Chapter XCII: Act 1903: , the powers and duties of the Board of Trade under the (17)

The bodies sevene eek, lo! hem heer anoon: Sol gold is, and Luna silver we threpe, Mars yren, Mercurie quik-silver we clepe, Saturnus leed and Jupiter is tin, And Venus coper, by my fader kin! Literature of Alchemy.--A considerable body of Greek chemical writings is contained in MSS. belonging to the various great libraries of Europe, the oldest being that at St Mark's, just mentioned. The contents of these MSS. are all of similar composition, and in Berthelot's opinion represent a collection of treatises made at Constantinople in the 8th or 9th century. The treatises are nearly all anterior to the 7th century, and most appear to belong to the 3rd and 4th centuries; some are the work of authentic authors like Zosimus and Synesius, while of others, such as profess to be written by Moses, Democritus, Ostanes, &c., the authorship is clearly fictitious. Some of the same names and the same works can be identified in the lists of the Kitab-al- Fihrist. But the Arabs did not acquire their knowledge of this literature at first hand. The earliest Hellenic culture in the East was Syrian, and the Arabs made their first acquaintance with Greek chemistry, as with Greek philosophy, mathematics, medicine, &c., by the intermediary of Syriac translations. (See ARABIAN PHILOSOPHY and SYRIAC LITERATURE.) Examples of such translations are preserved in MSS. at the British Museum, partly written in Syriac, partly in Arabic with Syriac characters. In Berthelot's opinion, the Syriac portions represent a compilation of receipts and processes undertaken in the Syrian school of medicine at Bagdad under the Abbasids in the 9th or 10th century, and to a large extent constituted by the earlier translations made by Sergius of Resaena in the 6th century. They contain, under the title Doctrine of Democritus, a fairly methodical treatise in ten books comprising the Argyropoeia and Chrysopoeia of the pseudo-Democritus, with many receipts for colouring metals, making artificial precious stones, effecting the diplosis or doubling of metals, &c. They give illustrations of the apparatus employed, and their close relationship to the Greek is attested by the frequent occurrence of Greek words and the fact that the signs and symbols of the Greek alchemists appear almost unchanged. The other portion seems of somewhat later date. Another Syriac MS., in the library of Cambridge University, contains a translation of a work by Zosimus which is so far unknown in the original Greek. Berthelot gives reproductions of the British Museum MSS. in vol. ii. of La Chimie au moyen

Several alchemistical treatises, written in Arabic, exist in manuscript in the National Library at Paris and in the library of the university of Leiden, and have been reproduced by Berthelot, with translations, in vol. iii. of La Chimie au moyen age. They fall into two groups: those in one are largely composed of compilations from Greek sources, while those in the other have rather the character of original compositions. Of the first group the most interesting and possibly the oldest is the Book of Crates; it is remarkable for containing some of the signs used for the metals by the Greek alchemists, and for giving figures of four pieces of apparatus which closely resemble those depicted in Greek MSS., the former being never, and the latter rarely, found in other Arabic MSS. Its concluding words suggest that its production was due to Khalid ben Yezid (died in 708), who was a pupil of the Syrian monk Marianus, and according to the Kitab-al-Fihrist was the first Mussulman writer on alchemy. The second group consists of a number of treatises professing to be written by Jaber, celebrated in Latin alchemy as Geber (q.v..) Internal evidence suggests that they are not all from the same hand or of the same date, but probably they are not earlier than the 9th nor later than the 12th century. The Arabic chroniclers record the names of many other writers on alchemy, among the most famous being Rhazes and Avicenna.

But the further development of alchemy took place in the West rather than in the East. With the spread of their empire to Spain the Arabs took with them their knowledge of Greek medicine and science, including alchemy, and thence it passed, strengthened by the infusion of a certain Jewish element, to the nations of western Europe, through the medium of Latin translations. The making of these began about the 11th century, one of the earliest of the translators, Constantinus Africanus, wrote about 1075, and another, Gerard of Cremona, lived from 1114 to 1187. The Liber de compositione alchemiae, which professes to be by Morienus--perhaps the same as the Marianus who was the teacher of Khalid--was translated by Robertus Castrensis, who states that he finished the work in 1182, and speaks as if he were making a revelation--``Quid sit alchemia nondum cognovit vestra Latinitas.'' The earlier translations, such as the Turba Philosophorum and other Works printed in collections like the Artis auriferae quam chemiam vocant (1572), Theatrum chemicum (1602), and J. J. Manget's Bibliotheca chemica curiosa (1702), are confused productions, written in an allegorical style, but full of phrases and even pages taken literally from the Greek alchemists, and citing by name various authorities of Greek alchemy. They were followed by treatises of a different character, clearer in matter, more systematic in arrangement, and reflecting the methods of the scholastic logic; these are farther from the Greek tradition, for although they contain sufficient traces of their ultimate Greek ancestry, their authors do not know the Greeks as masters and cite no Greek names. So far as they are Latin versions of Arabico-Greek treatises, they must have been much remodelled in the course of translation; but there is reason to suppose that many of them, even when pretending to be translations, are really original compositions. It is curious that although we possess a certain number of works on alchemy written in Arabic, and also many Latin treatises that profess to be translated from Arabic, yet in no case is the existence known of both the Arabic and the Latin version. The Arabic works of Jaber, as contained in MSS. at Paris and Leiden, are quite Aissimiiar from the Latin works attributed to Geber, and show few if any traces of the positive chemical knowledge, as of nitric acid (aqua dissolutiva or fortis) or of the mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acids known as aqua regis or regia, that appears in the latter. The treatises attributed to Geber, in fact, appear to be original works composed not earlier than the 13th century and fathered on Jaber in order to enhance their authority. If this view be accepted, an entirely new light is thrown on the achievements of the Arabs in the history of chemistry. Gibbon asserts that the Greeks were inattentive either to the use or to the abuse of chemistry (Decline and Fall, chap. xiii.), and gives the Arabs the credit of the origin and improvement of the science (chap. lii.).2 But the chemical knowledge attributed to the Arabs has been so attributed largely on the basis of the contents of the Latin Geber, regarded as a translation from the Arabic Jaber. If, then, those contents do not represent the knowledge of Jaber, and if the contents of other Latin translations which there is reason to believe are really made from the Arabic, show little, if any, advance on the knowledge of the Alexandrian Greeks, evidently the part played by the Arabs must be less, and that of the Westerns greater, than Gibbon is prepared to admit.

