Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume I.djvu/807

 AKSINOE Ptolemy Auletes, was proclaimed queen by the Alexandrians after her brother Ptolemy Dionysius had become prisoner to Caesar (47 B. 0.). She subsequently, however, fell into the hands of the conqueror, was carried to Rome, and served to adorn his triumph (46). Her deportment excited the sympathy of the Roman people, and Cassar permitted her to re- turn to Egypt. In 41 Antony, at the instiga- tion of her sister Cleopatra, had her taken from the temple of Diana at Miletus, whither she had fled for refuge, and put to death. ARSIJVOE. I. An ancient city of Egypt, cap- ital of the nome or district of Arsinoiitis, W. of the Nile, and not far from Lake Mceris. Ptolemy Philadelphus gave it that name in honor of his favorite sister and queen Arsinoe. Originally, however, it was called Crocodilo- polis by the Greeks, because the crocodile there received divine honors from the Egyp- tians. The ruins of the city may be seen in the vicinity of the modern Medinet el-Fayoom. II. An ancient city of Egypt, capital of the Heroopolite nome, at the N.W. extremity of the Red sea, near the site of the present town of Suez. Ptolemy Philadelphus considerably en- larged and improved it, and gave it its name. Arsinoe was connected with the Nile by the Ptolemsean canal, and was long the great east- ern emporium of Egypt. Its revenues belonged to Queen Arsinoe and her successors. ARSON (Lat. ardere, to burn), at common law, the wilful and malicious burning of another's house. House is to be understood in general to mean a dwelling house, and it included at common law all the outhouses that belonged to the dwelling, even though they were not under the same roof or joined to it, as barns and stables containing hay or corn of the owner of the house; and anciently even the burning of a stack of corn was arson. The offence was for a long time and until very lately punished by the English and American law with death. The law on the subject is not now so simple as it once was ; for malicious burnings not merely of dwellings, but of churches, warehouses, public buildings, vessels, crops, and many other kinds of property are now made the subjects of express statutory provisions, and usually named arsons ; and the subdivisions of the subject are very minute, and the character of the different offences in the different cases is very nicely distinguished. Arson is still used as a word of description, but the statutes do not always employ it ; and in- deed many of the offences which they refer to were not arsons at common law at all. The English law as to malicious burnings of all sorts of property has been revised and consolidated in the single act of 24 and 25 Victoria, ch. 97 (1861). It provides that the unlawful and malicious setting fire to any dwelling house, any person being therein, is a felony. It pun- ishes also the burning of churches or other places of divine worship, warehouses, out- houses, farm buildings, or any building used in ARSON 7Y1 carrying on trade or manufacture ; crops of hay, grass, corn, or grain, or any vegetable produce, whether cut or standing; woods, coppices, heath, gorse, or furze; stacks of corn, grain, or hay; turf, peat, charcoal, coal mines, and other kinds of property; and the penalty in almost all these cases is penal servitude for life or for not less than five years, or imprisonment for any term not exceeding two years, with or without hard labor. The statutes in the United States include not only the burning of dwell- ing houses, but also the burning of jails, state houses, court houses, school houses, and other public buildings, outhouses and edifices of all descriptions, and in some of the states ships and water craft of all kinds. In many of the states recent statutes of this character also pro- vide for cases of burning or setting fire to buildings with the intent to defraud insurers. In Louisiana and Maine burning a dwelling house may be punished with death ; but gen- erally that penalty has been abolished, impris- onment for life or for a shorter term being sub- stituted in its place. The statutes of two or three of the states will fairly represent the condition of the American law on the subject. In Maine any person who sets fire to the dwell- ing house of another, or to any building adjoin- ing thereto, or to any building owned by him- self or another, with the intent to burn such dwelling house, and it is thereby burned in the night time, shall be punished with death. But if the accused proves to the jury that there was no person lawfully in the dwelling house at the time, or if the offence was committed in the day time, the punishment shall be iin- prisonment for life. The statute of California provides that every person who shall wilfully and maliciously burn or cause to be burned in the night time any dwelling house in which there shall be at the time any human being, is guilty of arson in the first degree. Such burn- ing of any dwelling house the property of an- other, in the day time, or such burning either in the day or night of any office, shop, barn, stable, warehouse, stack of grain, or standing crop, the property of any other person, or of any church, school house, state house, or any other public building, or any ship, of the value in any case of $50, is arson in the second de- gree, and is punishable by imprisonment for not more than ten years and not less than one. If any life is lost in consequence of any such burning, the offender is guilty of murder. Any jail or other edifice usually occupied by per- sons lodging there at night is deemed the dwelling house of such persons. In Massa- chusetts the statute enacts that if any person wilfully and maliciously burns the dwelling house of another, or any building adjoining such dwelling house, or sets fire to any build- ing by the burning whereof such dwelling house is burned, he shall suffer imprisonment for life ; and the same punishment is inflicted on such burning of certain other buildings and of barns and the like structures within the