OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Aegis

See also Aegis on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​AEGIS (Gr. Aigis), in Homer, the shield or buckler of Zeus, fashioned for him by Hephaestus, furnished with tassels and bearing the Gorgon’s head in the centre. Originally symbolical of the storm-cloud, it is probably derived from ἀίσσω, signifying rapid, violent motion. When the god shakes it, Mount Ida is wrapped in clouds, the thunder rolls and men are smitten with fear. He sometimes lends it to Athene and (rarely) to Apollo. In the later story (Hyginus, Poet. Astronom. ii. 13) Zeus is said to have used the skin of the goat Amaltheia (αἰγίς＝goat-skin) which suckled him in Crete, as a buckler when he went forth to do battle against the giants. Another legend represents the aegis as a fire-breathing monster like the Chimaera, which was slain by Athene, who afterwards wore its skin as a cuirass (Diodorus Siculus iii. 70) It appears to have been really the goat’s skin used as a belt to support the shield. When so used it would generally be fastened on the right shoulder, and would partially envelop the chest as it passed obliquely round in front and behind to be attached to the shield under the left arm. Hence, by transference, it would be employed to denote at times the shield which it supported, and at other times a cuirass, the purpose of which it in part served. In accordance with this double meaning the aegis appears in works of art sometimes as an animal’s skin thrown over the shoulders and arms, sometimes as a cuirass, with a border of snakes corresponding to the tassels of Homer, usually with the Gorgon’s head in the centre. It is often represented on the statues of Roman emperors, heroes and warriors, and on cameos and vases.
See F. G. Welcker, Griechische Götterlehre (1857); L. Preller, Griechische Mythologie, i. (1887); articles in Pauly-Wissowa’s Realencyclopädie, Roscher’s Lexikon der Mythologie, Daremberg and Saglio’s Dictionnaire des Antiquités, and Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (3rd ed., 1890).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Aegisthus

See also Aegisthus on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​AEGISTHUS, in Greek legend, was the son of Thyestes by his own daughter Pelopia. Having been exposed by his mother to conceal her shame, he was found by shepherds and suckled by a goat—whence his name. His uncle Atreus, who had married ​Pelopia, took him to Mycenae, and brought him up as his own son. When he grew up Aegisthus slew Atreus, and ruled jointly with his father over Mycenae, until they were deposed by Agamemnon on his return from exile. After the departure of Agamemnon to the Trojan war, Aegisthus seduced his wife Clytaemnestra (more correctly Clytaemestra) and with her assistance slew him on his return. Eight years later his murder was avenged by his son Orestes.
Homer, Od. iii. 263, iv. 517; Hyginus, Fab. 87.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Aegospotami

See also Aegospotami on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​AEGOSPOTAMI (i.e., “Goat Streams”), a small creek issuing into the Hellespont, N. E. of Sestos, the scene of the decisive battle in 405 B.C. by which Lysander destroyed the last Athenian armament in the Peloponnesian War (q.v.). The township of that name, whose existence is attested by coins of the 5th and 4th centuries, must have been quite insignificant.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Aemilia Via

