Hystaspis; but was soon reconquered by Miltiades, the tyrant of the Thracian Chersonese. Miltiades afterwards returned to Athens, and Lemnos continued an Athenian possession till the Macedonian empire absorbed it. On the vicissitudes of its history in the 3rd century B.C. see Köhler in Mittheil. Inst. Athen. i. 261. The Romans declared it free in 197 B.C., but gave it over in 166 to Athens, which retained nominal possession of it till the whole of Greece was made a Roman province. A colony of Attic cleruchs was established by Pericles, and many inscriptions on the island relate to Athenians. After the division of the empire, Lemnos passed under the Byzantine emperors; it shared in the vicissitudes of the eastern provinces, being alternately in the power of Greeks, Italians and Turks, till finally the Turkish sultans became supreme in the Aegean. In 1476 the Venetians successfully defended Kotschinos against a Turkish siege; but in 1657 Kastro was captured by the Turks from the Venetians after a siege of sixty-three days. Kastro was again besieged by the Russians in 1770.
Homer speaks as if there were one town in the island called Lemnos, but in historical times there was no such place. There were two towns, Myrina, now Kastro, and Hephaestia. The latter was the chief town; its coins are found in considerable number, the types being sometimes the Athenian goddess and her owl, sometimes native religious symbols, the caps of the Dioscuri, Apollo, &c. Few coins of Myrina are known. They belong to the period of Attic occupation, and bear Athenian types. A few coins are also known which bear the name, not of either city, but of the whole island. Conze was the first to discover the site of Hephaestia, at a deserted place named Palaeokastro on the east coast. It had once a splendid harbour, which is now filled up. Its situation on the east explains why Miltiades attacked it first when he came from the Chersonese. It surrendered at once, whereas Myrina, with its very strong citadel built on a perpendicular rock, sustained a siege. It is said that the shadow of Mount Athos fell at sunset on a bronze cow in the agora of Myrina. Pliny says that Athos was 87 m. to the north-west; but the real distance is about 40 English miles. One legend localized in Lemnos still requires notice. Philoctetes was left there by the Greeks on their way to Troy; and there he suffered ten years’ agony from his wounded foot, until Ulysses and Neoptolemus induced him to accompany them to Troy. He is said by Sophocles to have lived beside Mount Hermaeus, which Aeschylus (Agam. 262) makes one of the beacon points to flash the news of Troy’s downfall home to Argos.
See Rhode, Res Lemnicae; Conze, Reise auf den Inseln des Thrakischen Meeres (from which the above-mentioned facts about the present state of the island are taken); also Hunt in Walpole’s Travels; Belon du Mans, Observations de plusieurs singularitez, &c.; Finlay, Greece under the Romans; von Hammer, Gesch. des Osman. Reiches; Gött. Gel. Anz. (1837). The chief references in ancient writers are Iliad i. 593, v. 138, xiv. 229, &c.; Herod. iv. 145; Str. pp. 124, 330; Plin. iv. 23, xxxvi. 13.
LEMOINNE, JOHN ÉMILE (1815–1892), French journalist,
was born of French parents, in London, on the 17th of October
1815. He was educated first at an English school and then in
France. In 1840 he began writing for the Journal des débats,
on English and other foreign questions, and under the empire
he held up to admiration the free institutions of England by
contrast with imperial methods. After 1871 he supported
Thiers, but his sympathies rather tended towards a liberalized
monarchy, until the comte de Chambord’s policy made such a
development an impossibility, and he then ranged himself with
the moderate Republicans. In 1875 Lemoinne was elected to
the French Academy, and in 1880 he was nominated a life senator.
Distinguished though he was for a real knowledge of England
among the French journalists who wrote on foreign affairs, his
tone towards English policy greatly changed in later days,
and though he never shared the extreme French bitterness
against England as regards Egypt, he maintained a critical
attitude which served to stimulate French Anglophobia. He
was a frequent contributor to the Revue des deux mondes,
and published several books, the best known of which is his
Études critiques et biographiques (1862). He died in Paris on
the 14th of December 1892.
LEMON, MARK (1809–1870), editor of Punch, was born in
London on the 30th of November 1809. He had a natural talent
for journalism and the stage, and, at twenty-six, retired from less
congenial business to devote himself to the writing of plays.
More than sixty of his melodramas, operettas and comedies were
produced in London. At the same time he contributed to a
variety of magazines and newspapers, and founded and edited
the Field. In 1841 Lemon and Henry Mayhew conceived the
idea of a humorous weekly paper to be called Punch, and when
the first number was issued, in July 1841, were joint-editors and,
with the printer and engraver, equal owners. The paper was
for some time unsuccessful, Lemon keeping it alive out of the
profits of his plays. On the sale of Punch Lemon became sole
editor for the new proprietors, and it remained under his control
until his death, achieving remarkable popularity and influence.
Lemon was an actor of ability, a pleasing lecturer and a successful
impersonator of Shakespearian characters. He also wrote
a host of novelettes and lyrics, over a hundred songs, a few
three-volume novels, several Christmas fairy tales and a volume
of jests. He died at Crawley, Sussex, on the 23rd of May 1870.
LEMON, the fruit of Citrus Limonum, which is regarded by
some botanists as a variety of Citrus medica. The wild stock of
the lemon tree is said to be a native of the valleys of Kumaon
and Sikkim in the North-West provinces of India, ascending
to a height of 4000 ft., and occurring under several forms. Sir
George Watt (Dictionary of Economic Products of India, ii. 352)
regards the wild plants as wild forms of the lime or citron and
considers it highly probable that the wild form of the lemon has
not yet been discovered.
| Fig. 1.—Lemon—Citrus Limonum. | |||
| 1, | Flowering shoot. | 3, | Fruit. |
| 2, | Flower with two petals and two | 4, | Same cut across. |
| bundles of stamens removed; | 5, | Seed. | |
| slightly enlarged. | 6, | Same cut lengthwise. | |
The lemon seems to have been unknown to the ancient Greeks and Romans, and to have been introduced by the Arabs into Spain between the 12th and 13th centuries. In 1494 the fruit was cultivated in the Azores, and largely shipped to England, but since 1838 the exportation has ceased. As a cultivated plant the lemon is now met with throughout the Mediterranean region, in Spain and Portugal, in California and Florida, and in almost all tropical and subtropical countries. Like the apple and pear, it varies exceedingly under cultivation. Risso and Poiteau enumerate forty-seven varieties of this fruit, although they maintain as distinct the sweet lime, C. Limetta, with eight varieties, and the sweet lemon, C. Lumia, with twelve varieties, which differ only in the fruit possessing an insipid instead of an acid juice.
The lemon is more delicate than the orange, although, according to Humboldt, both require an annual mean temperature of 62° Fahr.
