Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Anjar" to "Apollo" / Volume 2, Slice 2 Papyras Classics

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Chapter 2

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Anjar" to "Apollo" (part 2)


‘ANTARA IBN SHADDĀD, Arabian poet and warrior of the 6th century, was famous both for his poetry and his adventurous life. His chief poem is contained in the Mo‘allakât. The account of his life forms the basis of a long and extravagant romance. His father Shaddād was a soldier, his mother Zabūba a negro slave. Neglected at first, he soon claimed attention and respect for himself, and by his remarkable personal qualities and courage in battle he gained his freedom and the acknowledgment of his father. He took part in the great war between the related tribes of Abs and Dhubyān, which began over a contest of horses and was named after them the war of Dāhis and Ghabrā. He died in a fight against the tribe of Ṭai. His poems, which are chiefly concerned with fighting or with his love for Abla, are published in W. Ahlwardt’s The Diwans of the six ancient Arabic Poets (London, 1870); they have also been published separately at Beirût (1888). As regards their genuineness, cf. W. Ahlwardt’s Bemerkungen uber die Aechtheit der alten arabichen Gedichte (Greifswald, 1872), pp. 50 ff. The Romance of ‘Antar (Sîrat ‘Antar ibn Shaddād) is a work which was long handed down by oral tradition only, has grown to immense proportions and has been published in 32 vols. at Cairo, 1307 (A.D. 1889), and in 10 vols. at Beirût, 1871. It was partly translated by Terrick Hamilton under the title ‘Antar, a Bedoueen Romance (4 vols., London, 1820).

For an account of the poet and his works see H. Thorbeckes, Antarah, ein vorislamischer Dichter (Leipzig, 1867), and cf. the Book of Songs (see Abulfaraj), vol. vii. pp. 148-153.

(G. W. T.)


ANTARCTIC (Gr. ἀντί, opposite, and ἄρκτος, the Bear, the northern constellation of Ursa Major), the epithet applied to the region (including both the ocean and the lands) round the South Pole. The Antarctic circle is drawn at 66° 30′ S., but polar conditions of climate, &c., extend considerably north of the area thus enclosed. (See Polar Regions.)


ANTEATER, a term applied to several mammals, but (zoologically at any rate) specially indicating the tropical American anteaters of the family Myrmecophagidae (see Edentata). The typical and largest representative of the group is the great anteater or ant-bear (Myrmecophaga jubata), an animal measuring 4 ft. in length without the tail, and 2 ft. in height at the shoulder. Its prevailing colour is grey, with a broad black band, bordered with white, commencing on the chest, and passing obliquely over the shoulder, diminishing gradually in breadth as it approaches the loins, where it ends in a point. It is extensively distributed in the tropical parts of South and Central America, frequenting low swampy savannas, along the banks of rivers, and the depths of the humid forests, but is nowhere abundant. Its food consists mainly of termites, to obtain which it opens their nests with its powerful sharp anterior claws, and as the insects swarm to the damaged part of their dwelling, it draws them into its mouth by means of its long, flexible, rapidly moving tongue covered with glutinous saliva. The great anteater is terrestrial in habits, not burrowing underground like armadillos. Though generally an inoffensive animal, when attacked it can defend itself vigorously and effectively with its sabre-like anterior claws. The female produces a single young at a birth. The tamandua anteaters, as typified by Tamandua (or Uroleptes) tetradactyla, are much smaller than the great anteater, and differ essentially from it in their habits, being mainly arboreal. They inhabit the dense primeval forests of South and Central America. The usual colour is yellowish-white, with a broad black lateral band, covering nearly the whole of the side of the body.

The little or two-toed anteater (Cyclopes or Cycloturus didactylus) is a native of the hottest parts of South and Central America, and about the size of a rat, of a general yellowish colour, and exclusively arboreal in its habits. The name scaly anteater is applied to the pangolin (q.v.); the banded anteater (Myrmecobius fasciatus) is a marsupial, and the spiny anteater (Echidna) is one of the monotremes (see Marsupialia and Monotremata).


ANTE-CHAPEL, the term given to that portion of a chapel which lies on the western side of the choir screen. In some of the colleges at Oxford and Cambridge the ante-chapel is carried north and south across the west end of the chapel, constituting a western transept or narthex. This model, based on Merton College chapel (13th century), of which only chancel and transept were built though a nave was projected, was followed at Wadham, New and Magdalen Colleges, Oxford, in the new chapel of St John’s College, Cambridge, and in Eton College. In Jesus College, Cambridge, the transept and a short nave constitute the ante-chapel; in Clare College an octagonal vestibule serves the same purpose; and in Christ’s, Trinity and King’s Colleges, Cambridge, the ante-chapel is a portion of the main chapel, divided off from the chancel by the choir screen.


ANTE-CHOIR, the term given to the space enclosed in a church between the outer gate or railing of the rood screen and the door of the screen; sometimes there is only one rail, gate or door, but in Westminster Abbey it is equal in depth to one bay of the nave. The ante-choir is also called the “fore choir.”


ANTE-FIXAE (from Lat. antefigere, to fasten before), the vertical blocks which terminate the covering tiles of the roof of a Greek temple; as spaced they take the place of the cymatium and form a cresting along the sides of the temple. The face of the ante-fixae was richly carved with the anthemion (q.v.) ornament.


ANTELOPE, a zoological name which, so far as can be determined, appears to trace its origin, through the Latin, to Pantholops, the old Coptic, and Antholops, the late Greek name of the fabled unicorn. Its adoption by the languages of Europe cannot apparently be traced farther back than the 4th century of our era, at which date it was employed to designate an imaginary animal living on the banks of the Euphrates. By the earlier English naturalists, and afterwards by Buffon, it was, however, applied to the Indian blackbuck, which is thus entitled to rank as the antelope. It follows that the subfamily typified by this species, in which are included the gazelles, is the one to which alone the term antelopes should be applied if it were employed in a restricted and definable sense.

Although most people have a general vague idea of what constitutes an “antelope,” yet the group of animals thus designated is one that does not admit of accurate limitations or definition. Some, for instance, may consider that the chamois and the so-called white goat of the Rocky Mountains are entitled to be included in the group; but this is not the view held by the authors of the Book of Antelopes referred to below; and, as a matter of fact, the term is only a vague designation for a number of more or less distinct groups of hollow-horned ruminants which do not come under the designation of cattle, sheep or goats; and in reality there ought to be a distinct English group-name for each subfamily into which “antelopes” are subdivided.

The great majority of antelopes, exclusive of the doubtful chamois group (which, however, will be included in the present article), are African, although the gazelles are to a considerable extent an Asiatic group. They include ruminants varying in size from a hare to an ox; and comprise about 150 species, although this number is subject to considerable variation according to personal views as to the limitations of species and races. No true antelopes are American, the prongbuck (Antilocapra), which is commonly called “antelope” in the United States, representing a distinct group; while, as already mentioned, the Rocky Mountain or white goat stands on the borderland between antelopes and goats.

Fig. 1.—Female Bushbuck (Tragelaphus scriptus).

The first group, or Tragelaphinae, is represented by the African elands (Taurotragus), bongo (Boöcercus), kudus (Strepsiceros) and bushbucks or harnessed antelopes (Tragelaphus), and the Indian nilgai (Boselaphus). Except in the bongo and elands, horns are present only in the males, and these are angulated and generally spirally twisted, and without rings. The muzzle is naked, small glands are present on the face below the eyes, and the tail is comparatively long. The colours are often brilliant; white spots and stripes being prevalent. The harnessed antelopes, or bushbucks, are closely allied to the kudus, from which they chiefly differ by the spiral formed by the horns generally having fewer turns. They include some of the most brilliantly coloured of all antelopes; the ornamentation taking the form of vertical white lines and rows of spots. Usually the sexes differ in colour. Whereas most of the species have hoofs of normal shape, in some, such as the nakong, or situtunga (Tragelaphus spekei), these are greatly elongated, in order to be suited for walking in soft mud, and these have accordingly been separated as Limnotragus. The last-named species spends most of its time in water, where it may be observed not infrequently among the reeds with all but its head and horns submerged. The true or smaller bushbucks, represented by the widely spread Tragelaphus scriptus, with several local races (fig. 1) are sometimes separated as Sylvicapra, leaving the genus Tragelaphus to be represented by the larger T. angasi and its relatives. The genus Strepsiceros is represented by the true or great kudu (S. capensis or S. strepsiceros), fig. 2, ranging from the Cape to Somaliland, and the smaller S. imberbis of North-East Africa, which has no throat-fringe. The large and brightly coloured bongo (Boöcercus euryceros) of the equatorial forest-districts serves in some respects to connect the bushbucks with the elands, having horns in both sexes, and a tufted tail, but a brilliant orange coat with vertical white stripes. Still larger are the elands, of which the typical Taurotragus oryx of the Cape is uniformly sandy-coloured, although stripes appear in the more northern T. o. livingstonei, while the black-necked eland (T. derbianus) of Senegambia and the Bahr-el-Ghazal district is a larger and more brilliantly coloured animal. The small horns and bluish-grey colour of the adult bulls serve to distinguish the Indian nilgai (q.v.), Boselaphus tragocamdus, from the other members of the subfamily.

The second group, which is mainly African, but also represented in Syria, is that of the Hippotraginae, typified by the sable antelope (Hippotragus niger) and roan antelope (H. equinus), but also including the oryxes (Oryx) and addax. These are for the most part large antelopes, with long cylindrical horns, which are present in both sexes, hairy muzzles, no face-glands, long tufted tails and tall thick molars of the ox-type. In Hippotragus the stout and thickly ringed horns rise vertically from a ridge above the eyes at an obtuse angle to the plane of the lower part of the face, and then sweep backwards in a bold curve; while there are tufts of long white hairs near the eyes. The sable antelope is a southern species in which both sexes are black or blackish when adult, while the lighter-coloured and larger roan antelope has a much wider distribution. The South African blauwbok (H. leucophaeus) is extinct. In the addax (Addax nasomaculatus), which is a distinct species common to North Africa and Syria, the ringed horns form an open spiral ascending in the plane of the face, and there is long, shaggy, dark hair on the fore-quarters in winter. The various species of oryx differ from Hippotragus by the absence of the white eye-tufts, and by the horns sloping backwards in the plane of the face. In the South African gemsbuck (Oryx gazella), fig. 3, the East African beisa or true oryx (O. beisa), and the white Arabian (O. beatrix) the horns are straight, but in the North African white oryx or algazel (O. leucoryx or O. algazal) they are scimitar-shaped, the colour of this species being white and pale chestnut (see Addax, Oryx, and Sable Antelope).

The third subfamily is the Antilopinae, the members of which have a much wider geographical range than either of the foregoing groups. The subfamily is characterized by the narrow crowns of the molars, which are similar to those of sheep, and the hairy muzzle. Generally there are face-glands below the eyes; and the tail is moderate or short. Pits are present in the forehead of the skull, and the horns are ringed for part of their length, with a compressed base, their form being often lyrate, but sometimes spiral. Lateral hoofs are generally present.

Gazelles (Gazella), which form by far the largest genus of the subfamily, are inhabitants of open and frequently more or less desert districts. They are mostly of a sandy colour, with dark and light markings on the face, and often a dark band on the flanks. The horns are more or less lyrate, and generally developed in both sexes; there are frequently brushes of hair on the knees. Gazelles may be divided into groups. The one to which the North African G. dorcas belongs is characterized by the presence of lyrate or sub-lyrate horns in both sexes, and by the white of the buttocks not extending on to the haunches. Nearly allied is the group including the Indian G. bennetti and the Arabian G. arabica, in which the horns have a somewhat S-shaped curvature in profile. In the group represented by the African G. granti, G. thomsoni, G. mohr, &c., the white of the buttocks often sends a prolongation on to the flanks, the horns are long and the size is large. Lastly, the Central Asian G. gutturosa, G. subgutturosa and G. picticaudata form a group in which the females are hornless and the face-markings inconspicuous or wanting.

The South African springbuck (Antidorcas euchore) is nearly related to the gazelles, from which it is distinguished by the presence on the middle line of the loins of an evertible pouch, lined with long white hairs capable of erection. It has also one premolar tooth less in the lower jaw. Formerly these beautiful antelopes existed in countless numbers on the plains of South Africa, and were in the habit of migrating in droves which completely filled entire valleys. Now they are comparatively rare.

The dibatag or Clarke’s gazelle (Ammodorcas clarkei), of Somaliland, forms a kind of connecting link between the true gazelles and the gerenuk, this being especially shown in the skull. The face has the ordinary gazelle-markings; but the rather short horns—which are wanting in the female—have a peculiar upward and forward curvature, unlike that obtaining in the gazelles and somewhat resembling that of the reedbuck. The neck is longer and more slender than in ordinary gazelles, and the tail is likewise relatively long. Although local, these animals are fairly common in the interior of Somaliland, where they are known by the name of dibatag. In running, the head and neck are thrown backwards, while the tail is turned forwards over the back.

The East African gerenuk (q.v.), or Waller’s gazelle (Lithocranius walleri), of which two races have been named, is a very remarkable ruminant, distinguished not only by its exceedingly elongated neck and limbs, but also by the peculiar hooked form of the very massive horns of the bucks, the dense structure and straight profile of the skull, and the extreme slenderness of the lower jaw.

A still more aberrant gazelle is a small North-East African species known as the beira (Dorcatragus melanotis), with very short horns, large hoofs and a general appearance recalling that of some of the members of the subfamily Neotraginae, although in other respects gazelle-like. The blackbuck (Antilope cervicapra or A. bezoartica) of India, a species taking its name from the deep black coat assumed by the adult bucks, and easily recognized by the graceful, spirally twisted horns ornamenting the heads of that sex, is now the sole representative of the genus Antilope, formerly taken to embrace the whole of the true antelopes. Large face-glands are characteristic of the species, which inhabits the open plains of India in large herds. They leap high in the air, like the springbuck, when on the move.

With the palla (q.v.), or impala (Aepyceros melampus), we reach an exclusively African genus, characterized by the lyrate horns of the bucks, the absence of lateral hoofs, and the presence of a pair of glands with black tufts of hair on the hind-feet.

The sheep-like saiga (q.v.), Saiga tatarica, of the Kirghiz steppes stands apart from all other antelopes by its curiously puffed and trunk-like nose, which can be wrinkled up when the animal is feeding and has the nostrils opening downwards. More or less nearly related to the saiga is the chiru (q.v.), Pantholops hodgsoni of Tibet, characterized by the long upright black horns of the bucks, and the less convex nose, in which the nostrils open anteriorly instead of downwards.

The Neotraginae (or Nanotraginae) form an exclusively African group of small-sized antelopes divided into several, for the most part nearly related, genera. Almost the only characters they possess in common are the short and spike-like horns of the bucks, which are ringed at the base, with smooth tips, and the large size of the face-gland, which opens by a circular aperture. Neotragus is represented by the pigmy royal antelope (N. pygmaeus) of Guinea; Hylarnus includes one species from Cameroon and a second from the Semliki forest; while Nesotragus comprises the East African suni antelopes, N. moschatus and N. livingstonianus. All three might, however, well be included in Neotragus. The royal antelope is the smallest of the Bovidae.

The steinbok (Rhaphiceros campestris) and the grysbok (R. melanotis) are the best-known representatives of a group characterized by the vertical direction of the horns and the small gland-pit in the skull; lateral hoofs being absent in the first-named and present in the second. A bare gland-patch behind the ear serves to distinguish the oribis or ourebis, as typified by Oribia montana of the Cape; lateral hoofs being present and the face-pit large.

From all the preceding the tiny dik-diks (Madoqua) of North-East Africa differ by their hairy noses, expanded in some species into short trunks; while the widely spread klipspringer (q.v.), Oreotragus saltator, with its several local races, is unfailingly distinguishable by its rounded blunt hoofs and thick, brittle, golden-flecked hair.

In some respects connecting the last group with the Cervicaprinae is the rhebok, or vaal-rhebok (Pelea capreolus), a grey antelope of the size of a roebuck, with small upright horns in the bucks recalling those of the last group, and small lateral hoofs, but no face-glands. In size and several structural features it approximates to the more typical Cervicaprinae, as represented by the reedbuck (Cervicapra), and the waterbucks and kobs (Cobus or Kobus), all of which are likewise African. These are medium-sized or large antelopes with naked muzzles, narrow sheep-like upper molars, fairly long tails, rudimentary or no face-glands, and pits in the frontal bones of the skull. Reedbuck (q.v.), or rietbok (Cervicapra), are foxy-red antelopes ranging in size from a fallow-deer to a roe, with thick bushy tails, forwardly curving black horns, and a bare patch of glandular skin behind each ear. They keep to open country near water. The waterbuck (q.v.), Cobus, on the other hand, actually seek refuge from pursuit in the water. They have heavily fringed necks, tufted tails, long lyrate horns in the bucks (fig. 4) but no glandular ear-patches. The true waterbuck (C. ellipsiprymnus), and the defassa or sing-sing (C. defassa), are the two largest species, equal in size to red deer, and grey or reddish in colour. Of the smaller forms or kobs, C. maria and C. leucotis of the swamps of the White Nile are characterized by the black coats of the adult bucks; the West African C. cob, and its East African representative C. thomasi, are wholly red antelopes of the size of roedeer; the lichi or lechwe (C. lichi) is characterized by its long horns, black fore-legs and superior size; while the puku (C. vardoni), which is also a swamp-loving species from South-Central Africa, differs from the three preceding species by the fore-legs being uniformly foxy.

The duikers, or duikerboks (Cephalophus), of Africa, which range in size from a large hare to a fallow-deer, typify the subfamily Cephalophinae, characterized by the spike-like horns of the bucks, the elongated aperture of the face-glands, the naked muzzle, the relatively short tail, and the square-crowned upper molars; lateral hoofs being present. In the duikers themselves the single pair of horns is set in the midst of a tuft of long hairs, and the face-gland opens in a long naked line on the side of the face above the muzzle. The group is represented in India by the chousingha or four-horned antelope (Tetraceros quadricornis), generally distinguished by the feature from which it takes its name (see Duiker).

The last section of the true antelopes is the Bubalinae, represented by the hartebeest (q.v.), Bubalis, blesbok and sassaby (Damaliscus), and the gnu (q.v.) or wildebeest (Connochaetes, also called Catoblepas), all being African with the exception of one or two hartebeests which range into Syria. All these are large and generally more or less uniformly coloured antelopes with horns in both sexes, long and more or less hairy tails, high withers, small face-glands, naked muzzles, tall, narrow upper molars, and the absence of pits in the frontal bones. The long face, high crest for the horns, which are ringed, lyrate and more or less strongly angulated, and the moderately long tail, are the distinctive features of the hartebeests. They are large red antelopes (fig. 5), often with black markings on the face and limbs. In Damaliscus, which includes, among many other species, the blesbok and bontebok (D. albifrons and D. pygargus) and the sassaby or bastard hartebeest (D. lunatus), the face is shorter, and the horns straighter and set on a less elevated crest. The colour, too, of these antelopes tends in many cases to purple, with white markings. From the hartebeest the gnus (fig. 6) differ by their smooth and outwardly or downwardly directed horns, broad bristly muzzles, heavy manes and long horse-like tails. There are two chief types, the white-tailed gnu or black wildebeest (Connochaetes gnu) of South Africa, now nearly extinct (fig. 6), and the brindled gnu, or blue wildebeest (C. taurinus), which, with some local variation, has a large range in South and East Africa.

In concluding this survey of living antelopes, reference may be made to the subfamily Rupicaprinae (typified by the European chamois), the members of which, as already stated, are in some respects intermediate between antelopes and goats. They are all small or medium-sized mountain ruminants, for the most part European and Asiatic, but with one North American representative. They are heavily built ruminants, with horns of nearly equal size in both sexes, short tapering tails, large hoofs, narrow goat-like upper molars, and usually small face-glands. The horns are generally rather small, upright, ringed at the base, and more or less curved backwards, but in the takin they are gnu-like. The group is represented by the European chamois or gemse (Rupicapra tragus or R. rupicapra), broadly distinguished by its well-known hook-like horns, and the Asiatic gorals (Urotragus) and serows (Nemorhaedus), which are represented by numerous species ranging from Tibet, the Himalaya, and China, to the Malay Peninsula and islands, being in the two latter areas the sole representatives of both antelopes and goats. In the structure of its horns the North American white Rocky Mountain goat (Oreamnus) is very like a serow, from which it differs by its extremely short cannon-bones. In the latter respect this ruminant resembles the takin (Budorcas) of Tibet, which, as already mentioned, has horns recalling those of the white-tailed gnu. Possibly the Arctic musk-ox (Ovibos) may be connected with the takin by means of certain extinct ruminants, such as the North American Pleistocene Euceratherium and the European Pliocene Criotherium (see Chamois, Goral, Serow, Rocky Mountain Goat and Takin).

Extinct Antelopes.—Only a few lines can be devoted to extinct antelopes, the earliest of which apparently date from the European Miocene. An antelope from the Lower Pliocene of Northern India known as Bubalis, or Damaliscus, palaeindicus indicates the occurrence of the hartebeest group in that country. Cobus also occurs in the same formation, as does likewise Hippotragus. Palaeoryx from the corresponding horizon in Greece and Samos is to some extent intermediate between Hippotragus and Oryx. Gazelles are common in the Miocene and Pliocene of both Europe and Asia. Elands and kudus appear to have been represented in India during the Pliocene; the European Palaeoreas of the same age seems to be intermediate between the two, while Protragelaphus is evidently another European representative of the group. Helicophora is another spiral-horned European Pliocene antelope, but of somewhat doubtful affinity; the same being the case with the large Criotherium of the Samos Pliocene, in which the short horns are curiously twisted. As already stated, there is a possibility of this latter ruminant being allied both to the takin and the musk-ox. Palaeotragus and Tragoceros, of the Lower Pliocene of Greece, at one time regarded as antelopes, are now known to be ancestors of the okapi.

For antelopes in general, see P.L. Sclater and O. Thomas, The Book of Antelopes (4 vols., London, 1894-1900).

(R. L.*)


ANTEMNAE (Lat. ante amnem, sc. Anienem; Varro, Ling. Lat. v. 28), an ancient village of Latium, situated on the W. of the Via Salaria, 2 m. N. of Rome, where the Anio falls into the Tiber. It is said to have been conquered by Romulus after the rape of the Sabine women, and to have assisted the Tarquins. Certainly it soon lost its independence, and in Strabo’s time was a mere village. The site is one of great strength, and is now occupied by a fort, in the construction of which traces of the outer walls and of huts, and several wells and a cistern, all belonging to the primitive village, were discovered, and also the remains of a villa of the end of the Republic.

See T. Ashby in Papers of the British School at Rome, iii. 14.


ANTENOR, an Athenian sculptor, of the latter part of the 6th century B.C. He was the author of the group of the tyrannicides Harmodius and Aristogeiton, set up by the Athenians on the expulsion of the Peisistratidae, and carried away to Persia by Xerxes. A basis with the signature of Antenor, son of Eumares, has been shown to belong to one of the dedicated female figures of archaic style which have been found on the Acropolis of Athens.

See Greek Art; and E.A. Gardner’s Handbook of Greek Sculpture, i. p. 182.


ANTENOR, in Greek legend, one of the wisest of the Trojan elders and counsellors. He advised his fellow-townsmen to send Helen back to her husband, and showed himself not unfriendly to the Greeks and an advocate of peace. In the later story, according to Dares and Dictys, he was said to have treacherously opened the gates of Troy to the enemy; in return for which, at the general sack of the city, his house, distinguished by a panther’s skin at the door, was spared by the victors. Afterwards, according to various versions of the legend, he either rebuilt a city on the site of Troy, or settled at Cyrene, or became the founder of Patavium.

Homer, Iliad, iii. 148, vii. 347; Horace, Epp. i. 2. 9; Livy i. 1; Pindar, Pythia, v. 83; Virgil, Aen. i. 242.


ANTEQUERA (the ancient Anticaria), a town of southern Spain, in the province of Málaga; on the Bobadilla-Granada railway. Pop. (1900) 31,609. Antequera overlooks the fertile valley bounded on the S. by the Sierra de los Torcales, and on the N. by the river Guadalhorce. It occupies a commanding position, while the remains of its walls, and of a fine Moorish castle on a rock that overhangs the town, show how admirably its natural defences were supplemented by art. Besides several interesting churches and palaces, it contains a fine arch, erected in 1595 in honour of Philip II., and partly constructed of inscribed Roman masonry. In the eastern suburbs there is one of the largest grave-mounds in Spain, said to be of prehistoric date, and with subterranean chambers excavated to a depth of 65 ft. The Peña de los Enamorados, or “Lovers’ Peak,” is a conspicuous crag which owes its name to the romantic legend adapted by Robert Southey (1774-1843) in his Laila and Manuel. Woollen fabrics are manufactured, and the sugar industry established in 1890 employs several thousand hands; but the majority of the inhabitants are occupied by the trade in grain, fruit, wine and oil. Marble is quarried; and at El Torcal, 6 m. south, there is a very curious labyrinth of red marble rocks. Antequera was captured from the Moors in 1410, and became until 1492 one of the most important outposts of the Christian power in Spain.

See C. Fernandez, Historia de Antequera, desde su fondacion (Malaga, 1842).


ANTEROS, pope for some weeks at the end of the year 235. He died on the 3rd of January 236. His original epitaph was discovered in the Catacombs.


ANTHELION (late Gr. ἀνθήλιος, opposite the sun), the luminous ring or halo sometimes seen in Alpine or polar regions surrounding the shadow of the head of an observer cast upon a bank of cloud or mist. The halo diminishes in brightness from the centre outwards, and is probably due to the diffraction of light. Under favourable conditions four concentric rings may be seen round the shadow of the observer’s head, the outermost, which seldom appears, having an angular radius of 40°.


ANTHEM, derived from the Gr. ἀντίφωνα, through the Saxon antefn, a word which originally had the same meaning as antiphony (q.v.). It is now, however, generally restricted to a form of church music, particularly in the service of the Church of England, in which it is appointed by the rubrics to follow the third collect at both morning and evening prayer, “in choirs and places where they sing.” It is just as usual in this place to have an ordinary hymn as an anthem, which is a more elaborate composition than the congregational hymns. Several anthems are included in the English coronation service. The words are selected from Holy Scripture or in some cases from the Liturgy, and the music is generally more elaborate and varied than that of psalm or hymn tunes. Anthems may be written for solo voices only, for the full choir, or for both, and according to this distinction are called respectively Verse, Full, and Full with Verse. Though the anthem of the Church of England is analogous to the motet of the Roman Catholic and Lutheran Churches, both being written for a trained choir and not for the congregation, it is as a musical form essentially English in its origin and development. The English school of musicians has from the first devoted its chief attention to this form, and scarcely a composer of any note can be named who has not written several good anthems. Tallis, Tye, Byrd, and Farrant in the 16th century; Orlando Gibbons, Blow, and Purcell in the 17th, and Croft, Boyce, James Kent, James Nares, Benjamin Cooke, and Samuel Arnold in the 18th were famous composers of anthems, and in more recent times the names are too numerous to mention.


ANTHEMION (from the Gr. ἀνθέμιον, a flower), the conventional design of flower or leaf forms which was largely employed by the Greeks to decorate (1) the fronts of ante-fixae, (2) the upper portion of the stele or vertical tombstones, (3) the necking of the Ionic columns of the Erechtheum and its continuation as a decorative frieze on the walls of the same, and (4) the cymatium of a cornice. Though generally known as the honeysuckle ornament, from its resemblance to that flower, its origin will be found in the flower of the acanthus plant.


ANTHEMIUS, Greek mathematician and architect, who produced, under the patronage of Justinian (A.D. 532), the original and daring plans for the church of St Sophia in Constantinople, which strikingly displayed at once his knowledge and his ignorance. He was one of five brothers—the sons of Stephanus, a physician of Tralles—who were all more or less eminent in their respective departments. Dioscorus followed his father’s profession in his native place; Alexander became at Rome one of the most celebrated medical men of his time; Olympius was deeply versed in Roman jurisprudence; and Metrodorus was one of the distinguished grammarians of the great Eastern capital. It is related of Anthemius that, having a quarrel with his next-door neighbour Zeno, he annoyed him in two ways. First, he made a number of leathern tubes the ends of which he contrived to fix among the joists and flooring of a fine upper-room in which Zeno entertained his friends, and then subjected it to a miniature earthquake by sending steam through the tubes. Secondly, he simulated thunder and lightning, the latter by flashing in Zeno’s eyes an intolerable light from a slightly hollowed mirror. Certain it is that he wrote a treatise on burning-glasses. A fragment of this was published under the title Περὶ παραδόξων μηχανημάτων by L. Dupuy in 1777, and also appeared in 1786 in the forty-second volume of the Hist. de l’Acad. des Inscr.; A. Westermann gave a revised edition of it in his Παραδοξογράφοι (Scriptores rerum mirabilium Graeci), 1839. In the course of constructions for surfaces to reflect to one and the same point (1) all rays in whatever direction passing through another point, (2) a set of parallel rays, Anthemius assumes a property of an ellipse not found in Apollonius (the equality of the angles subtended at a focus by two tangents drawn from a point), and (having given the focus and a double ordinate) he uses the focus and directrix to obtain any number of points on a parabola—the first instance on record of the practical use of the directrix.

