Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume III.djvu/519

 BYSSUS BYZANTINE EMPIRE 513 tions when cast away in 1740-'46, a work which' was very popular. In 1769 lie was ap- pointed governor of Newfoundland; in 1778 he watched the movements of a fleet sent by the French to aid the American revolutionists, and in 1779 fought an indecisive action off Grenada with the French squadron command- ed by Count d'Estaing. His eldest son, John, was the father of Lord Byron, the poet. His second son, George Anson, was a captain in the navy; and his son John, also a naval offi- cer, succeeded the poet as Baron Byron, and was the author of " A Narrative of the Voyage of his Majesty's Ship Blonde to the Sandwich Islands " (4to, London, 1825). BYSSCS. I. The name given to the long, deli- cate, shining fibres by which some of the bivalve shells attach themselves to submarine bodies. It is sometimes coarse and strong, as in the common mussel (mytilus edulis), or silky, as in the great p inna of the Mediterranean. Accord- ing to De Blainville, it is not a secretion spun from a glandular organ, but a bundle of mus- cular fibres, which, though dried and appa- rently lifeless externally, are actively contrac- tile at their origin near the foot; there seems to be a regular gradation from the ordinary foot to a true byssus. Along the Mediterra- nean the silky byssus of the pinna, is woven into various articles, such as gloves and stock- ings, more curious than useful. II. The byssus of the ancients (Gr. /37<rof; Heb. butz) has been the subject of many learned disquisitions, some critical authorities contending that it was cotton, and others that it was linen. It is not unlikely that the word was applied, in various connections and at various times, to both cot- ton and linen textiles. The mummy cloth of the Egyptians, which Herodotus designates as byssus, has been proved by microscopic exami- nations to have been linen. BYSTROM, Johan Nils, a Swedish sculptor, born at Philipstad, in Wermland, Dec. 18, 1783, died in Rome, March 13, 1848. He was at first engaged in business, but subsequently studied under Sergell at Stockholm, and in 1809 gained the first prize in the Swedish acad- emy of arts. The following year he went to Rome, and produced there " A Drunken Bac- chante," which was received with favor at home. From this time he lived partly in Rome and partly in Sweden. In 1815 he exhibited in Stockholm a colossal statue of the crown prince, who commissioned him to execute stat- ues of several of the Swedish kings. His princi- pal works are a "Nymph going into the Bath," "Juno suckling the young Hercules," "Pan- dora combing her Hair," "A Dancing Girl," a statue of Linnasus, and colossal statues of Charles XIII., Charles XIV., and Gustavus Adolphus. BYTOWN. See OTTAWA. BYZANTINE EMPIRE, called also the Roman empire of the East, the Eastern empire, the Greek empire, and the Lower empire. On the death of Theodosius the Great, A. D. 395, the division of the great Roman empire into East and West became permanent. The eastern portion, with Constantinople, the ancient By- zantium, for its capital, was bequeathed to the elder son Arcadius, with whom the line of By- zantine emperors properly commences. The Byzantine empire, beginning in 395, ended in 1453, with the Mohammedan conquest of Con- stantinople. At its inception it consisted of two prefectures, namely: I, the Orient, in- cluding five dioceses, Oriens (proper), Egypt, Asia, Pontus, and Thrace, and embracing all the Asiatic regions to the Euphrates and inde- pendent Armenia, and Egypt and the African coast west of it to the Greater Syrtis ; 2, Hlyri- cum, with the two dioceses of Macedonia and Dacia, embracing Upper and Lower Moesia, Eastern Illyria, the whole of ancient Macedonia, Hellas, Crete, and the islands of the yEgean, as well as possessions in the Tauric Chersonesus (Crimea). The line of demarcation between the empires of the East and the West, com- mencing a little above Pesth, followed the Dan- ube, the Save, and the Drina, and was contin- ued by a line drawn from the town of Scodra, now Scutari, near the Adriatic, toward the Greater Syrtis off the coast of Cyrenaica in Africa. Rufinus was guardian for the young Arcadius; after the overthrow of the former by Stilicho, the minister of the Western em- pire, the eunuch Eutropius, and later Gainas, the murderer of Rufinus, succeeded to the pre- miership. During this period the Goths rav- aged Greece. After the death of Gainas in a civil war excited by his ambition, the empire was ruled by the immoral and avaricious wife of Arcadius, Eudoxia, till her death in 404. The young son of Arcadius, Theodosius II., succeeded to the throne in 408. Anthemius administered the government for him till 415, and then his sister, the princess Pulcheria, be- came regent. Pulcheria assumed the title of Augusta, governed the empire ably, and ex- cluded her brother from any participation in its administration. Under her sway a successful war was carried on against the Persians, and the western empire was conquered by the By- zantines for Valentinian III., who ceded the province of Western Illyria, including Panno- nia, Dalmatia, and Noricum, as a recompense therefor. On the other hand, Thrace and Mace- donia were ravaged with impunity by Attila 'and his Huns, and Pulcheria was obliged to purchase peace by the payment of an annual tribute to the barbarians. The Codex Theodo- sianus was drawn up in this reign. After the death of her brother, Pulcheria was called to the throne, 450. She was the first female who ever attained to this dignity. She gave her hand to the aged senator Marcian, whose pru- dence and valor averted the attacks of the Huns from his empire. Shelter was given in this reign to the Germans and Sarmatians, who fled before the Huns. Marcian persuaded Attila to wreak his thirst for bloodshed and destruc- tion upon Italy and the West, instead of the