The descent of alchemistical doctrine can thus be traced with fair continuity for a thousand years, from the Greeks of Alexandria down to the time when Latin alchemy was firmly established in the West, and began to be written of by historical authors like Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon and Arnoldus Villanovanus in the 13th century. But side by side with this literary transmission Berthelot insists that there was another mode of transmission, by means of the knowledge of practical receipts and processes traditional among jewellers, painters, workers in glass and pottery, and other handicraftsmen. The chemical knowledge of Egyptian metallurgists and jewellers, he holds, was early transmitted to the artisans of Rome, and was preserved throughout the dark ages in the workshops of Italy and France until about the 13th century, when it was mingled with the theories of the Greek alchemists which reached the West by way of the Arabs. Receipts given in the Leiden papyrus reappear in the Compositiones ad Tingenda and the Mappae Clavicula, both workshop receipt books, one known in an 8th-century MS. at Lucca, and the other in a 10th-century MS. in the library of Schlettstadt; and again in such works as the De Artibus Romanorum of Eraclius and the Schedula Diversarum Artium of Theophilus, belonging to the 11th or 12th century.

Theory of Transmutation.--The fundamental theory of the transmutation of metals is to be found in the Greek alchemists, although in details it was modified and elaborated by the Arabs and the Latin alchemists. Regarding all substances as being composed of one primitive matter--the prima materia, and as owing their specific differences to the presence of different qualities imposed upon it, the alchemist hoped, by taking away these qualities, to obtain the prima materia itself, and then to get from it the particular substance he desired by the addition of the appropriate qualities. The prima materia was early identified with mercury, not ordinary mercury, but the ``mercury of the philosophers,'' which was the essence or soul of mercury, freed from the four Aristotelian elements--earth, air, fire and water--or rather from the qualities which they represent. Thus the operator had to remove from ordinary mercury, earth or an earthy principle or quality, and water or a liquid principle, and to fix it by taking away air or a volatile principle. The prima materia thus obtained had to be treated with sulphur (or with sulphur and arsenic) to confer upon it the desired qualities that were missing. This sulphur again was not ordinary sulphur, but some principle derived from it, which constituted the philosopher's stone or elixir--white for silver and yellow or red for gold. This is briefly the doctrine that the metals are composed of mercury and sulphur, which persisted in one form or another down to the 17th century. Of course there were numerous variations and refinements. Thus in the Speculum Naturale of Vincent of Beauvais (c. 1250) it is said that there are four spirits--mercury, sulphur, arsenic and sal ammoniac-- and six bodies--gold, silver, copper, tin, lead and iron.3 Of these bodies the two first are pure, the four last impure. Pure white mercury, fixed by the virtue of white non-corrosive sulphur, engenders in mines a matter which fusion changes into silver, and united to pure clear red sulphur it forms gold, while with various kinds of impure mercury and sulphur the other bodies are produced. Vincent attributes to Rhazes the statement that copper is potentially silver, and any one who can eliminate the red colour will bring it to the state of silver, for it is copper in outward appearance, but in its inmost nature silver. This statement represents a doctrine widely held in the 13th century, and also to be found in the Greek alchemists, that everything endowed with a particular apparent quality possesses a hidden opposite quality, which can be rendered apparent by fire. Later, as in the works attributed to Basil Valentine, sulphur, mercury and salt are held to be the constituents of the metals.

It must be noted that the processes described by the alchemists of the 13th century are not put forward as being miraculous or supernatural; they rather represent the methods employed by nature, which it is the end of the alchemist's art to reproduce artificially in the laboratory. But even among the late Arabian alchemists it was doubted whether the resources of the art were adequate to the task; and in the West, Vincent of Beauvais remarks that success had not been achieved in making artificial metals identical with the natural ones. Thus he says that the silver which has been changed into gold by the projection of the red elixir is not rendered resistant to the agents which affect silver but not gold, and Albertus Magnus in his De Mineralibus --the De Alchemia attributed to him is spurious--states that alchemy cannot change species but merely imitates them--for instance, colours a metal white to make it resemble silver or yellow to give it the appearance of gold. He has, he adds, tested gold made by alchemists, and found that it will not withstand six or seven exposures to fire. But scepticism of this kind was not universal. Roger Bacon--or more probably some one who usurped his name--declared that with a certain amount of the philosopher's stone he could transmute a million times as much base metal into gold, and on Raimon Lull was fathered the boast, ``Mare tingerem si mercurius esset.'' Numerous less distinguished adepts also practised the art, and sometimes were so successful in their deceptions that they gained the ear of kings, whose desire to profit by the achievements of science was in several instances rewarded by an abundant crop of counterfeit coins.

