AUTOLYCUS, in Greek mythology, the son of Hermes and father of Anticleia, mother of Odysseus. He lived at the foot of Mount Parnassus, and was famous as a thief and swindler. On one occasion he met his match. Sisyphus, who had lost some cattle, suspected Autolycus of being the thief, but was unable to bring it home to him, since he possessed the power of changing everything that was touched by his hands. Sisyphus accordingly burnt his name into the hoofs of his cattle, and, during a visit to Autolycus, recognized his property. It is said that on this occasion Sisyphus seduced Autolycus's daughter Anticleia, and that Odysseus was really the son of Sisyphus, not of Laertes, whom Anticleia afterwards married. The object of the story is to establish the close connexion between Hermes, the god of theft and cunning, and the three persons--Sisyphus, Odysseus, Autolycus--who are the incarnate representations of these practices. Autolycus is also said to have instructed Heracles in the art of wrestling, and to have taken part in the Argonautic expedition. Entry: AUTOLYCUS
It may be granted that the author of the _Odyssey_ can hardly have been just such a singer as he himself describes. The songs of Phemius and Demodocus are too short, and have too much the character of improvisations. Nor is it necessary to suppose that epic poetry, at the time to which the picture in the _Odyssey_ belongs, was confined to the one type represented. Yet in several respects the conditions under which the singer finds himself in the house of a chieftain like Odysseus or Alcinous are more in harmony with the character of Homeric poetry than those of the later rhapsodic contests. The subdivision of a poem like the _Iliad_ or _Odyssey_ among different and necessarily unequal performers must have been injurious to the effect. The highly theatrical manner of recitation which was fostered by the spirit of competition, and by the example of the stage, cannot have done justice to the even movement of the epic style. It is not certain indeed that the practice of reciting a long poem by the agency of several competitors was ancient, or that it prevailed elsewhere than at Athens; but as rhapsodists were numerous, and popular favour throughout Greece became more and more confined to one or two great works, it must have become almost a necessity. That it was the mode of recitation contemplated by the author of the _Iliad_ or _Odyssey_ it is impossible to believe. Entry: 6
DRAMA (literally "action," from Gr. [Greek: dran], act or do), the term applied to those productions of Art which imitate or, to use a more modern term, "represent" action by introducing the personages taking part in them as real, and as employed in the action itself. There are numerous varieties of the drama, differing more or less widely from one another, both as to the objects imitated and as to the means used in the process. But they all agree in the _method_ or _manner_ which is essential to the drama and to dramatic art, namely, _imitation in the way of action_. The function of all Art being to give pleasure by representation (see FINE ARTS), it is clear that what is distinctive of any one branch or form must be the manner in which this function is performed by it. In the epos, for instance, the method or manner is narrative, and even when Odysseus tells of his action, he is not acting. Entry: DRAMA
LAESTRYGONES, a mythical race of giants and cannibals. According to the _Odyssey_ (x. 80) they dwelt in the farthest north, where the nights were so short that the shepherd who was driving out his flock met another driving it in. This feature of the tale contains some hint of the long nightless summer in the Arctic regions, which perhaps reached the Greeks through the merchants who fetched amber from the Baltic coasts. Odysseus in his wanderings arrived at the coast inhabited by the Laestrygones, and escaped with only one ship, the rest being sunk by the giants with masses of rock. Their chief city was Telepylus, founded by a former king Lamus, their ruler at that time being Antiphates. This is a purely fanciful name, but Lamus takes us into a religious world where we can trace the origin of the legend, and observe the god of an older religion becoming the subject of fairy tales (see LAMIA) in a later period. Entry: LAESTRYGONES