See also Via Aemilia on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​AEMILIA VIA, or Aemillian Way. (1) A highroad of Italy, constructed in 187 B.C. by the consul M. Aemilius Lepidus, from whom it takes its name; it ran from Ariminum to Placentia, a distance of 176 m. almost straight N.W., with the plain of the Po (Padus) and its tributaries on the right, and the Apennines on the left. The 79th milestone from Ariminum found in the bed of the Rhenus at Bononia records the restoration of the road by Augustus from Ariminum to the river Trebia in 2 B.C. (Notiz. Scav., 1902, 539). The bridge by which it crossed the Sillaro was restored by Trajan in A.D. 100 (Notizie degli Scavi, 1888, 621). The modern highroad follows the ancient line, and some of the original bridges still exist. After Augustus, the road gave its name to the district which formed the eighth region of Italy (previously known as Gallia or Provincia Ariminum), at first in popular usage (as in Martial), but in official language as early as the 2nd century; it is still in use (see Emilia). The district was bounded on the N. by the Padus, E. by the Adriatic, S. by the river Crustumium (mod. Conca), and W. by the Apennines and the Ira (mod. Staffora) at Iria (mod. Voghera), and corresponds approximately with the modern district.
(2) A road constructed in 109 B.C. by the censor M. Aemilius Scaurus from Vada Volaterrana and Luna to Vada Sabatia and thence over the Apennines to Dertona (Tortona), where it joined ​the Via Postumia from Genua to Cremona. We must, however (as Mommsen points out in C.I.L. v. p. 885), suppose that the portion of the coast road from Vada Volaterrana to Genua at least must have existed before the construction of the Via Postumia in 148 B.C. Indeed Polybius (iii. 39. 8) tells us (and this must refer to the time of the Gracchi if not earlier) that the Romans had in his time built the coast road from the Rhone to Carthago Nova; and it is incredible that the coast road in Italy itself should not have been constructed previously. It is, however, a very different thing to open a road for traffic, and so to construct it that it takes its name from that construction in perpetuity.  (T. As.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Aemilius, Paulus

See also Paulus Aemilius Veronensis on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​AEMILIUS, PAULUS (Paolo Emilio) (d. 1529), Italian historian, was born at Verona. He obtained such reputation in his own country that he was invited to France in the reign of Charles VIII., in order to write in Latin the history of the kings of France, and was presented to a canonry in Notre Dame. He enjoyed the patronage and support of Louis XII. He died at Paris on the 5th of May 1529. His De Rebus gestis Francorum was translated into French in 1581, and has also been translated into Italian and German.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Harpy

See also Harpy Eagle on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer. The Latin name is now Harpia harpyja.
​HARPY, a large diurnal bird of prey, so named after the mythological monster of the classical poets (see Harpies),—the Thrasaëtus harpyia of modern ornithologists—an inhabitant of the warmer parts of America from Southern Mexico to Brazil. Though known since the middle of the 17th century, its habits have come very little under the notice of naturalists, and what is said of them by the older writers must be received with some suspicion. A cursory inspection of the bird, which is not unfrequently brought alive to Europe, its size, and its enormous bill and talons, at once suggest the vast powers of destruction imputed to it, and are enough to account for the stories told of its ravages on mammals—sloths, fawns, peccaries and spider-monkeys. It has even been asserted to attack the human race. How much of this is fabulous there seems no means at present of determining, but some of the statements are made by veracious travellers—D’Orbigny and Tschudi. It is not uncommon in the forests of the isthmus of Panama, and Salvin says (Proc. Zool. Society, 1864, p. 368) that its flight is slow and heavy. Indeed its owl-like visage, its short wings and soft plumage, do not indicate a bird of very active habits, but the weapons of offence with which it is armed show that it must be able to cope with vigorous prey. Its appearance is sufficiently striking—the head and lower parts, except a pectoral band, white, the former adorned with an erectile crest, the upper parts dark grey banded with black, the wings dusky, and the tail barred; but the huge bill and powerful scutellated legs most of all impress the beholder. The precise affinities of the harpy cannot be said to have been determined. By some authors it is referred to the eagles, by others to the buzzards, and by others again to the hawks; but possibly the first of these alliances is the most likely to be true.  (A. N.)
Harpy.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Harriman

See also Harriman on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​HARRIMAN, a city of Roane county, Tennessee, U.S.A., on the Emory river, about 35 m. W. by S. of Knoxville. Pop. (1900) 3442 (516 being negroes); (1910) 3061. Harriman is served by the Harriman & North Eastern, the Tennessee Central, and the Southern railways. It is the seat of the East Tennessee Normal and Industrial Institute, for negroes, and of the American University of Harriman (Christian Church, coeducational; 1893), which comprises primary, preparatory, collegiate, Bible school, civic research, commercial, music and art departments, and in 1907–1908 had 12 instructors and 317 students. Near the city are large deposits of iron and an abundance of coal and timber. Among manufactures are cotton products, farming tools, leather, tannic acid, furniture and flour. Harriman was founded in 1890 by a land company. A clause in this company’s by-laws requires that every conveyance of real estate by the company “shall contain a provision forbidding the use of the property or any building thereon, for the purpose of making, storing or selling intoxicating beverages as such.” Harriman was chartered as a city in 1891, and its charter was revised in 1899.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Harpoon

