OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature to the End of the Sixth Century/Pomponia Graecina

Pomponia Graecina, one of the earliest and most distinguished Roman converts. Tacitus (Annals, xiii. 32) tells us, referring to a.d. 57 or 58, that Pomponia Graecina, a distinguished lady, wife of the Plautius who returned from Britain with an ovation, was accused of some foreign superstition and handed over to her husband's judicial decision. Following ancient precedent, he heard his wife's cause in the presence of kinsfolk, involving, as it did, her legal status and character, and reported that she was innocent. She lived a long life of unbroken melancholy. After the murder of Julia, Drusus's daughter, by Messalina's treachery, for 40 years she wore only the attire of a mourner. For this, during Claudius's reign, she escaped unpunished, and it was afterwards counted a glory to her. This is the only notice of her in ancient literature. She came into prominence through De Rossi's discoveries in the catacomb of Callistus (Roma Sotterranea, ii. 360–364). De Rossi identified her with St. Lucina (of. Aubé, Hist. des perséc. t. i. p 180). Cf. for other notices Brownlow and Northcote's Roma Sott. t. i. pp. 82, 83, 278–282. De Rossi (op. cit. t. i. pp. 306–351) discusses the crypt and family of St. Lucina at great length (cf. also his Bullettino di Archeol. Crist. passim).
[G.T.S.]
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Aldulf (d.1002)

​ALDULF, or EALDULF (d. 1002), archbishop of York, is said by Hugh, called Candidus, the historian of Peterborough, writing about 1175, to have been ‘chancellor' to King Eadgar. Having killed his only son by accidentally overlaying him as the child slept between him and his wife, he was about to seek absolution at Rome, but was persuaded by bishop Æthelwold to do good deeds at home, as an atonement for his involuntary sin. He accordingly became a monk of the abbey of Medeshamstede or Burgh (Peterborough), which was then in ruins, and devoted all his wealth to rebuilding it. We know on more certain authority that he was made abbot of Burgh when that house was rebuilt by bishop Æthelwold in 963, and that the new abbot bought many lands, and ‘greatly enriched the minster withal' (A.-S. Chron. sub an. 963). He remained abbot until the death of Oswald, archbishop of York, in 992, and was then chosen to succeed him. With York he also held the see of Worcester, as Oswald did before him. In 994 he signs a charter as bishop only; in 995 as elect to the archbishopric; and in 996 in a grant of his own as archbishop. We may, therefore, conclude that, though he was elected to the see of York, as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells us, in 992, he did not receive the pall until 995–6. Like Oswald he was a munificent benefactor to the abbey of Fleury. On 15 April 1002 he translated the body of Oswald with great honour at Worcester. He ​died 6 May of the same year, and was buried in his church in that city.
[Hugo Candidus, Hist. Ang. Script. ed. Sparke, p. 18; A.-S. Chron. sub an. 963; Florence of Worcester, sub an. 1002; Simeon, 162; Chron. Monast. de Abingdon (Rolls Ser.), i. 405, ii. 262; Will. Malm. de Gestis Pontif. iii. 270; Codex Dipl. ed. Kemble, Hist. Soc. iii. 280, 283, 291, 296.]
W. H.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Alexander, Daniel Asher

​ALEXANDER, DANIEL ASHER (1768–1846), architect, was born in London and educated at St. Paul's School. In 1782 he became a student at the Royal Academy, where after two months' study he gained a silver medal. He found ample employment as soon as he was out of his articles. He had special constructive genius, which is evidenced by many of his works. One of the earliest of these was the widening, at Rochester, of the bridge over the Medway. He accomplished a most difficult task in forming the two middle arches of that bridge into one. In 1796 he was made survevor to the London Dock Company, and until 1831 all the buildings in the docks were from his designs. He was surveyor also to the Trinity House, and in that capacity built lighthouses at Harwich, Lundy Island, and other places. The Dartmoor prisons and the old county prison at Maidstone were from his designs. He attained great eminence in his profession, and had many pupils. Several writers insist upon the great constructive skill of Alexander's, work, and upon those qualities of sound sense and sure knowledge which gained for him his high place amongst the architects of the century. A writer in the ‘Gentleman's Magazine’ (August 1846) says, ‘a characteristic fitness of purpose was prominent in every building, whether a principal or a subordinate one, and in his hands the architecture, whatever it was, was ever made to grow out of and to form an inherent necessity of the structure. . . . He ever distinguished between the sense of an original architectural feature and the nonsense of a false adaptation of it.’
He was publicly complimented by Sir John Soane from the chair of the Royal Academy for the finely conservative spirit he had shown in repairing two works of Inigo Jones—the Naval Asylum at Greenwich, and Coleshill House, Berks. He died at Exeter on 2 March 1846, and was ‘buried at Yarmouth in the Isle of Wight’ in a church ‘the tower of which he had raised at his own expense the better to mark the channel at that part.’
His eldest son Daniel practised as an architect, but in 1820 gave up that profession for the church, and died vicar of Bickleigh, in Devonshire, in 1843.
E. R.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Aldridge, William

