Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Age

​ ​275 A G A A G E stones are dipped in sulphuric acid, and immediately exposed in a covered earthenware crucible to a red heat : the whole is allowed to cool slowly, and when cold the stones are removed and washed. 3. Mocha stones, originally brought from the East, are clear grayish calcedonies, with clouds and dashes of rich brown of various shades. They probably owe their colour chiefly to art. 4. Moss agates are such as contain arborisations or den- drites of oxide of iron, some of which seem to be petrifac tions of real vegetable forms. 5. Bloodstone is a dark-green agate containing bright red spots like blood-drops. 6. Plasma, a grass-green stone, found engraved in ruins at Rome, on the Schwartzwald, and on Mount Olympus, appears to be calcedony coloured by chlorite. 7. Ckrysoprase, found in Silesia, is an agate coloured apple-green by oxide of nickel. The agate can be cut or sawed easily, and is used for making cups, rings, seals, handles for knives and forks, sword-hilts, rosary beads, and a great variety of trinkets. Many stones of this kind are marked with representations of men, animals, or inanimate natural objects; but there can be no question that a very large proportion of these are to be regarded as productions of art. AGATHARCHIDES, a celebrated Greek grammarian and geographer who nourished about 140 years B.C., was born at Cnidos. His works are lost, except those passages quoted by Diodorus Siculus and other authors, in which he describes the gold mines of Upper Egypt, and gives the first philosophical explanation of the inundations of the Nile, which he ascribed to the rains on the mountains of Ethiopia. (Hudson s Greek Geographers.) AGATHARCHUS, a Greek painter, commemorated by Vitruvius for having first applied the laws of perspective to architectural painting, which he used successfully in prepar ing scenery for the plays of yEschylus. He nourished about 480 years B.C. AGATHIAS, a Greek historian and poet, born at Myrina in Asia Minor, about 536 A.D. He was educated at Alex andria, and in 554 went to Constantinople, where, after studying Roman law for some years, he practised as an advo cate. The title " Scholasticus," generally given to Agathias, was that by which advocates were known in Constanti nople. Of the poetry by Agathias but little remains; his Daphniaea (Aa(/)i/taKa), a collection of erotic poems, being entirely lost, and only the introduction to his Kv/cAos, or anthology from earlier and contemporary writers, being extant. A number of his epigrams may be found in the Anthologia Groeca. His principal work is his history, which begins, where Procopius ends, with the 2Gth year of the reign of Justinian (553), and carries on the narrative of events until 558. It is valuable as a chronicle, but the style is turgid, and great ignorance is shown of the history and geography of western Europe. It was printed in Greek, with a Latin translation by Bonaventura Vulcanius, at Leyden in 1594. The best edition is that of Niebuhr (Bonn, 1828). A French translation is included in the second volume of Louis Cousin s History of Constantinople. AGATHO, an Athenian tragic poet, the disciple of Pro- dicus and Socrates, celebrated by Plato in his Protagoras for his virtue and his beauty. A tragedy of his obtained the prize in the fourth year of the 90th Olympiad, and he was crowned, in the presence of upwards of 30,000 persoii.s, when a little over thirty years of age. There are no remains of his works, except a few quotations in Aristotle, Athenseus, and others. AGATHOCLES, a famous tyrant of Sicily, was the son of a potter at Rhegium. By his singular vigour and abilities he raised himself through various gradations of rank till he finally made himself tyrant of Syracuse, and then of nearly all Sicily. He defeated the armies of the Carthaginians several times, both in Sicily and Africa; but at length he met with a reverse, and his soldiers pay being in arrears, they mutinied, forced him to fly his camp, and murdered his sons. Recovering himself, he relieved Corcyra, which was besieged by Cassander; burnt the Macedonian fleet; and revenged the death of his chil dren by putting the murderers, with their wives and fami lies, to the sword. After ravaging the sea-coast of Italy he took the city of Hipponium. The last years of his life were greatly harassed with ill-health and the turbulence of his grandson Archagathus. He died in the seventy-second year of his age, B.C. 290, after a reign of twenty-eight years. AGDE, a town of France, in the department of Heraiilt, on the left bank of the river of that name, 30 miles S.W. of Montpellier. It is a place of great antiquity, and is said to have been founded, under the name of Agathe, by the Greeks. In the neighbourhood there is an extinct volcano, and the town is built of black volcanic basalt, which gives it a grim and forbidding aspect. It has a fine old Gothic cathedral, a college, and a school of navigation. The Canal du Midi, or Languedoc canal, uniting the Garonne with the Mediterranean Sea, passes under the walls of the town, and the mouth of the He"rault forms a convenient