See also Harpoon on Wikipedia; harpoon on Wiktionary; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​HARPOON (from Fr. harpon, a grappling-iron, O. Fr. harpe, a dog’s claw, an iron clamp for fastening stones together; the source of these words is the Lat. harpago, harpa, &c., formed from Gr. ἁρπαγή, hook, ἁρπάζειν, to snatch, tear away, cf. “harpy”), barbed spear, particularly one used for spearing whales or other large fish, and either thrown by hand or fired from a gun (see Whale-Fishery).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Harran

See also Harran on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​HARRAN, Haran or Charran (Sept. Χαῤῥάν or Χαῤῥά: Strabo, Κάῤῥαι: Pliny, Carrae or Carrhae; Arab. Harrān), in biblical history the place where Terah halted after leaving Ur, and apparently the birthplace of Abraham, a town on the stream Jullab, some nine hours’ journey from Edessa in Syria. At this point the road from Damascus joins the highway between Nineveh and Carchemish, and Haran had thus considerable military and commercial value. As a strategic position it is mentioned in inscriptions as early as the time of Tiglath Pileser I., about 1100 B.C., and subsequently by Sargon II., who restored the privileges lost at the rebellion which led to the conquest referred to in 2 Kings xix. 12 (= Isa. xxxvii. 12). It was the centre of a considerable commerce (Ezek. xxvii. 23), and one of its specialities was the odoriferous gum derived from the strobus (Pliny, H.N. xii. 40). It was here that Crassus in his eastern expedition was attacked and slain by the Parthians (53 B.C.); and here also the emperor Caracalla was murdered at the instigation of Macrinus (A.D. 217). Haran was the chief home of the moon-god Sin, whose temple was rebuilt by several kings, among them Assur-bani-pal and Nabunidus and Herodian (iv. 13, 7) mentions the town as possessing in his day a temple of the moon. In the middle ages it is mentioned as having been the seat of a particular heathen sect, that of the Haranite Sabeans. It retained its importance down to the period of the Arab ascendancy; but by Abulfeda it is mentioned as having before his time fallen into decay. It is now wholly in ruins. The Yahwistic writer (Gen. xxvii. 43) makes it the home of Laban and connects it with Isaac and Jacob. But we cannot thus put Haran in Aramnaharaim; the home of the Labanites is rather to be looked for in the very similar word Hauran.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Harratin

See also Haratin on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​HARRATIN, black Berbers, dwelling in Tidikelt and other Saharan oases. Many of them are blacker than the average negro. In physique, however, they are true to the Berber type, being of handsome appearance with European features and well-proportioned bodies. They are the result of an early crossing with the Sudanese negro races, though to-day they have all the pride of the Berbers (q.v.), and do not live with or intermarry among negroes.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Harpsichord