EPICHARMUS (c. 540-450 B.C.), Greek comic poet, was born in the island of Cos. Early in life he went to Megara in Sicily, and after its destruction by Gelo (484) removed to Syracuse, where he spent the rest of his life at the court of Hiero, and died at the age of ninety or (according to a statement in Lucian, _Macrobii_, 25) ninety-seven. A brazen statue was set up in his honour by the inhabitants, for which Theocritus composed an inscription (_Epigr._ 17). Epicharmus was the chief representative of the Sicilian or Dorian comedy. Of his works 35 titles and a few fragments have survived. In the city of tyrants it would have been dangerous to present comedies like those of the Athenian stage, in which attacks were made upon the authorities. Accordingly, the comedies of Epicharmus are of two kinds, neither of them calculated to give offence to the ruler. They are either mythological travesties (resembling the satyric drama of Athens) or character comedies. To the first class belong the _Busiris_, in which Heracles is represented as a voracious glutton; the _Marriage of Hebe_, remarkable for a lengthy list of dainties. The second class dealt with different classes of the population (the sailor, the prophet, the boor, the parasite). Some of the plays seem to have bordered on the political, as _The Plunderings_, describing the devastation of Sicily in the time of the poet. A short fragment has been discovered (in the Rainer papyri) from the [Greek: Odysseus automolos], which told how Odysseus got inside Troy in the disguise of a beggar and obtained valuable information. Another feature of his works was the large number of excellent sentiments expressed in a brief proverbial form; the Pythagoreans claimed him as a member of their school, who had forsaken the study of philosophy for the writing of comedy. Plato (_Theaetetus_, 152 E) puts him at the head of the masters of comedy, coupling his name with Homer and, according to a remark in Diogenes Laërtius, Plato was indebted to Epicharmus for much of his philosophy. Ennius called his didactic poem on natural philosophy _Epicharmus_ after the comic poet. The metres employed by Epicharmus were iambic trimeter, and especially trochaic and anapaestic tetrameter. The plot of the plays was simple, the action lively and rapid; hence they were classed among the _fabulae motoriae_ (stirring, bustling), as indicated in the well-known line of Horace (_Epistles_, ii. 1. 58): Entry: EPICHARMUS
The name has remained attached to the island from the earliest historical times with but little interruption of the tradition; though in Brompton's travels (12th century) and in the old Venetian maps we find it called Fale or Val de Compar, and at a later date it not unfrequently appears as Little Cephalonia. This last name indicates the general character of Ithacan history (if history it can be called) in modern and indeed in ancient times; for the fame of the island is almost solely due to its position in the Homeric story of Odysseus. Ithaca, according to the Homeric epos, was the royal seat and residence of King Odysseus. The island is incidentally described with no small variety of detail, picturesque and topographical; the Homeric localities for which counterparts have been sought are Mount Neritos, Mount Neion, the harbour of Phorcys, the town and palace of Odysseus, the fountain of Arethusa, the cave of the Naiads, the stalls of the swineherd Eumaeus, the orchard of Laertes, the Korax or Raven Cliff and the island Asteris, where the suitors lay in ambush for Telemachus. Among the "identificationists" there are two schools, one placing the town at Polis on the west coast in the northern half of the island (Leake, Gladstone, &c.), and the other at Aeto on the isthmus. The latter site, which was advocated by Sir William Gell (_Topography and Antiquities of Ithaca_, London, 1807), was supported by Dr H. Schliemann, who carried on excavations in 1873 and 1878 (see H. Schliemann, _Ithaque, le Péloponnèse, Troie_, Paris, 1869, also published in German; his letter to _The Times_, 26th of September, 1878; and the author's life prefixed to _Ilios_, London, 1880). But his results were mainly negative. The fact is that no amount of ingenuity can reconcile the descriptions given in the _Odyssey_ with the actual topography of this island. Above all, the passage in which the position of Ithaca is described offers great difficulties. "Now Ithaca lies low, farthest up the sea line towards the darkness, but those others face the dawning and the sun" (Butcher and Lang). Such a passage fits very ill an island lying, as Ithaca does, just to the east of Cephalonia. Accordingly Professor W. Dörpfeld has suggested that the Homeric Ithaca is not the island which was called Ithaca by the later Greeks, but must be identified with Leucas (Santa Maura, q.v.). He succeeds in fitting the Homeric topography to this latter island, and suggests that the name may have been transferred in consequence of a migration of the inhabitants. There is no doubt that Leucas fits the Homeric descriptions much better than Ithaca; but, on the other hand, many scholars maintain that it is a mistake to treat the imaginary descriptions of a poet as if they were portions of a guide-book, or to look, in the author of the _Odyssey_, for a close familiarity with the geography of the Ionian islands. Entry: ITHACA