On Anthemius generally, see Procopius, De Aedific. i. 1; Agathias, Hist. v. 6-9; Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, cap. xl.

(T. L. H.)


ANTHESTERIA, one of the four Athenian festivals in honour of Dionysus, held annually for three days (11th-13th) in the month of Anthesterion (February-March). The object of the festival was to celebrate the maturing of the wine stored at the previous vintage, and the beginning of spring. On the first day, called Pithoigia (opening of the casks), libations were offered from the newly opened casks to the god of wine, all the household, including servants and slaves, joining in the festivities. The rooms and the drinking vessels in them were adorned with spring flowers, as were also the children over three years of age. The second day, named Choës (feast of beakers), was a time of merrymaking. The people dressed themselves gaily, some in the disguise of the mythical personages in the suite of Dionysus, and paid a round of visits to their acquaintances. Drinking clubs met to drink off matches, the winner being he who drained his cup most rapidly. Others poured libations on the tombs of deceased relatives. On the part of the state this day was the occasion of a peculiarly solemn and secret ceremony in one of the sanctuaries of Dionysus in the Lenaeum, which for the rest of the year was closed. The basilissa (or basilinna), wife of the archon basileus for the time, went through a ceremony of marriage to the wine god, in which she was assisted by fourteen Athenian matrons, called geraerae, chosen by the basileus and sworn to secrecy. The days on which the Pithoigia and Choës were celebrated were both regarded as ἀποφράδες (nefasti) and μιαραί (“defiled”), necessitating expiatory libations; on them the souls of the dead came up from the underworld and walked abroad; people chewed leaves of whitethorn and besmeared their doors with tar to protect themselves from evil. But at least in private circles the festive character of the ceremonies predominated. The third day was named Chytri (feast of pots, from χύτρος, a pot), a festival of the dead. Cooked pulse was offered to Hermes, in his capacity of a god of the lower world, and to the souls of the dead. Although no performances were allowed at the theatre, a sort of rehearsal took place, at which the players for the ensuing dramatic festival were selected.

The name Anthesteria, according to the account of it given above, is usually connected with ἄνθος (“flower,” or the “bloom” of the grape), but A.W. Verrall (Journal of Hellenic Studies, xx., 1900, p. 115) explains it as a feast of “revocation” (from ἀναθέσσασθαι, to “pray back” or “up”), at which the ghosts of the dead were recalled to the land of the living (cp. the Roman mundus patet). J.E. Harrison (ibid. 100, 109, and Prolegomena), regarding the Anthesteria as primarily a festival of all souls, the object of which was the expulsion of ancestral ghosts by means of placation, explains πιθοιγία as the feast of the opening of the graves (πίθος meaning a large urn used for burial purposes), χόες as the day of libations, and χύτροι as the day of the grave-holes (not “pots,” which is χύτροι), in point of time really anterior to the πιθοιγία. E. Rohde and M.P. Nilsson, however, take the χύτροι to mean “water vessels,” and connect the ceremony with the Hydrophoria, a libation festival to propitiate the dead who had perished in the flood of Deucalion.

See F. Hiller von Gartringen in Pauly-Wissowa’s Realencyclopadie (s.v.); J. Girard in Daremberg and Saglio, Dictionnaire des antiquités (s.v. “Dionysia”); and F.A. Voigt in Roscher’s Lexikon der Mythologie (s.v. “Dionysos”); J.E. Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (1903); M.P. Nilsson, Studia de Dionysiis Atticis (1900) and Griechische Feste (1906); G.F. Schömann, Griechische Alterthümer, ii. (ed. J.H. Lipsius, 1902), p. 516; A. Mommsen, Feste der Stadt Athen (1898); E. Rohde, Psyche (4th ed., 1907), p. 237.


ANTHIM THE IBERIAN, a notable figure in the ecclesiastical history of Rumania. A Georgian by birth, he came to Rumania early in the second half of the 17th century, as a simple monk. He became bishop of Râmnicu in 1705, and in 1708 archbishop of Walachia. Taking a leading part in the political movements of the time, he came into conflict with the newly appointed Greek hospodars, and was exiled to Rumelia. But on his crossing the Danube in 1716 he was thrown into the water and drowned, as it is alleged, at the instigation of the prince of Walachia. He was a man of great talents and spoke and wrote many Oriental and European languages. Though a foreigner, he soon acquired a thorough knowledge of Rumanian, and was instrumental in helping to introduce that language into the church as its official language. He was a master printer and an artist of the first order. He cut the wood blocks for the books which he printed in Tirgovishtea, Râmnicu, Snagov and Bucharest. He was also the first to introduce Oriental founts of type into Rumania, and he printed there the first Arabic missal for the Christians of the East (Râmnicu, 1702). He also trained Georgians in the art of printing, and cut the type with which under his pupil Mihail Ishtvanovitch they printed the first Georgian Gospels (Tiflis, 1709). A man of great oratorical power, Anthim delivered a series of sermons (Didahii), and some of his pastoral letters are models of style and of language as well as of exact and beautiful printing. He also completed a whole corpus of lectionaries, missals, gospels, &c.

See M. Gaster, Chrestomathie roumaine (1881), and “Gesch. d. rumänischen Litteratur,” in Grober, Grundriss d. rom. Philologie, vol. ii. (1899); and E. Picot, Notice sur Anthim d’Ivir (Paris, 1886).

(M. G.)


ANTHOLOGY. The term “anthology,” literally denoting a garland or collection of flowers, is figuratively applied to any selection of literary beauties, and especially to that great body of fugitive poetry, comprehending about 4500 pieces, by upwards of 300 writers, which is commonly known as the Greek Anthology.

Literary History of the Greek Anthology.—The art of occasional poetry had been cultivated in Greece from an early period,—less, however, as the vehicle of personal feeling, than as the recognized commemoration of remarkable individuals or events, on sepulchral monuments and votive offerings: Such compositions were termed epigrams, i.e. inscriptions. The modern use of the word is a departure from the original sense, which simply indicated that the composition was intended to be engraved or inscribed. Such a composition must necessarily be brief, and the restraints attendant upon its publication concurred with the simplicity of Greek taste in prescribing conciseness of expression, pregnancy of meaning, purity of diction and singleness of thought, as the indispensable conditions of excellence in the epigrammatic style. The term was soon extended to any piece by which these conditions were fulfilled. The transition from the monumental to the purely literary character of the epigram was favoured by the exhaustion of more lofty forms of poetry, the general increase, from the general diffusion of culture, of accomplished writers and tasteful readers, but, above all, by the changed political circumstances of the times, which induced many who would otherwise have engaged in public affairs to addict themselves to literary pursuits. These causes came into full operation during the Alexandrian era, in which we find every description of epigrammatic composition perfectly developed. About 60 B.C., the sophist and poet, Meleager of Gadara, undertook to combine the choicest effusions of his predecessors into a single body of fugitive poetry. Collections of monumental inscriptions, or of poems on particular subjects, had previously been formed by Polemon Periegetes and others; but Meleager first gave the principle a comprehensive application. His selection, compiled from forty-six of his predecessors, and including numerous contributions of his own, was entitled The Garland (Στέφανος); and in an introductory poem each poet is compared to some flower, fancifully deemed appropriate to his genius. The arrangement of his collection was alphabetical, according to the initial letter of each epigram.

In the age of the emperor Tiberius (or Trajan, according to others) the work of Meleager was continued by another epigrammatist, Philippus of Thessalonica, who first employed the term anthology. His collection, which included the compositions of thirteen writers subsequent to Meleager, was also arranged alphabetically, and contained an introductory poem. It was of inferior quality to Meleager’s. Somewhat later, under Hadrian, another supplement was formed by the sophist Diogenianus of Heracleia (2nd century A.D.), and Strato of Sardis compiled his elegant but tainted Μοῦσα Παιδική (Musa Puerilis) from his productions and those of earlier writers. No further collection from various sources is recorded until the time of Justinian, when epigrammatic writing, especially of an amatory character, experienced a great revival at the hands of Agathias of Myrina, the historian, Paulus Silentiarius, and their circle. Their ingenious but mannered productions were collected by Agathias into a new anthology, entitled The Circle (Κύκλος); it was the first to be divided into books, and arranged with reference to the subjects of the pieces.

These and other collections made during the middle ages are now lost. The partial incorporation of them into a single body, classified according to the contents in 15 books, was the work of a certain Constantinus Cephalas, whose name alone is preserved in the single MS. of his compilation extant, but who probably lived during the temporary revival of letters under Constantine Porphyrogenitus, at the beginning of the 10th century. He appears to have merely made excerpts from the existing anthologies, with the addition of selections from Lucillius, Palladas, and other epigrammatists, whose compositions had been published separately. His arrangement, to which we shall have to recur, is founded on a principle of classification, and nearly corresponds to that adopted by Agathias. His principle of selection is unknown; it is only certain that while he omitted much that he should have retained, he has preserved much that would otherwise have perished. The extent of our obligations may be ascertained by a comparison between his anthology and that of the next editor, the monk Maximus Planudes (A.D. 1320), who has not merely grievously mutilated the anthology of Cephalas by omissions, but has disfigured it by interpolating verses of his own. We are, however, indebted to him for the preservation of the epigrams on works of art, which seem to have been accidentally omitted from our only transcript of Cephalas.

The Planudean (in seven books) was the only recension of the anthology known at the revival of classical literature, and was first published at Florence, by Janus Lascaris, in 1494. It long continued to be the only accessible collection, for although the Palatine MS., the sole extant copy of the anthology of Cephalas, was discovered in the Palatine library at Heidelberg, and copied by Saumaise (Salmasius) in 1606, it was not published until 1776, when it was included in Brunck’s Analecta Veterum Poetarum Graecorum. The MS. itself had frequently changed its quarters. In 1623, having been taken in the sack of Heidelberg in the Thirty Years’ War, it was sent with the rest of the Palatine Library to Rome as a present from Maximilian I. of Bavaria to Gregory XV., who had it divided into two parts, the first of which was by far the larger; thence it was taken to Paris in 1797. In 1816 it went back to Heidelberg, but in an incomplete state, the second part remaining at Paris. It is now represented at Heidelberg by a photographic facsimile. Brunck’s edition was superseded by the standard one of Friedrich Jacobs (1794-1814, 13 vols.), the text of which was reprinted in a more convenient form in 1813-1817, and occupies three pocket volumes in the Tauchnitz series of the classics. The best edition for general purposes is perhaps that of Dubner in Didot’s Bibliotheca (1864-1872), which contains the Palatine Anthology, the epigrams of the Planudean Anthology not comprised in the former, an appendix of pieces derived from other sources, copious notes selected from all quarters, a literal Latin prose translation by Boissonade, Bothe, and Lapaume and the metrical Latin versions of Hugo Grotius. A third volume, edited by E. Cougny, was published in 1890. The best edition of the Planudean Anthology is the splendid one by van Bosch and van Lennep (1795-1822). There is also a complete edition of the text by Stadlmuller in the Teubner series.

Arrangement.—The Palatine MS., the archetype of the present text, was transcribed by different persons at different times, and the actual arrangement of the collection does not correspond with that signalized in the index. It is as follows: Book 1. Christian epigrams; 2. Christodorus’s description of certain statues; 3. Inscriptions in the temple at Cyzicus; 4. The prefaces of Meleager, Philippus, and Agathias to their respective collections; 5. Amatory epigrams; 6. Votive inscriptions; 7. Epitaphs; 8. The epigrams of Gregory of Nazianzus; 9. Rhetorical and illustrative epigrams; 10. Ethical pieces; 11. Humorous and convivial; 12. Strata’s Musa Puerilis; 13. Metrical curiosities; 14. Puzzles, enigmas, oracles; 15. Miscellanies. The epigrams on works of art, as already stated, are missing from the Codex Palatinus, and must be sought in an appendix of epigrams only occurring in the Planudean Anthology. The epigrams hitherto recovered from ancient monuments and similar sources form appendices in the second and third volumes of Dübner’s edition.

Style and Value.—One of the principal claims of the Anthology to attention is derived from its continuity, its existence as a living and growing body of poetry throughout all the vicissitudes of Greek civilization. More ambitious descriptions of composition speedily ran their course, and having attained their complete development became extinct or at best lingered only in feeble or conventional imitations. The humbler strains of the epigrammatic muse, on the other hand, remained ever fresh and animated, ever in intimate union with the spirit of the generation that gave them birth. To peruse the entire collection, accordingly, is as it were to assist at the disinterment of an ancient city, where generation has succeeded generation on the same site, and each stratum of soil enshrines the vestiges of a distinct epoch, but where all epochs, nevertheless, combine to constitute an organic whole, and the transition from one to the other is hardly perceptible. Four stages may be indicated:—1. The Hellenic proper, of which Simonides of Ceos (c. 556-469 B.C.), the author of most of the sepulchral inscriptions on those who fell in the Persian wars, is the characteristic representative. This is characterized by a simple dignity of phrase, which to a modern taste almost verges upon baldness, by a crystalline transparency of diction, and by an absolute fidelity to the original conception of the epigram. Nearly all the pieces of this era are actual bona fide inscriptions or addresses to real personages, whether living or deceased; narratives, literary exercises, and sports of fancy are exceedingly rare. 2. The epigram received a great development in its second or Alexandrian era, when its range was so extended as to include anecdote, satire, and amorous longing; when epitaphs and votive inscriptions were composed on imaginary persons and things, and men of taste successfully attempted the same subjects in mutual emulation, or sat down to compose verses as displays of their ingenuity. The result was a great gain in richness of style and general interest, counterbalanced by a falling off in purity of diction and sincerity of treatment. The modification—a perfectly legitimate one, the resources of the old style being exhausted—had its real source in the transformation of political life, but may be said to commence with and to find its best representative in the playful and elegant Leonidas of Tarentum, a contemporary of Pyrrhus, and to close with Antipater of Sidon, about 140 B.C. (or later). It should be noticed, however, that Callimachus, one of the most distinguished of the Alexandrian poets, affects the sternest simplicity in his epigrams, and copies the austerity of Simonides with as much success as an imitator can expect. 3. By a slight additional modification in the same direction, the Alexandrian passes into what, for the sake of preserving the parallelism with eras of Greek prose literature, we may call the Roman style, although the peculiarities of its principal representative are decidedly Oriental. Meleager of Gadara was a Syrian; his taste was less severe, and his temperament more fervent than those of his Greek predecessors; his pieces are usually erotic, and their glowing imagery sometimes reminds us of the Song of Solomon. The luxuriance of his fancy occasionally betrays him into far-fetched conceits, and the lavishness of his epithets is only redeemed by their exquisite felicity. Yet his effusions are manifestly the offspring of genuine feeling, and his epitaph on himself indicates a great advance on the exclusiveness of antique Greek patriotism, and is perhaps the first clear enunciation of the spirit of universal humanity characteristic of the later Stoic philosophy. His gaiety and licentiousness are imitated and exaggerated by his somewhat later contemporary, the Epicurean Philodemus, perhaps the liveliest of all the epigrammatists; his fancy reappears with diminished brilliancy in Philodemus’s contemporary, Zonas, in Crinagoras, who wrote under Augustus, and in Marcus Argentarius, of uncertain date; his peculiar gorgeousness of colouring remains entirely his own. At a later period of the empire another genre, hitherto comparatively in abeyance, was developed, the satirical. Lucillius, who flourished under Nero, and Lucian, more renowned in other fields of literature, display a remarkable talent for shrewd, caustic epigram, frequently embodying moral reflexions of great cogency, often lashing vice and folly with signal effect, but not seldom indulging in mere trivialities, or deformed by scoffs at personal blemishes. This style of composition is not properly Greek, but Roman; it answers to the modern definition of epigram, and has hence attained a celebrity in excess of its deserts. It is remarkable, however, as an almost solitary example of direct Latin influence on Greek literature. The same style obtains with Palladas, an Alexandrian grammarian of the 4th century, the last of the strictly classical epigrammatists, and the first to be guilty of downright bad taste. His better pieces, however, are characterized by an austere ethical impressiveness, and his literary position is very interesting as that of an indignant but despairing opponent of Christianity. 4. The fourth or Byzantine style of epigrammatic composition was cultivated by the beaux-esprits of the court of Justinian. To a great extent this is merely imitative, but the circumstances of the period operated so as to produce a species of originality. The peculiarly ornate and recherché diction of Agathias and his compeers is not a merit in itself, but, applied for the first time, it has the effect of revivifying an old form, and many of their new locutions are actual enrichments of the language. The writers, moreover, were men of genuine poetical feeling, ingenious in invention, and capable of expressing emotion with energy and liveliness; the colouring of their pieces is sometimes highly dramatic.

It would be hard to exaggerate the substantial value of the Anthology, whether as a storehouse of facts bearing on antique manners, customs and ideas, or as one among the influences which have contributed to mould the literature of the modern world. The multitudinous votive inscriptions, serious and sportive, connote the phases of Greek religious sentiment, from pious awe to irreverent familiarity and sarcastic scepticism; the moral tone of the nation at various periods is mirrored with corresponding fidelity; the sepulchral inscriptions admit us into the inmost sanctuary of family affection, and reveal a depth and tenderness of feeling beyond the province of the historian to depict, which we should not have surmised even from the dramatists; the general tendency of the collection is to display antiquity on its most human side, and to mitigate those contrasts with the modern world which more ambitious modes of composition force into relief. The constant reference to the details of private life renders the Anthology an inexhaustible treasury for the student of archaeology; art, industry and costume receive their fullest illustration from its pages. Its influence on European literatures will be appreciated in proportion to the inquirer’s knowledge of each. The further his researches extend, the greater will be his astonishment at the extent to which the Anthology has been laid under contribution for thoughts which have become household words in all cultivated languages, and at the beneficial effect of the imitation of its brevity, simplicity, and absolute verbal accuracy upon the undisciplined luxuriance of modern genius.

Translations, Imitations, &c.—The best versions of the Anthology ever made are the Latin renderings of select epigrams by Hugo Grotius. They have not been printed separately, but will be found in Bosch and Lennep’s edition of the Planudean Anthology, in the Didot edition, and in Dr Wellesley’s Anthologia Polyglotta. The number of more or less professed imitations in modern languages is infinite, that of actual translations less considerable. French and Italian, indeed, are ill adapted to this purpose, from their incapacity of approximating to the form of the original, and their poets have usually contented themselves with paraphrases or imitations, often exceedingly felicitous. F.D. Dehèque’s French prose translation, however (1863), is most excellent and valuable. The German language alone admits of the preservation of the original metre—a circumstance advantageous to the German translators, Herder and Jacobs, who have not, however, compensated the loss inevitably consequent upon a change of idiom by any added beauties of their own. Though unfitted to reproduce the precise form, the English language, from its superior terseness, is better adapted to preserve the spirit of the original than the German; and the comparative ill success of many English translators must be chiefly attributed to the extremely low standard of fidelity and brevity observed by them. Bland, Merivale, and their associates (1806-1813), are often intolerably diffuse and feeble, from want, not of ability, but of taking pains. Archdeacon Wrangham’s too rare versions are much more spirited; and John Sterling’s translations of the inscriptions of Simonides deserve high praise. Professor Wilson (Blackwood’s Magazine, 1833-1835) collected and commented upon the labours of these and other translators, with his accustomed critical insight and exuberant geniality, but damaged his essay by burdening it with the indifferent attempts of William Hay. In 1849 Dr Wellesley, principal of New Inn Hall, Oxford, published his Anthologia Polyglotta, a most valuable collection of the best translations and imitations in all languages, with the original text. In this appeared some admirable versions by Goldwin Smith and Dean Merivale, which, with the other English renderings extant at the time, will be found accompanying the literal prose translation of the Public School Selections, executed by the Rev. George Burges for Bohn’s Classical Library (1854). This is a useful volume, but the editor’s notes are worthless. In 1864 Major R.G. Macgregor published an almost complete translation of the Anthology, a work whose stupendous industry and fidelity almost redeem the general mediocrity of the execution. Idylls and Epigrams, by R. Garnett (1869, reprinted 1892 in the Cameo series), includes about 140 translations or imitations, with some original compositions in the same style. Recent translations (selections) are: J.W. Mackail, Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology (with text, introduction, notes, and prose translation), 1890, revised 1906, a most charming volume; Graham R. Tomson (Mrs Marriott Watson), Selections from the Greek Anthology (1889); W.H.D. Rouse, Echo of Greek Song (1899); L.C. Perry, From the Garden of Hellas (New York, 1891); W.R. Paton, Love Epigrams (1898). An agreeable little volume on the Anthology, by Lord Neaves, is one of Collins’s series of Ancient Classics for Modern Readers. The earl of Cromer, with all the cares of Egyptian administration upon him, found time to translate and publish an elegant volume of selections (1903). Two critical contributions to the subject should be noticed, the Rev. James Davies’s essay on Epigrams in the Quarterly Review (vol. cxvii.), especially valuable for its lucid illustration of the distinction between Greek and Latin epigram; and the brilliant disquisition in J.A. Symonds’s Studies of the Greek Poets (1873; 3rd ed., 1893).

Latin Anthology.—The Latin Anthology is the appellation bestowed upon a collection of fugitive Latin verse, from the age of Ennius to about A.D. 1000, formed by Peter Burmann the Younger. Nothing corresponding to the Greek anthology is known to have existed among the Romans, though professional epigrammatists like Martial published their volumes on their own account, and detached sayings were excerpted from authors like Ennius and Publius Syrus, while the Priapeïa were probably but one among many collections on special subjects. The first general collection of scattered pieces made by a modern scholar was Scaliger’s Catalecta veterum Poetarum (1573), succeeded by the more ample one of Pithoeus, Epigrammata et Poemata e Codicibus et Lapidibus collecta (1590). Numerous additions, principally from inscriptions, continued to be made, and in 1759-1773 Burmann digested the whole into his Anthologia veterum Latinorum Epigrammatum et Poematum. This, occasionally reprinted, was the standard edition until 1869, when Alexander Riese commenced a new and more critical recension, from which many pieces improperly inserted by Burmann are rejected, and his classified arrangement is discarded for one according to the sources whence the poems have been derived. The first volume contains those found in MSS., in the order of the importance of these documents; those furnished by inscriptions following. The first volume (in two parts) appeared in 1869-1870, a second edition of the first part in 1894, and the second volume, Carmina Epigraphica (in two parts), in 1895-1897, edited by F. Bücheler. An Anthologiae Latinae Supplementa, in the same series, followed. Having been formed by scholars actuated by no aesthetic principles of selection, but solely intent on preserving everything they could find, the Latin anthology is much more heterogeneous than the Greek, and unspeakably inferior. The really beautiful poems of Petronius and Apuleius are more properly inserted in the collected editions of their writings, and more than half the remainder consists of the frigid conceits of pedantic professional exercises of grammarians of a very late period of the empire, relieved by an occasional gem, such as the apostrophe of the dying Hadrian to his spirit, or the epithalamium of Gallienus. The collection is also, for the most part, too recent in date, and too exclusively literary in character, to add much to our knowledge of classical antiquity. The epitaphs are interesting, but the genuineness of many of them is very questionable.

(R. G.)


ANTHON, CHARLES (1797-1867), American classical scholar, was born in New York city on the 19th of November 1797. After graduating with honours at Columbia College in 1815, he began the study of law, and in 1819 was admitted to the bar, but never practised. In 1820 he was appointed assistant professor of Greek and Latin in his old college, full professor ten years later, and at the same time headmaster of the grammar school attached to the college, which post he held until 1864. He died at New York on the 29th of July 1867. He produced for use in colleges and schools a large number of classical works, which enjoyed great popularity, although his editions of classical authors were by no means in favour with schoolmasters, owing to the large amount of assistance, especially translations, contained in the notes.


ANTHONY, SAINT, the first Christian monk, was born in Egypt about 250. At the age of twenty he began to practise an ascetical life in the neighbourhood of his native place, and after fifteen years of this life he withdrew into solitude to a mountain by the Nile, called Pispir, now Der el Memun, opposite Arsinoë in the Fayum. Here he lived strictly enclosed in an old fort for twenty years. At last in the early years of the 4th century he emerged from his retreat and set himself to organize the monastic life of the crowds of monks who had followed him and taken up their abode in the caves around him. After a time, again in pursuit of more complete solitude, he withdrew to the mountain by the Red Sea, where now stands the monastery that bears his name (Der Mar Antonios). Here he died about the middle of the 4th century. His Life states that on two occasions he went to Alexandria, to strengthen the Christians in the Diocletian persecution and to preach against Arianism. Anthony is recognized as the first Christian monk and the first organizer and father of Christian monachism (see Monasticism). Certain letters and sermons are attributed to him, but their authenticity is more than doubtful. The monastic rule which bears his name was not written by him, but was compiled out of these writings and out of discourses and utterances put into his mouth in the Life and the Apophthegmata Patrum. According to this rule live a number of Coptic Syrian and Armenian monks to this day. The chief source of information about St Anthony is the Life, attributed to St Athanasius. This attribution, as also the historical character of the book, and even the very existence of St Anthony, were questioned and denied by the sceptical criticism of thirty years ago; but such doubts are no longer entertained by critical scholars.

The Greek Vita is among the works of St Athanasius; the almost contemporary Latin translation is among Rosweyd’s Vitae Patrum (Migne, Patrol. Lat. lxxiii.); an English translation is in the Athanasius volume of the “Nicene and Post-Nicene Library.” Accounts of St Anthony are given by Card. Newman, Church of the Fathers (Historical Sketches) and Alban Butler, Lives of the Saints (Jan. 17). Discussions of the historical and critical questions raised will be found in E.C. Butler’s Lausiac History of Palladius (1898, 1904), Part I. pp. 197, 215-228; Part II. pp. ix.-xii.

(E. C. B.)


ANTHONY OF PADUA, SAINT (1195-1231), the most celebrated of the followers of Saint Francis of Assisi, was born at Lisbon on the 15th of August 1195. In his fifteenth year he entered the Augustinian order, and subsequently joined the Franciscans in 1220. He wished to devote himself to missionary labours in North Africa, but the ship in which he sailed was cast by a storm on the coast of Sicily, whence he made his way to Italy. He taught theology at Bologna, Toulouse, Montpellier and Padua, and won a great reputation as a preacher throughout Italy. He was the leader of the rigorous party in the Franciscan order against the mitigations introduced by the general Elias. His death took place at the convent of Ara Coeli, near Padua, on the 13th of June 1231. He was canonized by Gregory IX. in the following year, and his festival is kept on the 13th of June. He is regarded as the patron saint of Padua and of Portugal, and is appealed to by devout clients for finding lost objects. The meagre accounts of his life which we possess have been supplemented by numerous popular legends, which represent him as a continuous worker of miracles, and describe his marvellous eloquence by pictures of fishes leaping out of the water to hear him. There are many confraternities established in his honour throughout Christendom, and the number of “pious” biographies devoted to him would fill many volumes.

The most trustworthy modern works are by A. Lepître, St Antoine de Padoue (Paris, 1902, in Les Saints series: good bibliography; Eng. trans. by Edith Guest, London, 1902), and by Léopold de Chérancé, St Antoine de Padoue (Paris, 1895; Eng. trans., London, 1896). His works, consisting of sermons and a mystical commentary on the Bible, were published in an appendix to those of St Francis, in the Annales Minorum of Luke Wadding (Antwerp, 1623), and are also reproduced by Horoy, Medii aevi bibliotheca patristica (1880, vi. pp. 555 et sqq.); see art. “Antonius von Padua” in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopadie.


ANTHONY, SUSAN BROWNELL (1820-1906), American reformer, was born at Adams, Massachusetts, on the 15th of February 1820, the daughter of Quakers. Soon after her birth, her family moved to the state of New York, and after 1845 she lived in Rochester. She received her early education in a school maintained by her father for his own and neighbours’ children, and from the time she was seventeen until she was thirty-two she taught in various schools. In the decade preceding the outbreak of the Civil War she took a prominent part in the anti-slavery and temperance movements in New York, organizing in 1852 the first woman’s state temperance society in America, and in 1856 becoming the agent for New York state of the American Anti-slavery Society. After 1854 she devoted herself almost exclusively to the agitation for woman’s rights, and became recognized as one of the ablest and most zealous advocates, both as a public speaker and as a writer, of the complete legal equality of the two sexes. From 1868 to 1870 she was the proprietor of a weekly paper, The Revolution, published in New York, edited by Mrs Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and having for its motto, “The true republic—men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less.” She was vice-president-at-large of the National Woman’s Suffrage Association from the date of its organization in 1869 until 1892, when she became president. For casting a vote in the presidential election of 1872, as, she asserted, the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution entitled her to do, she was arrested and fined $100, but she never paid the fine. In collaboration with Mrs Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mrs Matilda Joslyn Gage, and Mrs Ida Husted Harper, she published The History of Woman Suffrage (4 vols., New York, 1884-1887). She died at Rochester, New York, on the 13th of March 1906.

See Mrs Ida Husted Harper’s Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (3 vols., Indianapolis, 1898-1908).


