ABA

AAEDE, one of the original three Muses: the

other two were Melete and Mneme. AAIN-EL-GINUM, or the fountain of idols, was an ancient city of Africa, in the province of Chaus and kingdom of Fez. Tradition relates, that the Africans had in the precincts of it, near a fountain, a temple, where persons of both sexes celebrated, at particular seasons, nocturnal festivals; in which the women abandoned themselves in the dark to such men as chance might present. The offspring of this intercourse were reputed sacred, and brought up by the priests of the temple. On this account those who had passed the night there, were secluded from their husbands for the space of a year. This temple was destroyed by the Mahometans. Ortelius calls the city Manlisnana.

AB, the eleventh month of the civil year of the Hebrews, and the fifth of their ecclesiastical year, which begins with the month Nisan. The word Ab corresponds to the moon of July, that is, of a part of that month and the beginning of August. Its duration is thirty days. The Jews fasted upon the first day of this month on account of the death of Aaron, and upon the ninth, to commemorate both the burning of Solomon's temple by the Chaldeans, and also their second temple, by the Romans. The Jews supposed it to be on the same day that the spies, returning from Canaan, incited their nation to revolt. They fasted also on this day because of the prohibition of Adrian issued against their abode in Jerusalem, or even looking towards it at a distance to deplore its ruin. The eighteenth day of the same month they fasted, because on that night the lamps of the sanctuary went out in the time of Ahaz. Other calamities are represented Vol. I.

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as having befallen the Jews in this month, on account of which it may be termed their month of fasting.

ABABIL, a strange, or rather fabulous bird mentioned in the Koran, concerning the nature and qualities of which, the Mahometan doctors greatly differ.

ABADIR, a word compounded of two Phoenecian terms. It signifies magnificent father, a title which the Carthagenians gave to their gods of the first order. It is also applied to the stone which Ops or Rhea dressed up for Saturn to swallow, instead of Jupiter; for the old god, afraid of being dethroned by his sons, devoured them to secure himself. This stone was called by the Greeks Barua. The same title has been attributed, but by mistake, to the god Terminus. ABAE, a place of Lysia, where (as we learn from the Scholiast on the Oedipus Tyrannus) Apollo had a temple; and whence he was stiled ABAEUS. · ABANTIAS, or ABANTIADES, a patronymic of Danae, Atalante, and the other grand-children of Abas. ABARBAREA, one of the Naiades, whom Bucolion the eldest son of Laomedon married, and by whom he had two sons, Aesepus and Peda

sus.

ABARIS, was a Scythian, who, for having sung the expedition of Apollo to the Hyperboreans, was constituted his priest, and received from him the spirit of divination, together with an arrow, by means of which he could traverse the air. He is also said to have formed, from the bones of Pelops, the statue of Minerva, which the Trojans purchased of him, and on his word, believed to have descended from heaven. It was this statue that was afterwards celebrated

B

under the name of the Palladium. There were two others named Abaris, one of which was killed by Perseus, and the other by Euryalus. ABAS, the son of Hypothoon and Metanira, or, according to some, of Celeus and Meganira. Ceres changed him into a lizard, for mocking her and her sacrifices.

ABAS, one of the Centaurs who opposed the Lapithes.

ABAS, the son of Lynceus and Hypermnestra, and father of Acrisius and Proetus, was the eleventh king of the Argives. ABAS, son of Eurydamus, the soothsayer, and brother of Polydius. Both brothers were slain by Diomed in the Trojan war. Also one of the companions of Aeneas killed by Lausus, son of Mezentius.

ABAS, a celebrated soothsayer, to whom a statue was erected by the Lacedemonians in the temple of Delphi, for having rendered signal services to Lysander.

ABASTER, one of the three horses of Pluto, of a black colour. See Metheus and Nonius. ABATOS, an island in the palus of Memphis or lake Moeris, famous amongst other things for the tomb of Osiris, which was afterwards carried to Abydos. This island hath been by some confounded with a rock of the same name. ABUTTO, an idol or god of the Japanese, eminent for the cure of many distempers, and also for procuring fair winds and quick voyages. On the latter account, small pieces of coin tied to a stick are thrown by sailors into the sea, as an offering. These offerings his priests pretend are wafted to him. In still weather he is said to appear himself in a boat to demand this tribute. ABDERUS, a favourite of Hercules, who having carried off the mares of Diomedes which lived | on human flesh, committed them to the care of Abderus, and proceeded against the Bistones. Having slain many of them, and Diomedes amongst the rest, Hercules returned from his expedition, but finding that his favourite had been torn asunder by the mares, he built a city near his tomb in memorial of him, and gave it the name of Abdera.

ABELLION, a divinity of the ancient Gauls.--. Vossius supposes him to be the same with the Apollo of the Greeks, and the Belus of the Cretans. ABEONA AND ADEONA, divinities that pre

sided over travellers, the one at their going out, and the other on their return. ABERIDES, the son of Coelus and Vesta; the same with Saturn.

