Slave, which drains the lake of that name, and Clearwater. Athabasca lake is 195 m. long, west to east, from 20 to 32 m. wide has an area of 3085 sq. m., and is 690 ft. above the sea. It discharges its waters northward by Slave river and the Mackenzie system to the Arctic Ocean. On its north shore the country is high and rocky; on the south, sandy and barren. Shallow-draught steamers navigate the lake and river, and Lesser Slave lake and river, with one interruption—at Grand Rapids near the mouth of the Clearwater river.
ATHALARIC (516–534), king of the Ostrogoths, grandson of Theodoric, became king of the Ostrogoths in Italy on his grandfather’s death (526). As he was only ten years old, the regency was assumed by his mother Amalasuntha (q.v.). The murmurs of the Gothic nobles procured for their young sovereign too early emancipation from the schoolroom. He drank heavily, and indulged in vicious excesses which ruined his constitution. He died on the 2nd of October 534.
ATHALIAH, in the Bible, the daughter of Ahab, and wife of Jehoram, king of Judah. After the death of Ahaziah, her son she usurped the throne and reigned for six years. She is said to have massacred all the members of the royal house of Judah (2 Kings xi. 1-3), but a similar atrocity is also ascribed to Jehu (2 Kings x. 12-14); with both notices contrast 2 Chron. xxi. 17. The sole survivor Joash was concealed in the temple by his aunt, Jehosheba, wife of the priest Jehoida (2 Chron. xxii. 11) These organized a revolution in favour of Joash, and caused Athaliah and her adherents to be put to death (2 Kings xi.; 2 Chron. xxii. 10-12, xxiii., xxiv. 7).
The story of Athaliah forms the subject of one of Racine’s best tragedies. It has been musically treated by Handel and Mendelssohn.
ATHAMAS, in Greek mythology, king of the Minyae in Boeotian Orchomenus, son of Aeolus, king of Thessaly, or of Minyas. His first wife was Nephele, the cloud-goddess, by whom he had two children, Phrixus and Helle (see Argonauts). Athamas and his second wife Ino were said to have incurred the wrath of Hera, because Ino had brought up Dionysus, the son of her sister Semele, as a girl, to save his life. Athamas went mad, and slew one of his sons, Learchus; Ino, to escape the pursuit of her frenzied husband, threw herself into the sea with her other son Melicertes. Both were afterwards worshipped as marine divinities, Ino as Leucothea, Melicertes as Palaemon (Odyssey v. 333). Athamas, with the guilt of his son’s murder upon him, was obliged to flee from Boeotia. He was ordered by the oracle to settle in a place where he should receive hospitality from wild beasts. This he found at Phthiotis in Thessaly, where he surprised some wolves eating sheep; on his approach they fled, leaving him the bones. Athamas, regarding this as the fulfilment of the oracle, settled there and married a third wife, Themisto. The spot was afterwards called the Athamanian plain (Apollodorus i. 9; Hyginus, Fab. 1-5; Ovid, Metam. iv. 416, Fasti, vi. 485; Valerius Flaccus i. 277).
According to a local legend, Athamas was king of Halos in Phthiotis from the first (Schol. on Apoll. Rhodius ii. 513). After his attempt on the life of Phrixus, which was supposed to have succeeded, the Phthiots were ordered to sacrifice him to Zeus Laphystius, in order to appease the anger of the gods. As he was on the point of being put to death, Cytissorus, a son of Phrixus, suddenly arrived from Aea with the news that Phrixus was still alive. Athamas’s life was thus saved, but the wrath of the gods was unappeased, and pursued the family. It was ordained that the eldest born of the race should not enter the council-chamber; if he did so, he was liable to be seized and sacrificed if detected (Herodotus vii. 197). The legend of Athamas is probably founded on a very old custom amongst the Minyae—the sacrifice of the first-born of the race of Athamas to Zeus Laphystius. The story formed the subject of lost tragedies by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and other Greek and Latin dramatists.