ANTHOZOA (i.e. “flower-animals”), the zoological name for a class of marine polyps forming “coral” (q.v.). Although corals have been familiar objects since the days of antiquity, and the variety known as the precious red coral has been for a long time an article of commerce in the Mediterranean, it was only in the 18th century that their true nature and structure came to be understood. By the ancients and the earlier naturalists of the Christian era they were regarded either as petrifactions or as plants, and many supposed that they occupied a position midway between minerals and plants. The discovery of the animal nature of red coral is due to J.A. de Peyssonel, a native of Marseilles, who obtained living specimens from the coral fishers on the coast of Barbary and kept them alive in aquaria. He was thus able to see that the so-called “flowers of coral” were in fact nothing else than minute polyps resembling sea-anemones. His discovery, made in 1727, was rejected by the Academy of Sciences of France, but eventually found acceptance at the hands of the Royal Society of London, and was published by that body in 1751. The structure and classification of polyps, however, were at that time very imperfectly understood, and it was fully a century before the true anatomical characters and systematic position of corals were placed on a secure basis.

The hard calcareous substance to which the name coral is applied is the supporting skeleton of certain members of the Anthozoa, one of the classes of the phylum Coelentera. The most familiar Anthozoan is the common sea-anemone, Actinia equina, L., and it will serve, although it does not form a skeleton or corallum, as a good example of the structure of a typical Anthozoan polyp or zooid. The individual animal or zooid of Actinia equina has the form of a column fixed by one extremity, called the base, to a rock or other object, and bearing at the opposite extremity a crown of tentacles. The tentacles surround an area known as the peristome, in the middle of which there is an elongated mouth-opening surrounded by tumid lips. The mouth does not open directly into the general cavity of the body, as is the case in a hydrozoan polyp, but into a short tube called the stomodaeum, which in its turn opens below into the general body-cavity or coelenteron. In Actinia and its allies, and most generally, though not invariably, in Anthozoa, the stomodaeum is not circular, but is compressed from side to side so as to be oval or slit-like in transverse section. At each end of the oval there is a groove lined by specially long vibratile cilia. These grooves are known as the sulcus and sulculus, and will be more particularly described hereafter. The elongation of the mouth and stomodaeum confer a bilateral symmetry on the body of the zooid, which is extended to other organs of the body. In Actinia, as in all Anthozoan zooids, the coelenteron is not a simple cavity, as in a Hydroid, but is divided by a number of radial folds or curtains of soft tissue into a corresponding number of radial chambers. These radial folds are known as mesenteries, and their position and relations may be understood by reference to figs. 1 and 2. Each mesentery is attached by its upper margin to the peristome, by its outer margin to the body-wall, and by its lower margin to the basal disk. A certain number of mesenteries, known as complete mesenteries, are attached by the upper parts of their internal margins to the stomodaeum, but below this level their edges hang in the coelenteron. Other mesenteries, called incomplete, are not attached to the stomodaeum, and their internal margins are free from the peristome to the basal disk. The lower part of the free edge of every mesentery, whether complete or incomplete, is thrown into numerous puckers or folds, and is furnished with a glandular thickening known as a mesenterial filament. The reproductive organs or gonads are borne on the mesenteries, the germinal cells being derived from the inner layer or endoderm.

m, Mesentery.

t, Tentacles.

st, Stomodaeum.

sc, Sulcus.

r, Rotteken’s muscle.

s, Stoma.

lm, Longitudinal muscle.

d, Diagonal Muscle.

go, Gonads.

Fig. 2.—1, Portion of epithelium from the tentacle of an Actinian, showing three supporting cells and one sense cell (sc); 2, a cnidoblast with enclosed nematocyst from the same specimen; 3 and 4 two forms of gland cell from the stomodaeum; 5a, 5b, epithelio-muscular cells from the tentacle in different states of contraction; 5c, an epithelio-muscular cell from the endoderm, containing a symbiotic zooxanthella; 6, a ganglion cell from the ectoderm of the peristome. (After O. and R. Hertwig.)

In common with all Coelenterate animals, the walls of the columnar body and also the tentacles and peristome of Actinia are composed of three layers of tissue. The external layer, or ectoderm, is made up of cells, and contains also muscular and nervous elements. The preponderating elements of the ectodermic layer are elongated columnar cells, each containing a nucleus, and bearing cilia at their free extremities. Packed in among these are gland cells, sense cells, and cnidoblasts. The last-named are specially numerous on the tentacles and on some other regions of the body, and produce the well-known “thread cells,” or nematocysts, so characteristic of the Coelentera. The inner layer or endoderm is also a cellular layer, and is chiefly made up of columnar cells, each bearing a cilium at its free extremity and terminating internally in a long muscular fibre. Such cells, made up of epithelial and muscular components, are known as epithelio-muscular or myo-epithelial cells. In Actinians the epithelio-muscular cells of the endoderm are crowded with yellow spherical bodies, which are unicellular plants or Algae, living symbiotically in the tissues of the zooid. The endoderm contains in addition gland cells and nervous elements. The middle layer or mesogloea is not originally a cellular layer, but a gelatinoid structureless substance, secreted by the two cellular layers. In the course of development, however, cells from the ectoderm and endoderm may migrate into it. In Actinia equina the mesogloea consists of fine fibres imbedded in a homogeneous matrix, and between the fibres are minute branched or spindle-shaped cells. For further details of the structure of Actinians, the reader should consult the work of O. and R. Hertwig.

The Anthozoa are divisible into two sub-classes, sharply marked off from one another by definite anatomical characters. These are the Alcyonaria and the Zoantharia. To the first-named belong the precious red coral and its allies, the sea-fans or Gorgoniae, to the second belong the white or Madreporarian corals.

Fig. 3.—An expanded Alcyonarian zooid, showing the mouth surrounded by eight pinnate tentacles. st, Stomodaeum in the the centre of the transparent body; m, mesenteries; asm, asulcar mesenteries; B, spicules, enlarged.

Fig. 4.—Transverse section of an Alcyonarian zooid mm, Mesenteries; mb, muscle banners; sc, sulcus; st, stomodaeum.

Alcyonaria.—In this sub-class the zooid has very constant anatomical characters, differing in some important respects from the Actinian zooid, which has been taken as a type. There is only one ciliated groove, the sulcus, in the stomodaeum. There are always eight tentacles, which are hollow and fringed on their sides, with hollow projections or pinnae; and always eight mesenteries, all of which are complete, i.e. inserted on the stomodaeum. The mesenteries are provided with well-developed longitudinal retractor muscles, supported on longitudinal folds or plaits of the mesogloea, so that in cross-section they have a branched appearance. These muscle-banners, as they are called, have a highly characteristic arrangement; they are all situated on those faces of the mesenteries which look towards the sulcus. (fig. 4). Each mesentery has a filament; but two of them, namely, the pair farthest from the sulcus, are longer than the rest, and have a different form of filament. It has been shown that these asulcar filaments are derived from the ectoderm, the remainder from the endoderm. The only exceptions to this structure are found in the arrested or modified zooids, which occur in many of the colonial Alcyonaria. In these the tentacles are stunted or suppressed and the mesenteries are ill-developed, but the sulcus is unusually large and has long cilia. Such modified zooids are called siphonozooids, their function being to drive currents of fluid through the canal-systems of the colonies to which they belong. With very few exceptions a calcareous skeleton is present in all Alcyonaria; it usually consists of spicules of carbonate of lime, each spicule being formed within an ectodermic cell (fig. 3, B). Most commonly the spicule-forming cells pass out of the ectoderm and are imbedded in the mesogloea, where they may remain separate from one another or may be fused together to form a strong mass. In addition to the spicular skeleton an organic horny skeleton is frequently present, either in the form of a horny external investment (Cornularia), or an internal axis (Gorgonia), or it may form a matrix in which spicules are imbedded (Keroeides, Meistodes).

Nearly all the Alcyonaria are colonial. Four solitary species have been described, viz. Haimea funebris and H. hyalina, Hartea elegans, and Monoxenia Darwinii; but it is doubtful whether these are not the young forms of colonies. For the present the solitary forms may be placed in a grade, Protal-cyonacea, and the colonial forms may be grouped in another grade, Synalcyonacea. Every Alcyonarian colony is developed by budding from a single parent zooid. The buds are not direct outgrowths of the body-wall, but are formed on the courses of hollow out growths of the base or body-wall, called solenia. These form a more or less complicated canal system, lined by endoderm, and communicating with the cavities of the zooids. The most simple form of budding is found in the genus Cornularia, in which the mother zooid gives off from its base one or more simple radiciform outgrowths. Each outgrowth contains a single tube or solenium, and at a longer or shorter distance from the mother zooid a daughter zooid is formed as a bud. This gives off new outgrowths, and these, branching and anastomosing with one another, may form a network, adhering to stones, corals, or other objects, from which zooids arise at intervals. In Clavularia and its allies each outgrowth contains several solenia, and the outgrowths may take the form of flat expansions, composed of a number of solenial tubes felted together to form a lamellar surface of attachment. Such outgrowths are called stolons, and a stolon may be simple, i.e. contain only one solenium, as in Cornularia, or may be complex and built up of many solenia, as in Clavularia. Further complications arise when the lower walls of the mother zooid become thickened and interpenetrated with solenia, from which buds are developed, so that lobose, tufted, or branched colonies are formed. The chief orders of the Synalcyonacea are founded upon the different architectural features of colonies produced by different modes of budding. We recognize six orders—the Stolonifera, Alcyonacea, Pseudaxonia, Axifera, Stelechotokea, and Cornothecalia.

A. Skeleton of a young colony of Tubipora purpurea. st, Stolon; p, platform.

B. Diagrammatic longitudinal section of a corallite, showing two platforms, p and cup-shaped tabulae, t. (After S.J. Hickson.)

Fig. 6.—Portion of a colony of Coralinum rubrum, showing expanded and contracted zooids. In the lower part of the figure the cortex has been cut away to show the axis, ax, and the longitudinal canals, lc, surrounding it.

In the order Stolonirera the zooids spring at intervals from branching or lamellar stolons, and are usually free from one another, except at their bases, but in some cases horizontal solenia arising at various heights from the body-wall may place the more distal portions of the zooids in communication with one another. In the genus Tubipora these horizontal solenia unite to form a series of horizontal platforms (fig. 5). The order comprises the families Cornulamdae, Syringopordae, Tubipondae, and Favositidae. In the first-named, the zooids are united only by their bases and the skeleton consists of loose spicules. In the Tubipondae the spicules of the proximal part of the body-wall are fused together to form a firm tube, the corallite, into which the distal part of the zooid can be retracted. The corallites are connected at intervals by horizontal platforms containing solenia, and at the level of each platform the cavity of the corallite is divided by a transverse calcareous partition, either flat or cup-shaped, called a tabula. Formerly all corals in which tabulae are present were classed together as Tabulata, but Tubipora is an undoubted Alcyonarian with a lamellar stolon, and the structure of the fossil genus Syringopora, which has vertical corallites united by horizontal solenia, clearly shows its affinity to Tubipora. The Favositidae, a fossil family from the Silurian and Devonian, have a massive corallum composed of numerous polygonal corallites closely packed together. The cavities of adjacent corallites communicate by means of numerous perforations, which appear to represent solenia, and numerous transverse tabulae are also present. In Favosites hemisphaerica a number of radial spines, projecting into the cavity of the corallite, give it the appearance of a madreporarian coral.

In the order Alcyonacea the colony consists of bunches of elongate cylindrical zooids, whose proximal portions are united by solenia and compacted, by fusion of their own walls and those of the solenia, into a fleshy mass called the coenenchyma. Thus the coenenchyma forms a stem, sometimes branched, from the surface of which the free portions of the zooids project. The skeleton of the Alcyonacea consists of separate calcareous spicules, which are often, especially in the Nephthyidae, so abundant and so closely interlocked as to form a tolerably firm and hard armour. The order comprises the families Xeniidae, Alcyonidae and Nephthyidae. Alcyonium digitatum, a pink digitate form popularly known as “dead men’s fingers,” is common in 10-20 fathoms of water off the English coasts.

Fig. 7.—The sea-fan (Gorgonia cavolinii).

A. Colony of Pennatula phosphorea from the metarachidial aspect. p, The peduncle.

B. Section of the rachis bearing a single pinna, a, Axis; b, metarachidial; c, prorachidial; d, pararachidial stem canals.

In the order Pseudaxonia the colonies are upright and branched, consisting of a number of short zooids whose proximal ends are imbedded in a coenenchyma containing numerous ramifying solenia and spicules. The coenenchyma is further differentiated into a medullary portion and a cortex. The latter contains the proximal moieties of the zooids and numerous but separate spicules. The medullary portion is densely crowded with spicules of different shape from those in the cortex, and in some forms the spicules are cemented together to form a hard supporting axis. There are four families of Pseudaxonia—the Briareidae, Sclerogorgidae, Melitodidae, and Corallidae. In the first-named the medulla is penetrated by solenia and forms an indistinct axis; in the remainder the medulla is devoid of solenia, and in the Melitodidae and Corallidae it forms a dense axis, which in the Melitodidae consists of alternate calcareous and horny joints. The precious red coral of commerce, Corallium rubrum (fig. 6), a member of the family Corallidae, is found at depths varying from 15 to 120 fathoms the Mediterranean Sea, chiefly on the African coast. It owes its commercial value to the beauty of its hard red calcareous axis which in life is covered by a cortex in which the proximal moieties of the zooids are imbedded. Corallium rubrum has been the subject of a beautifully-illustrated memoir by de Lacaze-Duthiers, which should be consulted for details of anatomy.

The Axifera comprise those corals that have a horny or calcified axis, which in position corresponds to the axis of the Pscudaxonia, but, unlike it, is never formed of fused spicules; the most familiar example is the pink sea-fan, Gorgonia cavolinii, which is found in abundance in 10-25 fathoms of water off the English coasts (fig. 7). In this order the axis is formed as an ingrowth of the ectoderm of the base of the mother zooid of the colony, the cavity of the ingrowth being filled by a horny substance secreted by the ectoderm. In Gorgonia the axis remains horny throughout life, but in many forms it is further strengthened by a deposit of calcareous matter In the family Isidinae the axis consists of alternate segments of horny and calcareous substance, the latter being amorphous. The order contains six families—the Dasygorgidae, Isidae, Primnoidae, Muriceidae, Plexauridae, and Gorgoniaae.

In the order Stelechotokea the colony consists of a stem formed by a greatly-elongated mother zooid, and the daughter zooids are borne as lateral buds on the stem. In the section Asiphonacea the colonies are upright and branched, springing from membranous or ramifying stolons. They resemble and are closely allied to certain families of the Cornulariidae, differing from them only in mode of budding and in the dispostion of the daughter zooids round a central, much-elongated mother zooid. The section contains two families, the Telestidae and the Coelogorgidae. The second section comprises the Pennatulacea or sea-pens, which are remarkable from the fact that the colony is not fixed by the base to a rock or other object, but is imbedded in sand or mud by the proximal portion of the stem known as the peduncle. In the typical genus, Pennatula (fig. 8), the colony looks like a feather having a stem divisible into an upper moiety or rachis, bearing lateral central leaflets (pinnae), and a lower peduncle, which is sterile and imbedded in sand or mud. The stem represents a greatly enlarged and elongated mother zooid. It is divided longitudinally by a partition separating a so-called “ventral” or prorachidial canal from a so-called “dorsal” or metarachidial canal. A rod-like supporting axis of peculiar texture is developed in the longitudinal partition, and a longitudinal canal is hollowed out on either side of the axis in the substance of the longitudinal partition, so that there are four stem-canals in all. The prorachidial and metarachidial aspects of the rachis are sterile, but the sides or pararachides bear numerous daughter zooids of two kinds—(1) fully-formed autozooids, (2) small stunted siphonozooids. The pinnae are formed by the elongated autozooids, whose proximal portions are fused together to form a leaf-like expansion, from the upper edge of which the distal extremities of the zooids project. The siphonozooids are very numerous and lie between the bases at the pinnae on the pararachides; they extend also on the prorachidial and metarachidial surfaces. The calcareous skeleton of the Pennatulacea consists of scattered spicules, but in one species, Protocaulon molle, spicules are absent. Although of great interest the Pennatulacea do not form an enduring skeleton or “coral,” and need not be considered in detail in this place.

A, Portion of the surface of a colony of Heliopora coerulea magnified, showing two calices and the surrounding coenenchymal tubes.

B, Single zooid with the adjacent soft tissues as seen after removal of the skeleton by decalcification. Z1, the distal, and Z2, the proximal or intracalicular portion of the zooid; ec, ectoderm; ct, coenenchymal tubes; sp, superficial network of solenia.

The order Coenothecalia is represented by a single living species, Heliopora coerulea, which differs from all recent Alcyonaria in the fact that its skeleton is not composed of spicules, but is formed as a secretion from a layer of cells called calicoblasts, which originate from the ectoderm. The corallum of Heliopora is of a blue colour, and has the form of broad, upright, lobed, or digitate masses flattened from side to side. The surfaces are pitted all over with perforations of two kinds, viz. larger star-shaped cavities, called calices, in which the zooids are lodged, and very numerous smaller round or polygonal apertures, which in life contain as many short unbranched tubes, known as the coenenchymal tubes (fig. 9, A). The walls of the calices and coenenchymal tubes are formed of flat plates of calcite, which are so disposed that the walls of one tube enter into the composition of the walls of adjacent tubes, and the walls of the calices are formed by the walls of adjacent coenenchymal tubes. Thus the architecture of the Helioporid colony differs entirely from such forms as Tubipora or Favosites, in which each corallite has its own distinct and proper wall. The cavities both of the calices and coenenchymal tubes of Heliopora are closed below by horizontal partitions or tabulae, hence the genus was formerly included in the group Tabulata, and was supposed to belong to the madreporarian corals, both because of its lamellar skeleton, which resembles that of a Madrepore, and because each calicle has from twelve to fifteen radial partitions or septa projecting into its cavity. The structure of the zooid of Heliopora, however, is that of a typical Alcyonarian, and the septa have only a resemblance to, but no real homology with, the similarly named structures in madreporarian corals. Heliopora coerulea is found between tide-marks on the shore platforms of coral islands. The order was more abundantly represented in Palaeozoic times by the Heliolitidae from the Upper and Lower Silurian and the Devonian, and by the Thecidae from the Wenlock limestone. In Heliolites porosus the colonies had the form of spheroidal masses; the calices were furnished with twelve pseudosepta, and the coenenchymal tubes were more or less regularly hexagonal.

A, Edwardsia claparedii (after A. Andres). Cap, capitulum; sc, scapus; ph, physa.

B, Transverse section of the same, showing the arrangement of the mesenteries, s, Sulcus; sl, sulculus.

C, Transverse section of Halcampa. d, d, Directive mesenteries; st, stomodaeum.

Zoantharia.—In this sub-class the arrangement of the mesenteries is subject to a great deal of variation, but all the types hitherto observed may be referred to a common plan, illustrated by the living genus Edwardsia (fig. 10, A, B). This is a small solitary Zoantharian which lives embedded in sand. Its body is divisible into three portions, an upper capitulum bearing the mouth and tentacles, a median scapus covered by a friable cuticle, and a terminal physa which is rounded. Both capitulum and physa can be retracted within the scapus. There are from sixteen to thirty-two simple tentacles, but only eight mesenteries, all of which are complete. The stomodaeum is compressed laterally, and is furnished with two longitudinal grooves, a sulcus and a sulculus. The arrangement of the muscle-banners on the mesenteries is characteristic. On six of the mesenteries the muscle-banners have the same position as in the Alcyonaria, namely, on the sulcar faces; but in the two remaining mesenteries, namely, those which are attached on either side of the sulcus, the muscle-banners are on the opposite or sulcular faces. It is not known whether all the eight mesenteries of Edwardsia are developed simultaneously or not, but in the youngest form which has been studied all the eight mesenteries were present, but only two of them, namely the sulco-laterals, bore mesenterial filaments, and so it is presumed that they are the first pair to be developed. In the common sea-anemone, Actinia equina (which has already been quoted as a type of Anthozoan structure), the mesenteries are numerous and are arranged in cycles. The mesenteries of the first cycle are complete (i.e. are attached to the stomodaeum), are twelve in number, and arranged in couples, distinguishable by the position of the muscle-banners. In the four couples of mesenteries which are attached to the sides of the elongated stomodaeum the muscle-banners of each couple are turned towards one another, but in the sulcar and sulcular couples, known as the directive mesenteries, the muscle-banners are on the outer faces of the mesenteries, and so are turned away from one another (see fig. 10, C). The space enclosed between two mesenteries of the same couple is called an entocoele; the space enclosed between two mesenteries of adjacent couples is called an exocoele. The second cycle of mesenteries consists of six couples, each formed in an exocoele of the primary cycle, and in each couple the muscle-banners are vis-à-vis. The third cycle comprises twelve couples, each formed in an exocoele between the primary and secondary couples and so on, it being a general rule (subject, however, to exceptions) that new mesenterial couples are always formed in the exocoeles, and not in the entocoeles.

Fig. 11.—A, Diagram showing the sequence of mesenterial development in an Actinian. B, Diagrammatic transverse section of Gonactinia prolifera.

While the mesenterial couples belonging to the second and each successive cycle are formed simultaneously, those of the first cycle are formed in successive pairs, each member of a pair being placed on opposite sides of the stomodaeum. Hence the arrangement in six couples is a secondary and not a primary feature. In most Actinians the mesenteries appear in the following order:—At the time when the stomodaeum is formed, a single pair of mesenteries, marked I, I in the diagram (fig. 11, A), makes its appearance, dividing the coelenteric cavity into a smaller sulcar and a large sulcular chamber. The muscle-banners of this pair are placed on the sulcar faces of the mesenteries. Next, a pair of mesenteries, marked II, II in the diagram, is developed in the sulcular chamber, its muscle-banners facing the same way as those of I, I. The third pair is formed in the sulcar chamber, in close connexion with the sulcus, and in this case the muscle-banners are on the sulcular faces. The fourth pair, having its muscle-banners on the sulcar faces, is developed at the opposite extremity of the stomodaeum in close connexion with the sulculus. There are now eight mesenteries present, having exactly the same arrangement as in Edwardsia. A pause in the development follows, during which no new mesenteries are formed, and then the six-rayed symmetry characteristic of a normal Actinian zooid is completed by the formation of the mesenteries V, V in the lateral chambers, and VI, VI in the sulco-lateral chambers, their muscle-banners being so disposed that they form couples respectively with II, II and I, I. In Actinia equina the Edwardsia stage is arrived at somewhat differently. The mesenteries second in order of formation form the sulcular directives, those fourth in order of formation form with the fifth the sulculo-lateral couples of the adult.

A, Zoanthid colony, showing the expanded zooids.

B, Diagram showing the arrangement of mesenteries in a young Zoanthid.

C, Diagram showing the arrangement of mesenteries in an adult Zoanthid. 1, 2, 3, 4, Edwardsian mesenteries.

As far as the anatomy of the zooid is concerned, the majority of the stony or madreporarian corals agree exactly with the soft-bodied Actinians, such as Actinia equina, both in the number and arrangement of the adult mesenteries and in the order of development of the first cycle. The few exceptions will be dealt with later, but it may be stated here that even in these the first cycle of six couples of mesenteries is always formed, and in all the cases which have been examined the course of development described above is followed. There are, however, several groups of Zoantharia in which the mesenterial arrangement of the adult differs widely from that just described. But it is possible to refer all these cases with more or less certainty to the Edwardsian type.

The order Zoanthidea comprises a number of soft-bodied Zoantharians generally encrusted with sand. Externally they resemble ordinary sea-anemones, but there is only one ciliated groove, the sulcus, in the stomodaeum, and the mesenteries are arranged on a peculiar pattern. The first twelve mesenteries are disposed in couples, and do not differ from those of Actinia except in size. The mesenterial pairs I, II and III are attached to the stomodaeum, and are called macromesenteries (fig. 12, B), but IV, V and VI are much shorter, and are called micromesenteries. The subsequent development is peculiar to the group. New mesenteries are formed only in the sulco-lateral exocoeles. They are formed in couples, each couple consisting of a macromesentery and a micromesentery, disposed so that the former is nearest to the sulcar directives. The derivation of the Zoanthidea from an Edwardsia form is sufficiently obvious.

The order Cerianthidea comprises a few soft-bodied Zoantharians with rounded aboral extremities pierced by pores. They have two circlets of tentacles, a labial and a marginal, and there is only one ciliated groove in the stomodaeum, which appears to be the sulculus. The mesenteries are numerous, and the longitudinal muscles, though distinguishable, are so feebly developed that there are no muscle-banners. The larval forms of the type genus Cerianthus float freely in the sea, and were once considered to belong to a separate genus, Arachnactis. In this larva four pairs of mesenteries having the typical Edwardsian arrangement are developed, but the fifth and sixth pairs, instead of forming couples with the first and second, arise in the sulcar chamber, the fifth pair inside the fourth, and the sixth pair inside the fifth. New mesenteries are continually added in the sulcar chamber, the seventh pair within the sixth, the eighth pair within the seventh, and so on (fig. 13). In the Cerianthidea, as in the Zoanthidea, much as the adult arrangement of mesenteries differs from that of Actinia, the derivation from an Edwardsia stock is obvious.

A, Cerianthus solitarius (after A. Andres).

B, Transverse section of the stomodaeum, showing the sulculus, sl, and the arrangement of the mesenteries.

C, Oral aspect of Arachnactis brachiolata, the larva of Cerianthus, with seven tentacles.

D, Transverse section of an older larva. The numerals indicate the order of development of the mesenteries.

The order Antipathidea is a well-defined group whose affinities are more obscure. The type form, Antipathes dichotoma (fig. 14), forms arborescent colonies consisting of numerous zooids arranged in a single series along one surface of a branched horny axis. Each zooid has six tentacles; the stomodaeum is elongate, but the sulcus and sulculus are very feebly represented. There are ten mesenteries in which the musculature is so little developed as to be almost indistinguishable. The sulcar and sulcular pairs of mesenteries are short, the sulco-lateral and sulculo-lateral pairs are a little longer, but the two transverse are very large and are the only mesenteries which bear gonads. As the development of the Antipathidea is unknown, it is impossible to say what is the sequence of the mesenterial development, but in Leiopathes glaberrima, a genus with twelve mesenteries, there are distinct indications of an Edwardsia stage.

A, Portion of a colony of Antipathes dichotoma.

B, Single zooid and axis of the same magnified. m, Mouth; mf mesenterial filament; ax, axis.

C, Transverse section through the oral cone of Antipathella minor, st, Stomodaeum; ov, ovary.

There are, in addition to these groups, several genera of Actinians whose mesenterial arrangement differs from the normal type. Of these perhaps the most interesting is Gonactinia prolifera (fig. 11, B), with eight macromesenteries arranged on the Edwardsian plan. Two pairs of micromesenteries form couples with the first and second Edwardsian pairs, and in addition there is a couple of micromesenteries in each of the sulculo-lateral exocoeles. Only the first and second pairs of Edwardsian macromesenteries are fertile, i.e. bear gonads.

The remaining forms, the Actiniidea, are divisible into the Malacactiniae, or soft-bodied sea-anemones, which have already been described sufficiently in the course of this article, and the Scleractiniae (= Madreporaria) or true corals.

All recent corals, as has already been said, conform so closely to the anatomy of normal Actinians that they cannot be classified apart from them, except that they are distinguished by the possession of a calcareous skeleton. This skeleton is largely composed of a number of radiating plates or septa, and it differs both in origin and structure from the calcareous skeleton of all Alcyonaria except Heliopora. It is formed, not from fused spicules, but as a secretion of a special layer of cells derived from the basal ectoderm, and known as calicoblasts. The skeleton or corallum of a typical solitary coral—the common Devonshire cup-coral Caryophyllia smithii (fig. 15) is a good example—exhibits the followings parts:—(1) The basal plate, between the zooid and the surface of attachment. (2) The septa, radial plates of calcite reaching from the periphery nearly or quite to the centre of the coral-cup or calicle. (3) The theca or wall, which in many corals is not an independent structure, but is formed by the conjoined thickened peripheral ends of the septa. (4) The columella, a structure which occupies the centre of the calicle, and may arise from the basal plate, when it is called essential, or may be formed by union of trabecular offsets of the septa, when it is called unessential. (5) The costae, longitudinal ribs or rows of spines on the outer surface of the theca. True costae always correspond to the septa, and are in fact the peripheral edges of the latter. (6) Epitheca, an offset of the basal plate which surrounds the base of the theca in a ring-like manner, and in some corals may take the place of a true theca. (7) Pali, spinous or blade-like upgrowths from the bottom of the calicle, which project between the inner edges of certain septa and the columella. In addition to these parts the following structures may exist in corals:— Dissepiments are oblique calcareous partitions, stretching from septum to septum, and closing the interseptal chambers below. The whole system of dissepiments in any given calicle is often called endotheca. Synapticulae are calcareous bars uniting adjacent septa. Tabulae are stout horizontal partitions traversing the centre of the calicle and dividing it into as many superimposed chambers. The septa in recent corals always bear a definite relation to the mesenteries, being found either in every entocoele or in every entocoele and exocoele. Hence in corals in which there is only a single cycle of mesenteries the septa are correspondingly few in number; where several cycles of mesenteries are present the septa are correspondingly numerous. In some cases—e.g. in some species of Madrepora—only two septa are fully developed, the remainder being very feebly represented.