Later History of Alchemy.--In the earlier part of the 16th century Paracelsus gave a new direction to alchemy by declaring that its true object was not the making of gold but the preparation of medicines, and this union of chemistry with medicine was one characteristic of the iatrochemical school of which he was the precursor. Increasing attention was paid to the investigation of the properties of substances and of their effects on the human body, and chemistry profited by the fact that it passed into the hands of men who possessed the highest scientific culture of the time, Still, belief in the possibility of transmutation long remained orthodox, even among the most distinguished men of science. Thus it was accepted, at least academically, by Andreas Libavius (d. 1616); by F. de la Boe Sylvius (1614-1672), though not by his pupil Otto Tachenius, and by J. R. Glauber (1603-1668); by Robert Boyle (1627-1691) and, for a time at least, by Sir Isaac Newton and his rival and contemporary, G. W. Leibnitz (1646-1716); and by G. E. Stahl (1660-1734) and Hermann Boerhaave (1668-1738). Though an alchemist, Boyle, in his Sceptical Chemist (1661), cast doubts on the ``experiments whereby vulgar Spagyrists are wont to endeavour to evince their salt, sulphur and mercury to be the true principles of things,'' and advanced towards the conception of chemical elements as those constituents of matter which cannot be further decomposed. With J. J. Becher (1635-1682) and G. E. Stahl, however, there was a reversion to earlier ideas. The former substituted for the salt, sulphur and mercury of Basil Valentine and Paracelsus three earths--the mercurial, the vitreous and the combustible--and he explained combustion as depending on the escape of this last combustible element; while Stahl's conception of phlogiston--not fire itself, but the principle of fire--by virtue of which combustible bodies burned, was a near relative of the mercury of the philosophers, the soul or essence of ordinary mercury.

Perhaps J. B. van Helmont (1577-1644) was the last distinguished investigator who professed actually to have changed mercury into gold, though impostors and mystics of various kinds continued to claim knowledge of the art long after his time. So late as 1782, James Price, an English physician, showed experiments with white and red powders, by the aid of which he was supposed to be able to transform fifty and sixty times as much mercury into silver and gold. The metals he produced are said to have proved genuine on assay; when, however, in the following year he was challenged to repeat the experiments he was unable to do so and committed suicide. In the course of the 19th century the idea that the different elements are constituted by different groupings or condensations of one primal matter--a speculation which, if proved to be well grounded, would imply the possibility of changing one element into another--found favour with more than one responsible chemist; but experimental research failed to yield any evidence that was generally regarded as offering any support to this hypothesis. About the beginning of the 20th century, however, the view was promulgated that the spontaneous production of helium from radium may be an instance of the transformation of one element into another. (See RADIOACTIVITY; also ELEMENT and MATTER.)

See M. P. E. Berthelot, Les Origines de l'alchimie (1885); Collection des anciens alchimistes grecs (text and translation, 3 vols., 1887-1888); Introduction a l'etude de la chimie des anciens et du moyen age (1889): La Chimie au moyen age (text and translation of Syriac and Arabic treatises on alchemy, 3 vols., 1893). Much bibliographical and other information about the later writers on alchemy is contained in Bibliotheca Chemica (2 vols., Glasgow, 1906), a catalogue by John Ferguson of the books in the collection of James Young of Kelly (printed for private distribution). (H. M. R.)

1 An alchemistical work bearing the name of Ostanes speaks of a divine water which cures all maladies--an early appearance of the universal panacea or elixir of life.

2 ``Some traditionary knowledge might be secreted in the temples and monasteries of Egypt: much useful experience might have been acquired in the practice of arts and manufactures, but the science of chemistry owes its origin and improvement to the industry of the Saracens. They first invented and named the alembic for the purposes of distillation, analyzed the substances of the three kingdoms of nature, tried the distinction and affinities of alkalis and acids, and converted the poisonous minerals into soft and salutary remedies. But the most eager search of Arabian chemistry was the transmutation of metals, and the elixir of immortal health: the reason and the fortunes of thousands were evaporated in the crucibles of alchemy, and the consummation of the great work was promoted by the worthy aid of mystery, fable and superstition.'' It may be noted that the word ``alembic'' is derived from the Greek ambix, ``cup,'' with the Arabic article prefixed, and that the instrument is figured in the MSS. of some of the Greek alchemists.

3 Cf. Chaucer, Chanouns Yemannes Tale, where, however, mercury figures both as a spirit and a body:--

``The firste spirit quik-silver called is, The second orpiment, the thridde ywis Sal armoniak, and the ferthe brimstoon.'' ALCIATI, ANDREA (1492-1550), Italian jurist, was born at Alzano, near Milan, on the 12th of January 1492. He displayed great literary skill in his exposition of the laws, and was one of the first to interpret the civil law by the history, languages and literature of antiquity, and to substitute original research for the servile interpretations of the glossators. He published many legal works, and some annotations on Tacitus. His Emblems, a collection of moral sayings in Latin verse, has been greatly admired, and translated into French, Italian and Spanish. Alciati's history of Milan, under the title Rerum Potriae, seu Historiae Mediolanensis, Libri IV., was published posthumously at Milan in 1625. He died at Pavia in 1550.

ALCIBIADES (c. 450-404 B.C.), Athenian general and politician, was born at Athens. He was the son of Cleinias and Deinomache, who belonged to the family of the Alcmaeonidae. He was a near relative of Pericles, who, after the death of Cleinias at the battle of Coroneia (447), became his guardian. Thus early deprived of his father's control, possessed of great personal beauty and the heir to great wealth, which was increased by his marriage, he showed himself self-willed, capricious and passionate, and indulged in the wildest freaks and most insolent behaviour. Nor did the instructors of his early manhood supply the corrective which his boyhood lacked. From Protagoras, Prodicus and others he learnt to laugh at the common ideas of justice, temperance, holiness and patriotism. The laborious thought, the ascetic life of his master Socrates, he was able to admire, but not to imitate or practise. On the contrary, his ostentatious vanity, his amours, his debaucheries and his impious revels became notorious. But great as were his vices, his abilities were even greater.