See also Harpsichord on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​HARPSICHORD, Harpsicon, double virginals (Fr. clavecin; Ger. Clavicymbel, Kiel-Flügel; Ital. arpicordo, cembalo, clavicembalo, gravecembalo; Dutch, clavisinbal), a large keyboard instrument (see Pianoforte), belonging to the same family as the virginal and spinet, but having 2, 3, or even 4 strings to each note, and a case of the harp or wing shape, afterwards adopted for the grand pianoforte. J. S. Bach’s harpsichord, preserved in the museum of the Hochschule für Musik at Charlottenburg, has two manuals and 4 strings to each note, one 16 ft., two 8 ft. and one 4 ft. By means of stops the performer has within his power a number of combinations for varying the tone and dynamic power. In all instruments of the harpsichord family ​the strings, instead of being struck by tangents as in the clavichord, or by hammers as in the pianoforte, are plucked by means of a quill firmly embedded in the centred tongue of a jack or upright placed on the back end of the key-lever. When the finger depresses a key, the jack is thrown up, and in passing the crow-quill catches the string and twangs it. It is this twanging of the string which produces the brilliant incisive tone peculiar to the harpsichord family. What these instruments gain in brilliancy of tone, however, they lose in power of expression and of accent. The impossibility of commanding any emphasis necessarily created for the harpsichord an individual technique which influenced the music composed for it to so great an extent that it cannot be adequately rendered upon the pianoforte.
The harpsichord assumed a position of great importance during the 16th and 17th centuries, more especially in the orchestra, which was under the leadership of the harpsichord player. The most famous of all harpsichord makers, whose names form a guarantee for excellence, were the Ruckers, established at Antwerp from the last quarter of the 16th century. (K. S.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Harrigan, Edward

See also Edward Harrigan on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​HARRIGAN, EDWARD (1845– ), American actor, was born in New York of Irish parents on the 26th of October 1845. He made his first appearance in San Francisco in 1867, and soon afterwards formed a stage partnership with Tony Hart, whose real name was Anthony Cannon. As “Harrigan and Hart,” they had a great success in the presentation of types of low life in New York. Beginning as simple sketches, these were gradually worked up into plays, with occasional songs, set to popular music ​by David Braham. The titles of these plays indicate their character, The Mulligan Guards, Squatter Sovereignty, A Leather Patch, The O’Regans. The partnership with Hart lasted from 1871–1884. Subsequently Harrigan played in different cities of the United States, one of his favourite parts being George Coggswell in Old Lavender.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Harriman, Edward Henry

See also E. H. Harriman on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​HARRIMAN, EDWARD HENRY (1848–1909), American financier and railroad magnate, son of the Rev. Orlando Harriman, rector of St George’s Episcopal church, Hempstead, L.I., was born at Hempstead on the 25th of February 1848. He became a broker’s clerk in New York at an early age, and in 1870 was able to buy a seat on the New York Stock Exchange on his own account. For a good many years there was nothing sensational in his success, but he built up a considerable business connexion and prospered in his financial operations. Meanwhile he carefully mastered the situation affecting American railways. In this respect he was assisted by his friendship with Mr Stuyvesant Fish, who, on becoming vice-president of the Illinois Central in 1883, brought Harriman upon the directorate, and in 1887, being then president, made Harriman vice-president; twenty years later it was Harriman who dominated the finance of the Illinois Central, and Fish, having become his opponent, was dropped from the board. It was not till 1898, however, that his career as a great railway organizer began with his formation, by the aid of the bankers, Kuhn, Loeb & Co., of a syndicate to acquire the Union Pacific line, which was then in the hands of a receiver and was generally regarded as a hopeless failure. It was soon found that a new power had arisen in the railway world. Having brought the Union Pacific out of bankruptcy into prosperity, and made it an efficient instead of a decaying line, he utilized his position to draw other lines within his control, notably the Southern Pacific in 1901. These extensions of his power were not made without friction, and his abortive contest in 1901 with James J. Hill for the control of the Northern Pacific led to one of the most serious financial crises ever known on Wall Street. But in the result he became the dominant factor in American railway matters. At his death, on the 9th of September 1909, his influence was estimated to extend over 60,000 m. of track, with an annual earning power of $700,000,000 or over. Astute and unscrupulous manipulation of the stock markets, and a capacity for the hardest of bargaining and the most determined warfare against his rivals, had their place in this success, and Harriman’s methods excited the bitterest criticism, culminating in a stern denunciation from President Roosevelt himself in 1907. Nevertheless, besides acquiring colossal wealth for himself, he helped to create for the American public a vastly improved railway service, the benefit of which survived all controversy as to the means by which he triumphed over the obstacles in his way.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Fontana, Lavinia

