lieutenant-general in 1879, general and colonel commandant of the Royal Artillery in 1884, he retired in 1886. He unsuccessfully contested Bath in the Liberal interest in 1892. He died on the 26th of August 1900. He was author of A Review of The Crimean War ; The Defence of Cawnpore; A Frontier Campaign in Afghanistan; Recollections of a Military Life; and Indian Frontier Policy.
ADYTUM, the Latinized form of ἄδυτον (not to be entered), the innermost sanctuary in ancient temples, access to which was forbidden to all but the officiating priests. The most famous adytum in Greece was in the temple of Apollo at Delphi.
ADZE (from the Old Eng. adesa, of which the origin is unknown), a tool used for cutting and planing. It is somewhat like an axe reversed, the edge of the blade curving inward and placed at right angles to the handle. This shape is most suitable for planing uneven timber, as inequalities are “hooked off” by the curved blade. (See Tools.)
AEACUS, in Greek legend, the ancestor of the Aeacidae, was the son of Zeus and Aegina, daughter of the river-god Asopus. His mother was carried off by Zeus to the island of Oenone, which was afterwards called by her name. The island having been depopulated by a pestilence, Zeus changed the ants upon it into human beings (Ovid, Met. vii. 520), who were called Myrmidones (μύρμηκες＝ants). Aeacus ruled over his people with such justice and impartiality that after his death he was made judge of the lower world together with Minos and Rhadamanthus. By his wife Endeis he was the father of Telamon and Peleus. His successful prayer to Zeus for rain at a time of drought (Isocrates, Evagoras, 14) was commemorated by a temple at Aegina (Pausanias ii. 29). He himself erected a temple to Zeus Panhellenios and helped Poseidon and Apollo to build the walls of Troy.
See Hutchinson, Aeacus, 1901.
AECLANUM, an ancient town of Samnium, Italy, 15 m. E.S.E. of Beneventum, on the Via Appia (near the modern Mirabella). It became the chief town of the Hirpini after Beneventum had become a Roman colony. Sulla captured it in 89 B.C. by setting on fire the wooden breastwork by which it was defended, and new fortifications were erected. Hadrian, who repaired the Via Appia from Beneventum to this point, made it a colony; it has ruins of the city walls, of an aqueduct, baths and an amphitheatre; nearly 400 inscriptions have also been discovered. Two different routes to Apulia diverged at this point, one (Via Aurelia Aeclanensis) leading through the modern Ariano to Herdoniae, the other (the Via Appia of the Empire) passing the Lacus Ampsanctus and going on to Aquilonia and Venusia; while the road from Aeclanum to Abellinum (mod. Avellini) may also follow an ancient line. H. Nissen (Italische Landeskunde, Berlin, 1902, ii. 819) speaks of another road, which he believes to have been that followed by Horace, from Aeclanum to Trevicum and thence to Ausculum; but Th. Mommsen (Corpus Inscrip. Lat., Berlin, 1883, ix. 602) is more likely to be right in supposing that the road taken by Horace ran directly from Beneventum to Trevicum and thence to Aquilonia (though the course of this road is not yet determined in detail), and that the easier, though somewhat longer, road by Aeclanum was of later date.
AEDESIUS (d. A.D. 355), Neoplatonist philosopher, was born of a noble Cappadocian family. He migrated to Syria, attracted by the lectures of Iamblichus, whose follower he became. According to Eunapius, he differed from Iamblichus on certain points connected with magic. He taught at Pergamum, his chief disciples being Eusebius and Maximus. He seems to have modified his doctrines through fear of Constantine.
See Ritter and Preller, 552; Ritter’s Geschichte der Philosophie; T. Whittaker, The Neoplatonists (Cambridge, 1901).
AEDICULA (diminutive of Lat. aedis or aedes, a temple or house), a small house or temple,—a household shrine holding small altars of the Lares and Penates.
