Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VII.djvu/666

 654 GAZA GAZELLE shared in the wars of the Philistines with the Hebrews. Having become a possession of Persia, it was taken after an obstinate siege by Alexander the Great (332 B. C.) ; nearly all its inhabitants perished during the assault, and its commander Batis, at the conqueror's order, was dragged around the walls at the wheels of a chariot. After Alexander's death it was taken by Antigonus, and witnessed the defeat of Demetrius Poliorcetes by Ptolemy (312). After the restoration of Jewish independence by the Maccabees, it was several times assaulted, be- sieged, and taken by the princes of that house. The Romans ceded it to Herod the Great. Under Nero it was taken by the revolted Jews. Constantine restored its ancient splendor, made it a bishopric, and gave it the name of Con- stantia, with various privileges. These were abolished by Julian the Apostate, and restored by his Christian successors. The Arabs took it in 634, two years after the death of Mo- hammed. The crusaders captured it in 1100, and from them it was wrested by Saladin. In the 13th century it witnessed the defeats of the Christian armies by the Kharesmians and of the emir of Damascus by the Egyptians, and in 1516 that of the Mamelukes by the Turks. In 1771 it was seized by the revolted Ali Bey, and in 1799 by the French under Kleber. Another Gaza (correctly, Gazaca) was in Media Atropatene, a summer residence of the Median kings. Ruins of it are seen be- tween Miana and Tabriz. GAZA, Theodore, one of those learned Greeks who contributed to the revival of letters in Italy, born in Thessalonica about 1400, died in Abruzzo in 14T8. After the capture of his native town by the Turks in 1430 he fled to Italy, where "he introduced a more exact knowledge than had before existed of the two principal philosophers of antiquity. He was a Peripatetic, and devoted himself to translating from the works of Aristotle, Theophrastus, and Hippocrates into Latin, and from those of Ci- cero into Greek, and was also the author of a treatise on the Attic months, of a book on the origin of the Turks, and of a Greek grammar, which was published at Venice and often re- printed. After assisting at the council of Flor- ence in 1439, he taught Greek at Ferrara by the invitation of the duke, and founded there an academy. In 1450 he was called by Pope Nicholas V. to Rome. He afterward lived at Naples under the patronage of Alfonso the Magnanimous, and at Rome under that of Car- dinal Bessarion. GAZEL, or Ghazel, a kind of lyric poem, con- sisting of from 5 to 17 stanzas of two lines each, all the second lines of which rhyme to- gether. It is a favorite form in the poetry of the Turks and the Persians, and may be called the sonnet of the East. The last couplet al- ways contains the real or assumed name of the author. The subjects treated in the gazel are either erotic and bac- chanalian, or allegori- cal and mystical. Ha- fiz excels in this form tations of it have been made in German by Platen, Riickert, and others. GAZELLE, the type of a group of the antelope family (see ANTELOPE), of beautiful form, small size, and graceful car- riage. Both sexes are provided with horns, nearly over the orbits, annulated and stria- ted, nearly vertical, and bending outward and at the top inward in a lyrate form, and of a black color ; the shape of the ancient lyre is said to have originated from using in its construction the horns and the frontal bone of antelopes, the strings being passed from a cross bar at their tips to a second fastened across the orbits; the bony core of the horn is solid. They have a small lachrymal sinus, inguinal pores, generally tufts upon the knees, a short dark-tufted tail, and two or four mammse ; the darker color of the sides is sepa- rated from the white of the abdomen by ave: dark band ; the eyes are prominent, dark-col- ored, with a soft and gentle expression ; the nose is ovine. They are gregarious, inhabiting the open and barren plains of northern Africa and western Asia, shy and difficult of approach, and extremely swift. The common gazelle, or Barbary antelope (gazella dorcas, H. Smith), the gazal of the Arabs, is generally supposed to be the doKag of ./Elian and the tzebi of the i
 * *^ e lyric, and imi-