See also Lavinia Fontana on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​FONTANA, LAVINIA (1552–1614), Italian portrait-painter, was the daughter of Prospero Fontana (q.v.). She was greatly employed by the ladies of Bologna, and, going thence to Rome, painted the likenesses of many illustrious personages, being under the particular patronage of the family (Buoncampagni) of Pope Gregory XIII., who died in 1585. The Roman ladies, from the days of this pontiff to those of Paul V., elected in 1605, showed no less favour to Lavinia than their Bolognese sisters had done; and Paul V. was himself among her sitters. Some of her portraits, often lavishly paid for, have been attributed to Guido. In works of a different kind also she united care and delicacy with boldness. Among the chief of these are a Venus in the Berlin museum; the “Virgin lifting a veil from the sleeping infant Christ,” in the Escorial; and the “Queen of Sheba visiting Solomon.” Her own portrait in youth—she was accounted very beautiful—was perhaps her masterpiece; it belongs to the counts Zappi of Imola, the family into which Lavinia married. Her husband, whose name is given as Paolo Zappi or Paolo Foppa, painted the draperies in many of Lavinia’s pictures. She is deemed on the whole a better painter than her father; from him naturally came her first instruction, but she gradually adopted the Caraccesque style, with strong quasi-Venetian colouring. She was elected into the Academy of Rome, and died in that city in 1614.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Fontanes, Louis, Marquis de

See also Louis-Marcelin de Fontanes on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​FONTANES, LOUIS, Marquis de (1757–1821), French poet and politician, was born at Niort (Deux Sèvres) on the 6th of March 1757. He belonged to a noble Protestant family of Languedoc which had been reduced to poverty by the revocation of the edict of Nantes. His father and grandfather remained Protestant, but he was himself brought up as a Catholic. His parents died in 1774–1775, and in 1777 Fontanes went to Paris, where he found a friend in the dramatist J. F. Ducis. His first published poems, some of which were inspired by English models, appeared in the Almanach des Muses; “Le Cri de mon cœur,” describing his own sad childhood, in 1778; and “La Forêt de Navarre” in 1780. His translation from Alexander Pope, L’Essai sur l’homme, was published with an elaborate preface in 1783, and La Chartreuse and Le Jour des morts in the same year, Le Verger in 1788 and his Épître sur l’édit en faveur des non-catholiques, and the Essai sur l’astronomie in 1789. Fontanes was a moderate reformer, and in 1790 he became joint-editor of the Modérateur. He married at Lyons in 1792, and his wife’s first child was born during their flight from the siege of that town. Fontanes was in hiding in Paris when the four citizens of Lyons were sent to the Convention to protest against the cruelties of Collot d’Herbois. The petition was drawn up by Fontanes, and the authorship being discovered, he fled from Paris and found shelter at Sevran, near Livry, and afterwards at Andelys. On the fall of Robespierre he was made professor of literature in the École Centrale des Quatre-Nations, and he was one of the original members of the Institute. In the Mémorial, a journal edited by La Harpe, he discreetly advocated reaction to the monarchical principle. He was exiled by the Directory and made his way to London, where he was closely associated with Chateaubriand. He soon returned to France, and his admiration for Napoleon, who commissioned him to write an éloge on Washington, secured his return to the Institute and his political promotion. In 1802 he was elected to the legislative chamber, of which he was president from 1804 to 1810. Other honours and titles followed. He has been accused of servility to Napoleon, but he had the courage to remonstrate with him on the judicial murder of the duc d’Enghien, and as grand master of the university of Paris (1808–1815) he consistently supported religious and monarchical principles. He acquiesced in the Bourbon restoration, and was made a marquis in 1817. He died on the 17th of March 1821 in Paris, leaving eight cantos of an unfinished epic poem entitled La Grèce sauvée.
The verse of Fontanes is polished and musical in the style of the 18th century. It was not collected until 1839, when Sainte-Beuve edited the Œuvres (2 vols.) of Fontanes, with a sympathetic critical study of the author and his career. But by that time the Romantic movement was in the ascendant and Fontanes met with small appreciation.