of the modern system of musical notation (died c. 1050), the poet Petrarch, Pietro Aretino, the satirist (1492–1556), and Vasari, famous for his lives of Italian painters. The town never possessed a distinct school of artists.
See C. Signorini, Arezzo, Città y Provincia, Guida illustrata (Arezzo, 1904). (T. As.)
ARGALI, the Tatar name of the great wild sheep, Ovis ammon, of the Altai and other parts of Siberia. Standing as high as a large donkey, the argali is the finest of all the wild sheep, the horns of the rams, although of inferior length, being more massive than those of Ovis poli of the Pamirs. There are several local races of argali, among which O. ammon hodgsoni of Ladak and Tibet is one of the best known. There are likewise several nearly related central Asian species, such as O. sairensis and O. littledalei. (See Sheep.)
ARGAO, a town on the east coast of Cebu, Philippine Islands, 36 m. S.S.W. of the town of Cebu. Pop. (1903) 35,448. Large quantities of a superior quality of cacao are produced in the vicinity, and rice and Indian corn are other important products. A limited amount of cotton is raised and woven into cloth. The language is Cebu-Visayan. Argao was founded in 1608.
ARGAUM, a village of British India in the Akola district of the Central Provinces, 32 m. north of Akola. The village is memorable for an action which took place on the 28th of November 1803 between the British army, commanded by Major-General Wellesley (afterwards duke of Wellington), and the Mahrattas under Sindhia and the raja of Berar, in which the latter were defeated with great loss. A medal struck in England in 1851 commemorates the victory.
ARGEI, the name given by the ancient Romans to a number of rush puppets (24 or 27 according to the reading of Varro, de Ling. lat. vii. 44, or 30 according to Dionysius i. 38) resembling men tied hand and foot, which were taken down to the ancient bridge over the Tiber (pons sublicius) on the 14th of May by the pontifices and magistrates, with the flaminica Dialis in mourning guise, and there thrown into the Tiber by the Vestal virgins. There were also in various parts of the four Servian regions of the city a number of sacella Argeorum (chapels), round which a procession seems to have gone on the 17th of March (Varro, L.L. v. 46-54; Jordan, Röm. Topogr. vol. ii. 603), and it has been conjectured that the puppets were kept in these chapels until the time came for them to be cast into the river. The Romans had no historical explanation of these curious rites, and neither the theories of their scholars nor the beliefs of the common people, who fancied that the puppets were substitutes for old men who used at one time to be sacrificed to the river, are worth serious consideration. Recently two explanations have been given: (1) that of W. Mannhardt, who by comparing numerous examples of similar customs among other European peoples arrived at the conclusion that the rite was of extreme antiquity and of dramatic rather than sacrificial character, and that its object was possibly to procure rain; (2) that of Wissowa, who refuses to date it farther back than the latter half of the 3rd century B.C., and sees in it the yearly representation of an original sacrifice of twenty-seven captive Greeks (taking Argei as a Latin form of Ἀργεῖοι) by drowning in the Tiber. This second theory is, however, not borne out by any Roman historical record.
See Wissowa’s arguments in the article “Argei” in his edition of Pauly’s Realencyclopädie. For the other view see W. Mannhardt, Antike Wald und Feldkulte, 178 foll.; W. W. Fowler, Roman Festivals, pp. 111 foll. (W. W. F.*)
ARGELANDER, FRIEDRICH WILHELM AUGUST (1799–1875), German astronomer, was born at Memel on the 22nd of March 1799. He studied at the university of Königsberg, and was attracted to astronomy by F. W. Bessel, whose assistant he became (October 1, 1820). His treatise on the path of the great comet of 1811 appeared in 1822; he was, in 1823, entrusted with the direction of the observatory at Åbo; and he exchanged it for a similar charge at Helsingfors in 1832. His admirable investigation of the sun’s motion in space was published in 1837; and in the same year he was appointed professor of astronomy in the university of Bonn, where he died on the 17th of February 1875. He also published Observationes Astronomicae Aboae Factae (3 vols., 1830–1832); DLX Stellarum Fixarum Positiones Mediae (1835); and the first seven volumes of Astronomische Beobachtungen auf der Sternwarte zu Bonn (1846–1869), containing his observations of northern and southern star-zones, and his great Durchmusterung (vols. iii,-v., 1859–1862) of 324,198 stars, from the north pole to −2° Dec. The corresponding atlas was issued in 1863. His observations (begun in 1838) and discussions of variable stars were embodied in vol. vii. of the same series.