ATHANAGILD (d. 547) became king of the Visigoths (in Spain) in 534, having invoked the aid of the emperor Justinian for his revolt against his predecessor Agila. Athanagild, when himself king, vainly tried to oust his late allies from the footing which they had gained in Spain, nor were the Greeks finally expelled from Spain till seventy years later. Athanagild himself is chiefly remembered for the tragic fortunes of his daughters Brunechildis and Gavleswintha, who married two Frankish brother kings, Sigebert and Chilperic. Athanagild died (“peacefully,” as the annalist remarks) in 547.
ATHANARIC (d. 381), a ruler of the Visigoths from about 366 to 380. He bore the title not of king but of judge, a title which may be compared with that of ealdorman among the Anglo-Saxon invaders of Britain. Athanaric waged, from 367 to 369, an unsuccessful war with the emperor Valens, and the peace by which the war was ended was ratified by the Roman and Gothic rulers meeting on a barge in mid-stream of the Danube. Athanaric was a harsh and obstinate heathen, and his short reign was chiefly famous for his brutal persecution of his Christian fellow-countrymen. In 376 he was utterly defeated by the Huns, who a few years before had burst into Europe. The bulk of the Visigothic people sought refuge within the Empire in the region now known as Bulgaria, but Athanaric seems to have fled into Transylvania. Being attacked there by two Ostrogothic chiefs he also, in 381, sought the protection of the Roman emperor. Theodosius I. received him courteously, and he was profoundly impressed by the glories of Constantinople, but on the fifteenth day after his arrival he died, and was honoured by the emperor with a magnificent funeral.
ATHANASIUS (293–373), bishop of Alexandria and saint, one of the most illustrious defenders of the Christian faith, was born probably at Alexandria. Of his family and of his early education nothing can be said to be known. According to the legend, the boy is said to have once baptized some of his playmates and thereupon to have been taken into his house by Bishop Alexander, who recognized the validity of this proceeding. It is certain that Athanasius was young when he took orders, and that he must soon have entered into close relations with his bishop, whom, after the outbreak of the Arian controversy, he accompanied as archdeacon to the council of Nicaea. In the sessions and discussions of the council he could take no part; but in unofficial conferences he took sides vigorously, according to his own evidence, against the Arians, and was certainly not without influence. He had already, before the opening of the Council, defined his personal attitude towards the dogmatic problem in two essays, Against the Gentiles and On the Incarnation, without, however, any special relation to the Arian controversy.
The essay On the Incarnation is the locus classicus for the presentation of the teaching of the ancient church on the subject of salvation. In this the great idea that God himself had entered into humanity becomes dominant. The doom of death under which mankind had sighed since Adam’s fall could only then be averted, when the immortal Word of God (Λόγος) assumed a mortal body, and, by yielding this to death for the sake of all, abrogated once for all the law of death, of which the power had been spent on the body of the Lord. Thus was rendered possible the leading back of mankind to God, of which the sure pledge lies in the grace of the resurrection of Christ. Athanasius would hear of no questioning of this religious mystery. In the catchword Homousios, which had been added to the creed at Nicaea, he too recognized the best formula for the expression of the mystery, although in his own writings he made but sparing use of it. He was in fact less concerned with the formula than with the content. Arians and Semi-Arians seemed to him to be pagans, who worship the creature, instead of the God who created all things, since they teach two gods, one having no beginning, the other having a beginning in Time and therefore of the same nature as the heathen gods, since, like them, he is a creature. Athanasius has no terms for the definition of the Persons in the one “Divine” (τὸ θεῖον), which are in their substance one; and yet he is certain that this “Divine” is not mere abstraction, but something truly personal: “They are One,” so he wrote later in his Discourses against the Arians, “not as though the unity were torn into two parts, which outside the unity would be nothing, nor as though the unity bore two names, so that one and the same is at one time Father and then
