The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 8

ADVOCATE, LORD, chief counsel for the Crown in Scotland, public prosecutor of crimes, and a member of the administration in power.

ADVOCATES, FACULTY OF, body of lawyers qualified to plead at the Scottish bar.

ADVOCATES' LIBRARY, a library belonging to the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh, founded in 1632; it alone of Scotch libraries still holds the privilege of receiving a copy of every book entered at Stationers'

Hall.

ADVOCATUS DIABOLI, the devil's advocate, a functionary in the Roman Catholic Church appointed to show reason against a proposed canonization.

aeACUS, a Greek king renowned as an administrator of distributive justice, after death appointed one of the three judges in Hades. _See_ MINOS and RHADAMANTHUS.

aeDILES, magistrates of ancient Rome who had charge of the public buildings and public structures generally.

aeE'TIS, king of Colchis and father of Medea.

aeGE'AN SEA, the Archipelago.

aeGEUS, the father of Theseus, who threw himself into the aegean Sea, so called after him, in the mistaken belief that his son, who had been to slay the Minotaur, had been slain by him.

aeGI'NA, an island 20 m. SW. of Athens, in a gulf of the same name.

aeGIR, the G.o.d of the sea in the Norse mythology.

aeGIS (lit. a goat's skin), the shield of Zeus, made of the hide of the goat AMALTHEA (q. v.), representing originally the storm-cloud in which the G.o.d invested himself when he was angry; it was also the attribute of Athena, bearing in her case the Gorgon's head.

aeGIS'THUS. See AGAMEMNON.

aeL'FRIC, a Saxon writer of the end of the 10th century known as the "Grammarian."

aeLIA'NUS, CLAUDIUS, an Italian rhetorician who wrote in Greek, and whose extant works are valuable for the pa.s.sages from prior authors which they have preserved for us.

aeMI'LIUS PAULUS, the Roman Consul who fell at Cannae, 216 B.C.; also his son, surnamed Macedonicus, so called as having defeated Perseus at Pydna, in Macedonia.

aeNE'AS, a Trojan, the hero of Virgil's "aeneid," who in his various wanderings after the fall of Troy settled in Italy, and became, tradition alleges, the forefather of the Julian Gens in Rome.

aeNEAS SILVIUS. See PICCOLOMINI.

ae'NEID, an epic poem by Virgil, of which aeneas is the hero.

aeNESIDEMUS, a sceptical philosopher, born in Crete, who flourished shortly after Cicero, and summed up under ten arguments the contention against dogmatism in philosophy. See "SCHWEGLER," translated by Dr. Hutchison Stirling.

aeOLIAN ACTION, action of the wind as causing geologic changes.

aeOLIAN ISLANDS, the LIPARI ISLANDS (q. v.).

aeO'LIANS, one of the Greek races who, originating in Thessaly, spread north and south, and emigrated into Asia Minor, giving rise to the aeolic dialect of the Greek language.

aeOLOTROPY, a change in the physical properties of bodies due to a change of position.

ae'OLUS, the Greek G.o.d of the winds.

aeON, among the Gnostics, one of a succession of powers conceived as emanating from G.o.d and presiding over successive creations and transformations of being.

aePYOR'NIS, a gigantic fossil bird of Madagascar, of which the egg is six times larger than that of an ostrich.

ae'QUI, a tribe on NE. of Latium, troublesome to the Romans until subdued in 302 B.C.

AERATED BREAD, bread of flour dough charged with carbonic acid gas.

AERATED WATERS, waters aerated with carbonic acid gas.

aeS'CHINES, a celebrated Athenian orator, rival of Demosthenes, who in the end prevailed over him by persuading the citizens to believe he was betraying them to Philip of Macedon, so that he left Athens and settled in Rhodes, where he founded a school as a rhetorician (389-314 B.C.).

aeS'CHYLUS, the father of the Greek tragedy, who distinguished himself as a soldier both at Marathon and Salamis before he figured as a poet; wrote, it is said, some seventy dramas, of which only seven are extant--the "Suppliants," the "Persae," the "Seven against Thebes," the "Prometheus Bound," the "Agamemnon," the "Choephori," and the "Eumenides," his plays being trilogies; born at Eleusis and died in Sicily (525-456 B.C.).

aeSCULA'PIUS, a son of Apollo and the nymph Coronis, whom, for restoring Hippolytus to life, Zeus, at the prayer of Pluto, destroyed with a thunderbolt, but afterwards admitted among the G.o.ds as G.o.d of medicine and the healing art; the c.o.c.k, the emblem of vigilance, and the serpent, of prudence, were sacred to him.