He took part in the battle of Potidaea (432), where his life was saved by Socrates, a service which he repaid at the battle of Delium (424). As the reward of his bravery, the wealthy Hipponicus bestowed upon him the hand of his daughter. From this time he took a prominent part in Athenian politics during the Peloponnesian war. Originally friendly to Sparta, he subsequently became the leader of the war party in opposition to Nicias, and after the peace of 421 he succeeded by an unscrupulous trick in duping the Spartan ambassadors, and persuading the Athenians to conclude an alliance (420) with Argos, Elis and Mantineia (Thuc. v. 56, 76). On the failure of Nicias in Thrace (418-417) he became the chief advocate of the Sicilian expedition, seeing an opportunity for the realization of his ambitious projects, which included the conquest of Sicily, to be followed by that of Peloponnesus and possibly of Carthage (though this seems to have been an afterthought). The expedition was decided upon with great enthusiasm, and Alcibiades, Nicias and Lamachus were appointed joint commanders. But, on the day before the expedition sailed, there occurred the mysterious mutilation of the Hermae, and Alcibiades was accused not only of being the originator of the crime, but also of having profaned the Eleusinian mysteries. His request for an immediate investigation being refused, he was obliged to set sail with the charge still hanging over him. Almost as soon as he reached Sicily he was recalled to stand his trial, but he escaped on the journey home and made his way to Sparta. Learning that he had been condemned to death in his absence and his property confiscated, he openly joined the Spartans, and persuaded them to send Gylippus to assist the Syracusans and to fortify Decelea in Attica. He then passed over to Asia Minor, prevailed upon many of the Ionic allies of Athens to revolt, and concluded an alliance with the Persian satrap Tissaphernes. But in a few months he had lost the confidence of the Spartans, and at the instigation of Agis II., whose personal hostility he had excited, an order was sent for his execution. Receiving timely information of this order he crossed over to Tissaphernes (412), and persuaded him to adopt the negative policy of leaving Athens and Sparta to wear themselves out by their mutual struggles. Alcibiades was now bent on returning to Athens, and he used his supposed influence with Tissaphernes to effect his purpose. He entered into negotiations with the oligarch Peisander, but when these led to no result he attached himself to the fleet at Samos which remained loyal to the democracy, and was subsequently recalled by Thrasybulus, although he did not at once return to Athens. Being appointed commander in the neighbourhood of the Hellespont, he defeated the Spartan fleet at Abydos (411) and Cyzicus (410), and recovered Chalcedon and Byzantium. On his return to Athens after these successes he was welcomed with unexpected enthusiasm (407); all the proceedings against him were cancelled, and he was appointed general with full powers. His ill success, however, at Andros, and the defeat at Notium (407) of his lieutenant Antiochus, led the Athenians to dismiss him from his command. He thereupon retired to the Thracian Chersonesus. After the battle of Aegospotami, and the final defeat of Athens, he crossed the Hellespont and took refuge with Pharnabazus in Phrygia, with the object of securing the aid of Artaxerxes against Sparta. But the Spartans induced Pharnabazus to put him out of the way; as he was about to set out for the Persian court his residence was set on fire, and on rushing out on his assassins, dagger in hand, he was killed by a shower of arrows (404). There can be no doubt that his advice to Sparta in connexion with Syracuse and the fortification of Decelea was the real cause of his country's downfall, though it is only fair to him to add that had he been allowed to continue in command of the Sicilian expedition he would undoubtedly have overruled the fatal policy of Nicias and prevented the catastrophe of 413. His belated attempt to repair his fatal treachery only exposed the essential selfishness of his character. Though he must have known that his influence over the Persian satraps was slender in the extreme, he used it with the most flagrant dishonesty as a bait first to Sparta, then to the Athenian oligarchs, and finally to the democracy. Superficial and opportunist to the last, he owed the successes of his meteoric career purely to personal magnetism and an almost incredible capacity for deception.

There are lives of Alcibiades by Plutarch and Cornelius Nepos, and monographs by Hertzberg, A. der Staatsmann und Feldherr (1833), and Houssaye, Histoire d'Alcibiade (1873); but the best accounts will be found in the histories of Greece by G. Grote (also notes in abridged ed., 1907), Ed. Meyer, and works quoted under GREECE, Ancient History, sect. ``Authorities''; also PELOPONNESIAN WAR.

ALCIDAMAS, of Elaea, in Aeolis, Greek sophist and rhetorician, flourished in the 4th century B.C. He was the pupil and successor of Gorgias and taught at Athens at the same time as Isocrates, whose rival and opponent he was. We possess two declamations under his name: Peri Sofiston, directed against Isocrates and setting forth the superiority of extempore over written speeches (a recently discovered fragment of another speech against Isocrates is probably of later date); 'Odusseus, in which Odysseus accuses Palamedes of treachery during the siege of Troy (this is generally considered spurious). According to Alcidamas, the highest aim of the orator was the power of speaking extempore on every conceivable subject. Aristotle (Rhet. iii. 3) criticizes his writings as characterized by pomposity of style and an extravagant use of poetical epithets and compounds and far-fetched metaphors. Of other works only fragments and the titles have survived: Messeniakos, advocating the freedom of the Messenians and containing the sentiment that ``all are by nature free''; a Eulogy of Death, in consideration of the wide extent of human sufferings; a Techne or instruction-book in the art of rhetoric; and a Fusikos lolos. Lastly, his Mouseion (a word of doubtful meaning) contained the narrative of the contest between Homer and Hesiod, two fragments of which are found in the 'Agon `Omerou kai `Esiodou, the work of a grammarian in the time of Hadrian. A 3rd-century papyrus (Flinders Petrie, Papyri, ed. Mahaffy, 1891, pl. xxv.) probably contains the actual remains of a description by Alcidamas.

See the edition by Blass, 1881; fragments in Muller, Oratores Attici, ii. (1858); Vahlen, Der Rhetor Alkidamas (1864); Blass, Die attische Beredsamkeit.

