the offensive in 58, and, reinforced by troops from Germany, attacked Tiridates. Artaxata and Tigranocerta were captured, and Tigranes, who had been brought up in Rome and was the obedient servant of the government, was installed king of Armenia. In 61 Tigranes invaded Adiabene, an integral portion of the Parthian kingdom, and a conflict between Rome and Parthia seemed unavoidable. Vologaeses, however, thought it better to come to terms. It was agreed that both the Roman and Parthian troops should evacuate Armenia, that Tigranes should be dethroned, and the position of Tiridates recognized. The Roman government declined to accede to these arrangements, and L. Caesennius Paetus, governor of Cappadocia, was ordered to settle the question by bringing Armenia under direct Roman administration. The protection of Syria in the meantime claimed all Corbulo’s attention. Paetus, a weak and incapable man, suffered a severe defeat at Rhandea (62), where he was surrounded and forced to capitulate and to evacuate Armenia. The command of the troops was again entrusted to Corbulo. In 63, with a strong army, he crossed the Euphrates, but Tiridates declined to give battle and concluded peace. At Rhandea he laid down his diadem at the foot of the emperor’s statue, promising not to resume it until he received it from the hand of Nero himself in Rome. In 67 disturbances broke out in Judaea, but Nero, jealous of Corbulo’s success and popularity, ordered Vespasian to take command of the forces and summoned Corbulo to Greece. On his arrival at Cenchreae, the port of Corinth, messengers from Nero met Corbulo, and ordered him to commit suicide. Without hesitation he obeyed, exclaiming, “I have deserved it.” Whether he had really given any grounds for suspicion is unknown; but there is no doubt, so great was his popularity with the soldiers and such the hatred felt for Nero, that he could easily have seized the throne. Corbulo wrote an account of his Asiatic experiences, which is lost.
See Tacitus, Annals, xii.-xv.; Dio Cassius lix. 15, lx. 30, lxii. 19-23, lxiii. 6, 17, lxvi. 3; H. Schiller, Geschichte des römischen Kaiserreichs unter der Regierung des Nero (1872); E. Egli, “Feldzüge in Armenien von 41-63,” in M. Büdinger’s Untersuchungen zur römischen Kaisergeschichte, i. (1868); Mommsen, Hist. of the Roman Provinces, ii. (1886); for the Armenian campaigns see B. W. Henderson in Classical Review (April, May, June, 1901); in general D. T. Schoonover, A Study of Cn. Domitius Corbulo (Chicago, 1909).
CORD (derived through the Fr. corde, from the Lat. chorda,
Gr. χορδή, the string of a musical instrument), a length of twisted
or woven strands, in thickness coming between a rope and a
string, a smaller kind of rope (q.v.). From the use of such a
cord for measuring, the word is applied to a quantity of cut wood,
differing according to locality. The variant “chord,” which, in
spelling, reverts to the original Latin, is used in particular senses,
as, in physiology, for such cord-like structures as the vocal
chords; in the case of the “umbilical cord,” the other spelling
is usually retained. In mathematics a “chord” is a straight line
joining any two points on the same curve, and, in music, the word
is used of several musical notes sounded simultaneously and in
harmony (q.v.). In this last sense, “chord” is properly a
shortened form of “accord,” agreement, from Late Lat. accordare,
and the spelling with h is due to a confusion.