harbour, which is protected by a fort. Thus advantageously situated, the place commands an extensive coasting trade, more than 400 vessels annually entering the port. Soap and verdigris are manufactured, and the staple productions of southern France are largely exported. Population, 9747. AGE, a term denoting generally any fixed period of time, is used more definitely in a variety of senses. Classi cal mythology divided the whole history of the earth into a number of periods. Hesiod, for example, in his poem Works and Days, describes minutely five successive ages, during each of which the earth was peopled by an entirely distinct race. The first or golden race lived in perfect happiness on the fruits of the untilled earth, suffered from no bodily infirmity, passed away in a gentle sleep, and became after death guardian daemons of this world. The second or silver race was degenerate, and refusing to worship the immortal gods, was buried by Jove in the earth. The third or brazen race, still more degraded, was warlike and cruel, and perished at last by internal violence. The fourth or heroic race was a marked advance upon the preceding, its members being the heroes or demi-gods who fought at Troy and Thebes, and who were rewarded after death by being permitted to reap thrice a-year the free produce of the earth. The fifth or iron race, to which the poet supposes himself to belong, is the most degenerate of all, sunk so low in every vice that any new change must be for the better. Ovid, in his Metamorphoses, follows Hesiod exactly as to nomenclature and very closely as to substance. He makes the degeneracy continuous, however, by omitting the heroic race or age, which, as Grote points out, was probably introduced by Hesiod, not as part of his didactic plan, but from a desire to conciliate popular feeling by including in his poem the chief myths that were already current among the Greeks. A definite period in history distinguished by some special characteristic, such as great literary activity, is generally styled, with some appropriate epithet, an age. It is usual, for example, to speak of the age of Pericles, the Augustan age, the Elizabethan age; of the age of the crusades, the dark ages, the middle ages, the age of steam. Such isolated periods, with no continuity or necessary con nection of any kind, arc obviously quite distinct from the ages or organically-related periods into which certain ​A G E A G E 279 eminent modern philosophers have divided the whole course of human history. According to Fichte s scheme there are five ages, distinguished by the relative predomi nance which instinct, external authority, and reason have in them respectively, instinct being supreme in the first and reason in the last. Comte s scheme distinguishes three ages according to the state of knowledge in each, and he supposes that we are now entering upon the third of these. In the first age of his scheme knowledge is super natural or fictitious; in the second it is metaphysical or abstract; in the third it is positive or scientific. Schemes somewhat similar have been proposed by other philosophers, chiefly of France and Germany, and seem to be regarded by them as essential to any complete science of history. In relation to individual as well as to social life, age is used with a considerable variety of application. It frequently denotes the total duration of life in man, animals, or plants, and in this sense belongs to the subject of LONGEVITY (q.v.) It also denotes in man the various periods into which his life may be divided, either from a physiological or from a legal point of view. In the former aspect perhaps the most common division is into the four ages of infancy, youth, manhood, and old age. These again have been increased to six or seven by some physiologists infancy, childhood, boyhood or girlhood, adolescence, manhood or womanhood, age, and old age or second childhood. While both schemes have a sufficient basis of scientific accuracy, they have also each attracted the fancy of the poet. Ovid in his Metamor phoses (xv. 198-213) makes a beautiful comparison between the four ages of a man s life and the four seasons of the year, in a passage which has been frequently imitated ; and the sevenfold division has been exquisitely cast into poetic form by Shakespeare in -4* You Like It, act ii. scene 7. The division of human life into periods for legal purposes is naturally more sharp and definite than the foregoing. It would be unscientific in the physiologist to name any pre cise year for the transition from one of his stages to another, inasmuch as that differs very considerably among different nations, and even to some extent among different indi viduals of the same nation. But the law must necessarily be fixed and uniform, and even where it professes to pro ceed according to nature, must be more precise than nature. The Roman law divided human life for its purposes into four chief periods, which had their subdivisions (1.) Infantia, lasting till the close of the seventh year; (2.) The period between infantia and pubertas, males becoming puberes at fourteen and females at twelve; (3.) Adolescentia, the