ALCINOUS (ALKINOOS), in ancient Greek legend, king of the fabulous Phaeacians, in the island of Scheria, was the son of Nausithous and grandson of Poseidon. His reception and entertainment of Odysseus, who when cast by a storm on the shore of the island was relieved by the king's daughter, Nausicaa, is described in the Odyssey (vi.-xiii.). The gardens and palace of Alcinous and the wonderful ships of the Phaeacian mariners were famous in antiquity. Scheria was identified in very early times with Corcyra, where Alcinous was reverenced as a hero; In the Argonautic legend, his abode was the island of Drepane (Apoll. Rhodius iv. 990).

ALCINOUS, the Platonic philosopher, lived probably in the time of the Caesars. He was the author of an 'Epitome ton Platonos dogmaton, an analysis of Plato's philosophy according to later writers. It is rather in the manner of Aristotle, and freely attributes to Plato any ideas of other philosophers which appeared to contribute to the system. He produced in the end a synthesis of Plato and Aristotle with an admixture of Pythagorean or Oriental mysticism, and is closely allied to the Alexandrian school of thought. He recognized a God who is unknowable, and a series of beings (daimones) who hold intercourse with men. He recognized also Ideas and Matter, and borrowed largely from Aristotle and the Stoics.

The 'Epitome has been translated by Pierre Balbi (Rome, 1469) and by Marsilio Ficino; into French by J. I. Combes-Dounous (Paris, 1800), and into English by Thomas Stanley in his History of Philosophy. Editions: Heinsius (Leiden, 1630); Fischer (Leipzig, 1783); in Aldine Edition of Apuleius (Venice, 1521; Paris, 1532); Fell (Oxford, 1667). See Ritter, Geschichte der Philosophie, iv. 249.

ALCIONIO, PIETRO, or PETRUS ALCYONIUS (c. 1487-1527), Italian classical scholar, was born at Venice. After having studied Greek under Marcus Musurus of Candia, he was employed for some time by Aldus Manutius as a corrector of the press, and in 1522 was appointed professor of Greek at Florence through the influence of Giulio de' Medici. When his patron became pope in 1523 under the title of Clement VII., Alcionio followed him to Rome and remained there until his death. Alcionio published at Venice, in 1521, a Latin translation of several of the works of Aristotle, which was shown by the Spanish scholar Sepulveda to be very incorrect. He wrote a dialogue entitled Medices Legatus, sive de Exilio (1522), in connexion with which he was charged with plagiarism by his personal enemy, Paulus Manutius. The accusation, which Tiraboschi has shown to be groundless, was that he had taken the finest passages in the work from Cicero's lost treatise De Gloria, and had then destroyed the only existing copy of the original in order to escape detection. His contemporaries speak very unfavourably of Alcionio, and accuse him of haughtiness, uncouth manners, vanity and licentiousness.

ALCIPHRON, Greek rhetorician, was probably a contemporary of Lucian (2nd century A.D..) He was the author of a collection of fictitious letters, of which 124 (118 complete and 6 fragments) have been published; they are written in the purest Attic dialect and are considered models of style. The scene is throughout at Athens; the imaginary writers are country people, fishermen, parasites and courtesans, who express their sentiments and opinions on familiar subjects in elegant language. The ``courtesan'' letters are especially valuable, the information contained in them being chiefly derived from the writers of the New Comedy, especially Menander.

EDITIONS.--Editio princeps (44 letters), 1499; Bergler (1715); Seiler (1856); Hercher (1873); Schepers (1905). English translation by Monro and Beloe (1791).

ALCIRA, a town of eastern Spain, in the province of Valencia; on the left bank of the river Jucar, and on the Valencia- Alicante railway. Pop. (1900) 20,572. Alcira is a walled town, surrounded by palm, orange and mulberry groves, and by low-lying rice-swamps, which render its neighbourhood somewhat unhealthy. Silk, fruit and rice are its chief products. It is sometimes identified w;th the Roman Saetabicula. In the middle ages it was a prosperous Moorish trading-station.

ALCMAEON, of Argos, in Greek legend, was the son of Amphiaraus and Eriphyle. When his father set out with the expedition of the Seven against Thebes, which he knew would be fatal to him, he enjoined upon his sons to avenge his death by slaying Eriphyle and undertaking a second expedition against Thebes. After the destruction of Thebes by the Epigoni, Alcmaeon carried out his father's injunctions by killing his mother, as a punishment for which he was driven mad and pursued by the Erinyes from place to place. On his arrival at Psophis in Arcadia, he was purified by its king Phegeus, whose daughter Arsinoe (or Alphesiboea) he married, making her a present of the fatal necklace and the peplus of Harmonia. But the land was cursed with barrenness, and the oracle declared that Alcmaeon would never find rest until he reached a spot on which the sun had never shone at the time he slew his mother. Such a spot he found at the mouth of the river Achelous, where an island had recently been formed by the alluvial deposit; here he settled and, forgetting his wife Arsinoe, married Callirrhoe, the daughter of the river-god. His new wife longed for the necklace and peplus, and Alcmaeon, returning to Psophis, obtained possession of them, on the pretence that he desired to dedicate them at Delphi. When the truth became known he was pursued and slain by Phegeus and his sons. After his death Alcmaeon was worshipped at Thebes; his tomb was at Psophis in a grove of cypresses. His story was the subject of an old epic and of several tragedies, but none of these has been preserved.

Homer, Odyssey xv. 248; Apollodorus iii. 7; Thucydides ii, 68, 102; Pausanias viii. 24, x. 10; Ovid, Metam. ix. 400 et seq.