Fig. 16.—Tangential section of a larva of Astroides calicularis which has fixed itself on a piece of cork. ec, Ectoderm; en, endoderm; mg, mesogloea; m, m, mesenteries; s, septum; b, basal plate formed of ellipsoids of carbonate of lime secreted by the basal ectoderm; ep, epitheca. (After von Koch.)

Though the corallum appears to live within the zooid, it is morphologically external to it, as is best shown by its developmental history. The larvae of corals are free swimming ciliated forms known as planulae, and they do not acquire a corallum until they fix themselves. A ring-shaped plate of calcite, secreted by the ectoderm, is then formed, lying between the embryo and the surface of attachment. As the mesenteries are formed, the endoderm of the basal disk lying above the basal plate is raised up in the form of radiating folds. There may be six of these folds, one in each entocoele of the primary cycle of mesenteries, or there may be twelve, one in each exocoele and entocoele. The ectoderm beneath each fold becomes detached from the surface of the basal plate, and both it and the mesogloea are folded conformably with the endoderm. The cells forming the limbs of the ectodermic folds secrete nodules of calcite, and these, fusing together, give rise to six (or twelve) vertical radial plates or septa. As growth proceeds new septa are formed simultaneously with the new couples of secondary mesenteries. In some corals, in which all the septa are entocoelic, each new system is embraced by a mesenteric couple; in others, in which the septa are both entocoelic and exocoelic, three septa are formed in every chamber between two primary mesenterial couples, one in the entocoele of the newly formed mesenterial couple of the secondary cycle, and one in each exocoele between a primary and a secondary couple. These latter are in turn embraced by the couples of the tertiary cycle of mesenteries, and new septa are formed in the exocoeles on either side of them, and so forth.

Fig. 17.—Transverse section through a zooid of Cladocora. The corallum shaded with dots, the mesogloea represented by a thick line. Thirty-two septa are present, six in the entocoeles of the primary cycle of mesenteries, I; six in the entocoeles of the secondary cycle of mesenteries, II; four in the entocoeles of the tertiary cycle of mesenteries, III, only four pairs of the latter being developed; and sixteen in the entocoeles between the mesenterial pairs. D, D, Directive mesenteries; st, stomodaeum. (After Duerden.)

It is evident from an inspection of figs. 16 and 17 that every septum is covered by a fold of endoderm, mesogloea, and ectoderm, and is in fact pushed into the cavity of the zooid from without. The zooid then is, as it were, moulded upon the corallum. When fully extended, the upper part of the zooid projects for some distance out of the calicle, and its wall is reflected for some distance over the lip of the latter, forming a fold of soft tissue extending to a greater or less distance over the theca, and containing in most cases a cavity continuous over the lip of the calicle with the coelenteron. This fold of tissue is known as the edge-zone In some corals the septa are solid imperforate plates of calcite, and their peripheral ends are either firmly welded together, or are united by interstitial pieces so as to form imperforate theca. In others the peripheral ends of the septa are united only by bars or trabeculae, so that the theca is perforate, and in many such perforate corals the septa themselves are pierced by numerous perforations. In the former, which have been called aporose corals, the only communication between the cavity of the edge-zone and the general cavity of the zooid is by way of the lip of the calicle; in the latter, or perforate corals, the theca is permeated by numerous branching and anastomosing canals lined by endoderm, which place the cavity of the edge-zone in communication with the general cavity of the zooid.

A, Schematic longitudinal section through a zooid and bud of Stylophora digitata. In A, B, and C the thick black lines represent the soft tissues; the corallum is dotted. s, Stomodaeum; c, c, coenosarc; col, columella, T tabulae.

B, Similar section through a single zooid and bud of Astroides calicularis.

C, Similar section through three corallites of Lophohelia prolifera. ez, Edge-zone.

D, Diagram illustrating the process of budding by unequal division.

E, Section through a dividing calicle of Mussa, showing the union of two septa in the plane of division and the origin of new septa at right angles to them.

(C original; the rest after von Koch.)

A large number of corals, both aporose and perforate, are colonial. The colonies are produced by either budding or division. In the former case the young daughter zooid, with its corallum, arises wholly outside the cavity of the parent zooid, and the component parts of the young corallum, septa, theca, columella, &c., are formed anew in every individual produced. In division a vertical constriction divides a zooid into two equal or unequal parts, and the several parts of the two corals thus produced are severally derived from the corresponding parts of the dividing corallum. In colonial corals a bud is always formed from the edge-zone, and this bud develops into a new zooid with its corallum. The cavity of the bud in an aporose coral (fig. 18, A, C) does not communicate directly with that of the parent form, but through the medium of the edge-zone. As growth proceeds, and parent and bud become separated farther from one another, the edge-zone forms a sheet of soft tissue, bridging over the space between the two, and resting upon projecting spines of the corallum. This sheet of tissue is called the coenosarc. Its lower surface is clothed with a layer of calicoblasts which continue to secrete carbonate of lime, giving rise to a secondary deposit which more or less fills up the spaces between the individual coralla, and is distinguished as coenenchyme. This coenenchyme may be scanty, or may be so abundant that the individual corallites produced by budding seem to be immersed in it. Budding takes place in an analogous manner in perforate corals (fig. 18, B), but the presence of the canal system in the perforate theca leads to a modification of the process. Buds arise from the edge-zone which already communicate with the cavity of the zooid by the canals. As the buds develop the canal system becomes much extended, and calcareous tissue is deposited between the network of canals, the confluent edge-zones of mother zooid and bud forming a coenosarc. As the process continues a number of calicles are formed, imbedded in a spongy tissue in which the canals ramify, and it is impossible to say where the theca of one corallite ends and that of another begins. In the formation of colonies by division a constriction at right angles to the long axis of the mouth involves first the mouth, then the peristome, and finally the calyx itself, so that the previously single corallite becomes divided into two (fig. 18, E). After division the corallites continue to grow upwards, and their zooids may remain united by a bridge of soft tissue or coenosarc. But in some cases, as they grow farther apart, this continuity is broken, each corallite has its own edge-zone, and internal continuity is also broken by the formation of dissepiments within each calicle, all organic connexion between the two zooids being eventually lost. Massive meandrine corals are produced by continual repetition of a process of incomplete division, involving the mouth and to some extent the peristome: the calyx, however, does not divide, but elongates to form a characteristic meandrine channel containing several zooid mouths.

Corals have been divided into Aporosa and Perforata, according as the theca and septa are compact and solid, or are perforated by pores containing canals lined by endoderm. The division is in many respects convenient for descriptive purposes, but recent researches show that it does not accurately represent the relationships of the different families. Various attempts have been made to classify corals according to the arrangement of the septa, the characters of the theca, the microscopic structure of the corallum, and the anatomy of the soft parts. The last-named method has proved little more than that there is a remarkable similarity between the zooids of all recent corals, the differences which have been brought to light being for the most part secondary and valueless for classificatory purposes. On the other hand, the study of the anatomy and development of the zooids has thrown much light upon the manner in which the corallum is formed, and it is now possible to infer the structure of the soft parts from a microscopical examination of the septa, theca, &c., with the result that unexpected relationships have been shown to exist between corals previously supposed to stand far apart. This has been particularly the case with the group of Palaeozoic corals formerly classed together as Rugosa. In many of these so-called rugose forms the septa have a characteristic arrangement, differing from that of recent corals chiefly in the fact that they show a tetrameral instead of a hexameral symmetry. Thus in the family Stauridae there are four chief septa whose inner ends unite in the middle of the calicle to form a false columella, and in the Zaphrentidae there are many instances of an arrangement, such as that depicted in fig. 19, which represents the septal arrangement of Streptelasma corniculum from the lower Silurian. In this coral the calicle is divided into quadrants by four principal septa, the main septum, counter septum, and two alar septa. The remaining septa are so disposed that in the quadrants abutting on the chief septum they converge towards that septum, whilst in the other quadrants they converge towards the alar septa. The secondary septa show a regular gradation in size, and, assuming that the smallest were the most recently formed, it will be noticed that in the chief quadrants the youngest septa lie nearest to the main septum; in the other quadrants the youngest septa lie nearest to the alar septa. This arrangement, however, is by no means characteristic even of the Zaphrentidae, and in the family Cyathophyllidae most of the genera exhibit a radial symmetry in which no trace of the bilateral arrangement described above is recognizable, and indeed in the genus Cyathophyllum itself a radial arrangement is the rule. The connexion between the Cyathophyllidae and modern Astraeidae is shown by Moseleya latistellata, a living reef-building coral from Torres Strait. The general structure of this coral leaves no doubt that it is closely allied to the Astraeidae, but in the young calicles a tetrameral symmetry is indicated by the presence of four large septa placed at right angles to one another. Again, in the family Amphiastraeidae there is commonly a single septum much larger than the rest, and it has been shown that in the young calicles, e.g. of Thecidiosmilia, two septa, corresponding to the main- and counter-septa of Streptelasma, are first formed, then two alar septa, and afterwards the remaining septa, the latter taking on a generally radial arrangement, though the original bilaterality is marked by the preponderance of the main septum. As the microscopic character of the corallum of these extinct forms agrees with that of recent corals, it may be assumed that the anatomy of the soft parts also was similar, and the tetrameral arrangement, when present, may obviously be referred to a stage when only the first two pairs of Edwardsian mesenteries were present and septa were formed in the intervals between them.

Fig. 19.—Diagram of the arrangement of the septa in a Zaphrentid coral. m, Main septum; c, counter septum; t, t, alar septa.

Space forbids a discussion of the proposals to classify corals after the minute structure of their coralla, but it will suffice to say that it has been shown that the septa of all corals are built up of a number of curved bars called trabeculae, each of which is composed of a number of nodes. In many secondary corals (Cyclolites, Thamnastraea) the trabeculae are so far separate that the individual bars are easily recognizable, and each looks something like a bamboo owing to the thickening of the two ends of each node. The trabeculae are united together by these thickened internodes, and the result is a fenestrated septum, which in older septa may become solid and aporose by continual deposit of calcite in the fenestrae. Each node of a trabecula may be simple, i.e. have only one centre of calcification, or may be compound. The septa of modern perforate corals are shown to have a structure nearly identical with that of the secondary forms, but the trabeculae and their nodes are only apparent on microscopical examination. The aporose corals, too, have a practically identical structure, their compactness being due to the union of the trabeculae throughout their entire lengths instead of at intervals, as in the Perforata. Further, the trabeculae may be evenly spaced throughout the septum, or may be grouped together, and this feature is probably of value in estimating the affinities of corals. (For an account of coral formations see Coral-Reefs.)

In the present state of our knowledge the Zoantharia in which a primary cycle of six couples of mesenteries is (or may be inferred to be) completed by the addition of two pairs to the eight Edwardsian mesenteries, and succeeding cycles are formed in the exocoeles of the pre-existing mesenterial cycles, may be classed in an order Actiniidea, and this may be divided into the suborders Malacactiniae, comprising the soft-bodied Actinians, such as Actinia, Sagartia, Bunodes, &c., and the Scleractiniae, comprising the corals. The Scleractiniae may best be divided into groups of families which appear to be most closely related to one another, but it should not be forgotten that there is great reason to believe that many if not most of the extinct corals must have differed from modern Actiniidea in mesenterial characters, and may have only possessed Edwardsian mesenteries, or even have possessed only four mesenteries, in this respect showing close affinities to the Stauromedusae. Moreover, there are some modern corals in which the secondary cycle of mesenteries departs from the Actinian plan. For example, J.E. Duerden has shown that in Porites the ordinary zooids possess only six couples of mesenteries arranged on the Actinian plan. But some zooids grow to a larger size and develop a number of additional mesenteries, which arise either in the sulcar or the sulcular entocoele, much in the same manner as in Cerianthus. Bearing this in mind, the following arrangement may be taken to represent the most recent knowledge of coral structure:—

Group A.

Family I. Zaphrentidae.—Solitary Palaeozoic corals with an epithecal wall. Septa numerous, arranged pinnately with regard to four principal septa. Tabulae present. One or more pits or fossulae present in the calicle. Typical genera—Zaphrentis, Raf. Amplexus, M. Edw. and H. Streptelasma, Hall. Omphyma, Raf.

Family 2. Turbinolidae.—Solitary, rarely colonial corals, with radially arranged septa and without tabulae. Typical genera— Flabellum, Lesson. Turbinolia, M. Edw. and H. Caryophyllia, Lamarck. Sphenotrochus, Moseley, &c.

Family 3. Amphiastraeidae.—Mainly colonial, rarely solitary corals, with radial septa, but bilateral arrangement indicated by persistence of a main septum. Typical genera—Amphiastraea, Étallon. Thecidiosmilia.

Family 4. Stylinidae.—Colonial corals allied to the Amphiastraeidae, but with radially symmetrical septa arranged in cycles. Typical genera—Stylina, Lamarck (Jurassic). Convexastraea, D’Orb. (Jurassic). Isastraea, M. Edw. and H.(Jurassic). Ogilvie refers the modern genus Galaxea to this family.

Group B.

Family 5. Oculinidae.—Branching or massive aporose corals, the calices projecting above the level of a compact coenenchyme formed from the coenosarc which covers the exterior of the corallum. Typical genera—Lophohelia, M. Edw. and H. Oculina, M. Edw. and H.

Family 6. Pocilloporidae.—Colonial branching aporose corals, with small calices sunk in the coenenchyme. Tabulae present, and two larger septa, an axial and abaxial, are always present, with traces of ten smaller septa. Typical genera—Pocillopora, Lamarck. Seriatopora, Lamarck.

Family 7. Madreporidae.—Colonial branching or palmate perforate corals, with abundant trabecular coenenchyme. Theca porous; septa compact and reduced in number. Typical genera— Madrepora, Linn. Turbinaria, Oken. Montipora, Quoy and G.

Family 8. Poritidae.—Incrusting or massive colonial perforate corals; calices usually in contact by their edges, sometimes disjunct and immersed in coenenchyme. Theca and septa perforate. Typical genera—Porites, M. Edw. and H. Goniopora, Quoy and G. Rhodaraea, M. Edw. and H.

Group C.

Family 9. Cyathophyllidae.—Solitary and colonial aporose corals. Tabulae and vesicular endotheca present. Septa numerous, generally radial, seldom pinnate. Typical genera—Cyathophyllum, Goldfuss (Devonian and Carboniferous). Moseleya, Quelch (recent).

Family 10. Astraeidae.—Aporpse, mainly colonial corals, massive, branching, or maeandroid. Septa radial; dissepiments present; an epitheca surrounds the base of massive or maeandroid forms, but only surrounds individual corallites in simple or branching forms. Typical genera—Goniastraea, M. Edw. and H. Heliastraea, M. Edw. and H. Maeandrina, Lam. Coeloria, M. Edw. and H. Favia, Oken.

Family 11. Fungidae.—Solitary and colonial corals, with numerous radial septa united by synapticulae. Typical genera— Lophoseris, M. Edw. and H. Thamnastraea, Le Sauvage. Leptophyllia, Reuss (Jurassic and Cretaceous). Fungia, Dana. Siderastraea, Blainv.

Group D.

Family 12. Eupsammidae.—Solitary or colonial perforate corals, branching, massive, or encrusting. Septa radial; the primary septa usually compact, the remainder perforate. Theca perforate. Synapticula present in some genera. Typical genera—Stephanophyllia, Michelin. Eupsammia, M. Edw. and H. Astroides, Blainv. Rhodopsammia, M. Edw. and H. Dendrophyllia, M. Edw. and H.

Group E.

Family 13. Cystiphyllidae.—Solitary corals with rudimentary septa, and the calicle filled with vesicular endotheca. Genera—Cystiphyllum, Lonsdale (Silurian and Devonian). Goniophyllum, M. Edw. and H. (In this Silurian genus the calyx is provided with a movable operculum, consisting of four paired triangular pieces, the bases of each being attached to the sides of the calyx, and their apices meeting in the middle when the operculum is closed). Calcecla, Lam. (In this Devonian genus there is a single semicircular operculum furnished with a stout median septum and numerous feebly developed secondary septa. The calyx is triangular in section, pointed below, and the operculum is attached to it by hinge-like teeth.)

Authorities.—The following list contains only the names of the more important and more general works on the structure and classification of corals and on coral reefs. For a fuller bibliography the works marked with an asterisk should be consulted: * A. Andres, Fauna und Flora des Golfes von Neapel, ix. (1884); H.M. Bernard, “Catalogue of Madreporarian Corals” in Brit. Museum, ii. (1896), iii. (1897); * G.C. Bourne, “Anthozoa,” in E. Ray Lankester’s Treatise on Zoology, vol. ii. (London, 1900); G. Brook, “Challenger Reports,” Zoology, xxxii. (1899) (Antipatharia); “Cat. Madrep. Corals,” Brit. Museum, i. (1893); D.C. Danielssen, “Report Norwegian North Atlantic Exploring Expedition,” Zoology, xix. (1890); J.E. Duerden, “Some Results on the Morphology and Development of Recent and Fossil Corals,” Rep. Brit. Association, 1903, pp. 684-685; “The Morphology of the Madreporaria,” Biol. Bullet, vii. pp. 79-104; P.M. Duncan, Journ. Linnean Soc. xviii. (1885); P.H. Gosse, Actinologia britannica (London, 1860); O. and R. Hertwig, Die Actinien (Jena, 1879); R. Hertwig, “Challenger Reports,” Zoology, vi. (1882) and xxvi. (1888); * C.B. Klunzinger, Die Korallthiere des Rothen Meeres (Berlin, 1877); * G. von Koch, Fauna und Flora des Golfes van Neapel, xv. (1887); Mitth. Zool. Stat. Neapel, ii. (1882) and xii. (1897); Palaeontographica, xxix. (1883); (also many papers in the Morphol. Jahrbuch from 1878 to 1898); F. Koby, “Polypiers jurassiques de la Suisse,” Mem. Soc. Palaeont. Suisse, vii.-xvi. (1880-1889); A. von Kölliker, “Die Pennatuliden,” Abh. d. Senck. Naturf. Gesell. vii.; * “Challenger Reports,” Zoology, i. Pennatulidae (1880); Koren and Danielssen, Norske Nordhaus Exped., Alcyonida (1887); H. de Lacaze-Duthiers, Hist. nat. du corail (Paris, 1864); H. Milne-Edwards and J. Haime, Hist. nat. des coralliaires (Paris, 1857); H.N. Moseley, “Challenger Reports,” Zoology, ii. (1881); H.A. Nicholson, Palaeozoic Tabulate Corals (Edinburgh, 1879); M.M. Ogilvie, Phil. Transactions, clxxxvii. (1896); E. Pratz, Palaeontographica, xxix. (1882); J.J. Quelch, “Challenger Reports,” Zoology, xvi. (1886); * P.S. Wright and Th. Studer, “Challenger Reports,” Zoology, xxxi. (1889).

(G. C. B.)


ANTHRACENE (from the Greek ἄνθραξ, coal), C14H10, a hydrocarbon obtained from the fraction of the coal-tar distillate boiling between 270° and 400° C. This high boiling fraction is allowed to stand for some days, when it partially solidifies. It is then separated in a centrifugal machine, the low melting-point impurities are removed by means of hot water, and the residue is finally hot-pressed. The crude anthracene cake is purified by treatment with the higher pyridine bases, the operation being carried out in large steam-jacketed boilers. The whole mass dissolves on heating, and the anthracene crystallizes out on cooling. The crystallized anthracene is then removed by a centrifugal separator and the process of solution in the pyridine bases is repeated. Finally the anthracene is purified by sublimation.

Many synthetical processes for the preparation of anthracene and its derivatives are known. It is formed by the condensation of acetylene tetrabromide with benzene in the presence of aluminium chloride:—

and similarly from methylene dibromide and benzene, and also when benzyl chloride is heated with aluminium chloride to 200° C. By condensing ortho-brombenzyl bromide with sodium, C.L. Jackson and J.F. White (Ber., 1879, 12, p. 1965) obtained dihydro-anthracene

Anthracene has also been obtained by heating ortho-tolylphenyl ketone with zinc dust

Anthracene crystallizes in colourless monoclinic tables which show a fine blue fluorescence. It melts at 213° C. and boils at 351° C. It is insoluble in water, sparingly soluble in alcohol and ether, but readily soluble in hot benzene. It unites with picric acid to form a picrate, C14H10·C6H2(NO2)3·OH, which crystallizes in needles, melting at 138° C. On exposure to sunlight a solution of anthracene in benzene or xylene deposits para-anthracene (C14H10)2, which melts at 244° C. and passes back into the ordinary form. Chlorine and bromine form both addition and substitution products with anthracene; the addition product, anthracene dichloride, C14H10Cl2, being formed when chlorine is passed into a cold solution of anthracene in carbon bisulphide. On treatment with potash, it forms the substitution product, monochlor-anthracene, C14H9Cl. Nitro-anthracenes are not as yet known. The mono-oxyanthracenes (anthrols), C14H9OH or (α) and (β) resemble the phenols, whilst (γ) (anthranol) is a reduction product of anthraquinone. β-anthrol and anthranol give the corresponding amino compounds (anthramines) when heated with ammonia.

Numerous sulphonic acids of anthracene are known, a monosulphonic acid being obtained with dilute sulphuric acid, whilst concentrated sulphuric acid produces mixtures of the anthracene disulphonic acids. By the action of sodium amalgam on an alcoholic solution of anthracene, an anthracene dihydride, C14H12, is obtained, whilst by the use of stronger reducing agents, such as hydriodic acid and amorphous phosphorus, hydrides of composition C14H16 and C14H24 are produced.

Methyl and phenyl anthracenes are known; phenyl anthranol (phthalidin) being somewhat closely related to the phenolphthaleins (q.v.). Oxidizing agents convert anthracene into anthraquinone (q.v.); the production of this substance by oxidizing anthracene in glacial acetic acid solution, with chromic acid, is the usual method employed for the estimation of anthracene.


ANTHRACITE (Gr. ἄνθραξ, coal), a term applied to those varieties of coal which do not give off tarry or other hydrocarbon vapours when heated below their point of ignition; or, in other words, which burn with a smokeless and nearly non-luminous flame. Other terms having the same meaning are, “stone coal” (not to be confounded with the German Steinkohle) or “blind coal” in Scotland, and “Kilkenny coal” in Ireland. The imperfect anthracite of north Devon, which however is only used as a pigment, is known as culm, the same term being used in geological classification to distinguish the strata in which it is found, and similar strata in the Rhenish hill countries which are known as the Culm Measures. In America, culm is used as an equivalent for waste or slack in anthracite mining.

Physically, anthracite differs from ordinary bituminous coal by its greater hardness, higher density, 1.3-1.4, and lustre, the latter being often semi-metallic with a somewhat brownish reflection. It is also free from included soft or fibrous notches and does not soil the fingers when rubbed. Structurally it shows some alteration by the development of secondary divisional planes and fissures so that the original stratification lines are not always easily seen. The thermal conductivity is also higher, a lump of anthracite feeling perceptibly colder when held in the warm hand than a similar lump of bituminous coal at the same temperature. The chemical composition of some typical anthracites is given in the article Coal.

Anthracite may be considered to be a transition stage between ordinary bituminous coal and graphite, produced by the more or less complete elimination of the volatile constituents of the former; and it is found most abundantly in areas that have been subjected to considerable earth-movements, such as the flanks of great mountain ranges. The largest and most important anthracite region, that of the north-eastern portion of the Pennsylvania coal-field, is a good example of this; the highly contorted strata of the Appalachian region produce anthracite exclusively, while in the western portion of the same basin on the Ohio and its tributaries, where the strata are undisturbed, free-burning and coking coals, rich in volatile matter, prevail. In the same way the anthracite region of South Wales is confined to the contorted portion west of Swansea and Llanelly, the central and eastern portions producing steam, coking and house coals.

Anthracites of newer, tertiary or cretaceous age, are found in the Crow’s Nest part of the Rocky Mountains in Canada, and at various points in the Andes in Peru.

The principal use of anthracite is as a smokeless fuel. In the eastern United States, it is largely employed as domestic fuel, usually in close stoves or furnaces, as well as for steam purposes, since, unlike that from South Wales, it does not decrepitate when heated, or at least not to the same extent. For proper use, however, it is necessary that the fuel should be supplied in pieces as nearly uniform in size as possible, a condition that has led to the development of the breaker which is so characteristic a feature in American anthracite mining (see Coal). The large coal as raised from the mine is passed through breakers with toothed rolls to reduce the lumps to smaller pieces, which are separated into different sizes by a system of graduated sieves, placed in descending order. Each size can be perfectly well burnt alone on an appropriate grate, if kept free from larger or smaller admixtures. The common American classification is as follows:—

Lump, steamboat, egg and stove coals, the latter in two or three sizes, all three being above 1½ in. size on round-hole screens.

Chestnut below 1½ inch above 7⁄8 inch.

Pea ” 7⁄8 ” ” 9⁄16 ”

Buckwheat ” 9⁄16 ” ” 3⁄8 ”

Rice ” 3⁄8 ” ” 3⁄16 ”

Barley ” 3⁄16 ” ” 3⁄32 ”

From the pea size downwards the principal use is for steam purposes. In South Wales a less elaborate classification is adopted; but great care is exercised in hand-picking and cleaning the coal from included particles of pyrites in the higher qualities known as best malting coals, which are used for kiln-drying malt and hops.

Formerly, anthracite was largely used, both in America and South Wales, as blast-furnace fuel for iron smelting, but for this purpose it has been largely superseded by coke in the former country and entirely in the latter. An important application has, however, been developed in the extended use of internal combustion motors driven by the so-called “mixed,” “poor,” “semi-water” or “Dowson gas” produced by the gasification of anthracite with air and a small proportion of steam. This is probably the most economical method of obtaining power known; with an engine as small as 15 horse-power the expenditure of fuel is at the rate of only 1 ℔ per horse-power hour, and with larger engines it is proportionately less. Large quantities of anthracite for power purposes are now exported from South Wales to France, Switzerland and parts of Germany.

(H. B.)


ANTHRACOTHERIUM (“coal-animal,” so called from the fact of the remains first described having been obtained from the Tertiary lignite-beds of Europe), a genus of extinct artiodactyle ungulate mammals, characterized by having 44 teeth, with five semi-crescentic cusps on the crowns of the upper molars. In many respects, especially the form of the lower jaw, Anthracotherium, which is of Oligocene and Miocene age in Europe, and typifies the family Anthracotheriidae, is allied to the hippopotamus, of which it is probably an ancestral form. The European A. magnum was as large as the last-mentioned animal, but there were several smaller species and the genus also occurs in Egypt, India and North America. (See Artiodactyla.)


ANTHRAQUINONE, C14H8O2, an important derivative of anthracene, first prepared in 1834 by A. Laurent. It is prepared commercially from anthracene by stirring a sludge of anthracene and water in horizontal cylinders with a mixture of sodium bichromate and caustic soda. This suspension is then run through a conical mill in order to remove all grit, the cones of the mill fitting so tightly that water cannot pass through unless the mill is running; the speed of the mill when working is about 3000 revolutions per minute. After this treatment, the mixture is run into lead-lined vats and treated with sulphuric acid, steam is blown through the mixture in order to bring it to the boil, and the anthracene is rapidly oxidized to anthraquinone. When the oxidation is complete, the anthraquinone is separated in a filter press, washed and heated to 120° C. with commercial oil of vitriol, using about 2½ parts of vitriol to 1 of anthraquinone. It is then removed to lead-lined tanks and again washed with water and dried; the product obtained contains about 95% of anthraquinone. It may be purified by sublimation. Various synthetic processes have been used for the preparation of anthraquinone. A. Behr and W.A. v. Dorp (Ber., 1874, 7, p. 578) obtained orthobenzoyl benzoic acid by heating phthalic anhydride with benzene in the presence of aluminium chloride. This compound on heating with phosphoric anhydride loses water and yields anthraquinone,

It may be prepared in a similar manner by heating phthalyl chloride with benzene in the presence of aluminium chloride. Dioxy- and tetraoxy-anthraquinones are obtained when meta-oxy- and dimeta-dioxy-benzoic acids are heated with concentrated sulphuric acid.

Anthraquinone crystallizes in yellow needles or prisms, which melt at 277° C. It is soluble in hot benzene, sublimes easily, and is very stable towards oxidizing agents. On the other hand, it is readily attacked by reducing agents. With zinc dust in presence of caustic soda it yields the secondary alcohol oxan-thranol, C6H4 : CO·CHOH : C6H4, with tin and hydrochloric acid, the phenolic compound anthranol, C6H4 : CO·C(OH) : C6H4; and with hydriodic acid at 150° C. or on distillation with zinc dust, the hydrocarbon anthracene, C14H10. When fused with caustic potash, it gives benzoic acid. It behaves more as a ketone than as a quinone, since with hydroxylamine it yields an oxime, and on reduction with zinc dust and caustic soda it yields a secondary alcohol, whilst it cannot be reduced by means of sulphurous acid. Various sulphonic acids of anthraquinone are known, as well as oxy-derivatives, for the preparation and properties of which see Alizarin.