_Epic Cycle._--This is a collection or corpus of lays written about 776-580 B.C. by poets of the Ionian School, introductory or complementary to the Homeric poems, dealing with the legends of the Trojan and Theban wars. At a later date they were arranged so as to form a continuous narrative (the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ included), perhaps after certain alterations had been made, to fill up gaps and remove inconsistencies and repetitions. By whom, and when, they were so arranged, cannot be decided; it is possible that it was the work of Zenodotus of Ephesus, who had the care of the epic section of the Alexandrian library. In order to furnish the general reader with a comprehensive sketch of mythological history, Proclus--according to Welcker and Valesius (Valois), not the neo-Platonist, but an unknown 2nd or 3rd century grammarian, perhaps Eutychius Proclus of Sicca[1] in Africa, one of the tutors of Marcus Aurelius (see PROCLUS)--compiled a prose summary ([Greek: Grammatkê chrêstomatheia]) of the contents of the poems, to serve as a sort of primer to Greek literature. Extracts from this are preserved in the Codex Venetus of Homer and Photius (cod. 239), according to which the epic cycle began with the union of Uranus and Ge and ended with the death of Odysseus on his return to Ithaca at the hands of his son Telegonus. The cycle was in existence in his (Proclus's) time, and was in request not so much for its artistic merit, as for the "sequence of the events described in it." Further light is thrown on the subject by pictorial representations, intended for school use during the Roman imperial period, the most famous of which is the _Tabula Iliaca_ in the Capitoline museum. Entry: CYCLE
CHAERONEIA, or CHAERONEA, an ancient town of Boeotia, said by some to be the Homeric Arne, situated about 7 m. W. of Orchomenus. Until the 4th century B.C. it was a dependency of Orchomenus, and at all times it played but a subordinate part in Boeotian politics. Its importance lay in its strategic position near the head of the defile which presents the last serious obstacle to an invader in central Greece. Two great battles were fought on this site in antiquity. In 338 B.C. Philip II. and Alexander of Macedon were confronted by a confederate host from central Greece and Peloponnese under the leadership of Thebes and Athens, which here made the last stand on behalf of Greek liberty. A hard-fought conflict, in which the Greek infantry displayed admirable firmness, was decided in favour of Philip through the superior organization of his army. In 86 B.C. the Roman general L. Cornelius Sulla defeated the army of Mithradates VI., king of Pontus, near Chaeroneia. The latter's enormous numerical superiority was neutralized by Sulla's judicious choice of ground and the steadiness of his legionaries; the Asiatics after the failure of their attack were worn down and almost annihilated. Chaeroneia is also notable as the birthplace of Plutarch, who returned to his native town in old age, and was held in honour by its citizens for many successive generations. Pausanias (ix. 40) mentions the divine honours accorded at Chaeroneia to the sceptre of Agamemnon, the work of Hephaestus (cf. _Iliad_, ii. 101). The site of the town is partly occupied by the village of Kapraena; the ancient citadel was known as the Petrachus, and there is a theatre cut in the rock. A colossal seated lion a little to the S.E. of the site marks the grave of the Boeotians who fell fighting against Philip; this lion was found broken to pieces; the tradition that it was blown up by Odysseus Androutsos is incorrect (see Murray, _Handbook for Greece_, ed. 5, 1884, p. 409). It has now been restored and re-erected (1905). Entry: CHAERONEIA
The story of the expedition of the Argonauts is very old. Homer was acquainted with it and speaks of the "Argo" as well known to all men; the wanderings of Odysseus may have been partly founded on its voyage. Pindar, in the fourth Pythian ode. gives the oldest detailed account of it. In Greek, there are also extant the _Argonautica_ of Apollonius Rhodius and the pseudo-Orpheus (4th century A.D.), and the account in Apollodorus (i. 9), based on the best extant authorities; in Latin, the imitation of Apollonius (a free translation or adaptation of whose _Argonautica_ was made by Terentius Varro Atacinus in the time of Cicero) by Valerius Flaccus. In ancient times the expedition was regarded as a historical fact, an incident in the opening up of the Euxine to Greek commerce and colonization. Its object was the acquisition of gold, which was caught by the inhabitants of Colchis in fleeces as it was washed down the rivers. Suidas says that the fleece was a book written on parchment, which taught how to make gold by chemical processes. The rationalists explained the ram on which Phrixus crossed the sea as the name or ornament of the ship on which he escaped. Several interpretations of the legend have been put forward by modern scholars. According to C.O. Müller, it had its origin in the worship of Zeus Laphystius; the fleece is the pledge of reconciliation; Jason is a propitiating god of health, Medea a goddess akin to Hera; Aeetes is connected with the Colchian sun-worship. Forchhammer saw in it an old nature symbolism; Jason, the god of healing and fruitfulness, brought the fleece--the fertilizing rain-cloud--to the western land that was parched by the heat of the sun. Others treat it as a solar myth; the ram is the light of the sun, the flight of Phrixus and the death of Helle signify its setting, the recovery of the fleece its rising again. Entry: ARGONAUTS