ALCMAEONIDAE, a noble Athenian family, claiming descent from Alcmaeon, the great-grandson of Nestor, who emigrated from Pylos to Athens at the time of the Dorian invasion of Peloponnesus. During the archonship of an Alcmaeonid Megacles (? 632 B.C.), Cylon, who had unsuccessfully attempted to make himself ``tyrant''' was treacherously murdered with his followers. The curse or pollution thus incurred was frequently in later years raked up for political reasons; the Spartans even demanded that Pericles should be expelled as accursed at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war. All the members of the family went into banishment, and having returned in the time of Solon (594) were again expelled (538) by Peisistratus (q.v..) Their great wealth enabled them during their exile to enhance their reputation and secure the favour of the Delphian Apollo by rebuilding the temple after its destruction by fire in 548. Their importance is shown by the fact that Cleisthenes, tyrant of Sicyon, gave his daughter Agariste in marriage to the Alcmaeonid Megacles in preference to all the assembled suitors after the undignified behaviour of Hippocleides. Under the statesman Cleisthenes (q.v.), the issue of this union, the Alcmaeonids became supreme in Athens about 510 B.C. To them was generally attributed (though Herodotus disbelieves the story--see GREECE, Ancient History, sect. ``Authorities,'' II.) the treacherous raising of the shield as a signal to the Persians at Marathon, but, whatever the truth of this may be, there can be little doubt that they were not the only one of the great Athenian families to make treasonable overtures to Persia. Pericles and Alcibiades were both connected with the Alcmaeonidae. Nothing is heard of them after the Peloponnesian war.

See Herodotus vi. 121-131.

ALCMAN, or ALCMAEON (the former being the Doric form of the name), the founder of Doric lyric poetry, to whom was assigned the first place among the nine lyric poets of Greece in the Alexandrian canon, flourished in the latter half of the 7th century B.C. He was a Lydian of Sardis, who came as a slave to Sparta, where he lived in the family of Agesidas, by whom he was emancipated. His mastery of Greek shows that he must have come very early to Sparta, where, after the close of the Messenian wars, the people were able to bestow their attention upon the arts of peace. Alcman composed various kinds of poems in various metres; Parthenia (maidens' songs), hymns, paeans, prosodia (processionals), and love-songs, of which he was considered the inventor. He was evidently fond of good living, and traces of Asiatic sensuousness seem out of place amidst Spartan simplicity. The fragments are scanty, the most considerable being part of a Parthenion found in 1855 on an Egyptian papyrus; some recently discovered hexameters are attributed to Alcman or Erinna (Oxyrhynchus papyri, i. 1898).

For general authorities see ALCAEUS.

ALCMENE, in ancient Greek mythology, the daughter of Electryon, king of Mycenae, and wife of Amphitryon. She was the mother of Heracles by Zeus, who assumed the likeness of her husband during his absence, and of Iphicles by Amphitryon. She was regarded as the ancestress of the Heracleidae, and worshipped at Thebes and Athens.

See Winter, Alkmene und Amphitryon (1876).

ALCOBACA, a town of Portugal, in the district of Leiria, formerly included in the province of Estremadura, on the Alcoa and Baca rivers, from which it derives its name. Pop. (1900) 2309. Alcobaca is chiefly interesting for its Cistercian convent, now partly converted into schools and barracks. The monastic buildings, which form a square 725 ft. in diameter, with a huge conical chimney rising above them, were founded in 1148 and completed in 1222. During the middle ages it rivalled the greatest European abbeys in size and wealth. It was supplied with water by an affluent of the Alcoa, which still flows through the kitchen; its abbot ranked with the highest Portuguese nobles, and, according to tradition, 999 monks continued the celebration of mass without intermission throughout the year. The convent was partly burned by the French in 1810, secularized in 1834 and afterwards gradually restored. Portions of the library, which comprised over 100,000 volumes, including many precious MSS., were saved in 1810, and are preserved in the public libraries of Lisbon and Braga. The monastic church (1222) is a good example of early Gothic, somewhat defaced by Moorish and other additions. It contains a fine cloister and the tombs of Peter I. (1357-1367) and his wife, Inez de Castro.

ALCOCK, JOHN (c. 1430-1500), English divine, was born at Beverley in Yorkshire and educated at Cambridge. In 1461 he was made dean of Westminster, and henceforward his promotion was rapid in church and state. In the following year he was made master of the rolls, and in 1470 was sent as ambassador to the court of Castile. He was consecrated bishop of Rochester in 1472 and was successively translated to the sees of Worcester (1476) and Ely (1486). He twice held the office of lord chancellor, and exhibited great ability in the negotiations with James III. of Scotland. He died at Wisbech Castle on the 1st of October 1500. Alcock was one of the most eminent pre-Reformation divines; he was a man of deep learning and also of great proficiency as an architect. Besides founding a charity at Beverley and a grammar school at Kingston-upon-Hull, he restored many churches and colleges; but his greatest enterprise was the erection of Jesus College, Cambridge, which he established on the site of the former Convent of St Radigund.

Alcock's published writings, most of which are extremely rare, are: Mons Perfectionis, or the Hill of Perfection (London, 1497); Gallicontus Johannis Alcock episcopi Eliensis ad frates suos curatos in sinodo apud Barnwell (1498), a good specimen of early English printing and quaint illustrations; The Castle of Labour, translated from the French (1536), and various other tracts and homilies. See J. Bass Mullinger's Hist. of the University of Cambridge, vol. i.