ANTHRAX (the Greek for “coal,” or “carbuncle,” so called by the ancients because they regarded it as burning like coal; cf. the French equivalent charbon; also known as fièvre charbonneuse, Milzbrand, splenic fever, and malignant pustule), an acute, specific, infectious, virulent disease, caused by the Bacillus anthracis, in animals, chiefly cattle, sheep and horses, and frequently occurring in workers in the wool or hair, as well as in those handling the hides or carcases, of beasts which have been affected.

Animals.—As affecting wild as well as domesticated animals and man, anthrax has been widely diffused in one or more of its forms, over the surface of the globe. It at times decimates the reindeer herds in Lapland and the Polar regions, and is only too well known in the tropics and in temperate latitudes. It has been observed and described in Russia, Siberia, Central Asia, China, Cochin-China, Egypt, West Indies, Peru, Paraguay, Brazil, Mexico, and other parts of North and South America, in Australia, and on different parts of the African continent, while for other European countries the writings which have been published with regard to its nature, its peculiar characteristics, and the injury it inflicts are innumerable. Countries in which are extensive marshes, or the subsoil of which is tenacious or impermeable, are usually those most frequently and seriously visited. Thus there have been regions notorious for its prevalence, such as the marshes of Sologne, Dombes and Bresse in France; certain parts of Germany, Hungary and Poland; in Spain the half-submerged valleys and the maritime coasts of Catalonia, as well as the Romagna and other marshy districts of Italy; while it is epizootic, and even panzootic, in the swampy regions of Esthonia, Livonia, Courland, and especially of Siberia, where it is known as the Sibirskaja jaswa (Siberian boil-plague). The records of anthrax go back to a very ancient date. It is supposed to be the murrain of Exodus. Classical writers allude to anthrax as if it were the only cattle disease worthy of mention (see Virgil, Georg. iii.). It figures largely in the history of the early and middle ages as a devastating pestilence attacking animals, and through them mankind; the oldest Anglo-Saxon manuscripts contain many fantastic recipes, leechdoms, charms and incantations for the prevention or cure of the “blacan blezene” (black blain) and the relief of the “elfshot” creatures. In the 18th and 19th centuries it sometimes spread like an epizootic over the whole of Europe, from Siberia to France. It was in this malady that disease-producing germs (bacteria) were first discovered, in 1840, by Pollender of Wipperfürth, and, independently, by veterinary surgeon Brauell of Dorpat, and their real character afterwards verified by C.J. Davaine (1812-1882) of Alfort in 1863; and it was in their experiments with this disease that Toussaint, Pasteur and J.B. Chauveau first showed how to make the morbific poison its own antidote. (See Vivisection.)

The symptoms vary with the species of animal, the mode of infection, and the seat of the primary lesion, internal or external. In all its forms anthrax is an inoculable disease, transmission being surely and promptly effected by this means, and it may be conveyed to nearly all animals by inoculation of a wound of the skin or through the digestive organs. Cattle, sheep and horses nearly always owe their infection to spores or bacilli ingested with their food or water, and pigs usually contract the disease by eating the flesh of animals dead of anthrax.

Internal anthrax, of cattle and sheep, exhibits no premonitory symptoms that can be relied on. Generally the first indication of an outbreak is the sudden death of one or more of the herd or flock. Animals which do not die at once may be noticed to stagger and tremble; the breathing becomes hurried and the pulse very rapid, while the heart beats violently; the internal temperature of the body is high, 104° to 106° F.; blood oozes from the nose, mouth and anus, the visible mucous membranes are dusky or almost black. The animal becomes weak and listless, the temperature falls and death supervenes in a few hours, being immediately preceded by delirium, convulsions or coma. While death is usually rapid or sudden when the malady is general, constituting what is designated splenic apoplexy, internal anthrax in cattle is not invariably fatal. In some cases the animal rallies from a first attack and gradually recovers.

In the external or localized form, marked by the formation of carbuncles before general infection takes place, death may not occur for several days. The carbuncles may appear in any part of the body, being preceded or accompanied by fever. They are developed in the subcutaneous connective tissue where this is loose and plentiful, in the interstices of the muscles, lymphatic glands, in the mucous membranes of the mouth and tongue (glossanthrax of cattle), pharynx and larynx (anthrax angina of horses and pigs), and the rectum. They begin as small circumscribed swellings which are warm, slightly painful and oedematous. In from two to eight hours they attain a considerable size, are cold, painless and gangrenous, and when they are incised a quantity of a blood-stained gelatinous exudate escapes. When the swellings have attained certain proportions symptoms of general infection appear, and, running their course with great rapidity, cause death in a few hours. Anthrax of the horse usually begins as an affection of the throat or bowel. In the former there is rapid obstructive oedema of the mucous membrane of the pharynx and larynx with swelling of the throat and neck, fever, salivation, difficulty in swallowing, noisy breathing, frothy discharge from the nose and threatening suffocation. General invasion soon ensues, and the horse may die in from four to sixteen hours. The intestinal form is marked by high temperature, great prostration, small thready pulse, tumultuous action of the heart, laboured breathing and symptoms of abdominal pain with straining and diarrhoea. When moved the horse staggers and trembles. Profuse sweating, a falling temperature and cyanotic mucous membranes indicate the approach of a fatal termination.

In splenic fever or splenic apoplexy, the most marked alterations observed after death are—the effects of rapid decomposition, evidenced by the foul odour, disengagement of gas beneath the skin and in the tissues and cavities of the body, yellow or yellowish-red gelatinous exudation into and between the muscles, effusion of citron or rust-coloured fluid in various cavities, extravasations of blood and local congestions throughout the body, the blood in the vessels generally being very dark and tar-like. The most notable feature, however, in the majority of cases is the enormous enlargement of the spleen, which is engorged with blood to such an extent that it often ruptures, while its tissue is changed into a violet or black fluid mass.

The bacillus of anthrax, under certain conditions, retains its vitality for a long time, and rapidly grows when it finds a suitable field in which to develop, its mode of multiplication being by scission and the formation of spores, and depending, to a great extent at least, on the presence of oxygen. The morbid action of the bacillus is indeed said to be due to its affinity for oxygen; by depriving the red corpuscles of the blood of that most essential gas, it renders the vital fluid unfit to sustain life. Albert Hoffa and others assert that the fatal lesions are produced by the poisonous action of the toxins formed by the bacilli and not by the blocking up of the minute blood-vessels, or the abstraction of oxygen from the blood by the bacilli.

It was by the cultivation of this micro-organism, or attenuation of the virus, that Pasteur was enabled to produce a prophylactic remedy for anthrax. His discovery was first made with regard to the cholera of fowls, a most destructive disorder which annually carries off great numbers of poultry. Pasteur produced his inoculation material by the cultivation of the bacilli at a temperature of 42° C. in oxygen. Two vaccines are required. The first or weak vaccine is obtained by incubating a bouillon culture for twenty-four days at 42° C., and the second or less attenuated vaccine by incubating a bouillon culture, at the same temperature, for twelve days. Pasteur’s method of protective inoculation comprises two inoculations with an interval of twelve days between them. Immunity, established in about fifteen days after the injection of the second vaccine, lasts from nine months to a year.

Toussaint had, previous to Pasteur, attenuated the virus of anthrax by the action of heat; and Chauveau subsequently corroborated by numerous experiments the value of Toussaint’s method, demonstrating that, according to the degree of heat to which the virus is subjected, so is its inocuousness when transferred to a healthy creature. In outbreaks of anthrax on farms where many animals are exposed to infection immediate temporary protection can be conferred by the injection of anthrax serum.

Human Beings.—For many years cases of sudden death had been observed to occur from time to time among healthy men engaged in woollen manufactories, particularly in the work of sorting or combing wool. In some instances death appeared to be due to the direct inoculation of some poisonous material into the body, for a form of malignant pustule was observed upon the skin; but, on the other hand, in not a few cases without any external manifestation, symptoms of blood-poisoning, often proving rapidly fatal, suggested the probability of other channels for the introduction of the disease. In 1880 the occurrence of several such cases among woolsorters at Bradford, reported by Dr J.H. Bell of that town, led to an official inquiry in England by the Local Government Board, and an elaborate investigation into the pathology of what was then called “woolsorters’ disease” was at the same time conducted at the Brown Institution, London, by Professor W.S. Greenfield. Among the results of this inquiry it was ascertained: (1) that the disease appeared to be identical with that occurring among sheep and cattle; (2) that in the blood and tissues of the body was found in abundance, as in the disease in animals, the Bacillus anthracis, and (3) that the skins, hair, wool, &c., of animals dying of anthrax retain this infecting organism, which, under certain conditions, finds ready access to the bodies of the workers.

Two well-marked forms of this disease in man are recognized, “external anthrax” and “internal anthrax.” In external anthrax the infecting agent is accidentally inoculated into some portion of skin, the seat of a slight abrasion, often the hand, arm or face. A minute swelling soon appears at the part, and develops into a vesicle containing serum or bloody matter, and varying in size, but seldom larger than a shilling. This vesicle speedily bursts and leaves an ulcerated or sloughing surface, round about which are numerous smaller vesicles which undergo similar changes, and the whole affected part becomes hard and tender, while the surrounding surface participates in the inflammatory action, and the neighbouring lymphatic glands are also inflamed. This condition, termed “malignant pustule,” is frequently accompanied with severe constitutional disturbance, in the form of fever, delirium, perspirations, together with great prostration and a tendency to death from septicaemia, although on the other hand recovery is not uncommon. It was repeatedly found that the matter taken from the vesicle during the progress of the disease, as well as the blood in the body after death, contained the Bacillus anthracis, and when inoculated into small animals produced rapid death, with all the symptoms and post-mortem appearances characteristic of che disease as known to affect them.

In internal anthrax there is no visible local manifestation of the disease, and the spores or bacilli appear to gain access to the system from the air charged with them, as in rooms where the contaminated wool or hair is unpacked, or again during the process of sorting. The symptoms usually observed are those of rapid physical prostration, with a small pulse, somewhat lowered temperature (rarely fever), and quickened breathing. Examination of the chest reveals inflammation of the lungs and pleura. In some cases death takes place by collapse in less than one day, while in others the fatal issue is postponed for three or four days, and is preceded by symptoms of blood-poisoning, including rigors, perspirations, extreme exhaustion, &c. In some cases of internal anthrax the symptoms are more intestinal than pulmonary, and consist in severe exhausting diarrhoea, with vomiting and rapid sinking. Recovery from the internal variety, although not unknown, is more rare than from the external, and its most striking phenomena are its sudden onset in the midst of apparent health, the rapid development of physical prostration, and its tendency to a fatal termination despite treatment. The post-mortem appearances in internal anthrax are such as are usually observed in septicaemia, but in addition evidence of extensive inflammation of the lungs, pleura and bronchial glands has in most cases been met with. The blood and other fluids and the diseased tissues are found loaded with the Bacillus anthracis.

Treatment in this disease appears to be of but little avail, except as regards the external form, where the malignant pustule may be excised or dealt with early by strong caustics to destroy the affected textures. For the relief of the general constitutional symptoms, quinine, stimulants and strong nourishment appear to be the only available means. An anti-anthrax serum has also been tried. As preventive measures in woollen manufactories, the disinfection of suspicious material, or the wetting of it before handling, is recommended as lessening the risk to the workers.

(J. Mac.)


ANTHROPOID APES, or Manlike Apes, the name given to the family of the Simiidae, because, of all the ape-world, they most closely resemble man. This family includes four kinds, the gibbons of S.E. Asia, the orangs of Borneo and Sumatra, the gorillas of W. Equatorial Africa, and the chimpanzees of W. and Central Equatorial Africa. Each of these apes resembles man most in some one physical characteristic: the gibbons in the formation of the teeth, the orangs in the brain-structure, the gorillas in size, and the chimpanzees in the sigmoid flexure of the spine. In general structure they all closely resemble human beings, as in the absence of tails; in their semi-erect position (resting on finger-tips or knuckles); in the shape of vertebral column, sternum and pelvis; in the adaptation of the arms for turning the palm uppermost at will; in the possession of a long vermiform appendix to the short caecum of the intestine; in the size of the cerebral hemispheres and the complexity of their convolutions. They differ in certain respects, as in the proportion of the limbs, in the bony development of the eyebrow ridges, and in the opposable great toe, which fits the foot to be a climbing and grasping organ.

Man differs from them in the absence of a hairy coat; in the development of a large lobule to the external ear; in his fully erect attitude; in his flattened foot with the non-opposable great toe; in the straight limb-bones; in the wider pelvis; in the marked sigmoid flexure of his spine; in the perfection of the muscular movements of the arm; in the delicacy of hand; in the smallness of the canine teeth and other dental peculiarities; in the development of a chin; and in the small size of his jaws compared to the relatively great size of the cranium. Together with man and the baboons, the anthropoid apes form the group known to science as Catarhini, those, that is, possessing a narrow nasal septum, and are thus easily distinguishable from the flat-nosed monkeys or Platyrhini. The anthropoid apes are arboreal and confined to the Old World. They are of special interest from the important place assigned to them in the arguments of Darwin and the Evolutionists. It is generally admitted now that no fundamental anatomical difference can be proved to exist between these higher apes and man, but it is equally agreed that none probably of the Simiidae is in the direct line of human ancestry. There is a great gap to be bridged between the highest anthropoid and the lowest man, and much importance has been attached to the discovery of an extinct primate, Pithecanthropus (q.v.), which has been regarded as the “missing link.”

See Huxley’s Man’s Place in Nature (1863); Robt. Hartmann’s Anthropoid Apes (1883; London, 1885); A.H. Keane’s Ethnology (1896); Darwin’s Descent of Man (1871; pop. ed., 1901); Haeckel’s Anthropogeny (Leipzig, 1874, 1903; Paris, 1877; Eng. ed., 1883); W.H. Flower and Rich. Lydekker, Mammals Living and Extinct (London, 1891).


ANTHROPOLOGY (Gr. ἄνθρωπος man, and λόγος, theory or science), the science which, in its strictest sense, has as its object the study of man as a unit in the animal kingdom. It is distinguished from ethnology, which is devoted to the study of man as a racial unit, and from ethnography, which deals with the distribution of the races formed by the aggregation of such units. To anthropology, however, in its more general sense as the natural history of man, ethnology and ethnography may both be considered to belong, being related as parts to a whole.

Various other sciences, in conformity with the above definition, must be regarded as subsidiary to anthropology, which yet hold their own independent places in the field of knowledge. Thus anatomy and physiology display the structure and functions of the human body, while psychology investigates the operations of the human mind. Philology deals with the general principles of language, as well as with the relations between the languages of particular races and nations. Ethics or moral science treats of man’s duty or rules of conduct toward his fellow-men. Sociology and the science of culture are concerned with the origin and development of arts and sciences, opinions, beliefs, customs, laws and institutions generally among mankind within historic time; while beyond the historical limit the study is continued by inferences from relics of early ages and remote districts, to interpret which is the task of prehistoric archaeology and geology.

I. Man’s Place in Nature.—In 1843 Dr J.C. Prichard, who perhaps of all others merits the title of founder of modern anthropology, wrote in his Natural History of Man:—

“The organized world presents no contrasts and resemblances more remarkable than those which we discover on comparing mankind with the inferior tribes. That creatures should exist so nearly approaching to each other in all the particulars of their physical structure, and yet differing so immeasurably in their endowments and capabilities, would be a fact hard to believe, if it were not manifest to our observation. The differences are everywhere striking: the resemblances are less obvious in the fulness of their extent, and they are never contemplated without wonder by those who, in the study of anatomy and physiology, are first made aware how near is man in his physical constitution to the brutes. In all the principles of his internal structure, in the composition and functions of his parts, man is but an animal. The lord of the earth, who contemplates the eternal order of the universe, and aspires to communion with its invisible Maker, is a being composed of the same materials, and framed on the same principles, as the creatures which he has tamed to be the servile instruments of his will, or slays for his daily food. The points of resemblance are innumerable; they extend to the most recondite arrangements of that mechanism which maintains instrumentally the physical life of the body, which brings forward its early development and admits, after a given period, its decay, and by means of which is prepared a succession of similar beings destined to perpetuate the race.”

The acknowledgment of man’s structural similarity with the anthropomorphous species nearest approaching him, viz.: the higher or anthropoid apes, had long before Prichard’s day been made by Linnaeus, who in his Systema Naturae (1735) grouped them together as the highest order of Mammalia, to which he gave the name of Primates. The Amoenitates Academicae (vol. vi., Leiden, 1764), published under the auspices of Linnaeus, contains a remarkable picture which illustrates a discourse by his disciple Hoppius, and is here reproduced (see Plate, fig. 1). In this picture, which shows the crudeness of the zoological notions current in the 18th century as to both men and apes, there are set in a row four figures: (a) a recognizable orang-utan, sitting and holding a staff; (b) a chimpanzee, absurdly humanized as to head, hands, and feet; (c) a hairy woman, with a tail a foot long; (d) another woman, more completely coated with hair. The great Swedish naturalist was possibly justified in treating the two latter creatures as quasi-human, for they seem to be grotesque exaggerations of such tailed and hairy human beings as really, though rarely, occur, and are apt to be exhibited as monstrosities (see Bastian and Hartmann, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, Index, “Geschwänzte Menschen”; Gould and Pile, Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine, 1897). To Linnaeus, however, they represented normal anthropomorpha or man-like creatures, vouched for by visitors to remote parts of the world. This opinion of the Swedish naturalist seems to have been little noticed in Great Britain till it was taken up by the learned but credulous Scottish judge, Lord Monboddo (see his Origin and Progress of Language, 1774, &c.; Antient Metaphysics, 1778). He had not heard of the tailed men till he met with them in the work of Linnaeus, with whom he entered into correspondence, with the result that he enlarged his range of mankind with races of sub-human type. One was founded on the description by the Swedish sailor Niklas Köping of the ferocious men with long tails inhabiting the Nicobar Islands. Another comprised the orang-utans of Sumatra, who were said to take men captive and set them to work as slaves. One of these apes, it was related, served as a sailor on board a Jamaica ship, and used to wait on the captain. These are stories which seem to carry their own explanation. When the Nicobar Islands were taken over by the British government two centuries later, the native warriors were still wearing their peculiar loin-cloth hanging behind in a most tail-like manner (E.H. Man, Journal Anthropological Institute, vol. xv. p. 442). As for the story of the orang-utan cabin boy, this may even be verbally true, it being borne in mind that in the Malay languages the term orang-utan, “man of the forest,” was originally used for inland forest natives and other rude men, rather than for the miyas apes to which it has come to be generally applied by Europeans. The speculations as to primitive man connected with these stories diverted the British public, headed by Dr Johnson, who said that Monboddo was “as jealous of his tail as a squirrel.” Linnaeus’s primarily zoological classification of man did not, however, suit the philosophical opinion of the time, which responded more readily to the systems represented by Buffon, and later by Cuvier, in which the human mind and soul formed an impassable wall of partition between him and other mammalia, so that the definition of man’s position in the animal world was treated as not belonging to zoology, but to metaphysics and theology. It has to be borne in mind that Linnaeus, plainly as he recognized the likeness of the higher simian and the human types, does not seem to have entertained the thought of accounting for this similarity by common descent. It satisfied his mind to consider it as belonging to the system of nature, as indeed remained the case with a greater anatomist of the following century, Richard Owen. The present drawing, which under the authority of Linnaeus shows an anthropomorphic series from which the normal type of man, the Homo sapiens, is conspicuously absent, brings zoological similarity into view without suggesting kinship to account for it. There are few ideas more ingrained in ancient and low civilization than that of relationship by descent between the lower animals and man. Savage and barbaric religions recognize it, and the mythology of the world has hardly a more universal theme. But in educated Europe such ideas had long been superseded by the influence of theology and philosophy, with which they seemed too incompatible. In the 19th century, however, Lamarck’s theory of the development of new species by habit and circumstance led through Wallace and Darwin to the doctrines of the hereditary transmission of acquired characters, the survival of the fittest, and natural selection. Thenceforward it was impossible to exclude a theory of descent of man from ancestral beings whom zoological similarity connects also, though by lines of descent not at all clearly defined, with ancestors of the anthropomorphic apes. In one form or another such a theory of human descent has in our time become part of an accepted framework of zoology, if not as a demonstrable truth, at any rate as a working hypothesis which has no effective rival.

The new development from Linnaeus’s zoological scheme which has thus ensued appears in Huxley’s diagram of simian and human skeletons (fig. 2, (a) gibbon; (b) orang; (c) chimpanzee; (d) gorilla; (e) man). Evidently suggested by the Linnean picture, this is brought up to the modern level of zoology, and continued on to man, forming an introduction to his zoological history hardly to be surpassed. Some of the main points it illustrates may be briefly stated here, the reader being referred for further information to Huxley’s Essays. In tracing the osteological characters of apes and man through this series, the general system of the skeletons, and the close correspondence in number and arrangement of vertebrae and ribs, as well as in the teeth, go far towards justifying the opinion of hereditary connexion. At the same time, the comparison brings into view differences in human structure adapted to man’s pre-eminent mode of life, though hardly to be accounted its chief causes. It may be seen how the arrangement of limbs suited for going on all-fours belongs rather to the apes than to man, and walking on the soles of the feet rather to man than the apes. The two modes of progression overlap in human life, but the child’s tendency when learning is to rest on the soles of the feet and the palms of the hands, unlike the apes, which support themselves on the sides of the feet and the bent knuckles of the hands. With regard to climbing, the long stretch of arm and the grasp with both hands and feet contribute to the arboreal life of the apes, contrasting with what seem the mere remains of the climbing habit to be found even among forest savages. On the whole, man’s locomotive limbs are not so much specialized to particular purposes, as generalized into adaptation to many ends. As to the mechanical conditions of the human body, the upright posture has always been recognized as the chief. To it contributes the balance of the skull on the cervical vertebrae, while the human form of the pelvis provides the necessary support to the intestines in the standing attitude. The marked curvature of the vertebral column, by breaking the shock to the neck and head in running and leaping, likewise favours the erect position. The lowest coccygeal vertebrae of man remain as a rudimentary tail. While it is evident that high importance must be attached to the adaptation of the human body to the life of diversified intelligence and occupation he has to lead, this must not be treated as though it were the principal element of the superiority of man, whose comparison with all lower genera of mammals must be mainly directed to the intellectual organ, the brain. Comparison of the brains of vertebrate animals (see Brain) brings into view the immense difference between the small, smooth brain of a fish or bird and the large and convoluted organ in man. In man, both size and complexity contribute to the increased area of the cortex or outer layer of the brain, which has been fully ascertained to be the seat of the mysterious processes by which sensation furnishes the groundwork of thought. Schäfer (Textbook of Physiology, vol. ii. p. 697) thus defines it: “The cerebral cortex is the seat of the intellectual functions, of intelligent sensation or consciousness, of ideation, of volition, and of memory.”

The relations between man and ape are most readily stated in comparison with the gorilla, as on the whole the most anthropomorphous ape. In the general proportions of the body and limbs there is a marked difference between the gorilla and man. The gorilla’s brain-case is smaller, its trunk larger, its lower limbs shorter, its upper limbs longer in proportion than those of man. The differences between a gorilla’s skull and a man’s are truly immense. In the gorilla, the face, formed largely by the massive jaw-bones, predominates over the brain-case or cranium; in the man these proportions are reversed. In man the occipital foramen, through which passes the spinal cord, is placed just behind the centre of the base of the skull, which is thus evenly balanced in the erect posture, whereas the gorilla, which goes habitually on all fours, and whose skull is inclined forward, in accordance with this posture has the foramen farther back. In man the surface of the skull is comparatively smooth, and the brow-ridges project but little, while in the gorilla these ridges overhang the cavernous orbits like penthouse roofs. The absolute capacity of the cranium of the gorilla is far less than that of man; the smallest adult human cranium hardly measuring less than 63 cub. in., while the largest gorilla cranium measured had a content of only 34½ cub. in. The largest proportional size of the facial bones, and the great projection of the jaws, confer on the gorilla’s skull its small facial angle and brutal character, while its teeth differ from man’s in relative size and number of fangs. Comparing the lengths of the extremities, it is seen that the gorilla’s arm is of enormous length, in fact about one-sixth longer than the spine, whereas a man’s arm is one-fifth shorter than the spine; both hand and foot are proportionally much longer in the gorilla than in man; the leg does not so much differ. The vertebral column of the gorilla differs from that of man in its curvature and other characters, as also does the conformation of its narrow pelvis. The hand of the gorilla corresponds essentially as to bones and muscles with that of man, but is clumsier and heavier; its thumb is “opposable” like a human thumb, that is, it can easily meet with its extremity the extremities of the other fingers, thus possessing a character which does much to make the human hand so admirable an instrument; but the gorilla’s thumb is proportionately shorter than man’s. The foot of the higher apes, though often spoken of as a hand, is anatomically not such, but a prehensile foot. It has been argued by Sir Richard Owen and others that the position of the great toe converts the foot of the higher apes into a hand, an extremely important distinction from man; but against this Professor T.H. Huxley maintained that it has the characteristic structure of a foot with a very movable great toe. The external unlikeness of the apes to man depends much on their hairiness, but this and some other characteristics have no great zoological value. No doubt the difference between man and the apes depends, of all things, on the relative size and organization of the brain. While similar as to their general arrangement to the human brain, those of the higher apes, such as the chimpanzee, are much less complex in their convolutions, as well as much less in both absolute and relative weight—the weight of a gorilla’s brain hardly exceeding 20 oz., and a man’s brain hardly weighing less thin 32 oz., although the gorilla is considerably the larger animal of the two.

These anatomical distinctions are undoubtedly of great moment, and it is an interesting question whether they suffice to place man in a zoological order by himself. It is plain that some eminent zoologists, regarding man as absolutely differing as to mind and spirit from any other animal, have had their discrimination of mere bodily differences unconsciously sharpened, and have been led to give differences, such as in the brain or even the foot of the apes and man, somewhat more importance than if they had merely distinguished two species of apes. Many naturalists hold the opinion that the anatomical differences which separate the gorilla or chimpanzee from man are in some respects less than those which separate these man-like apes from apes lower in the scale. Yet all authorities class both the higher and lower apes in the same order. This is Huxley’s argument, some prominent points of which are the following: As regards the proportion of limbs, the hylobates or gibbon is as much longer in the arms than the gorilla as the gorilla is than the man, while on the other hand, it is as much longer in the legs than the man as the man is than the gorilla. As to the vertebral column and pelvis, the lower apes differ from the gorilla as much as, or more than, it differs from man. As to the capacity of the cranium, men differ from one another so extremely that the largest known human skull holds nearly twice the measure of the smallest, a larger proportion than that in which man surpasses the gorilla; while, with proper allowance for difference of size of the various species, it appears that some of the lower apes fall nearly as much below the higher apes. The projection of the muzzle, which gives the character of brutality to the gorilla as distinguished from the man, is yet further exaggerated in the lemurs, as is also the backward position of the occipital foramen. In characters of such importance as the structure of the hand and foot, the lower apes diverge extremely from the gorilla; thus the thumb ceases to be opposable in the American monkeys, and in the marmosets is directed forwards, and armed with a curved claw like the other digits, the great toe in these latter being insignificant in proportion. The same argument can be extended to other points of anatomical structure, and, what is of more consequence, it appears true of the brain. A series of the apes, arranged from lower to higher orders, shows gradations from a brain little higher that that of a rat, to a brain like a small and imperfect imitation of a man’s; and the greatest structural break in the series lies not between man and the man-like apes, but between the apes and monkeys on one side, and the lemurs on the other. On these grounds Huxley, restoring in principle the Linnean classification, desired to include man in the order of Primates. This order he divided into seven families: first, the Anthropini, consisting of man only; second, the Catarhini or Old World apes; third, the Platyrhini, all New World apes, except the marmosets; fourth, the Arclopithecini, or marmosets; fifth, the Lemurini, or lemurs; sixth and seventh, the Cheiromyini and Galeopithecini.

It is in assigning to man his place in nature on psychological grounds that the greater difficulty arises. Huxley acknowledged an immeasurable and practically infinite divergence, ending in the present enormous psychological gulf between ape and man. It is difficult to account for this intellectual chasm as due to some minor structural difference. The opinion is deeply rooted in modern as in ancient thought, that only a distinctively human element of the highest import can account for the severance between man and the highest animal below him. Differences in the mechanical organs, such as the perfection of the human hand as an instrument, or the adaptability of the human voice to the expression of human thought, are indeed of great value. But they have not of themselves such value, that to endow an ape with the hand and vocal organs of a man would be likely to raise it through any large part of the interval that now separates it from humanity. Much more is to be said for the view that man’s larger and more highly organized brain accounts for those mental powers in which he so absolutely surpasses the brutes.

