the New Testament. The church at an early period appears to have ascribed the authorship of the book to John the evangel- ist. Papias and Melito of Sardis, according to the testimony of Eusebius, regarded the Apocalypse as inspired. Justin Martyr and Ireneaus expressly quote the Apocalypse as the work of the apostle John ; and the third council at Carthage, in 397, admitted it into its list of canonical books. On the other hand, Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria, testi- fies that some church writers before him re- pudiated the Apocalypse as a forgery of Cerin- thus ; and he himself undertakes to prove that it was not the work of the apostle John, but of some other John who lived in Asia. That this opinion was shared by other prominent men of the church may be inferred from the fact that the Apocalypse is absent from the ancient Pesliito version. Jerome moreover states that the Greek church felt with regard to the Apocalypse a doubt similar to that entertained by the Latins with regard to the Epistle to the Hebrews. The rejection of the canonical and apostolical character of the book was chiefly prompted by opposition to chiliasm ; and when the interest in the chiliastic controversies de- clined, the church generally recognized the Apocalypse as a work of the apostle John. In modern times the question of the apostolic ori- gin of the book was revived by Semler, and many of the prominent exegetical writers of the Protestant churches (in particular De Wette, Ewald, Lucke, and Baur) undertook to prove that the Apocalypse and the Gospel of John could not possibly have been written by the same author. While, however, most of these writers deny that it was written by the apos- tle John, Baur, Hilgenfeld, and other critics of the Tubingen school, ascribe the Apocalypse to him, but not the fourth Gospel. Among those who have recently undertaken to prove that neither the fourth Gospel nor the Apoca- lypse was written by St. John, Th. Keim (Ge- schichte Jesu von Nazara, vol. i., 1867) and