ABIA, the daughter of Hercules, was sister and nurse to Hyllus. A celebrated temple was erected to her in Messenia. She withdrew to the city of Ira, which took its name from her, and was one of the seven which Agamemnon promised Achilles.

ABLEGMINA, those choice parts of the entrails of victims which were offered in sacrifice to the gods. In Festus we find the word Ablegamina, which Scaliger and others take for a corruption of the text. It is apparently derived from Ab- · legere, to cull or separate, and formed in imitation of the Greek алоλɛy, which signifies the same. In this sense Ablegamina coincides with άтоλɛyμ; unless, as others suggest, the word be of Latin origin, and derived from albeo, whence albegmina, on account of the whiteness of these parts. The Ablegmina were otherwise called prosiciae, porricia, prosecta, and prosegmina: they seem to have differed from strebula, which were the like morsels of the fleshy parts, and from augmentum, which particularly denoted a lobe of the liver. Some authors make Ablegmina to include all those parts of the victims which were offered to the deities; contrary to the authority of Festus, who restrains Ablegmina to the cxta or entrails only. The exta being found good, were to be prosected or parted; i. e. the extremes or prominent parts cut off as Ablegmina, to be sprinkled with flour, and burnt by the priests on the altar, pouring wine on them. Tertullian rallies the heathens for thus serving their gods with scraps and offals. ABLERUS, one of the Trojans, who was killed by Archilochus.

ABORIGENES, the first inhabitants of Italy, who were brought thither by Saturn from the east. Some suppose them to have come from Arcadia under the conduct of Oenotrus, and that Virgil therefore called them Oenotrians. Others derive their name from abhorrenda gens, an abominable race; others from aberrigenes, a nation of wanderers, &c.

ABRACADABRA, a magical term, to which, if repeated in a particular manner and a certain number of times, great effects are attributed in

the cure of fevers and the prevention of other | maladies. Some write the word abrasadabra, mistaking the Roman C, equivalent to K, for the Greek Cor E. To produce its magical effect, the word should be thus written:

ABRACADABRA

ABRACADABR

ABRACADAB

ABRACADA
ABRACAD
A B RA СА
ABRA C
ABRA
A BR
А В
A

This formula is preserved by Serenus Samonicus, a phycian of the twelfth century. Scaliger, Salmasius and Kircher, have taken great pains to discover the sense of the word. Delrio speaks of it as a well known formula in magic, which was perhaps formed by Serenus, who followed the magical superstitions of Basilidas from Abrasax.

ABRASAX, a mystical term of the Basilidians, which, on the authority of Tertulian and Jerom, is supposed to have been a name given by Basilidas to the supreme Being, as expressive of the 365 divine processions which that heretic in vented, A signifying 1. ß, 2. p, 100. a, 1, σ, 200. x, 1., 60. This notion however is destroyed in part by Jerom himself, who hath elsewhere conjectured the word to be an appellative of Mithra, the god of the Persians, and the numeral value of the letters that compose it, to be his annual revolution of 365 days; whilst Irenaeus affirms that the Basilidians represented the Father of all things as ineffable and without a name; and that the name in question, making the number 365, was applied by them as the first of their 365 heavens, where the prince or chief of their 365 angels resided. Other solutions have been attempted by Wendelin, Basnage, Beausobre and others, but all with equal indecision. ABRETIA, a nymph which gave her name to Mysia, whence Jupiter, who was worshipped there, obtained the title Abretanus.

ABSEUS, a giant, the offspring of the Earth and Tartarus.

ABSYRTUS, son of Aeetes, king of Colchis, by Hypsea, and brother of Medea and Chalcione, according to some; Apollonius makes him son of Asteride, a Scythian nymph. Medea, after having assisted Jason in carrying away the golden fleece, and accompanied him, was pursued by her father; but, to stop his pursuit, tore her brother Absyrtus, who went with her in pieces, and scattered his limbs on the road. Aeetes, perceiving the mangled members of his son, stopped to gather them up, by which means Medea effected her escape with Jason. Apollonius, in his Argonautics, ascribes the death of Absyrtus not to Medea, but to Jason. ABUNDANTIA. This deity is represented in ancient monuments, under the figure of a woman with a pleasing aspect, crowned with garlands of flowers, pouring all sorts of fruit out of a horn which she holds in her right hand, and scattering grain with her left, taken promiscuously from a sheaf of corn. On a medal of Trajan she is represented with two cornucopias. She is most usually called by the name of Copia, in the Poets, and that of Abundantia on medals, on some of which she is seated on a chair, not unlike the Roman chair, only its two sides are wrought into the shape of cornucopias, to denote the character of this goddess, who was the giver of other things as well as provision, and that at all times and in all places.--The horn is said to have belonged to Achelous, or according to others to the goat Amalthea.--This goddess was saved with Saturn when Jupiter dethroned him.