ALCOCK, SIR RUTHERFORD (1809-1897), British consul and diplomatist, was the son of Dr Thomas Alcock, who practised at Ealing, near London, and himself followed the medical profession. In 1836 he became a surgeon in the marine brigade which took part in the Carlist war, and gaining distinction by his services was made deputy inspector-general of hospitals. He retired from this service in 1837, and seven years later was appointed consul at Fuchow in China, where, after a short official stay at Amoy, he performed the functions, as he himself expressed it, ``of everything from a lord chancellor to a sheriff's officer.'' Fuchow was one of the ports opened to trade by the treaty of 1842, and Mr Alcock, as he then was, had to maintain an entirely new position with the Chinese authorities. In so doing he was eminently successful, and earned for himself promotion to the consulate at Shanghai. Thither he went in 1846 and made it an especial part of his duties to superintend the establishment, and laying out of the British settlement, which has developed into such an important feature of British commercial life in China. In 1858 he was appointed consul-general in the newly opened empire of Japan, and in the following year was promoted to be minister plenipotentiary. In those days residence in Japan was surrounded with many dangers, and the people were intensely hostile to foreigners. In 1860 Mr Alcock's native interpreter was murdered at the gate of the legation, and in the following year the legation was stormed by a body of Ronins, whose attack was repulsed by Mr Alcock and his staff. Shortly after this event he returned to England on leave. Already he had been made a C.B. (1860); in 1862 he was made a K.C.B., and in 1863 hon. D.C.L. Oxon. In 1864 he returned to Japan, and after a year's further residence he was transferred to Pekin, where he represented the British government until 1871, when he retired. But though no longer in official life his leisure was fully occupied. He was for some years president of the Royal Geographical Society, and he served on many commissions. He was twice married, first in May 1841 to Henrietta Mary, daughter of Charles Bacon, who died in 1853, and secondly (July 8, 1862) to the widow of the Rev. John Lowder, who died on the 13th of March 1899. He was the author of several works, and was one of the first to awaken in England an interest in Japanese art; his best-known book is The Capital of the Tycoon, which appeared in 1863. He died in London on the 2nd of November 1897. (R. K. D.)

ALCOFORADO, MARIANNA (1640-1723), Portuguese authoress, writer of the Letters of a Portuguese Nun, was the daughter of a landed proprietor in Alemtejo. Beja, her birthplace, was the chief garrison town of that province, itself the principal theatre of the twenty-eight years' war with Spain that followed the Portuguese revolution of 1640, and her widowed father, occupied with administrative and military commissions, placed Marianna in her childhood in the wealthy convent of the Conception for security and education. She made her profession as a Franciscan nun at sixteen or earlier, without any real vocation, and lived a routine life in that somewhat relaxed house until her twenty-fifth year, when she met Noel Bouton. This man, afterwards marquis de Chamilly, and marshal of France, was one of the French officers who came to Portugal to serve under the great captain, Frederick, Count Schomberg, the re-organizer of the Portuguese army. During the years 1665-1667 Chamilly spent much of his time in and about Beja, and probably became acquainted with the Alcoforado family through Marianna's brother, who was a soldier. Custom then permitted religious to receive and entertain visitors, and Chamilly, aided by his military prestige and some flattery, found small difficulty in betraying the trustful nun. Before long their intrigue became known and caused a scandal, and to avoid the consequences Chamilly deserted Marianna and withdrew clandestinely to France. The letters to her lover which have earned her renown in literature were written between December 1667 and June 1668, and they described the successive stages of faith, doubt and despair through which she passed. As a piece of unconscious psychological self-analysis, they are unsurpassed; as a product of the Peninsular heart they are unrivalled. These five short letters written by Marianna to ``expostulate her desertion'' form one of the few documents of extreme human experience, and reveal a passion which in the course of two centuries has lost nothing of its heat. Perhaps their dominant note is reality, and, sad reading as they are from the moral standpoint, their absolute candour, exquisite tenderness and entire self-abandonment have excited the wonder and admiration of great men and women in every age, from Madame de Sevigne to W. E. Gladstone. There are signs in the fifth letter that Marianna had begun to conquer her passion, and after a life of rigid penance, accompanied by much suffering, she died at the age of eighty-three. The letters came into the possession of the comte de Guilleragues, director of the Gazette de France, who turned them into French, and they were published anonymously in Paris in January 1669. A Cologne edition of the same year stated that Chamilly was their addressee, which is confirmed by St Simon and Duclos, but the name of their authoress remained undivulged. In 1810, however, Boissonade discovered Marianna's name written in a copy of the first edition by a contemporary hand, and the veracity of this ascription has been placed beyond doubt by the recent investigations of Luciano Cordeiro, who found a tradition in Beja connecting the French captain and the Portuguese nun. The letters created a sensation on their first appearance, running through five editions in a year, and, to exploit their popularity, second parts, replies and new replies were issued from the press in quick succession. Notwithstanding that the Portuguese original of the five letters is lost, their genuineness is as patent as the spuriousness of their followers, and though Rousseau was ready to wager they were written by a man, the principal critics of Portugal and France have decided against him. It is now generally recognized that the letters are a verbatim translation from the Portuguese.

The foreign bibliography of the Letters, containing almost one hundred numbers, will be found in Cordeiro's admirable study, Soror Marianna, A Friera Portugueza, 2nd ed. (Lisbon, 1891). Besides the French editions, versions exist in Dutch, Danish, Italian and German; and the English bibliography is given by Edgar Prestage in his translation The Letters of a Portuguese Nun (Marianna Alcoforado), 3rd ed. (London, 1903). The French text of the editio princeps was printed in the first edition (1893) of this book. Edmund Gosse in the Fortnightly Review, vol. xlix. (old series) p. 506, shows the considerable influence exercised by the Letters on the sentimental literature of France and England. (E. PR.)

ALCOHOL, in Commerce, the name generally given to ``spirits of wine''; in systematic organic chemistry it has a wider meaning, being the generic name of a class of compounds (hydroxy hydrocarbons) of which ordinary alcohol (specifically ethyl alcohol) is a typical member (see ALCOHOLS.)

Etymology.

