demanded his freedom. This Pizzaro refused to grant, and accused Atahualpa of plotting against him. Atahualpa was placed on trial and formally condemned to death upon evidence furnished by an interpreter, who was desirous of possessing one of the wives of the King. He was threatened with burning at the stake as a heretic, but as he submitted to baptism according to the rites of the Church, he was garroted, August 29, 1533. The principal authority is Garcilasso de la Vega's Royal Commentaries of the Incas, translated by C. R. Markham for the Hakluyt Society (London, 1869-81). Garcilasso's' mother was of the Inca blood, or according to more probable authority one of the royal concubines.
ATAKAPA, a'ta-ka'pa (Choctaw, man-
eater). A cannibal tribe, now extinct, formerly
occupying the western Gulf coast of Louisiana.
They are believed to have constituted a distinct
linguistic stock, although the language shows
some slight correspondences with both Caranka-
wa and Tonkawa. The name was sometimes used
to include other cannibalistic tribes of the same
region.
ATALA, a'tii'la'.
A romance of Chateaubriand, published in the Paris newspaper Le Mercure de France, in 1801. Atala is the daughter of a North American Indian chief. She falls in love with a prisoner, who is the chief of another tribe, releases him, and flees with him. Having been brought up as a Christian, and sworn by her mother to a single life, she remains faithful to the vow, and finally commits suicide in a fit of religious scrupulosity.
AT'ALAN'TA (Gk. Ἀταλάντη, Atalantē). A heroine in Greek mythology. The tradition recognizes two persons of this name, the Bœotian Atalanta and the Arcadian Atalanta, who are often confounded in the ancient accounts, and whom it is not easy to keep apart. (1) The Bœotian Atalanta, daughter of Schœneus, was the most swift-footed of mortals, and, being reluctant to marry any one of her many suitors, she imposed upon all who sought her hand the test of a foot-race with herself. If successful, the suitor was to receive her hand, but, if defeated, he was to be put to death. Hippomenes, son of Megareus, came to the contest with three golden apples, which he had received from Aphrodite. By dropping these successively as he ran along he retarded the course of Atalanta — who stopped to pick them up — and thus won the race and the maiden. On the way home husband and wife profaned the sanctuary of Cybele, and Aphrodite, angered at the ingratitude of Hippomenes, changed them both into lions and yoked them to her chariot. (2) The Arcadian Atalanta, daughter of Jasius and Clymene, was, when an infant, exposed by her father on Mount Parthenius, suckled by a she-wolf, and afterwards rescued and brought up by shepherds. She lived apart from men, the companion of Artemis. Of her, many achievements are related. She slew the centaurs, Rhæcus and Hylæus, wounded the Calydonian boar, took part in the funeral games of Pelias, and sailed with the Argonauts to Colchis. She finally gave her hand to her suitor Meilanion, by whom she had a son, Parthenopæos.
ATALANTA IN CAL'YDON. A play by Swinburne. A quaint dramatic experiment, uniting Greek classic form with modern romantic treatment; a poem, rather than a play. It appeared in 1864. Its choruses are among the author's highest achievements, and it is founded on the famous boar-hunt of Greek legend.
ATALL, at'al.
Sir Positive. A character intended to satirize Sir Robert Howard, in Shadwell's Sullen Lovers. He assumes full knowledge on every point, but will admit none on the part of others.
AT'AMAN (Russ. ataman, Little Russ. otaman, hetman, Polish hetman, chief of any band or gang. By some explained as an adaptation, via Poland, of the AS. heafodman, Ger. Hauptmann, Eng. headman, or hetman). The title borne by the chief of the Cossack tribes. Formerly the ataman was elected by the people, the mode being for each man to throw his fur cap at his candidate, the one having the largest heap of caps being elected. After the part played by Mazeppa (q.v.) in the war between Charles XII. and Peter the Great, the office of Ataman of the Cossacks was stripped of much of its importance. Since 1835 the title of chief ataman has been vested in the Russian heir-apparent. The head of each Cossack army is still called ataman, and an ataman presides over the Government of the Territory of the Don Cossacks. Hetman was also the title given by the Poles to the commander-in-chief of their armies, who was absolute in power during time of war.
ATAUL'FUS, AT'AULF, or ADOLF, a'dolf
(?-415). The brother-in-law of Alaric, and his successor as King of the Visigoths (410-15). He assisted Alaric in the sieges of Rome, and after the latter's death went to Gaul, taking as a captive Galla Placidia, sister of the Emperor Honorius, who became his wife in June, 414. He wished to ally himself with Rome, but Honorius was unwilling to form such an alliance. Late in 414 he entered Spain, and in 415 he was assassinated at Barcelona. His last words are said to have been: "If possible live in friendship with Rome, and restore Placidia to the Emperor." Consult: Hodgkin, Italy and Her Invaders (Oxford, 1880-85).
AT'AVISM (from Lat. atavus, the father of a great-grandfather, an ancestor). A term used in biology to signify the temporary appearance in an individual — plant or animal — of a peculiar character which is not typical of the immediate race or genus, but which is found in allied ancestral races. The term atavism is sometimes incorrectly used as a synonym for reversion. Reversion, as employed by paleontologists and students of evolution, refers to the gradual resumption by a race, during the later stages of its existence, of the general form of its ancestors, generally the form of the earliest ancestral members of the race. Abnormal developments are often examples of atavism, as are occasional modern many-toed horses, which recall the foot structure of the extinct three-toed horses of Tertiary time. Good illustrations of atavism are often also furnished by hybrids. (See Evolution; Heredity.)
In sociological literature the term atavism is frequently used, in the sense of reversion to more primitive types, to explain criminal instincts and other social-pathological phenomena. In this sense the term is continually used by Lombroso (q.v.), and by other authors of both the Italian and French schools of criminologists. See Criminology.