CORDAY D’ARMONT, MARIE ANNE CHARLOTTE (1768–1793),
French revolutionary heroine, the murderess of Marat,
born at St Saturnin des Lignerets, near Séez in Normandy,
was descended from a noble but poor family, and numbered
among her ancestors the dramatist Corneille. Charlotte Corday
was educated in the convent of the Holy Trinity at Caen, and
then sent to live with an aunt. Here she saw hardly any one
but her relative, and passed her lonely hours in reading the
works of the philosophes, especially Voltaire and the Abbé
Raynal. Another of her favourite authors was Plutarch, from
whose pages she doubtless imbibed the idea of classic heroism
and civic virtue which prompted the act that has made her
name famous. On the outbreak of the Revolution she began to
study current politics, chiefly in the papers issued by the party
afterwards known as the Girondins. On the downfall of this
party, on May 31, 1793, many of the leaders took refuge in Normandy,
and proposed to make Caen the headquarters of an army
of volunteers, at the head of whom Félix de Wimpffen, who commanded
the army assembled for the defence of the coasts at
Cherbourg, was to have marched upon Paris. Charlotte attended
their meetings, and heard them speak; but we have no reason to
believe that she saw any of them privately, till the day when she
went to ask for introductions to friends of theirs in Paris. She
saw that their efforts in Normandy were doomed to fail. She
had heard of Marat as a tyrant and the chief agent in their overthrow,
and she had conceived the idea of going alone to Paris
and assassinating him,—doubtless thinking that this would
break up the party of the Terrorists and be the signal of a
counter-revolution, and ignorant of the fact that Marat was ill
almost to the point of death, and that others were more influential
than he.
Apparently she had thought of going to Paris in April, before the fall of the Girondins, for she had then procured a passport which she used in July. It contained the usual description of the bearer, and ran thus: Laissez passer la citoyenne Marie, &c., Corday, âgée de 24 ans, taille de 5 pieds 1 pouce, cheveux et sourcils châtains, yeux gris, front élevé, nez long, bouche moyenne, menton rond fourchu, visage ovale. Arrived in Paris she first attended to some business for a friend at Caen, and then she wrote to Marat: “Citizen, I have just arrived from Caen. Your love for your native place doubtless makes you desirous of learning the events which have occurred in that part of the republic. I shall call at your residence in about an hour; have the goodness to receive me and to give me a brief interview. I will put you in a condition to render great service to France.” On calling she was refused admittance, and wrote again, promising to reveal important secrets, and appealing to Marat’s sympathy on the ground that she herself was persecuted by the enemies of the republic. She was again refused an audience, and it was only when she called a third time (July 13) that Marat, hearing her voice in the antechamber, consented to see her. He lay in a bathing tub, wrapped in towels, for he was suffering from a horrible disease which had almost reduced him to a state of putrefaction. Our only source of information as to what followed is Charlotte’s own confession. She spoke to Marat of what was passing at Caen, and his only comment on her narrative was that all the men she had mentioned should be guillotined in a few days. As he spoke she drew from her bosom a dinner-knife (which she had bought the day before for two francs) and plunged it into his left side. It pierced the lung and the aorta. He cried out, “À moi, ma chère amie!” and expired. Two women rushed in, and prevented Charlotte from escaping. A crowd collected round the house, and it was with difficulty that she was escorted to the prison of the Abbaye. On being brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal she gloried in her act, and when the indictment against her was read, and the president asked her what she had to say in reply, her answer was, “Nothing, except that I have succeeded.” Her advocate, Claude François Chauveau Lagarde, put forward in vain the plea of insanity. She was sentenced to death, and calmly thanked her counsel for his efforts on her behalf, adding that the only defence worthy of her was an avowal of the act. She was then conducted to the Conciergerie, where at her own desire her portrait (now in the museum of Versailles) was painted by the artist Jean Jacques Hauer. She preserved her perfect calmness to the last. When she saw the guillotine, she placed herself in position under the fatal blade without assistance from any one. The knife fell, and one of the executioners held up her head by the hair, and had the brutality to strike it with his fist. Many believed they saw the dead face blush,—probably an effect of the red stormy sunset. It was the 17th of July 1793. It is difficult to analyse the character of Charlotte Corday; but there was in it much that was noble and exalted. Her mind had been formed by her studies on a pagan type. To C. J. M. Barbaroux and the Girondins of Caen she wrote from her prison, anticipating happiness “with Brutus in the Elysian Fields” after her death, and with this letter she sent a simple loving farewell to her father, revealing a tender side to her character that otherwise we would hardly have looked for in such a woman. Lamartine called her