See E. Schönfeld in Vierteljahrsschrift der Astronomischen Gesellschaft, x. pp. 150-178.
ARGENS, JEAN BAPTISTE DE BOYER, Marquis d’ (1704–1771), was born at Aix in Provence on the 24th of June 1704. He entered the army at the age of fifteen, and after a dissipated and adventurous youth settled for a time at Amsterdam, where he wrote some historical compilations and began his more famous Lettres juives (The Hague, 6 vols., 1738–1742), Lettres chinoises (The Hague, 6 vols., 1730–1472), and Lettres cabalistiques (2nd ed., 7 vols., 1769); also the Mémoires secrets de la république des lettres (7 vols., 1743–1478), afterwards revised and augmented as Histoire de l’esprit humain (Berlin, 14 vols., 1765–1768). He was invited by Prince Frederick (afterwards Frederick the Great) to Potsdam, and received high honours at court; but Frederick was bitterly offended by his marrying a Berlin actress, Mlle Cochois. Argens returned to France in 1769, and died near Toulon on the 11th of January 1771.
ARGENSOLA, LUPERCIO LEONARDO DE (1559–1613), Spanish dramatist and poet, was baptized at Barbastro on the 14th of December 1559. He was educated at the universities of Huesca and Saragossa, becoming secretary to the duke de Villahermosa in 1585. He was appointed historiographer of Aragon in 1599, and in 1610 accompanied the count de Lemos to Naples, where he died in March 1613. His tragedies—Filis, Isabela and Alejandra—are said by Cervantes to have “filled all who heard them with admiration, delight and interest”; Filis is lost, and Isabela and Alejandra, which were not printed till 1772, are ponderous imitations of Seneca. Argensola’s poems were published with those of his brother in 1634; they consist of excellent translations from the Latin poets, and of original satires. His “echoing sonnets”—such as Después que al mundo el rey divino vino—lend themselves to parody; but his diction is singularly pure.
His brother, Bartolomé Leonardo de Argensola (1562–1631), Spanish poet and historian, was baptized at Barbastro on the 26th of August 1562, studied at Huesca, took orders, and was presented to the rectory of Villahermosa in 1588. He was attached to the suite of the count de Lemos, viceroy of Naples, in 1610, and succeeded his brother as historiographer of Aragon in 1613. He died at Saragossa on the 4th of February 1631. His principal prose works are the Conquista de las Islas Molucas (1609), and a supplement to Zurita’s Anales de Aragón, which was published in 1630. His poems (1634), like those of his elder brother, are admirably finished examples of pungent wit. His commentaries on contemporary events, and his Alteraciones populares, dealing with a Saragossa rising in 1591, are lost. An interesting life of this writer by Father Miguel Mir precedes a reprint of the Conquista de las Islas Molucas, issued at Saragossa in 1891.
ARGENSON, the name, derived from an old hamlet situated in what is now the department of Indre-et-Loire, of a French family which produced some prominent statesmen, soldiers and men of letters.
René de Voyer, seigneur d’Argenson (1596–1651), French statesman, was born on the 21st of November 1596. He was a lawyer by profession, and became successively avocat, councillor at the parlement of Paris, maître des requêtes, and councillor of state. Cardinal Richelieu entrusted him with several missions as inspector and intendant of the forces. In 1623 he was appointed intendant of justice, police and finance in Auvergne, and in 1632 held similar office in Limousin, where he remained till 1637. After the death of Louis XIII. (1643) he retained his administrative posts, was intendant of the forces at Toulon