The distinction does not seem to lie principally in the range and delicacy of direct sensation, as may be judged from such well-known facts as man’s inferiority to the eagle in sight, or to the dog in scent. At the same time, it seems that the human sensory organs may have in various respects acuteness beyond those of other creatures. But, beyond a doubt, man possesses, and in some way possesses by virtue of his superior brain, a power of co-ordinating the impressions of his senses, which enables him to understand the world he lives in, and by understanding to use, resist, and even in a measure rule it. No human art shows the nature of this human attribute more clearly than does language. Man shares with the mammalia and birds the direct expression of the feelings by emotional tones and interjectional cries; the parrot’s power of articulate utterance almost equals his own; and, by association of ideas in some measure, some of the lower animals have even learnt to recognize words he utters. But, to use words in themselves unmeaning, as symbols by which to conduct and convey the complex intellectual processes in which mental conceptions are suggested, compared, combined, and even analysed, and new ones created— this is a faculty which is scarcely to be traced in any lower animal. The view that this, with other mental processes, is a function of the brain, is remarkably corroborated by modern investigation of the disease of aphasia, where the power of thinking remains, but the power is lost of recalling the word corresponding to the thought, and this mental defect is found to accompany a diseased state of a particular locality of the brain (see Aphasia). This may stand among the most perfect of the many evidences that, in Professor Bain’s words, “the brain is the principal, though not the sole organ of mind.” As the brains of the vertebrate animals form an ascending scale, more and more approaching man’s in their arrangement, the fact here finds its explanation, that lower animals perform mental processes corresponding in their nature to our own, though of generally less power and complexity. The full evidence of this correspondence will be found in such works as Brehm’s Thierleben; and some of the salient points are set forth by Charles Darwin, in the chapter on “Mental Powers,” in his Descent of Man. Such are the similar effects of terror on man and the lower animals, causing the muscled to tremble, the heart to palpitate, the sphincters to be relaxed, and the hair to stand on end. The phenomena of memory, as to both persons and places, is strong in animals, as is manifest by their recognition of their masters, and their returning at once to habits of which, though disused for many years, their brain has not lost the stored-up impressions. Such facts as that dogs “hunt in dreams,” make it likely that their minds are not only sensible to actual events, present and past, but can, like our minds, combine revived sensations into ideal scenes in which they are actors,—that is to say, they have the faculty of imagination. As for the reasoning powers in animals, the accounts of monkeys learning by experience to break eggs carefully, and pick off bits of shell, so as not to lose the contents, or of the way in which rats or martens after a while can no longer be caught by the same kind of trap, with innumerable similar facts, show in the plainest way that the reason of animals goes so far as to form by new experience a new hypothesis of cause and effect which will henceforth guide their actions. The employment of mechanical instruments, of which instances of monkeys using sticks and stones furnish the only rudimentary traces among the lower animals, is one of the often-quoted distinctive powers of man. With this comes the whole vast and ever-widening range of inventive and adaptive art, where the uniform hereditary instinct of the cell-forming bee and the nest-building bird is supplanted by multiform processes and constructions, often at first rude and clumsy in comparison to those of the lower instinct, but carried on by the faculty of improvement and new invention into ever higher stages. “From the moment,” writes A.R. Wallace (Natural Selection), “when the first skin was used as a covering, when the first rude spear was formed to assist in the chase, when fire was first used to cook his food, when the first seed was sown or shoot planted, a grand revolution was effected in nature, a revolution which in all the previous ages of the earth’s history had had no parallel; for a being had arisen who was no longer necessarily subject to change with the changing universe,—a being who was in some degree superior to nature, inasmuch as he knew how to control and regulate her action, and could keep himself in harmony with her, not by a change in body, but by an advance of mind.”

As to the lower instincts tending directly to self-preservation, it is acknowledged on all hands that man has them in a less developed state than other animals; in fact, the natural defencelessness of the human being, and the long-continued care and teaching of the young by the elders, are among the commonest themes of moral discourse. Parental tenderness and care for the young are strongly marked among the lower animals, though so inferior in scope and duration to the human qualities; and the same may be said of the mutual forbearance and defence which bind together in a rudimentary social bond the families and herds of animals. Philosophy seeking knowledge for its own sake; morality, manifested in the sense of truth, right, and virtue; and religion, the belief in and communion with superhuman powers ruling and pervading the universe, are human characters, of which it is instructive to trace, if possible, the earliest symptoms in the lower animals, but which can there show at most only faint and rudimentary signs of their wondrous development in mankind. That the tracing of physical and even intellectual continuity between the lower animals and our own race, does not necessarily lead the anthropologist to lower the rank of man in the scale of nature, may be shown by citing A.R. Wallace. Man, he considers, is to be placed “apart, as not only the head and culminating point of the grand series of organic nature, but as in some degree a new and distinct order of being.”

To regard the intellectual functions of the brain and nervous system as alone to be considered in the psychological comparison of man with the lower animals, is a view satisfactory to those thinkers who hold materialistic views. According to this school, man is a machine, no doubt the most complex and wonderfully adapted of all known machines, but still neither more nor less than an instrument whose energy is provided by force from without, and which, when set in action, performs the various operations for which its structure fits it, namely, to live, move, feel, and think. This view, however, always has been strongly opposed by those who accept on theological grounds a spiritualistic doctrine, or what is, perhaps, more usual, a theory which combines spiritualism and materialism in the doctrine of a composite nature in man, animal as to the body and in some measure as to the mind, spiritual as to the soul. It may be useful, as an illustration of one opinion on this subject, to continue here the citation of Dr Prichard’s comparison between man and the lower animals:—

“If it be inquired in what the still more remarkable difference consists, it is by no means easy to reply. By some it will be said that man, while similar in the organization of his body to the lower tribes, is distinguished from them by the possession of an immaterial soul, a principle capable of conscious feeling, of intellect and thought. To many persons it will appear paradoxical to ascribe the endowment of a soul to the inferior tribes in the creation, yet it is difficult to discover a valid argument that limits the possession of an immaterial principle to man. The phenomena of feeling, of desire and aversion, of love and hatred, of fear and revenge, and the perception of external relations manifested in the life of brutes, imply, not only through the analogy which they display to the human faculties, but likewise from all that we can learn or conjecture of their particular nature, the superadded existence of a principle distinct from the mere mechanism of material bodies. That such a principle must exist in all beings capable of sensation, or of anything analogous to human passions and feelings, will hardly be denied by those who perceive the force of arguments which metaphysically demonstrate the immaterial nature of the mind. There may be no rational grounds for the ancient dogma that the souls of the lower animals were imperishable, like the soul of man: this is, however, a problem which we are not called upon to discuss; and we may venture to conjecture that there may be immaterial essences of divers kinds, and endowed with various attributes and capabilities. But the real nature of these unseen principles eludes our research: they are only known to us by their external manifestations. These manifestations are the various powers and capabilities, or rather the habitudes of action, which characterize the different orders of being, diversified according to their several destinations.”

Dr Prichard here puts forward distinctly the time-honoured doctrine which refers the mental faculties to the operation of the soul. The view maintained by a distinguished comparative anatomist, Professor St George Mivart, in his Genesis of Species, ch. xii., may fairly follow. “Man, according to the old scholastic definition, is ‘a rational animal’ (animal rationale), and his animality is distinct in nature from his rationality, though inseparably joined, during life, in one common personality. Man’s animal body must have had a different source from that of the spiritual soul which informs it, owing to the distinctness of the two orders to which those two existences severally belong.” The two extracts just given, however, significant in themselves, fail to render an account of the view of the human constitution which would probably, among the theological and scholastic leaders of public opinion, count the largest weight of adherence. According to this view, not only life but thought are functions of the animal system, in which man excels all other animals as to height of organization: but beyond this, man embodies an immaterial and immortal spiritual principle which no lower creature possesses, and which makes the resemblance of the apes to him but a mocking simulance. To pronounce any absolute decision on these conflicting doctrines is foreign to our present purpose, which is to show that all of them count among their adherents men of high rank in science.

II. Origin of Man.—Opinion as to the genesis of man is divided between the theories of creation and evolution. In both schools, the ancient doctrine of the contemporaneous appearance on earth of all species of animals having been abandoned under the positive evidence of geology, it is admitted that the animal kingdom, past and present, includes a vast series of successive forms, whose appearances and disappearances have taken place at intervals during an immense lapse of ages. The line of inquiry has thus been directed to ascertaining what formative relation subsists among these species and genera, the last link of the argument reaching to the relation between man and the lower creatures preceding him in time. On both the theories here concerned it would be admitted, in the words of Agassiz (Principles of Zoology, pp. 205-206), that “there is a manifest progress in the succession of beings on the surface of the earth. This progress consists in an increasing similarity of the living fauna, and, among the vertebrates especially, in their increasing resemblance to man.” Agassiz continues, however, in terms characteristic of the creationist school: “But this connexion is not the consequence of a direct lineage between the faunas of different ages. There is nothing like parental descent connecting them. The fishes of the Palaeozoic age are in no respect the ancestors of the reptiles of the Secondary age, nor does man descend from the mammals which preceded him in the Tertiary age. The link by which they are connected is of a higher and immaterial nature; and their connexion is to be sought in the view of the Creator himself, whose aim in forming the earth, in allowing it to undergo the successive changes which geology has pointed out, and in creating successively all the different types of animals which have passed away, was to introduce man upon the surface of our globe. Man is the end towards which all the animal creation has tended from the first appearance of the first Palaeozoic fishes.” The evolutionist, on the contrary (see Evolution), maintains that different successive species of animals are in fact connected by parental descent, having become modified in the course of successive generations. The result of Charles Darwin’s application of this theory to man may be given in his own words (Descent of Man, part i. ch. 6):—

“The Catarhine and Platyrhine monkeys agree in a multitude of characters, as is shown by their unquestionably belonging to one and the same order. The many characters which they possess in common can hardly have been independently acquired by so many distinct species; so that these characters must have been inherited. But an ancient form which possessed many characters common to the Catarhine and Platyrhine monkeys, and others in an intermediate condition, and some few perhaps distinct from those now present in either group, would undoubtedly have been ranked, if seen by a naturalist, as an ape or a monkey. And as man under a genealogical point of view belongs to the Catarhine or Old World stock, we must conclude, however much the conclusion may revolt our pride, that our early progenitors would have been properly thus designated. But we must not fall into the error of supposing that the early progenitor of the whole Simian stock, including man, was identical with, or even closely resembled, any existing ape or monkey.”

The problem of the origin of man cannot be properly discussed apart from the full problem of the origin of species. The homologies between man and other animals which both schools try to account for; the explanation of the intervals, with apparent want of intermediate forms, which seem to the creationists so absolute a separation between species; the evidence of useless “rudimentary organs,” such as in man the external shell of the ear, and the muscle which enables some individuals to twitch their ears, which rudimentary parts the evolutionists claim to be only explicable as relics of an earlier specific condition,—these, which are the main points of the argument on the origin of man, belong to general biology. The philosophical principles which underlie the two theories stand for the most part in strong contrast, the theory of evolution tending toward the supposition of ordinary causes, such as “natural selection,” producing modifications in species, whether by gradual accumulation or more sudden leaps, while the theory of creation has recourse to acts of supernatural intervention (see the duke of Argyll, Reign of Law, ch. v.). St George Mivart (Genesis of Species) propounded a theory of a natural evolution of man as to his body, combined with a supernatural creation as to his soul; but this attempt to meet the difficulties on both sides seems to have satisfied neither.

The wide acceptance of the Darwinian theory, as applied to the descent of man, has naturally roused anticipation that geological research, which provides evidence of the animal life of incalculably greater antiquity, would furnish fossil remains of some comparatively recent being intermediate between the anthropomorphic and the anthropic types. This expectation has hardly been fulfilled, but of late years the notion of a variety of the human race, geologically ancient, differing from any known in historic times, and with characters approaching the simian, has been supported by further discoveries. To bring this to the reader’s notice, top and side views of three skulls, as placed together in the human development series in the Oxford University Museum, are represented in the plate, for the purpose of showing the great size of the orbital ridges, which the reader may contrast with his own by a touch with his fingers on his forehead. The first (fig. 3) is the famous Neanderthal skull from near Düsseldorf, described by Schaafhausen in Müller’s Archiv, 1858; Huxley in Lyell, Antiquity of Man, p. 86, and in Man’s Place in Nature. The second (fig. 4) is the skull from the cavern of Spy in Belgium (de Puydt and Lohest, Compte rendu du Congrès de Namur, 1886). The foreheads of these two skulls have an ape-like form, obvious on comparison with the simian skulls of the gorilla and other apes, and visible even in the small-scale figures in the Plate, fig. 2. Among modern tribes of mankind the forehead of the Australian aborigines makes the nearest approach to this type, as was pointed out by Huxley. This brief description will serve to show the importance of a later discovery. At Trinil, in Java, in an equatorial region where, if anywhere, a being intermediate between the higher apes and man would seem likely to be found, Dr Eugene Dubois in 1891-1892 excavated from a bed, considered by him to be of Sivalik formation (Pliocene), a thighbone which competent anatomists decide to be human, and a remarkably depressed calvaria or skull-cap (fig. 5), bearing a certain resemblance in its proportions to the corresponding part of the simian skull. These remains were referred by their discoverer to an animal intermediate between man and ape, to which he gave the name of Pithecanthropus erectus (q.v.), but the interesting discussions on the subject have shown divergence of opinion among anatomists. At any rate, classing the Trinil skull as human, it may be described as tending towards the simian type more than any other known.

III. Races of Mankind.—The classification of mankind into a number of permanent varieties or races, rests on grounds which are within limits not only obvious but definite. Whether from a popular or a scientific point of view, it would be admitted that a Negro, a Chinese, and an Australian belong to three such permanent varieties of men, all plainly distinguishable from one another and from any European. Moreover, such a division takes for granted the idea which is involved in the word race, that each of these varieties is due to special ancestry, each race thus representing an ancient breed or stock, however these breeds or stocks may have had their origin. The anthropological classification of mankind is thus zoological in its nature, like that of the varieties or species of any other animal group, and the characters on which it is based are in great measure physical, though intellectual and traditional peculiarities, such as moral habit and language, furnish important aid. Among the best-marked race-characters are the colour of the skin, eyes and hair; and the structure and arrangement of the latter. Stature is by no means a general criterion of race, and it would not, for instance, be difficult to choose groups of Englishmen, Kaffirs, and North American Indians, whose mean height should hardly differ. Yet in many cases it is a valuable means of distinction, as between the tall Patagonians and the stunted Fuegians, and even as a help in minuter problems, such as separating the Teutonic and Celtic ancestry in the population of England (see Beddoe, “Stature and Bulk of Man in the British Isles,” in Mem. Anthrop. Soc. London, vol. iii.) Proportions of the limbs, compared in length with the trunk, have been claimed as constituting peculiarities of African and American races; and other anatomical points, such as the conformation of the pelvis, have speciality. But inferences of this class have hardly attained to sufficient certainty and generality to be set down in the form of rules. The conformation of the skull is second only to the colour of the skin as a criterion for the distinction of race; and the position of the jaws is recognized as important, races being described as prognathous when the jaws project far, as in the Australian or Negro, in contradistinction to the orthognathous type, which is that of the ordinary well-shaped European skull. On this distinction in great measure depends the celebrated “facial angle,” measured by Camper as a test of low and high races; but this angle is objectionable as resulting partly from the development of the forehead and partly from the position of the jaws. The capacity of the cranium is estimated in cubic measure by filling it with sand, &c., with the general result that the civilized white man is found to have a larger brain than the barbarian or savage. Classification of races on cranial measurements has long been attempted by eminent anatomists, and in certain cases great reliance may be placed on such measurements. Thus the skulls of an Australian and a Negro would be generally distinguished by their narrowness and the projection of the jaw from that of any Englishman; but the Australian skull would usually differ perceptibly from the Negroid in its upright sides and strong orbital ridges. The relation of height to breadth may also furnish a valuable test; but it is acknowledged by all experienced craniologists, that the shape of the skull may vary so much within the same tribe, and even the same family, that it must be used with extreme caution, and if possible only in conjunction with other criteria of race. The general contour of the face, in part dependent on the form of the skull, varies much in different races, among whom it is loosely defined as oval, lozenge-shaped, pentagonal, &c. Of particular features, some of the most marked contrasts to European types are seen in the oblique Chinese eyes, the broad-set Kamchadale cheeks, the pointed Arab chin, the snub Kirghiz nose, the fleshy protuberant Negro lips, and the broad Kalmuck ear. Taken altogether, the features have a typical character which popular observation seizes with some degree of correctness, as in the recognition of the Jewish countenance in a European city.

Were the race-characters constant in degree or even in kind, the classification of races would be easy; but this is not so. Every division of mankind presents in every character wide deviations from a standard. Thus the Negro race, well marked as it may seem at the first glance, proves on closer examination to include several shades of complexion and features, in some districts varying far from the accepted Negro type; while the examination of a series of native American tribes shows that, notwithstanding their asserted uniformity of type, they differ in stature, colour, features and proportions of skull. (See Prichard, Nat. Hist. of Man; Waitz, Anthropology, part i. sec. 5.) Detailed anthropological research, indeed, more and more justifies Blumenbach’s words, that “innumerable varieties of mankind run into one another by insensible degrees.” This state of things, due partly to mixture and crossing of races, and partly to independent variation of types, makes the attempt to arrange the whole human species within exactly bounded divisions an apparently hopeless task. It does not follow, however, that the attempt to distinguish special races should be given up, for there at least exist several definable types, each of which so far prevails in a certain population as to be taken as its standard. L.A.J. Quetelet’s plan of defining such types will probably meet with general acceptance as the scientific method proper to this branch of anthropology. It consists in the determination of the standard or typical “mean man” (homme moyen) of a population, with reference to any particular quality, such as stature, weight, complexion, &c. In the case of stature, this would be done by measuring a sufficient number of men, and counting how many of them belong to each height on the scale. If it be thus ascertained, as it might be in an English district, that the 5 ft. 7 in. men form the most numerous group, while the 5 ft. 6 in. and 5 ft. 8 in. men are less in number, and the 5 ft. 5 in. and 5 ft. 9 in. still fewer, and so on until the extremely small number of extremely short or tall individuals of 5 ft. or 7 ft. is reached, it will thus be ascertained that the stature of the mean or typical man is to be taken as 5 ft. 7 in. The method is thus that of selecting as the standard the most numerous group, on both sides of which the groups decrease in number as they vary in type. Such classification may show the existence of two or more types, in a community, as, for instance, the population of a Californian settlement made up of Whites and Chinese might show two predominant groups (one of 5 ft. 8 in., the other of 5 ft. 4 in.) corresponding to these two racial types. It need hardly be said that this method of determining the mean type of a race, as being that of its really existing and most numerous class, is altogether superior to the mere calculation of an average, which may actually be represented by comparatively few individuals, and those the exceptional ones. For instance, the average stature of the mixed European and Chinese population just referred to might be 5 ft. 6 in.—a worthless and indeed misleading result. (For particulars of Quetelet’s method, see his Physique sociale (1869), and Anthropométrie (1871).)

Classifications of man have been numerous, and though, regarded as systems, most of them are unsatisfactory, yet they have been of great value in systematizing knowledge, and are all more or less based on indisputable distinctions. J.F. Blumenbach’s division, though published as long ago as 1781, has had the greatest influence. He reckons five races, viz. Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, American, Malay. The ill-chosen name of Caucasian, invented by Blumenbach in allusion to a South Caucasian skull of specially typical proportions, and applied by him to the so-called white races, is still current; it brings into one race peoples such as the Arabs and Swedes, although these are scarcely less different than the Americans and Malays, who are set down as two distinct races. Again, two of the best-marked varieties of mankind are the Australians and the Bushmen, neither of whom, however, seems to have a natural place in Blumenbach’s series. The yet simpler classification by Cuvier into Caucasian, Mongol and Negro corresponds in some measure with a division by mere complexion into white, yellow and black races; but neither this threefold division, nor the ancient classification into Semitic, Hamitic and Japhetic nations can be regarded as separating the human types either justly or sufficiently (see Prichard, Natural History of Man, sec. 15; Waitz, Anthropology, vol. i. part i. sec. 5). Schemes which set up a larger number of distinct races, such as the eleven of Pickering, the fifteen of Bory de St Vincent and the sixteen of Desmoulins, have the advantage of finding niches for most well-defined human varieties; but no modern naturalist would be likely to adopt any one of these as it stands. In criticism of Pickering’s system, it is sufficient to point out that he divides the white nations into two races, entitled the Arab and the Abyssinian (Pickering, Races of Man, ch. i.). Agassiz, Nott, Crawfurd and others who have assumed a much larger number of races or species of man, are not considered to have satisfactorily defined a corresponding number of distinguishable types. On the whole, Huxley’s division probably approaches more nearly than any other to such a tentative classification as may be accepted in definition of the principal varieties of mankind, regarded from a zoological point of view, though anthropologists may be disposed to erect into separate races several of his widely-differing sub-races. He distinguishes four principal types of mankind, the Australioid, Negroid, Mongoloid and Xanthochroic (“fair whites”), adding a fifth variety, the Melanochroic (“dark whites”).

In determining whether the races of mankind are to be classed as varieties of one species, it is important to decide whether every two races can unite to produce fertile offspring. It is settled by experience that the most numerous and well-known crossed races, such as the Mulattos, descended from Europeans and Negroes—the Mestizos, from Europeans and American indigenes—the Zambos, from these American indigenes and Negroes, &c., are permanently fertile. They practically constitute sub-races, with a general blending of the characters of the two parents, and only differing from fully-established races in more or less tendency to revert to one or other of the original types. It has been argued, on the other hand, that not all such mixed breeds are permanent, and especially that the cross between Europeans and Australian indigenes is almost sterile; but this assertion, when examined with the care demanded by its bearing on the general question of hybridity, has distinctly broken down. On the whole, the general evidence favours the opinion that any two races may combine to produce a new sub-race, which again may combine with any other variety. Thus, if the existence of a small number of distinct races of mankind be taken as a starting-point, it is obvious that their crossing would produce an indefinite number of secondary varieties, such as the population of the world actually presents. The working out in detail of the problem, how far the differences among complex nations, such as those of Europe, may have been brought about by hybridity, is still, however, a task of almost hopeless intricacy. Among the boldest attempts to account for distinctly-marked populations as resulting from the intermixture of two races, are Huxley’s view that the Hottentots are hybrid between the Bushmen and the Negroes, and his more important suggestion, that the Melanochroic peoples of southern Europe are of mixed Xanthochroic and Australioid stock.

The problem of ascertaining how the small number of races, distinct enough to be called primary, can have assumed their different types, has been for years the most disputed field of anthropology, the battle-ground of the rival schools of monogenists and polygenists. The one has claimed all mankind to be descended from one original stock, and generally from a single pair; the other has contended for the several primary races being separate species of independent origin. The great problem of the monogenist theory is to explain by what course of variation the so different races of man have arisen from a single stock. In ancient times little difficulty was felt in this, authorities such as Aristotle and Vitruvius seeing in climate and circumstance the natural cause of racial differences, the Ethiopian having been blackened by the tropical sun, &c. Later and closer observations, however, have shown such influences to be, at any rate, far slighter in amount and slower in operation than was once supposed. A. de Quatrefages brings forward (Unité de l’espèce humaine) his strongest arguments for the variability of races under change of climate, &c. (action du milieu), instancing the asserted alteration in complexion, constitution and character of Negroes in America, and Englishmen in America and Australia. But although the reality of some such modification is not disputed, especially as to stature and constitution, its amount is not enough to upset the counter-proposition of the remarkable permanence of type displayed by races, ages after they have been transported to climates extremely different from that of their former home. Moreover, physically different peoples, such as the Bushmen and Negroes in Africa, show no signs of approximation under the influence of the same climate; while, on the other hand, the coast tribes of Tierra del Fuego and forest tribes of tropical Brazil continue to resemble one another, in spite of extreme differences of climate and food. Darwin is moderate in his estimation of the changes produced on races of man by climate and mode of life within the range of history (Descent of Man, part i. ch. 4 and 7). The slightness and slowness of variation in human races having become known, a great difficulty of the monogenist theory was seen to lie in the apparent shortness of the Biblical chronology. Inasmuch as several well-marked races of mankind, such as the Egyptian, Phoenician, Ethiopian, &c., were much the same three or four thousand years ago as now, their variation from a single stock in the course of any like period could hardly be accounted for without a miracle. This difficulty the polygenist theory escaped, and in consequence it gained ground. Modern views have however tended to restore, though under a new aspect, the doctrine of a single human stock. The fact that man has existed during a vast period of time makes it more easy to assume the continuance of very slow natural variation as having differentiated even the white man and the Negro among the descendants of a common progenitor. On the other hand it does not follow necessarily from a theory of evolution of species that mankind must have descended from a single stock, for the hypothesis of development admits of the argument, that several simian species may have culminated in several races of man. The general tendency of the development theory, however, is against constituting separate species where the differences are moderate enough to be accounted for as due to variation from a single type. Darwin’s summing-up of the evidence as to unity of type throughout the races of mankind is as distinctly a monogenist argument as those of Blumenbach, Prichard or Quatrefages—

“Although the existing races of man differ in many respects, as in colour, hair, shape of skull, proportions of the body, &c., yet, if their whole organization be taken into consideration, they are found to resemble each other closely in a multitude of points. Many of these points are of so unimportant, or of so singular a nature, that it is extremely improbable that they should have been independently acquired by aboriginally distinct species or races. The same remark holds good with equal or greater force with respect to the numerous points of mental similarity between the most distinct races of man.... Now, when naturalists observe a close agreement in numerous small details of habits, tastes and dispositions between two or more domestic races, or between nearly allied natural forms, they use this fact as an argument that all are descended from a common progenitor who was thus endowed; and, consequently, that all should be classed under the same species. The same argument may be applied with much force to the races of man.”—(Darwin, Descent of Man, part i. ch. 7.)

The main difficulty of the monogenist school has ever been to explain how races which have remained comparatively fixed in type during the long period of history, such as the white man and the Negro, should, in even a far longer period, have passed by variation from a common original. To meet this A.R. Wallace suggests that the remotely ancient representatives of the human species, being as yet animals too low in mind to have developed those arts of maintenance and social ordinances by which man holds his own against influences from climate and circumstance, were in their then wild state much more plastic than now to external nature; so that “natural selection” and other causes met with but feeble resistance in forming the permanent varieties or races of man, whose complexion and structure still remained fixed in their descendants (see Wallace, Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection, p. 319). On the whole, it may be asserted that the doctrine of the unity of mankind stands on a firmer basis than in previous ages. It would be premature to judge how far the problem of the origin of races may be capable of exact solution; but the experience gained since 1871 countenances Darwin’s prophecy that before long the dispute between the monogenists and the polygenists would die a silent and unobserved death.

IV. Antiquity of Man.—Until the 10th century man’s first appearance on earth was treated on a historical basis as matter of record. It is true that the schemes drawn up by chronologists differed widely, as was natural, considering the variety and inconsistency of their documentary data. On the whole, the scheme of Archbishop Usher, who computed that the earth and man were created in 4004 B.C., was the most popular (see Chronology). It is no longer necessary, however, to discuss these chronologies. Geology has made it manifest that our earth must have been the seat of vegetable and animal life for an immense period of time; while the first appearance of man, though comparatively recent, is positively so remote, that an estimate between twenty and a hundred thousand years may fairly be taken as a minimum. This geological claim for a vast antiquity of the human race is supported by the similar claims of prehistoric archaeology and the science of culture, the evidence of all three departments of inquiry being intimately connected, and in perfect harmony.

Human bones and objects of human manufacture have been found in such geological relation to the remains of fossil species of elephant, rhinoceros, hyena, bear, &c., as to lead to the distinct inference that man already existed at a remote period in localities where these mammalia are now and have long been extinct. The not quite conclusive researches of Tournal and Christol in limestone caverns of the south of France date back to 1828. About the same time P.C. Schmerling of Liége was exploring the ossiferous caverns of the valley of the Meuse, and satisfied himself that the men whose bones he found beneath the stalagmite floors, together with bones cut and flints shaped by human workmanship, had inhabited this Belgian district at the same time with the cave-bear and several other extinct animals whose bones were imbedded with them (Recherches sur les ossements fossiles découverts dans les cavernes de la province de Liége (Liége, 1833-1834)). This evidence, however, met with little acceptance among scientific men. Nor, at first, was more credit given to the discovery by M. Boucher de Perthes, about 1841, of rude flint hatchets in a sand-bed containing remains of mammoth and rhinoceros at Menchecourt near Abbeville, which first find was followed by others in the same district (see Boucher de Perthes, De l’Industrie primitive, ou les arts à leur origine (1846); Antiquités celtiques et antédiluviennes (Paris, 1847), &c.). Between 1850 and 1860 French and English geologists were induced to examine into the facts, and found irresistible the evidence that man existed and used rude implements of chipped flint during the Quaternary or Drift period. Further investigations were then made, and overlooked results of older ones reviewed. In describing Kent’s Cavern (q.v.) near Torquay, R.A.C. Godwin-Austen had maintained, as early as 1840 (Proc. Geo. Soc. London, vol. iii. p. 286), that the human bones and worked flints had been deposited indiscriminately together with the remains of fossil elephant, rhinoceros, &c. Certain caves and rock-shelters in the province of Dordogne, in central France, were examined by a French and an English archaeologist, Edouard Lartet and Henry Christy, the remains discovered showing the former prevalence of the reindeer in this region, at that time inhabited by savages, whose bone and stone implements indicate a habit of life similar to that of the Eskimos. Moreover, the co-existence of man with a fauna now extinct or confined to other districts was brought to yet clearer demonstration by the discovery in these caves of certain drawings and carvings of the animals done by the ancient inhabitants themselves, such as a group of reindeer on a piece of reindeer horn, and a sketch of a mammoth, showing the elephant’s long hair, on a piece of a mammoth’s tusk from La Madeleine (Lartet and Christy, Reliquiae Aquitanicae, ed. by T.R. Jones (London, 1865), &c.).