ABYDOS, a city of Asia on the Hellespont and the country of Hero and Leander. There was another of the same name in Aegypt, where stood the famous temple of Osiris, and where Memnon in common resided.

ABYLA, a mountain of Africa, and CALPE in Spain on the Straits of Gibraltar were called the pillars of Hercules. It is pretended that Hercules, finding these two mountains in one, disjoined them, and thus united the Mediterranean with the ocean.

ACACALIS, daughter of Minos the first king of Crete, by Ithone daughter of Lictius, and sister to Lycastus. Apollonius makes her the mother of Amphithemis or Garamas by Apollo, to whom, according to Diodorus, she was married.

Philacides and Philander are said also to have been the offspring of this union. Some authors make her the wife of Miletus king of Caria, and others his mother by Apollo. ACACESIUS: Mercury was thus called from his foster-father ACACUS the son of Lycaon, who was founder of the city Acacesium. ACADINUS, a fountain in Sicily, consecrated to the Palic brothers who were particularly honoured in that island. To this fountain was attributed the marvellous faculty of discovering the truth of oaths. The words being inscribed on tablets of wood and thrown into the water, would sink if the oath they contained were false, but swim if it were true. ACALET OR PERDIX, nephew of Dedalus, invented both the saw and the compass. Dedalus through jealousy precipitated him from a lofty tower, but Minerva in compassion changed him to a partridge.

ACALIS OR ACASIS. See Acacalis. ACAMARCHIS, a nymph, daughter of the Ocean. ACAMAS, son of Theseus, and brother of Demophoon, followed the rest of the Grecian princes to the siege of Troy. He was deputed with Diomedes, to the Trojans, to solicit the restoration of Helena. This embassy, though abortive as to Helena, was however successful to Acamas; for Laodice, king Priam's daughter, fell despe. rately in love with him, and was constrained, against every reflection which honour or infamy could suggest, to reveal her passion to Philobia, wife of Perseus, and to beg her assistance. Philobia, touched with compassion, intreated her husband to contrive that the wishes of Laodice might be gratified. Perseus, pitying the lady, and desirous also of obliging his wife, insinuated himself into the friendship of Acamas, and obtained a visit from him in the city of Dardanus, of which he was governor. Laodice failed not to go thither, attended by some Trojan ladies. A splendid feast was prepared, at the conclusion of which, Perseus introduced Acamas to Laodice as one of the king's concubines.------Laodice, highly satisfied with her gallant, took leave of him, and, at the end of nine months, was delivered of a son, whom she committed to the care of Aethra, grandmother by the father's side to Acamas. The child was named Munycbus. Tzetzes relates that this Acamas had a

remarkable adventure with Phyllis, daughter of the king of Thrace; but most authors ascribe this adventure not to Acamas, but to Demophoon his brother. Acamas was one of the heroes concealed in the wooden horse, at the taking of Troy. One of the tribes of Athens was called Acamantides, by appointment of the Oracle. Acamas is said to have founded a city in Phrygia Major, to which he gave the name of Acamantium. He made war against the Solymi. Authors are not agreed whether Acamas was son to Phaedra or Ariadne. A leader of the Dardan troops under Aeneas, distinguished by this name, was slain by Ajax. ACANTHO.

The Pagan theology, which admitted five different suns, makes Acanto mother of the fourth.

ACANTHUS, a boy who was changed into the plant of that name, or, according to others, into a bird. ACARNAS AND AMPHOTERUS, were brothers and sons of Alcmeon and Callirhoe. Their mother obtained from Jupiter, that they should instantaneously acquire their full growth, to enable them to avenge the death of their father, whom the brothers of Alphesibeus had killed. ACACIS, daughter of Minos. See Acacalis. ACAMUS with PYROUS, were leaders of the Thracian troops, in support of Priam and Troy. ACASTA, a nymph, daughter of the Ocean and Tethys.

ACASTUS, son of Peleas, king of Thessaly, was a celebrated hunter, and famous for throwing the javelin. Critheis his wife, who by some was also called Hyppolyte, to avenge herself on Peleus for indifference to her passion, accused him to her husband of attempting her honour. Acastus dissembling his resentment, took Peleus a hunting on Mount Peleon, and having deprived him of his weapons, left him exposed to wild beasts and centaurs. Chiron or Mercury, however, having rescued him from their attacks, he with the aid of the Argonauts avenged himself of the cruelty of Acastus and the calumny of Cretheis.

ACCA, sister and companion of Camilla, queen of the Volsci. Besides this Acca there was ACCA LAURENTIA, wife to Faustulus the shepherd of Numitor, and nurse to Romulus and Remus. She is represented as not less conspi