The word ``alcohol'' is of Arabic origin, being derived from the particle al and the word kohl, an impalpable powder used in the East for painting the eyebrows. For many centuries the word was used to designate any fine powder; its present-day application to the product of the distillation of wine is of comparatively recent date. Thus Paracelsus and Libavius both used the term to denote a fine powder, the latter speaking of an alcohol derived from antimony. At the same time Paracelsus uses the word for a volatile liquid; alcool Or alcool vini occurs often in his writings, and once he adds ``id est vino ardente.'' Other names have been in use among the earlier chemists for this same liquid. Eau de vie (``elixir of life'') was in use during the 13th and 14th centuries; Arnoldus Villanovanus applied it to the product of distilled wine, though not as a specific name.

Ethyl alcohol.

Ordinary alcohol, which we shall frequently refer to by its specific name, ethyl alcohol, seldom occurs in the vegetable kingdom; the unripe seeds of Heracleum giganteum and H. Sphondylium contain it mixed with ethyl butyrate. In the animal kingdom it occurs in the urine of diabetic patients and of persons addicted to alcohol. Its important source lies in its formation by the ``spirituous'' or ``alcoholic fermentation'' of saccharine juices. The mechanism of alcoholic fermentation is discussed in the article FERMENTATION, and the manufacture of alcohol from fermented liquors in the article SPIRITS.

The qualitative composition of ethyl alcohol was ascertained by A. L. Lavoisier, and the quantitative by N. T. de Saussure in 1808. Sir Edward Frankland showed how it could be derived from, and converted into, ethane; and thus determined it to be ethane in which one hydrogen atom was repiaced by a hydroxyl group. Its constitutional formula is therefore CH3.CH2.OH. It may be synthetically prepared by any of the general methods described in the article ALCOHOLS.

Pure ethyl alcohol is a colourless, mobile liquid of an agreeable odour. It boils at 78.3 deg. C. (760 mm.); at -90 deg. C. it is a thick liquid, and at -130 deg. it solidifies to a white mass. Its high coefficient of thermal expansion, coupled with its low freezing point, renders it a valuable thermometric fluid, especially when the temperatures to be measured are below -39 deg. C., for which the mercury thermometer cannot be used. It readily inflames, burning with a blue smokeless flame, and producing water and carbon dioxide, with the evolution of great heat; hence it receives considerable application as a fuel. It mixes with water in all proportions, the mixing being attended by a contraction in volume and a rise in temperature; the maximum contraction corresponds to a mixture of 3 molecules of alcohol and 1 of water. Commercial alcohol or ``spirits of wine'' contains about 90% of pure ethyl alcohol, the remainder being water. This water cannot be entirely removed by fractional distillation, and to prepare anhydrous or ``absolute'' alcohol the commercial product must be allowed to stand over some dehydrating agent, such as caustic lime, baryta, anhydrous copper sulphate, &c., and then distilled. Calcium chloride must not be used, since it forms a crystalline compound with alcohol. The quantity of alcohol present in an aqueous solution is determined by a comparison of its specific gravity with standard tables, or directly by the use of an alcoholometer, which is a hydrometer graduated so as to read per cents by weight (degrees according to Richter) or volume per cents (degrees according to Tralles). Other methods consist in determining the vapour tension by means of the vaporimeter of Geissler, or the boiling point by the ebullioscope. In the United Kingdom ``proof spirit'' is defined as having a specific gravity at 51 deg. of 12/13 (.92308) compared with water at the same temperature. The ``quantity at proof'' is given by the formula:-- quantity of sample X (degrees over or under proof + 100) divided by 100.

The presence of water in alcohol may be detected in several ways. Aqueous alcohol becomes turbid when mixed with benzene, carbon disulphide or paraffin oil; when added to a solution of barium oxide in absolute alcohol, a white precipitate of barium hydroxide is formed. A more delicate method consists in adding a very little anthraquinone and sodium amalgam; absolute alcohol gives a green coloration, but in the presence of minute traces of water a red coloration appears. Traces of ethyl alcohol in solutions are detected and estimated by oxidation to acetaldehyde, or by conversion into iodoform by warming with iodine and potassium hydroxide. An alternative method consists in converting it into ethyl benzoate by shaking with benzoyl chloride and caustic soda.

Alcohol is extensively employed as a solvent; in fact, this constitutes one of its most important industrial applications. It dissolves most organic compounds, resins, hydrocarbons, fatty acids and many metallic salts, sometimes forming, in the latter case, crystalline compounds in which the ethyl alcohol plays a role similar to that of water of crystallization. This fact was first noticed by T. Graham, and, although it was at first contradicted, its truth was subsequently confirmed. In general, gases dissolve in it more readily than in water; 100 volumes of alcohol dissolve 7 volumes of hydrogen, 25 volumes of oxygen and 16 volumes of nitrogen.

Reactions.

Potassium and sodium readily dissolve in ethyl alcohol with the production of alcoholates of the formula C2 H5 OK(Na). These are voluminous white powders. Sulphuric acid converts it into ethyl sulphuric acid (see ETHER, and sulphur trioxide gives carbyl sulphate. The phosphorous haloids give the corresponding ethyl haloid. Ethyl chloride (from the phosphorus chlorides and alcohol) is an ethereal liquid boiling at 12.5 deg. C., soluble in alcohol, but sparingly so in water. Oxidation of ethyl alcohol gives acetaldehyde and acetic acid. Chlorine oxidizes it to acetaldehyde, and under certain conditions chloral (q.v.) is formed.

Industrial alcohol.

In almost all countries heavy taxes are levied on manufactured alcohol mainly as a source of revenue. In the United Kingdom the excise duty is eleven shillings per proof gallon of alcohol, while the customs duty is eleven shillings and fivepence; the magnitude of these imposts may be readily understood when one remembers that the proof gallon costs only about sevenpence to manufacture. The great importance of alcohol in the arts has necessitated the introduction of a duty-free product which is suitable for most industrial purposes, and at the same time is perfectly unfit for beverages or internal application.

Methylated spirit.