This and other evidence (which is considered in more detail in the article Archaeology) is now generally accepted by geologists as carrying back the existence of man into the period of the post-glacial drift, in what is now called the Quaternary period, an antiquity at least of tens of thousands of years. Again, certain inferences have been tentatively made from the depth of mud, earth, peat, &c., which has accumulated above relics of human art imbedded in ancient times. Among these is the argument from the numerous borings made in the alluvium of the Nile valley to a depth of 60 ft., where down to the lowest level fragments of burnt brick and pottery were always found, showing that people advanced enough in the arts to bake brick and pottery have inhabited the valley during the long period required for the Nile inundations to deposit 60 ft. of mud, at a rate probably not averaging more than a few inches in a century. Another argument is that of Professor von Morlot, based on a railway section through a conical accumulation of gravel and alluvium, which the torrent of the Tinière has gradually built up where it enters the Lake of Geneva near Villeneuve. Here three layers of vegetable soil appear, proved by the objects imbedded in them to have been the successive surface soils in two prehistoric periods and in the Roman period, but now lying 4, 10 and 19 ft. underground. On this it is computed that if 4 ft. of soil were formed in the 1500 years since the Roman period, we must go 5000 years farther back for the date of the earliest human inhabitants. Calculations of this kind, loose as they are, deserve attention.

The interval between the Quaternary or Drift period and the period of historical antiquity is to some extent bridged over by relics of various intermediate civilizations, e.g. the Lake-dwellings (q.v.) of Switzerland, mostly of the lower grades, and in some cases reaching back to remote dates. And further evidence of man’s antiquity is afforded by the kitchen-middens or shell-heaps (q.v.), especially those in Denmark. Danish peat-mosses again show the existence of man at a time when the Scotch fir was abundant; at a later period the firs were succeeded by oaks, which have again been almost superseded by beeches, a succession of changes which indicate a considerable lapse of time.

Lastly, chronicles and documentary records, taken in connexion with archaeological relics of the historical period, carry back into distant ages the starting-point of actual history, behind which lies the evidently vast period only known by inferences from the relations of languages and the stages of development of civilization. The most recent work of Egyptologists proves a systematic civilization to have existed in the valley of the Nile at least 6000 to 7000 years ago (see Chronology).

It was formerly held that the early state of society was one of comparatively high culture, and thus there was no hesitation in assigning the origin of man to a time but little beyond the range of historical records and monuments. But the researches of anthropologists in recent years have proved that the civilization of man has been gradually developed from an original stone-age culture, such as characterizes modern savage life. To the 6000 years to which ancient civilization dates back must be added a vast period during which the knowledge, arts and institutions of such a civilization as that of ancient Egypt attained the high level evidenced by the earliest records. The evidence of comparative philology supports the necessity for an enormous time allowance. Thus, Hebrew and Arabic are closely related languages, neither of them the original of the other, but both sprung from some parent language more ancient than either. When, therefore, the Hebrew records have carried back to the most ancient admissible date the existence of the Hebrew language, this date must have been long preceded by that of the extinct parent language of the whole Semitic family; while this again was no doubt the descendant of languages slowly shaping themselves through ages into this peculiar type. Yet more striking is the evidence of the Indo-European (formerly called Aryan) family of languages. The Hindus, Medes, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Germans, Celts and Slavs make their appearance at more or less remote dates as nations separate in language as in history. Nevertheless, it is now acknowledged that at some far remoter time, before these nations were divided from the parent stock, and distributed over Asia and Europe, a single barbaric people stood as physical and political representative of the nascent Aryan race, speaking a now extinct Aryan language, from which, by a series of modifications not to be estimated as possible within many thousands of years, there arose languages which have been mutually unintelligible since the dawn of history, and between which it was only possible for an age of advanced philology to trace the fundamental relationship.

From the combination of these considerations, it will be seen that the farthest date to which documentary or other records extend is now generally regarded by anthropologists as but the earliest distinctly visible point of the historic period, beyond which stretches back a vast indefinite series of prehistoric ages.

V. Language.—In examining how the science of language bears on the general problems of anthropology, it is not necessary to discuss at length the critical questions which arise, the principal of which are considered elsewhere (see Language). Philology is especially appealed to by anthropologists as contributing to the following lines of argument. A primary mental similarity of all branches of the human race is evidenced by their common faculty of speech, while at the same time secondary diversities of race-character and history are marked by difference of grammatical structure and of vocabularies. The existence of groups or families of allied languages, each group being evidently descended from a single language, affords one of the principal aids in classifying nations and races. The adoption by one language of words originally belonging to another, proving as it does the fact of intercourse between two races, and even to some extent indicating the results of such intercourse, affords a valuable clue through obscure regions of the history of civilization.

Communication by gesture-signs, between persons unable to converse in vocal language, is an effective system of expression common to all mankind. Thus, the signs used to ask a deaf and dumb child about his meals and lessons, or to communicate with a savage met in the desert about game or enemies, belong to codes of gesture-signals identical in principle, and to a great extent independent both of nationality and education; there is even a natural syntax, or order of succession, in such gesture-signs. To these gestures let there be added the use of the interjectional cries, such as oh! ugh! hey! and imitative sounds to represent the cat’s mew, the click of a trigger, the clap or thud of a blow, &c. The total result of this combination of gesture and significant sound will be a general system of expression, imperfect but serviceable, and naturally intelligible to all mankind without distinction of race. Nor is such a system of communication only theoretically conceivable; it is, and always has been, in practical operation between people ignorant of one another’s language, and as such is largely used in the intercourse of savage tribes. It is true that to some extent these means of utterance are common to the lower animals, the power of expressing emotion by cries and tones extending far down in the scale of animal life, while rudimentary gesture-signs are made by various mammals and birds. Still, the lower animals make no approach to the human system of natural utterance by gesture-signs and emotional-imitative sounds, while the practical identity of this human system among races physically so unlike as the Englishman and the native of the Australian bush indicates extreme closeness of mental similarity throughout the human species.

When, however, the Englishman and the Australian speak each in his native tongue, only such words as belong to the interjectional and imitative classes will be naturally intelligible, and as it were instinctive to both. Thus the savage, uttering the sound waow! as an explanation of surprise and warning, might be answered by the white man with the not less evidently significant sh! of silence, and the two speakers would be on common ground when the native indicated by the name bwirri his cudgel, flung whirring through the air at a flock of birds, or when the native described as a jakkal-yakkal the bird called by the foreigner a cockatoo. With these, and other very limited classes of natural words, however, resemblance in vocabulary practically ceases. The Australian and English languages each consist mainly of a series of words having no apparent connexion with the ideas they signify, and differing utterly; of course, accidental coincidences and borrowed words must be excluded from such comparisons. It would be easy to enumerate other languages of the world, such as Basque, Turkish, Hebrew, Malay, Mexican, all devoid of traceable resemblance to Australian and English, and to one another. There is, moreover, extreme difference in the grammatical structure both of words and sentences in various languages. The question then arises, how far the employment of different vocabularies, and that to a great extent on different grammatical principles, is compatible with similarity of the speakers’ minds, or how far does diversity of speech indicate diversity of mental nature? The obvious answer is, that the power of using words as signs to express thoughts with which their sound does not directly connect them, in fact as arbitrary symbols, is the highest grade of the special human faculty in language, the presence of which binds together all races of mankind in substantial mental unity. The measure of this unity is, that any child of any race can be brought up to speak the language of any other race.

Under the present standard of evidence in comparing languages and tracing allied groups to a common origin, the crude speculations as to a single primeval language of mankind, which formerly occupied so much attention, are acknowledged to be worthless. Increased knowledge and accuracy of method have as yet only left the way open to the most widely divergent suppositions. For all that known dialects prove to the contrary, on the one hand, there may have been one primitive language, from which the descendant languages have varied so widely, that neither their words nor their formation now indicate their unity in long past ages, while, on the other hand, the primitive tongues of mankind may have been numerous, and the extreme unlikeness of such languages as Basque, Chinese, Peruvian, Hottentot and Sanskrit may arise from absolute independence of origin.

The language spoken by any tribe or nation is not of itself absolute evidence as to its race-affinities. This is clearly shown in extreme cases. Thus the Jews in Europe have almost lost the use of Hebrew, but speak as their vernacular the language of their adopted nation, whatever it may be; even the Jewish-German dialect, though consisting so largely of Hebrew words, is philologically German, as any sentence shows: “Ich hab noch hoiom lo geachelt,” “I have not yet eaten to-day.” The mixture of the Israelites in Europe by marriage with other nations is probably much greater than is acknowledged by them; yet, on the whole, the race has been preserved with extraordinary strictness, as its physical characteristics sufficiently show. Language thus here fails conspicuously as a test of race and even of national history. Not much less conclusive is the case of the predominantly Negro populations of the West India Islands, who, nevertheless, speak as their native tongues dialects of English or French, in which the number of intermingled native African words is very scanty: “Dem hitti netti na ini watra bikasi dem de fisiman,” “They cast a net into the water, because they were fishermen.” (Surinam Negro-Eng.) “Bef pas ca jamain lasse poter cônes li,” “Le boeuf n’est jamais las de porter ses cornes.” (Haitian Negro-Fr.) If it be objected that the linguistic conditions of these two races are more artificial than has been usual in the history of the world, less extreme cases may be seen in countries where the ordinary results of conquest-colonization have taken place. The Mestizos, who form so large a fraction of the population of modern Mexico, numbering several millions, afford a convenient test in this respect, inasmuch as their intermediate complexion separates them from both their ancestral races, the Spaniard, and the chocolate-brown indigenous Aztec or other Mexican. The mother-tongue of this mixed race is Spanish, with an infusion of Mexican words; and a large proportion cannot speak any native dialect. In most or all nations of mankind, crossing or intermarriage of races has thus taken place between the conquering invader and the conquered native, so that the language spoken by the nation may represent the results of conquest as much or more than of ancestry. The supersession of the Celtic Cornish by English, and of the Slavonic Old-Prussian by German, are but examples of a process which has for untold ages been supplanting native dialects, whose very names have mostly disappeared. On the other hand, the language of the warlike invader or peaceful immigrant may yield, in a few generations, to the tongue of the mass of the population, as the Northman’s was replaced by French, and modern German gives way to English in the United States. Judging, then, by the extirpation and adoption of languages within the range of history, it is obvious that to classify mankind into, races, Aryan, Semitic, Turanian, Polynesian, Kaffir, &c., on the mere evidence of language, is intrinsically unsound.

VI. Development of Civilization.—The conditions of man at the lowest and highest known levels of culture are separated by a vast interval; but this interval is so nearly filled by known intermediate stages, that the line of continuity between the lowest savagery and the highest civilization is unbroken at any critical point.

An examination of the details of savage life shows not only that there is an immeasurable difference between the rudest man and the highest lower animal, but also that the least cultured savages have themselves advanced far beyond the lowest intellectual and moral state at which human tribes can be conceived as capable of existing, when placed under favourable circumstances of warm climate, abundant food, and security from too severe destructive influences. The Australian black-fellow or the forest Indian of Brazil, who may be taken as examples of the lowest modern savage, had, before contact with whites, attained to rudimentary stages in many of the characteristic functions of civilized life. His language, expressing thoughts by conventional articulate sounds, is the same in essential principle as the most cultivated philosophic dialect, only less exact and copious. His weapons, tools and other appliances such as the hammer, hatchet, spear, knife, awl, thread, net, canoe, &c., are the evident rudimentary analogues of what still remains in use among Europeans. His structures, such as the hut, fence, stockade, earthwork, &c., may be poor and clumsy, but they are of the same nature as our own. In the simple arts of broiling and roasting meat, the use of hides and furs for covering, the plaiting of mats and baskets, the devices of hunting, trapping and fishing, the pleasure taken in personal ornament, the touches of artistic decoration on objects of daily use, the savage differs in degree but not in kind from the civilized man. The domestic and social affections, the kindly care of the young and the old, some acknowledgment of marital and parental obligation, the duty of mutual defence in the tribe, the authority of the elders, and general respect to traditional custom as the regulator of life and duty, are more or less well marked in every savage tribe which is not disorganized and falling to pieces. Lastly, there is usually to be discerned amongst such lower races a belief in unseen powers pervading the universe, this belief shaping itself into an animistic or spiritualistic theology, mostly resulting in some kind of worship. If, again, high savage or low barbaric types be selected, as among the North American Indians, Polynesians, and Kaffirs of South Africa, the same elements of culture appear, but at a more advanced stage, namely, a more full and accurate language, more knowledge of the laws of nature, more serviceable implements, more perfect industrial processes, more definite and fixed social order and frame of government, more systematic and philosophic schemes of religion and a more elaborate and ceremonial worship. At intervals new arts and ideas appear, such as agriculture and pasturage, the manufacture of pottery, the use of metal implements and the device of record and communication by picture writing. Along such stages of improvement and invention the bridge is fairly made between savage and barbaric culture; and this once attained to, the remainder of the series of stages of civilization lies within the range of common knowledge.

The teaching of history, during the three to four thousand years of which contemporary chronicles have been preserved, is that civilization is gradually developed in the course of ages by enlargement and increased precision of knowledge, invention and improvement of arts, and the progression of social and political habits and institutions towards general well-being. That processes of development similar to these were in prehistoric times effective to raise culture from the savage to the barbaric level, two considerations especially tend to prove. First, there are numerous points in the culture even of rude races which are not explicable otherwise than on the theory of development. Thus, though difficult or superfluous arts may easily be lost, it is hard to imagine the abandonment of contrivances of practical daily utility, where little skill is required and materials are easily accessible. Had the Australians or New Zealanders, for instance, ever possessed the potter’s art, they could hardly have forgotten it. The inference that these tribes represent the stage of culture before the invention of pottery is confirmed by the absence of buried fragments of pottery in the districts they inhabit. The same races who were found making thread by the laborious process of twisting with the hand, would hardly have disused, if they had ever possessed, so simple a labour-saving device as the spindle, which consists merely of a small stick weighted at one end; the spindle may, accordingly, be regarded as an instrument invented somewhere between the lowest and highest savage levels (Tylor, Early Hist. of Mankind, p. 193). Again, many devices of civilization bear unmistakable marks of derivation from a lower source; thus the ancient Egyptian and Assyrian harps, which differ from ours in having no front pillar, appear certainly to owe this remarkable defect to having grown up through intermediate forms from the simple strung bow, the still used type of the most primitive stringed instrument. In this way the history of numeral words furnishes actual proof of that independent intellectual progress among savage tribes which some writers have rashly denied. Such words as hand, hands, foot, man, &c., are used as numerals signifying 5, 10, 15, 20, &c., among many savage and barbaric peoples; thus Polynesian lima, i.e. “hand,” means 5; Zulu tatisitupa, i.e. “taking the thumb,” means 6; Greenlandish arfersanek-pingasut, i.e. “on the other foot three,” means 18; Tamanac tevin itoto, i.e. “one man,” means 20, &c., &c. The existence of such expressions demonstrates that the people who use them had originally no spoken names for these numbers, but once merely counted them by gesture on their fingers and toes in low savage fashion, till they obtained higher numerals by the inventive process of describing in words these counting-gestures. Second, the process of “survival in culture” has caused the preservation in each stage of society of phenomena, belonging to an earlier period, but kept up by force of custom into the later, thus supplying evidence of the modern condition being derived from the ancient. Thus the mitre over an English bishop’s coat-of-arms is a survival which indicates him as the successor of bishops who actually wore mitres, while armorial bearings themselves, and the whole craft of heraldry, are survivals bearing record of a state of warfare and social order whence our present state was by vast modification evolved. Evidence of this class, proving the derivation of modern civilization, not only from ancient barbarism, but beyond this, from primeval savagery, is immensely plentiful, especially in rites and ceremonies, where the survival of ancient habits is peculiarly favoured. Thus the modern Hindu, though using civilized means for lighting his household fires, retains the savage “fire-drill” for obtaining fire by friction of wood when what he considers pure or sacred fire has to be produced for sacrificial purposes; while in Europe into modern times the same primitive process has been kept up in producing the sacred and magical “need-fire,” which was lighted to deliver cattle from a murrain. Again, the funeral offerings of food, clothing, weapons, &c., to the dead are absolutely intelligible and purposeful among savage races, who believe that the souls of the departed are ethereal beings capable of consuming food, and of receiving and using the souls or phantoms of any objects sacrificed for their use. The primitive philosophy to which these conceptions belong has to a great degree been discredited by modern science; yet the clear survivals of such ancient and savage rites may still be seen in Europe, where the Bretons leave the remains of the All Souls’ supper on the table for the ghosts of the dead kinsfolk to partake of, and Russian peasants set out cakes for the ancestral manes on the ledge which supports the holy pictures, and make dough ladders to assist the ghosts of the dead to ascend out of their graves and start on their journey for the future world; while other provision for the same spiritual journey is made when the coin is still put in the hand of the corpse at an Irish wake. In like manner magic still exists in the civilized world as a survival from the savage and barbaric times to which it originally belongs, and in which is found the natural source and proper home of utterly savage practices still carried on by ignorant peasants in Great Britain, such as taking omens from the cries of animals, or bewitching an enemy by sticking full of pins and hanging up to shrivel in the smoke an image or other object, that similar destruction may fall on the hated person represented by the symbol (Tylor, Primitive Culture, ch. i., iii., iv., xi., xii.; Early Hist. of Man, ch. vi.).

The comparative science of civilization thus not only generalizes the data of history, but supplements its information by laying down the lines of development along which the lowest prehistoric culture has gradually risen to the highest modern level. Among the most clearly marked of these lines is that which follows the succession of the Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages (see Archaeology). The Stone Age represents the early condition of mankind in general, and has remained in savage districts up to modern times, while the introduction of metals need not at once supersede the use of the old stone hatchets and arrows, which have often long continued in dwindling survival by the side of the new bronze and even iron ones. The Bronze Age had its most important place among ancient nations of Asia and Europe, and among them was only succeeded after many centuries by the Iron Age; while in other districts, such as Polynesia and Central and South Africa, and America (except Mexico and Peru), the native tribes were moved directly from the Stone to the Iron Age without passing through the Bronze Age at all. Although the three divisions of savage, barbaric, and civilized man do not correspond at all perfectly with the Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages, this classification of civilization has proved of extraordinary value in arranging in their proper order of culture the nations of the Old World.

Another great line of progress has been followed by tribes passing from the primitive state of the wild hunter, fisher and fruit-gatherer to that of the settled tiller of the soil, for to this change of habit may be plainly in great part traced the expansion of industrial arts and the creation of higher social and political institutions. These, again, have followed their proper lines along the course of time. Among such is the immense legal development by which the primitive law of personal vengeance passed gradually away, leaving but a few surviving relics in the modern civilized world, and being replaced by the higher doctrine that crime is an offence against society, to be repressed for the public good. Another vast social change has been that from the patriarchal condition, in which the unit is the family under the despotic rule of its head, to the systems in which individuals make up a society whose government is centralized in a chief or king. In the growth of systematic civilization, the art of writing has had an influence so intense, that of all tests to distinguish the barbaric from the civilized state, none is so generally effective as this, whether they have but the failing link with the past which mere memory furnishes, or can have recourse to written records of past history and written constitutions of present order. Lastly, still following the main lines of human culture, the primitive germs of religious institutions have to be traced in the childish faith and rude rites of savage life, and thence followed in their expansion into the vast systems administered by patriarchs and priests, henceforth taking under their charge the precepts of morality, and enforcing them under divine sanction, while also exercising in political life an authority beside or above the civil law.

The state of culture reached by Quaternary man is evidenced by the stone implements in the drift-gravels, and other relics of human art in the cave deposits. His drawings on bone or tusk found in the caves show no mean artistic power, as appears by the three specimens copied in the Plate. That representing two deer (fig. 6) was found so early as 1852 in the breccia of a limestone cave on the Charente, and its importance recognized in a remarkable letter by Prosper Merimée, as at once historically ancient and geologically modern (Congrès d’anthropologie et d’archéologie préhistoriques, Copenhagen (1869), p. 128). The other two are the famous mammoth from the cave of La Madeleine, on which the woolly mane and huge tusks of Elephas primigenius are boldly drawn (fig. 7); and the group of man and horses (fig. 8). There has been found one other contemporary portrait of man, where a hunter is shown stalking an aurochs.

That the men of the Quaternary period knew the savage art of producing fire by friction, and roasted the flesh on which they mainly subsisted, is proved by the fragments of charcoal found in the cave deposits, where also occur bone awls and needles, which indicate the wearing of skin clothing, like that of the modern Australians and Fuegians. Their bone lance-heads and dart-points were comparable to those of northern and southern savages. Particular attention has to be given to the stone implements used by these earliest known of mankind. The division of tribes in the stone implement stage into two classes, the Palaeolithic or Old Stone Age, and the Neolithic or New Stone Age, according to their proficiency in this most important art furnishes in some respects the best means of determining their rank in general culture.

In order to put this argument clearly before the reader, a few selected implements are figured in the Plate. The group in fig. 9 contains tools and weapons of the Neolithic period such as are dug up on European soil; they are evident relics of ancient populations who used them till replaced by metal. The stone hatchets are symmetrically shaped and edged by grinding, while the cutting flakes, scrapers, spear and arrow heads are of high finish. Direct knowledge of the tribes who made them is scanty, but implements so similar in make and design having been in use in North and South America until modern times, it may be assumed for purposes of classification that the Neolithic peoples of the New World were at a similar barbarous level in industrial arts, social organization, moral and religious ideas. Such comparison, though needing caution and reserve, at once proved of great value to anthropology. When, however, there came to light from the drift-gravels and limestone caves of Europe the Palaeolithic implements, of which some types are shown in the group (fig. 10), the difficult problem presented itself, what degree of general culture these rude implements belonged to. On mere inspection, their rudeness, their unsuitability for being hafted, and the absence of shaping and edging by the grindstone, mark their inferiority to the Neolithic implements. Their immensely greater antiquity was proved by their geological position and their association with a long extinct fauna, and they were not, like the Neoliths, recognizable as corresponding closely to the implements used by modern tribes. There was at first a tendency to consider the Palaeoliths as the work of men ruder than savages, if, indeed, their makers were to be accounted human at all. Since then, however, the problem has passed into a more manageable state. Stone implements, more or less approaching the European Palaeolithic type, were found in Africa from Egypt southwards, where in such parts as Somaliland and Cape Colony they lie about on the ground, as though they had been the rough tools and weapons of the rude inhabitants of the land at no very distant period. The group in fig. 11 in the Plate shows the usual Somaliland types. These facts tended to remove the mystery from Palaeolithic man, though too little is known of the ruder ancient tribes of Africa to furnish a definition of the state of culture which might have co-existed with the use of Palaeolithic implements. Information to this purpose, however, can now be furnished from a more outlying region. This is Tasmania, where as in the adjacent continent of Australia, the survival of marsupial animals indicates long isolation from the rest of the world. Here, till far on into the 19th century, the Englishmen could watch the natives striking off flakes of stone, trimming them to convenient shape for grasping them in the hand, and edging them by taking off successive chips on one face only. The group in fig. 12 shows ordinary Tasmanian forms, two of them being finer tools for scraping and grooving. (For further details reference may be made to H. Ling Roth, The Tasmanians, (2nd ed., 1899); R. Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria (1878), vol. ii.; Papers and Proceedings of Royal Society of Tasmania; and papers by the present writer in Journal of the Anthropological Institute.) The Tasmanians, when they came in contact with the European explorers and settlers, were not the broken outcasts they afterwards became. They were a savage people, perhaps the lowest in culture of any known, but leading a normal, self-supporting, and not unhappy life, which had probably changed little during untold ages. The accounts, imperfect as they are, which have been preserved of their arts, beliefs and habits, thus present a picture of the arts, beliefs and habits of tribes whose place in the Stone Age was a grade lower than that of Palaeolithic man of the Quaternary period.

Plate

The Tasmanian stone implements, figured in the Plate, show their own use when it is noticed that the rude chipping forms a good hand-grip above, and an effective edge for chopping, sawing, and cutting below. But the absence of the long-shaped implements, so characteristic of the Neolithic and Palaeolithic series, and serviceable as picks, hatchets, and chisels, shows remarkable limitation in the mind of these savages, who made a broad, hand-grasped knife their tool of all work to cut, saw, and chop with. Their weapons were the wooden club or waddy notched to the grasp, and spears of sticks, often crooked but well balanced, with points sharpened by tool or fire, and sometimes jagged. No spear thrower or bow and arrow was known. The Tasmanian savages were crafty warriors and kangaroo-hunters, and the women climbed the highest trees by notching, in quest of opossums. Shell-fish and crabs were taken, and seals knocked on the head with clubs, but neither fish-hook nor fishing-net was known, and indeed swimming fish were taboo as food. Meat and vegetable food, such as fern-root, was broiled over the fire, but boiling in a vessel was unknown. The fire was produced by the ordinary savage fire-drill. Ignorant of agriculture, with no dwellings but rough huts or breakwinds of sticks and bark, without dogs or other domestic animals, these savages, until the coming of civilized man, roamed after food within their tribal bounds. Logs and clumsy floats of bark and grass enabled them to cross water under favourable circumstances. They had clothing of skins rudely stitched together with bark thread, and they were decorated with simple necklaces of kangaroo teeth, shells and berries. Among their simple arts, plaiting and basket-work was one in which they approached the civilized level. The pictorial art of the Tasmanians was poor and childish, quite below that of the Palaeolithic men of Europe. The Tasmanians spoke a fairly copious agglutinating language, well marked as to parts of speech, syntax and inflexion. Numeration was at a low level, based on counting fingers on one hand only, so that the word for man (puggana) stood also for the number 5. The religion of the Tasmanians, when cleared from ideas apparently learnt from the whites, was a simple form of animism based on the shadow (warrawa) being the soul or spirit. The strongest belief of the natives was in the power of the ghosts of the dead, so that they carried the bones of relatives to secure themselves from harm, and they fancied the forest swarming with malignant demons. They placed weapons near the grave for the dead friend’s soul to use, and drove out disease from the sick by exorcising the ghost which was supposed to have caused it. Of greater special spirits of Nature we find something vaguely mentioned. The earliest recorders of the native social life set down such features as their previous experience of rude civilized life had made them judges of. They notice the self-denying affection of the mothers, and the hard treatment of the wives by the husbands, polygamy and the shifting marriage unions. But when we meet with a casual remark as to the tendency of the Tasmanians to take wives from other tribes than their own, it seems likely that they had some custom of exogamy which the foreigners did not understand. Meagre as is the information preserved of the arts, thoughts, and customs of these survivors from the lower Stone Age, it is of value as furnishing even a temporary and tentative means of working out the development of culture on a basis not of conjecture but of fact.

Conclusion.—To-day anthropology is grappling with the heavy task of systematizing the vast stores of knowledge to which the key was found by Boucher de Perthes, by Lartet, Christy and their successors. There have been recently no discoveries to rival in novelty those which followed the exploration of the bone-caves and drift-gravels, and which effected an instant revolution in all accepted theories of man’s antiquity, substituting for a chronology of centuries a vague computation of hundreds of thousands of years. The existence of man in remote geological time cannot now be questioned, but, despite much effort made in likely localities, no bones, with the exception of those of the much-discussed Pithecanthropus, have been found which can be regarded as definitely bridging the gulf between man and the lower creation. It seems as if anthropology had in this direction reached the limits of its discoveries. Far different are the prospects in other directions where the work of co-ordinating the material and facts collected promises to throw much light on the history of civilization. Anthropological researches undertaken all over the globe have shown the necessity of abandoning the old theory that a similarity of customs and superstitions, of arts and crafts, justifies the assumption of a remote relationship, if not an identity of origin, between races. It is now certain that there has ever been an inherent tendency in man, allowing for difference of climate and material surroundings, to develop culture by the same stages and in the same way. American man, for example, need not necessarily owe the minutest portion of his mental, religious, social or industrial development to remote contact with Asia or Europe, though he were proved to possess identical usages. An example in point is that of pyramid-building. No ethnical relationship can ever have existed between the Aztecs and the Egyptians; yet each race developed the idea of the pyramid tomb through that psychological similarity which is as much a characteristic of the species man as is his physique.