_History._--The name Lisbon is a modification of the ancient name _Olisipo_, also written _Ulyssippo_ under the influence of a mythical story of a city founded by Odysseus (Ulysses) in Iberia, which, however, according to Strabo, was placed by ancient tradition rather in the mountains of Turdetania (the extreme south of Spain). Under the Romans Olisipo became a _municipium_ with the epithet of _Felicitas Julia_, but was inferior in importance to the less ancient _Emerita Augusta_ (Mérida). From 407 to 585 it was occupied by Alaric, and thenceforward by the Visigoths until 711, when it was taken by the Moors. Under the Moors the town bore in Arabic the name of _Al Oshbuna_ or _Lashbuna_. It was the first point of Moslem Spain attacked by the Normans in 844. When Alphonso I. of Portugal took advantage of the decline and fall of the Almoravid dynasty to incorporate the provinces of Estremadura and Alemtejo in his new kingdom, Lisbon was the last city of Portugal to fall into his hands, and yielded only after a siege of several months (21st October 1147), in which he was aided by English and Flemish crusaders on their way to Syria. In 1184 the city was again attacked by the Moslems under the powerful caliph Abu Yakub, but the enterprise failed. In the reign of Ferdinand I., the greater part of the town was burned by the Castilian army under Henry II. (1373), and in 1384 the Castilians again besieged Lisbon, but without success. Lisbon became the seat of an archbishop in 1390, the seat of government in 1422. During the 16th century it gained much in wealth and splendour from the establishment of a Portuguese empire in India and Africa. From 1580 to 1640 Lisbon was a provincial town under Spanish rule, and it was from this port that the Spanish Armada sailed in 1588. In 1640 the town was captured by the duke of Braganza, and the independence of the kingdom restored. Entry: LISBON
HYMNS.--1. _Classical Hymnody._--The word "hymn" ([Greek: hymnos]) was employed by the ancient Greeks[1] to signify a song or poem composed in honour of gods, heroes or famous men, or to be recited on some joyful, mournful or solemn occasion. Polymnia was the name of their lyric muse. Homer makes Alcinous entertain Odysseus with a "hymn" of the minstrel Demodocus, on the capture of Troy by the wooden horse. The _Works and Days_ of Hesiod begins with an invocation to the Muses to address hymns to Zeus, and in his _Theogonia_ he speaks of them as singing or inspiring "hymns" to all the divinities, and of the bard as "their servant, hymning the glories of men of old, and of the gods of Olympus." Pindar calls by this name odes, like his own, in praise of conquerors at the public games of Greece. The Athenian dramatists (Euripides most frequently) use the word and its cognate verbs in a similar manner; they also describe by them metrical oracles and apophthegms, martial, festal and hymeneal songs, dirges and lamentations or incantations of woe. Entry: HYMNS
In 1896 excavations with the object of exploring the whole northern and eastern slopes of the Acropolis were begun by Kavvadias. The pathway between the citadel and the Areopagus was found to be so narrow that it is certain the Panathenaic procession cannot have taken this route to the Acropolis. On the north-west rock the caves known as the grottoes of Pan and Apollo were cleared out; these consist of a slight high-arched indentation immediately to the east of the Clepsydra and a double and somewhat deeper cavern a little farther to the east. In the first mentioned are a number of niches in which [Greek: pinakes] (votive tablets) were placed: some of these, inscribed with dedications to Apollo, have been discovered. The whole locality was the seat of the ancient cult of this deity, afterwards styled "Hypacraeus," with which was associated the legend of Creüsa and the birth of Ion. The worship of Pan was introduced after the Persian wars, in consequence of an apparition seen by Pheidippides, the Athenian courier, in the mountains of Arcadia. Another cave more to the west was revealed by the demolition of the bastion of Odysseus. To the east a much deeper and hitherto unknown cavern has been revealed, which Kavvadias identifies with the grotto of Pan. Close to it are a series of steps hewn in the rock which connect with those discovered in 1886 within the Acropolis wall. Farther east is an underground passage leading eastward to a cave supposed to be the sanctuary of Aglaurus where the ephebi took the oath; with this passage is connected a secret staircase leading up through a cleft in the rock to the precinct of the Errephori on the Acropolis. It is conceivable that the priestesses employed this exit when descending on their mysterious errand. Entry: I