AEDILE (Lat. aedilis), in Roman antiquities, the name of certain Roman magistrates, probably derived from aedis (a temple), because they had the care of the temple of Ceres, where the plebeian archives were kept. They were originally two in number, called “plebeian” aediles. They were created in the same year as the tribunes of the people (494 B.C.), their persons were sacrosanct or inviolable, and (at least after 471) they were elected at the Comitia Tributa out of the plebeians alone. Originally intended as assistants to the tribunes, they exercised certain police functions, were empowered to inflict fines and managed the plebeian and Roman games. According to Livy (vi. 42), after the passing of the Licinian rogations, an extra day was added to the Roman games; the aediles refused to bear the additional expense, whereupon the patricians offered to undertake it, on condition that they were admitted to the aedileship. The plebeians accepted the offer, and accordingly two “curule” aediles were appointed—at first from the patricians alone, then from patricians and plebeians in turn, lastly, from either—at the Comitia Tributa under the presidency of the consul. Although not sacrosanct, they had the right of sitting in a curule chair and wore the distinctive toga praetexta. They took over the management of the Roman and Megalesian games, the care of the patrician temples and had the right of issuing edicts as superintendents of the markets. But although the curule aediles always ranked higher than the plebeian, their functions gradually approximated and became practically identical.
Cicero (Legg. iii. 3, 7) divides these functions under three heads:—(1) Care of the city: the repair and preservation of temples, sewers and aqueducts; street cleansing and paving; regulations regarding traffic, dangerous animals and dilapidated buildings; precautions against fire; superintendence of baths and taverns; enforcement of sumptuary laws; punishment of gamblers and usurers; the care of public morals generally, including the prevention of foreign superstitions. They also punished those who had too large a share of the ager publicus, or kept too many cattle on the state pastures. (2) Care of provisions: investigation of the quality of the articles supplied and the correctness of weights and measures; the purchase of corn for disposal at a low price in case of necessity. (3) Care of the games: superintendence and organization of the public games, as well as of those given by themselves and private individuals (e.g. at funerals) at their own expense. Ambitious persons often spent enormous sums in this manner to win the popular favour with a view to official advancement.
In 44 Caesar added two patrician aediles, called Cereales, whose special duty was the care of the corn-supply. Under Augustus the office lost much of its importance, its juridical functions and the care of the games being transferred to the praetor, while its city responsibilities were limited by the appointment of a praefectus urbi. In the 3rd century A.D. it disappeared altogether.
Authorities.—Schubert, De Romanorum Aedilibus (1828); Hoffmann, De Aedilibus Romanis (1842); Göll, De Aedilibus sub Caesarum Imperio (1860); Labatut, Les Édiles et les mœurs (1868); Marquardt-Mommsen, Handbuch der römischen Altertümer, ii. (1888); Soltau, Die ursprüngliche Bedeutung und Competenz der Aediles Plebis (Bonn, 1882).
AEDUI, Haedui or Hedui (Gr. Αἴδουοι), a Gallic people of Gallia Lugdunensis, who inhabited the country between the Arar (Saône) and Liger (Loire). The statement in Strabo (ii. 3. 192) that they dwelt between the Arar and Dubis (Doubs) is incorrect. Their territory thus included the greater part of the modern departments of Saône-et-Loire, Côte d’Or and Nièvre. According to Livy (v. 34), they took part in the expedition of Bellovesus into Italy in the 6th century B.C. Before Caesar’s time they had attached themselves to the Romans, and were honoured with the title of brothers and kinsmen of the Roman people. When the Sequani, their neighbours on the other side of the Arar, with whom they were continually quarrelling, invaded their country and subjugated them with the assistance of a German chieftain named Ariovistus, the Aedui sent Divitiacus, the druid, to Rome to appeal to the senate for help, but his mission was unsuccessful. On his arrival in Gaul (58 B.C.), Caesar restored their independence. In spite of this, the Aedui joined the Gallic coalition against Caesar (B.G. vii. 42), but after the surrender of Vercingetorix at Alesia