Bibliography.—J.C. Prichard, Natural History of Man (London, 1843); T.H. Huxley, Man’s Place in Nature (London, 1863); and “Geographical Distribution of Chief Modifications of Mankind,” in Journal Ethnological Society for 1870; E.B. Tylor, Early History of Man (London, 1865), Primitive Culture (London, 1871), and Anthropology (London, 1881); A. de Quatrefages, Histoire générale des races humaines (Paris, 1889), Human Species (Eng. trans., 1879); Lord Avebury, Prehistoric Times (1865, 6th ed. 1900) and Origin of Civilization (1870, 6th ed. 1902), Theo. Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvolker (1859-1871), E.H. Haeckel, Anthropogenie (Leipzig, 1874-1891), Eng. trans., 1879; O. Peschel, Volkerkunde (Leipzig, 1874-1897); P. Topinard, L’Anthropologie (Paris, 1876); Éleménts d’anthropologie générale (Paris, 1885); D.G. Brinton, Races and Peoples (1890); A.H. Keane, Ethnology (1896), and Man: Past and Present (1899); G. Sergi, The Mediterranean Race (Eng. ed., 1889); F. Ratzel, History of Mankind (Eng. trans., 1897); G. de Mortillet, Le Préhistorique (Paris, 1882); A.C. Haddon, Study of Man (1897); J. Deniker, The Races of Man (London, 1900); W.Z. Ripley, The Races of Europe (1900, with long bibliography); The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain; Revue d’anthropologie (Paris); Zeitschrift für Ethnologie (Berlin). See also bibliographies under separate ethnological headings (Australia, Africa, Arabs, America, &c.).

(E. B. T.)


ANTHROPOMETRY (Gr. ἄνθρωπος, man, and μέτρον, measure), the name given by the French savant, Alphonse Bertillon (b. 1853), to a system of identification (q.v.) depending on the unchanging character of certain measurements of parts of the human frame. He found by patient inquiry that several physical features and the dimensions of certain bones or bony structures in the body remain practically constant during adult life. He concluded from this that when these measurements were made and recorded systematically every single individual would be found to be perfectly distinguishable from others. The system was soon adapted to police methods, as the immense value of being able to fix a person’s identity was fully realized, both in preventing false personation and in bringing home to any one charged with an offence his responsibility for previous wrongdoing. “Bertillonage,” as it was called, became widely popular, and after its introduction into France in 1883, where it was soon credited with highly gratifying results, was applied to the administration of justice in most civilized countries. England followed tardily, and it was not until 1894 that an investigation of the methods used and results obtained was made by a special committee sent to Paris for the purpose. It reported favourably, especially on the use of the measurements for primary classification, but recommended also the adoption in part of a system of “finger prints” as suggested by Francis Galton, and already practised in Bengal.

M. Bertillon selected the following five measurements as the basis of his system: (1) head length; (2) head breadth; (3) length of middle finger; (4) of left foot, and (5) of cubit or forearm from the elbow to the extremity of the middle finger. Each principal heading was further subdivided into three classes of “small,” “medium” and “large,” and as an increased guarantee height, length of little finger, and the colour of the eye were also recorded. From this great mass of details, soon represented in Paris by the collection of some 100,000 cards, it was possible, proceeding by exhaustion, to sift and sort down the cards till a small bundle of half a dozen produced the combined facts of the measurements of the individual last sought. The whole of the information is easily contained in one cabinet of very ordinary dimensions, and most ingeniously contrived so as to make the most of the space and facilitate the search. The whole of the record is independent of names, and the final identification is by means of the photograph which lies with the individual’s card of measurements.

Anthropometry, however, gradually fell into disfavour, and it has been generally supplanted by the superior system of finger prints (q.v.). Bertillonage exhibited certain defects which were first brought to light in Bengal. The objections raised were (1) the costliness of the instruments employed and their liability to get out of order; (2) the need for specially instructed measurers, men of superior education; (3) the errors that frequently crept in when carrying out the processes and were all but irremediable. Measures inaccurately taken, or wrongly read off, could seldom, if ever, be corrected, and these persistent errors defeated all chance of successful search. The process was slow, as it was necessary to repeat it three times so as to arrive at a mean result. In Bengal measurements were already abandoned by 1897, when the finger print system was adopted throughout British India. Three years later England followed suit; and as the result of a fresh inquiry ordered by the Home Office, finger prints were alone relied upon for identification.

Authorities.—Lombroso, Antropometria di 400 delinquenti (1872); Roberts, Manual of Anthropometry (1878); Ferri, Studi comparati di antropometria (2 vols., 1881-1882); Lombroso, Rughe anomale speciali ai criminali (1890); Bertillon, Instructions signalétiques pour l’identification anthropométrique (1893); Livi, Anthropometria (Milan, 1900); Fürst, Indextabellen zum anthropometrischen Gebrauch (Jena, 1902); Report of Home Office Committee on the Best Means of Identifying Habitual Criminals (1893-1894).

(A. G.)


ANTHROPOMORPHISM (Gr. ἄνθρωπος, man, μορφή, form), the attribution (a) of a human body, or (b) of human qualities generally, to God or the gods. The word anthropomorphism is a modern coinage (possibly from 18th century French). The New English Dictionary is misled by the 1866 reprint of Paul Bayne on Ephesians when it quotes “anthropomorphist” as 17th century English. Seventeenth century editions print “anthropomorphits,” i.e. anthropomorphites, in sense (a). The older abstract term is “anthropopathy,” literally “attributing human feelings,” in sense (b).

Early religion, among its many objects of worship, includes beasts (see Animal-Worship), considered, in the more refined theology of the later Greeks and Romans, as metamorphoses of the great gods. Similarly we find “therianthropic” forms—half animal, half human—in Egypt or Assyria-Babylonia. In contrast with these, it is considered one of the glories of the Olympian mythology of Greece that it believed in happy manlike beings (though exempt from death, and using special rarefied foods, &c.), and celebrated them in statues of the most exquisite art. Israel shows us animal images, doubtless of a ruder sort, when Yahweh is worshipped in the northern kingdom under the image of a steer. (Some scholars think the title “mighty one of Jacob,” Psalm cxxxii., 2, 5, et al., ריבא as if from רבא is really “steer” ריבא “of Jacob.”) But the higher religion of Israel inclined to morality more than to art, and forbade image worship altogether. This prepared the way for the conception of God as an immaterial Spirit. True mythical anthropomorphisms occur in early parts of the Old Testament (e.g. Genesis iii. 8, cf. vi. 2), though in the majority of Old Testament passages such expressions are merely verbal (e.g. Isaiah lix. 1). In the Christian Church (and again in early Mahommedanism) simple minds believed in the corporeal nature of God. Gibbon and other writers quote from John Cassian the tale of the poor monk, who, being convinced of his error, burst into tears, exclaiming, “You have taken away my God! I have none now whom I can worship!” According to a fragment of Origen (on Genesis i. 26), Melito of Sardis shared this belief. Many have thought Melito’s work, περἰ ἐνσωμάτου θεοῦ, must have been a treatise on the Incarnation; but it is hard to think that Origen could blunder so. Epiphanius tells of Audaeus of Mesopotamia and his followers, Puritan sectaries in the 4th century, who were orthodox except for this belief and for Quartodecimanism (see Easter). Tertullian, who is sometimes called an anthropomorphist, stood for the Stoical doctrine, that all reality, even the divine, is in a sense material.

The reaction against anthropomorphism begins in Greek philosophy with the satirical spirit of Xenophanes (540 B.C.), who puts the case as broadly as any. The “greatest God” resembles man “neither in form nor in mind.” In Judaism—unless we should refer to the prophets’ polemic against images—a reaction is due to the introduction of the codified law. God seemed to grow more remote. The old sacred name Yahweh is never pronounced; even “God” is avoided for allusive titles like “heaven” or “place.” Still, amid all this, the God of Judaism remains a personal, almost a limited, being. In Philo we see Jewish scruples uniting with others drawn from Greek philosophy. For, though the quarrel with popular anthropomorphism was patched up, and the gods of the Pantheon were described by Stoics and Epicureans as manlike in form, philosophy nevertheless tended to highly abstract conceptions of supreme, or real, deity. Philo followed out the line of this tradition in teaching that God cannot be named. How much exactly he meant is disputed. The same inheritance of Greek philosophy appears in the Christian fathers, especially Origen. He names and condemns the “anthropomorphites,” who ascribe a human body to God (on Romans i., sub fin.; Rufinus’ Latin version). In Arabian philosophy the reaction sought to deny that God had any attributes. And, under the influence of Mahommedan Aristotelianism, the same paralysing speculation found entrance among the learned Jews of Spain (see Maimonides).

Till modern times the philosophical reaction was not carried out with full vigour. Spinoza (Ethics, i. 15 and 17), representing here as elsewhere both a Jewish inheritance and a philosophical, but advancing further, sweeps away all community between God and man. So later J.G. Fichte and Matthew Arnold (“a magnified and non-natural man”),—strangely, in view of their strong belief in an objective moral order. For the use of the word “anthropomorphic,” or kindred forms, in this new spirit of condemnation for all conceptions of God as manlike—sense (b) noted above—see J.J. Rousseau in Émile iv. (cited by Littré),— Nous sommes pour la plupart de vrais anthropomorphites. Rousseau is here speaking of the language of Christian theology,—a divine Spirit: divine Persons. At the present day this usage is universal. What it means on the lips of pantheists is plain. But when theists charge one another with “anthropomorphism,” in order to rebuke what they deem unduly manlike conceptions of God, they stand on slippery ground. All theism implies the assertion of kinship between man, especially in his moral being, and God. As a brilliant theologian, B. Duhm, has said, physiomorphism is the enemy of Christian faith, not anthropomorphism.

The latest extension of the word, proposed in the interests of philosophy or psychology, uses it of the principle according to which man is said to interpret all things (not God merely) through himself. Common-sense intuitionalism would deny that man does this, attributing to him immediate knowledge of reality. And idealism in all its forms would say that man, interpreting through his reason, does rightly, and reaches truth. Even here then the use of the word is not colourless. It implies blame. It is the symptom of a philosophy which confines knowledge within narrow limits, and which, when held by Christians (e.g. Peter Browne, or H.L. Mansel), believes only in an “analogical” knowledge of God.

(R. Ma.)


ANTI, or Campa, a tribe of South American Indians of Arawakan stock, inhabiting the forests of the upper Ucayali basin, east of Cuzco, on the eastern side of the Andes, south Peru. The Antis, who gave their name to the eastern province of Antisuyu, have always been notorious for ferocity and cannibalism. They are of fine physique and generally good-looking. Their dress is a robe with holes for the head and arms. Their long hair hangs down over the shoulders, and round their necks a toucan beak or a bunch of feathers is worn as an ornament.


ANTIBES, a seaport town in the French department of the Alpes-Maritimes (formerly in that of the Var, but transferred after the Alpes-Maritimes department was formed in 1860 out of the county of Nice). Pop. (1906) of the town, 5730; of the commune, 11,753. It is 12½ m. by rail S.W. of Nice, and is situated on the E. side of the Garoupe peninsula. It was formerly fortified, but all the ramparts (save the Fort Carré, built by Vauban) have now been demolished, and a new town is rising on their site. There is a tolerable harbour, with a considerable fishing industry. The principal exports are dried fruits, salt fish and oil. Much perfume distilling is done here, as the surrounding country produces an abundance of flowers. Antibes is the ancient Antipolis. It is said to have been founded before the Christian era (perhaps about 340 B.C.) by colonists from Marseilles, and is mentioned by Strabo. It was the seat of a bishopric from the 5th century to 1244, when the see was transferred to Grasse.

(W. A. B. C.)


ANTICHRIST (ἀντίχριστος). The earliest mention of the name Antichrist, which was probably first coined in Christian eschatological literature, is in the Epistles of St John (I. ii. 18, 22, iv. 3; II. 7), and it has since come into universal use. The conception, paraphrased in this word, of a mighty ruler who will appear at the end of time, and whose essence will be enmity to God (Dan. xi. 36; cf. 2 Thess. ii. 4; ἀντικείμενος), is older, and traceable to Jewish eschatology. Its origin is to be sought in the first place in the prophecy of Daniel, written at the beginning of the Maccabean period. The historical figure who served as a model for the “Antichrist” was Antiochus IV. Epiphanes, the persecutor of the Jews, and he has impressed indelible traits upon the conception. Since then ever-recurring characteristics of this figure (cf. especially Dan xi. 40, &c.) are, that he would appear as a mighty ruler at the head of gigantic armies, that he would destroy three rulers (the three horns, Dan. vii. 8, 24), persecute the saints (vii. 25), rule for three and a half years (vii. 25, &c.), and subject the temple of God to a horrible devastation (βδέλυγμα τῆς ἐρημὠσεως). When the end of the world foretold by Daniel did not take place, but the book of Daniel retained its validity as a sacred scripture which foretold future things, the personality of the tyrant who was God’s enemy disengaged itself from that of Antiochus IV., and became merely a figure of prophecy, which was applied now to one and now to another historical phenomenon. Thus for the author of the Psalms of Solomon (c. 60 B.C.), Pompey, who destroyed the independent rule of the Maccabees and stormed Jerusalem, was the Adversary of God (cf. ii. 26, &c.); so too the tyrant whom the Ascension of Moses (c. A.D. 30) expects at the end of all things, possesses, besides the traits of Antiochus IV., those of Herod the Great. A further influence on the development of the eschatological imagination of the Jews was exercised by such a figure as that of the emperor Caligula (A.D. 37-41), who is known to have given the order, never carried out, to erect his statue in the temple of Jerusalem. In the little Jewish Apocalypse, the existence of which is assumed by many scholars, which in Mark xiii. and Matt. xxiv. is combined with the words of Christ to form the great eschatological discourse, the prophecy of the “abomination of desolation” (Mark xiii. 14 et seq.) may have originated in this episode of Jewish history. Later Jewish and Christian writers of Apocalypses saw in Nero the tyrant of the end of time. The author of the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch (or his source), cap. 36-40, speaks in quite general terms of the last ruler of the end of time. In 4 Ezra v. 6 also is found the allusion: regnabit quem non sperant.

The roots of this eschatological fancy are to be sought perhaps still deeper in a purely mythological and speculative expectation of a battle at the end of days between God and the devil, which has no reference whatever to historical occurrences. This idea has its original source in the apocalypses of Iran, for these are based upon the conflict between Ahura-Mazda (Auramazda, Ormazd) and Angro-Mainyush (Ahriman) and its consummation at the end of the world. This Iranian dualism is proved to have penetrated into the late Jewish eschatology from the beginning of the 1st century before Christ, and did so probably still earlier. Thus the opposition between God and the devil already plays a part in the Jewish groundwork of the Testaments of the Patriarchs, which was perhaps composed at the end of the period of the Maccabees. In this the name of the devil appears, besides the usual form (σατανᾶς, διάβολος), especially as Belial (Beliar, probably, from Ps. xviii. 4, where the rivers of Belial are spoken of, originally a god of the underworld), a name which also plays a part in the Antichrist tradition. In the Ascension of Moses we already hear, at the beginning of the description of the latter time (x. 1): “And then will God’s rule be made manifest over all his creatures, then will the devil have an end” (cf. Matt. xii. 28; Luke xi. 20; John xii. 31, xiv. 30, xvi. 11). This conception of the strife of God with the devil was further interwoven, before its introduction into the Antichrist myth, with another idea of different origin, namely, the myth derived from the Babylonian religion, of the battle of the supreme God (Marduk) with the dragon of chaos (Tiamat), originally a myth of the origin of things which, later perhaps, was changed into an eschatological one, again under Iranian influence. Thus it comes that the devil, the opponent of God, appears in the end often also in the form of a terrible dragon-monster; this appears most clearly in Rev. xii. Now it is possible that the whole conception of Antichrist has its final roots in this already complicated myth, that the form of the mighty adversary of God is but the equivalent in human form of the devil or of the dragon of chaos. In any case, however, this myth has exercised a formative influence on the conception of Antichrist. For only thus can we explain how his figure acquires numerous superhuman and ghostly traits, which cannot be explained by any particular historical phenomenon on which it may have been based. Thus the figure of Antiochus IV. has already become superhuman, when in Dan. viii. 10, it is said that the little horn “waxed great, even to the host of heaven; and cast down some of the host and of the stars to the ground.” Similarly Pompey, in the second psalm of Solomon, is obviously represented as the dragon of chaos, and his figure exalted into myth. Without this assumption of a continual infusion of mythological conceptions, we cannot understand the figure of Antichrist. Finally, it must be mentioned that Antichrist receives, at least in the later sources, the name originally proper to the devil himself.

From the Jews, Christianity took over the idea. It is present quite unaltered in certain passages, specifically traceable to Judaism, e.g. (Rev. xi.). “The Beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit” and, surrounded by a mighty host of nations, slays the “two witnesses” in Jerusalem, is the entirely superhuman Jewish conception of Antichrist. Even if the beast (ch. xiii.), which rises from the sea at the summons of the devil, be interpreted as the Roman empire, and, specially, as any particular Roman ruler, yet the original form of the malevolent tyrant of the latter time is completely preserved.

A fundamental change of the whole idea from the specifically Christian point of view, then, is signified by the conclusion of ch. ii. of the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians. There can, of course, be no doubt as to the identity of the “man of sin, the son of perdition” here described with the dominating figure of Jewish eschatology (cf. ii. 3 &c., ὁ ἄνθρωπος τῆς ἀνομίας, i.e. Beliar (?), ὁ ἀντικείμενος—the allusion that follows to Dan xi. 36). But Antichrist here appears as a tempter, who works by signs and wonders (ii. 9) and seeks to obtain divine honours; it is further signified that this “man of sin” will obtain credence, more especially among the Jews, because they have not accepted the truth. The conception, moreover, has become almost more superhuman than ever (cf. ii. 4, “showing himself that he is God”). The destruction of the Adversary is drawn from Isaiah xi. 4, where it is said of the Messiah: “with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked.” The idea that Antichrist was to establish himself in the temple of Jerusalem (ii. 4) is very enigmatical, and has not yet been explained. The “abomination of desolation” has naturally had its influence upon it; possibly also the experience of the time of Caligula (see above). Remarkable also is the allusion to a power which still retards the revelation of Antichrist (2 Thess. ii. 6 &c., τὸ κατέχον; ὁ κατέχων), an allusion which, in the tradition of the Fathers of the church, came to be universally, and probably correctly, referred to the Roman empire. In this then consists the significant turn given by St Paul in the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians to the whole conception, namely, in the substitution for the tyrant of the latter time who should persecute the Jewish people, of a pseudo-Messianic figure, who, establishing himself in the temple of God, should find credence and a following precisely among the Jews. And while the originally Jewish idea led straight to the conception, set forth in Revelation, of the Roman empire or its ruler as Antichrist, here, on the contrary, it is probably the Roman empire that is the power which still retards the reign of Antichrist. With this, the expectation of such an event at last separates itself from any connexion with historical fact, and becomes purely ideal. In this process of transformation of the idea, which has become of importance for the history of the world, is revealed probably the genius of Paul, or at any rate, that of the young Christianity which was breaking its ties with Judaism and establishing itself in the world of the Roman empire.

This version of the figure of Antichrist, who may now really for the first time be described by this name, appears to have been at once widely accepted in Christendom. The idea that the Jews would believe in Antichrist, as punishment for not having believed in the true Christ, seems to be expressed by the author of the fourth gospel (v. 43). The conception of Antichrist as a perverter of men, leads naturally to his connexion with false doctrine (1 John ii. 18, 22; iv. 3; 2 John 7). The Teaching of the Apostles (xvi. 4) describes his form in the same way as 2 Thessalonians (καὶ τότε φαινήσεται ὁ κοσμοπλάνος ὡς υἱὸς θεοῦ καὶ ποιεῖ σημεῖα καὶ τέρατα). In the late Christian Sibylline fragment (iii. 63 &c.) also, “Beliar” appears above all as a worker of wonders, this figure having possibly been influenced by that of Simon Magus. Finally the author of the Apocalypse of St John also has made use of the new conception of Antichrist as a wonder-worker and seducer, and has set his figure beside that of the “first” Beast which was for him the actual embodiment of Antichrist (xiii. II &c.). Since this second Beast could not appear along with the first as a power demanding worship and directly playing the part of Antichrist, he made out of him the false prophet (xvi. 13, xix. 20, xx. 10) who seduces the inhabitants of the earth to worship the first Beast, and probably interpreted this figure as applying to the Roman provincial priesthood.

But this version of the idea of Antichrist, hostile to the Jews and better expressing the relation of Christianity to the Roman empire, was prevented from obtaining an absolute ascendancy in Christian tradition by the rise of the belief in the ultimate return of Nero, and by the absorption of this outcome of pagan superstition into the Jewish-Christian apocalyptic conceptions. It is known that soon after the death of Nero rumours were current that he was not dead. This report soon took the more concrete form that he had fled to the Parthians and would return thence to take vengeance on Rome. This expectation led to the appearance of several pretenders who posed as Nero; and as late as A.D. 100 many still held the belief that Nero yet lived. This idea of Nero’s return was in the first instance taken up by the Jewish apocalyptic writers. While the Jewish author of the fourth Sibylline book (c. A.D. 80) still only refers simply to the heathen belief, the author of the (Jewish?) original of the 17th chapter of the Apocalypse of St John expects the return of Nero with the Parthians to take vengeance on Rome, because she had shed the blood of the Saints (destruction of Jerusalem!). In the fifth Sibylline book, which, with the exception of verses 1-51, was mainly composed by a Jewish writer at the close of the first century, the return of Nero plays a great part. Three times the author recurs to this theme, 137-154; 214-227; 361-385. He sees in the coming again of Nero, whose figure he endows with supernatural and daemonic characteristics, a judgment of God, in whose hand the revivified Nero becomes a rod of chastisement. Later, the figure of Nero redivivus became, more especially in Christian thought, entirely confused with that of Antichrist. The less it became possible, as time went on, to believe that Nero yet lived and would return as a living ruler, the greater was the tendency for his figure to develop into one wholly infernal and daemonic. The relation to the Parthians is also gradually lost sight of; and from being the adversary of Rome, Nero becomes the adversary of God and of Christ. This is the version of the expectation of Nero’s second coming preserved in the form given to the prophecy, under Domitian, by the collaborator in the Apocalypse of John (xiii., xvii.). Nero is here the beast that returns from the bottomless pit, “that was, and is not, and yet is”; the head “as it were wounded to death” that lives again; the gruesome similitude of the Lamb that was slain, and his adversary in the final struggle. The number of the Beast, 666, points certainly to Nero (ןורנ רסק = 666, or ורנ רסק = 616). In the little apocalypse of the Ascensio Jesaiae (iii. 13b-iv. 18), which dates perhaps from the second, perhaps only from the first, decade of the third century, it is said that Beliar, the king of this world, would descend from the firmament in the human form of Nero. In the same way, in Sibyll. v. 28-34, Nero and Antichrist are absolutely identical (mostly obscure reminiscences, Sib. viii. 68 &c., 140 &c., 151 &c.). Then the Nero-legend gradually fades away. But Victorinus of Pettau, who wrote during the persecution under Diocletian, still knows the relation of the Apocalypse to the legend of Nero; and Commodian, whose Carmen Apologeticum was perhaps not written until the beginning of the 4th century, knows two Antichrist-figures, of which he still identifies the first with Nero redivivus.

In proportion as the figure of Nero again ceased to dominate the imagination of the faithful, the wholly unhistorical, unpolitical and anti-Jewish conception of Antichrist, which based itself more especially on 2 Thess. ii., gained the upper hand, having usually become associated with the description of the universal conflagration of the world which had also originated in the Iranian eschatology. On the strength of exegetical combinations, and with the assistance of various traditions, it was developed even in its details, which it thenceforth maintained practically unchanged. In this form it is in great part present in the eschatological portions of the Adv. Haereses of Irenaeus, and in the de Antichristo and commentary on Daniel of Hippolytus. In times of political excitement, during the following centuries, men appealed again and again to the prophecy of Antichrist. Then the foreground scenery of the prophecies was shifted; special prophecies, having reference to contemporary events, are pushed to the front, but in the background remains standing, with scarcely a change, the prophecy of Antichrist that is bound up with no particular time. Thus at the beginning of the Testamentum Domini, edited by Rahmani, there is an apocalypse, possibly of the time of Decius, though it has been worked over (Harnack, Chronol. der altchrist. Litt. ii. 514 &c.) In the third century, the period of Aurelianus and Gallienus, with its wild warfare of Romans and Persians, and of Roman pretenders one with another, seems especially to have aroused the spirit of prophecy. To this period belongs the Jewish apocalypse of Elijah (ed. Buttenwieser), of which the Antichrist is possibly Odaenathus of Palmyra, while Sibyll. xiii., a Christian writing of this period, glorifies this very prince. It is possible that at this time also the Sibylline fragment (iii. 63 &c.) and the Christian recension of the two first Sibylline books were written. To this time possibly belongs also a recension of the Coptic apocalypse of Elijah, edited by Steindorff (Texte und Untersuchungen, N. F. ii. 3). To the 4th century belongs, according to Kamper (Die deutsche Kaiseridee, 1896, p. 18) and Sackur (Texte und Forschungen, 1898, p. 114 &c.), the first nucleus of the “Tiburtine” Sibyl, very celebrated in the middle ages, with its prophecy of the return of Constans, and its dream, which later on exercised so much influence, that after ruling over the whole world he would go to Jerusalem and lay down his crown upon Golgotha. To the 4th century also perhaps belongs a series of apocalyptic pieces and homilies which have been handed down under the name of Ephraem. At the beginning of the Mahommedan period, then, we meet with the most influential and the most curious of these prophetic books, the Pseudo-Methodius, which prophesied of the emperor who would awake from his sleep and conquer Islam. From the Pseudo-Methodius are derived innumerable Byzantine prophecies (cf. especially Vassiliev, Anecdota Graeco-Byzantina) which follow the fortunes of the Byzantine emperors and their governments. A prophecy in verse, adorned with pictures, which is ascribed to Leo VI. the Philosopher (Migne, Patr. Gracca, cvii. p. 1121 &c.), tells of the downfall of the house of the Comneni and sings of the emperor of the future who would one day awake from death and go forth from the cave in which he had lain. Thus the prophecy of the sleeping emperor of the future is very closely connected with the Antichrist tradition. There is extant a Daniel prophecy which, in the time of the Latin empire, foretells the restoration of the Greek rule. In the East, too, Antichrist prophecies were extraordinarily flourishing during the period of the rise of Islam and of the Crusades. To these belong the apocalypses in Arabic, Ethiopian and perhaps also in Syrian, preserved in the so-called Liber Clementis discipuli S. Petri (Petri apostoli apocalypsis per Clementem), the late Syrian apocalypse of Ezra (Bousset, Antichrist, 45 &c.), the Coptic (14th) vision of Daniel (in the appendix to Woide’s edition of the Codex Alexandrinus; Oxford, 1799), the Ethiopian Wisdom of the Sibyl, which is closely related to the Tiburtine Sibyl (see Basset, Apocryphes éthiopiennes, x.); in the last mentioned of these sources long series of Islamic rulers are foretold before the final time of Antichrist. Jewish apocalypse also awakes to fresh developments in the Mahommedan period, and shows a close relationship with the Christian Antichrist literature. One of the most interesting apocalypses is the Jewish History of Daniel, handed down in Persian.

This whole type of prophecy reached the West above all through the Pseudo-Methodius, which was soon translated into Latin. Especially influential, too, in this respect was the letter which the monk Adso in 954 wrote to Queen Gerberga, De ortu et tempere Antichristi. The old Tiburtine Sibylla went through edition after edition, in each case being altered so as to apply to the government of the monarch who happened to be ruling at the time. Then in the West the period arrived in which eschatology, and above all the expectation of the coming of Antichrist, exercised a great influence on the world’s history. This period, as is well known, was inaugurated, at the end of the 12th century, by the apocalyptic writings of the abbot Joachim of Floris. Soon the word Antichrist re-echoed from all sides in the embittered controversies of the West. The pope bestowed this title upon the emperor, the emperor upon the pope, the Guelphs on the Ghibellines and the Ghibellines on the Guelphs. In the contests between the rival powers and courts of the period, the prophecy of Antichrist played a political part. It gave motives to art, to lyrical, epic and dramatic poetry. Among the visionary Franciscans, enthusiastic adherents of Joachim’s prophecies, arose above all the conviction that the pope was Antichrist, or at least his precursor. From the Franciscans, influenced by Abbot Joachim, the lines of connexion are clearly traceable with Milic of Kremsier (Libellus de Antichristo) and Matthias of Janow. For Wycliffe and his adherent John Purvey (probably the author of the Commentarius in Apocalypsin ante centum annos editus, edited in 1528 by Luther), as on the other hand for Hus, the conviction that the papacy is essentially Antichrist is absolute. Finally, if Luther advanced in his contest with the papacy with greater and greater energy, he did so because he was borne on by the conviction that the pope in Rome was Antichrist. And if in the Augustana. the expression of this conviction was suppressed for political reasons, in the Articles of Schmalkalden, drawn up by him, Luther propounded it in the most uncompromising fashion. This sentence was for him an articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae. To write the history of the idea of Antichrist in the last centuries of the middle ages, would be almost to write that of the middle ages themselves.