GIANT (O. E. _geant_, through Fr. _géant_, O. Fr. _gaiant_, _jaiant_, _jéant_, med. pop. Lat. _gagante_--cf. Ital. _gigante_--by assimilation from _gigantem_, acc. of Lat. _gigas_, Gr. [Greek: gigas]). The idea conveyed by the word in classic mythology is that of beings more or less manlike, but monstrous in size and strength. Figures like the Titans and the Giants whose birth from Heaven and Earth is sung by Hesiod in the _Theogony_, such as can heap up mountains to scale the sky and war beside or against the gods, must be treated, with other like monstrous figures of the wonder-tales of the world, as belonging altogether to the realms of mythology. But there also appear in the legends of giants some with historic significance. The ancient and commonly repeated explanation of the Greek word [Greek: gigas], as connected with or derived from [Greek: gêgenês], or "earth-born," is etymologically doubtful, but at any rate the idea conveyed by it was familiar to the ancient Greeks, that the giants were earth-born or indigenous races (see Welcker, _Griechische Götterlehre_, i. 787). The Bible (the English reader must be cautioned that the word giant has been there used ambiguously, from the Septuagint downwards) touches the present matter in so far as it records the traditions of the Israelites of fighting in Palestine with tall races of the land such as the Anakim (Numb. xiii. 33; Deut. ii. 10, iii. 11; 1 Sam. xvii. 4). When reading in Homer of "the Cyclopes and the wild tribes of the Giants," or of the adventures of Odysseus in the cave of Polyphemus (Homer, _Odyss._ vii. 206; ix.), we seem to come into view of dim traditions, exaggerated through the mist of ages, of pre-Hellenic barbarians, godless, cannibal, skin-clothed, hurling huge stones in their rude warfare. Giant-legends of this class are common in Europe and Asia, where the big and stupid giants would seem to have been barbaric tribes exaggerated into monsters in the legends of those who dispossessed and slew them. In early times it was usual for cities to have their legends of giants. Thus London had Gog and Magog, whose effigies (14 ft. high) still stand in the Guildhall (see GOG); Antwerp had her Antigonus, 40 ft. high; Douai had Gayant, 22 ft. high, and so on. Entry: GIANT
(c) The familiar is sometimes an ancestral spirit, and here we touch the fringe of the cult of the dead (see also ANCESTOR WORSHIP). Especially among the lower races the dead are regarded as hostile; the Australian avoids the grave even of a kinsman and elaborate ceremonies of mourning are found amongst most primitive peoples, whose object seems to be to rid the living of the danger they run by association with the ghost of the dead. Among the Zulu the spirits of the dead are held to be friendly or hostile, just as they were in life; on the Congo a man after death joins the good or bad spirits according as his life has been good or bad. Especially feared among many peoples are the souls of those who have committed suicide or died a violent death; the woman who dies in childbed is held to become a demon of the most dangerous kind; even the unburied, as restless, dissatisfied spirits, are more feared than ordinary ghosts. Naturally spirits of these latter kinds are more valuable as familiars than ordinary dead men's souls. We find many recipes for securing their aid. In the Malay Peninsula the blood of a murdered man must be put in a bottle and prayers said over; after seven days of this worship a sound is heard and the operator puts his finger into the bottle for the polong, as the demon is called, to suck; it will fly through the air in the shape of an exceedingly diminutive female figure, and is always preceded by its pet, the pelesit, in the shape of a grasshopper. In Europe a similar demon is said to be obtainable from a cock's egg. In South Africa and India, on the other hand, the magician digs up a dead body, especially of a child, to secure a familiar. The evocation of spirits, especially in the form of necromancy, is an important branch of the demonology of many peoples; and the peculiarities of trance mediumship, which seem sufficiently established by modern research, go far to explain the vogue of this art. It seems to have been common among the Jews, and the case of the witch of Endor is narrated in a way to suggest something beyond fraud; in the book of magic which bears the name of Dr Faustus may be found many of the formulae for raising demons; in England may be mentioned especially Dr Dee as one of the most famous of those who claimed before the days of modern spiritualism (q.v.) to have intercourse with the unseen world and to summon demons at his will. Sometimes the spirits were summoned to appear as did the phantoms of the Greek heroes to Odysseus; sometimes they were called to enter a crystal (see CRYSTAL-GAZING); sometimes they are merely asked to declare the future or communicate by moving external objects without taking a visible form; thus among the Karens at the close of the burial ceremonies the ghost of the dead man, which is said to hover round till the rites are completed, is believed to make a ring swing round and snap the string from which it hangs. Entry: DEMONOLOGY