period between pubertyand majority; and(4.)The period after the twenty-fifth year, when males become majores. The first period was one of total legal incapacity ; in the second period a person could lawfully do certain specified acts, but only with the sanction of his tutor or guardian; in the third the restrictions were fewer, males being permitted to manage their own property, contract marriage, and make a will; but majority was not reached until the age of twenty- five. By English law there are two great periods into which life is divided infancy, which lasts in both sexes until the twenty-first year, and manhood or womanhood. The period of infancy, again, is divided into several stages, marked by the growing development both of rights and obligations. Thus at twelve years of age a male may take the oath of allegiance; at fourteen both sexes are held to have arrived at years of discretion, and may therefore choose guardians, give evidence, and consent or disagree to a marriage. A female has the last privilege from the twelfth year, but the marriage cannot be celebrated until the majority of the parties without the consent of parents or guardians. At fourteen, too, both sexes are fully re sponsible to the criminal law. Between seven and fourteen there is responsibility only if the accused be proved doli capax, capable of discerning between right and wrong, the principle in that case being that malitia supplet ititatem. At twenty-one both males and females obtain their full legal rights, and become liable to all legal obligations. A seat in the British Parliament may be taken at twenty-one. Certain professions, however, demand as a qualification in entrants a more advanced age than that of legal manhood. In the church a candidate for deacon s orders must be twenty-three, and for priest s orders twenty-four yearn of age; and no clergyman is eligible for a bishopric under thirty. In Scotland infancy is not a legal term. The time previous to majority, which, as in England, is reached by both sexes at twenty-one, is divided into two stages : pupilccye lasts until the attainment of puberty, which the law fixes at fourteen in males and twelve in females; minority lasts from these ages respectively until twenty-one. Minority obviously corresponds in some degree to the English years of discretion, but a Scotch minor has more personal rights than an English infant in the last stage of- his infancy, e.g., he may dispose by will of moveable property, make contracts, carry on trade, and, as a neces sary consequence, is liable to be declared a bankrupt. Among foreign nations the law on this matter is somewhat varied. In France the year of majority is twenty- one, and the nubile age, according to the Code Napoleon, eighteen for males and fifteen for females, with a restriction as to the consent of guardians. In Germany majority is usually reached at twenty-four, though in some states (Bavaria, Saxony, Wiirtemburg, and Baden) the age is twenty-one. In the United States the age qualification for a president is thirty-five, for a senator thirty, and for a representative twenty-five. AG EL AD AS, an eminent statuary of Argos, and the instructor of the three great sculptors, Phidias, Myron, and Polycletus. There is considerable difference in the state ments of the date when he flourished. Thiersch meets the difficulty by supposing that there was another artist of the same name. AGELNOTH, ^THELNOTH, or ETHELNOTII, known also as Achelnotus, son of Egelmaer the Earl, Archbishop of Canterbury in the reign of Canute, was trained in the monastery at Glastonbury, for which he afterwards obtained new privileges from the king. According to William of Malmesbury, he exercised a great and salutary influence over Canute in the way both of encouragement and restraint. He was appointed dean of Canterbury and chaplain to the king, and was raised to the archbishopric on the death of Living in 1020. He wisely counselled Canute to that course of policy which ultimately led to the fusion of Danes and Saxons, and their united resistance to the invasion of the Normans; and similar pacific counsels in the church brought about a temporary cessation of the mutual persecution on the part of the Benedictine and secular clergy. It being necessary that the archbishop should visit Rome in person to receive the pall, he repaired thither in 1022, and was received by Pope Benedictine VIII. with every mark of honour. At Pavia, on his way home, he purchased a relic, which was said to be the right arm of St Augustine of Hippo, at the cost of 100 talents of silver and 1 of gold. This he sent as a present to Leofric, the young Earl of Mercia. With his own wealth and liberal grants from Canute he restored and adorned his cathedral. When Canute died, he made the archbishop promise to be faithful to his sons by Emma, and the pro mise was so truly kept that Harold, the usurper, remained unconsecrated until after the death of Agelnoth (1038). AGEN, the chief town of the department of Lot-et- Garonne in France, is situated on the right bank of the Garonne, 73 miles S.E. of Bordeaux. Through its ex cellent water communication it affords an outlet for the