1904 Errata appended.
​ALDRIDGE, WILLIAM (1737–1797), nonconformist minister, was born at Warminster, in Wiltshire, in 1737. As a youth he spent a mere pleasure-seeking life. In his twenty-fourth year, however, he was seized with a passionate desire to be a preacher of the gospel, and was admitted to the Countess of Huntingdon's college at Treveca in South Wales. There he remained until a regular theological course was completed. He received ‘license,' and for a number of years preached in the chapels of the countess's ‘connection'—semi-methodist, semi-episcopal. In September 1771 he was sent by Lady Huntingdon, with a Joseph Cook, to Margate, in the Isle of Thanet. They were utter strangers in the place. They began to address any who would listen to them in the open air. The numbers increased from month to month. About this time occurred in Dover a schism among the Wesleyan Methodists, and the malcontents invited the two missionary evangelists thither. Mr. Aldridge preached for the first time in the market-place on a Sunday. The opposition was violent. But a presbyterian meeting-house that had been closed having been obtained, he officiated in it while he resided at Dover. Later, the two preachers supplied Margate and Dover alternately. In the midst of his usefulness the Countess of Huntingdon appointed Mr. Aldridge to ‘supply' the Mulberry Garden chapel in Wapping. There his ministry proved so remarkable a success that the large congregation united in a petition to her ladyship to ‘continue him as their minister.' The despotic lady—as was her wont—refused the appeal of the people. This led to Mr. Aldridge severing himself from the countess's ‘connexion.' Jewry-street chapel (Calvinistic Methodist) being then vacant, he was ‘called' to it, accepted the invitation, and remained its devoted and beloved minister for upwards of twenty years. He died on 28 Feb. 1797. Like so many nonconformist ministers he was buried in Bunhill-fields. The two literary-theological memorials of Aldridge are his ‘Doctrine of the Trinity, Stated, Proved, and Defended,' and a funeral sermon on the death of the Countess of Huntingdon. The former is occasionally most powerful in its reasoning.
A. B. G.
Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.5 N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line
| Page | Col. | Line | |
| 253 | i | 35 | Aldridge, William: for Treveca read Trevecca |
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Alexander, Helen

​ALEXANDER, HELEN (1654–1729), heroine of the Scottish covenanters in the unequal struggle between the adherents of ancient presbyterianism and prelacy, is still to-day a ‘household name’ in the west of Scotland. In the mountain glens and moors of Ayrshire and Galloway and the Pentlands, chap-books still tell her marvellous story of courage and devoutness. Towards the end of her life she dictated many of her experiences to her husband, and the manuscript was published by the Rev. Dr. Robert Simpson, of Sanquhar, in his ‘A Voice from the Desert, or the Church in the Wilderness’ (1856). It is entitled ‘A Short Account of the Lord's Dealing with Helen Alexander, spouse first to Charles Umpherston, tenant in Pentland, and thereafter to James Currie, merchant in Pentland; together with some remarkable passages, providential occurrences, and her support and comfort under them, and deliverance out of them. All collected from her own mouth by her surviving husband.’ It is scarcely possible to imagine a more artless or a more absolutely truthful narrative of the events of ‘the killing time,’ as it is still called, in Scotland. All the leading covenanters cross and recross the stage; for in and out of prison Helen Alexander was brought into the closest relations with them all, especially John Welsh, Donald Cargill, David Williamson, Andrew Gullon, James Renwick. Of the last she writes: ‘In the year 1683 the reverend and worthy Mr. James Renwick came home from Holland, an ordained minister. At first I scrupled to hear him, because it was said he was ordained by such as used the organ in their worship. But being better informed by himself, according as it is recorded in his Life and Death, printed some years ago, I heard him with all freedom, and to my great satisfaction, at Woodhouselee old house, being called there by friends about Edinburgh and Pentland. After this he frequented my house, with several worthy christians, even in the very heat of persecution; and I judged it my duty, in all these hazards, to attend the ordinances administered by him.’ And this: ‘In the year 1687, November 30, I was again married unto James Currie, by the renowned Mr. James Renwick. . . . Some months after this, Mr. Renwick being taken, I went and saw him in prison. . . . And when he was executed, I went along to the Greyfriars' churchyard, took him in my arms until stripped of his clothes, helped to wind him in his graveclothes, and helped to put him into the coffin. This was a most shocking and sinking dispensation, more piercing, wounding, and afflicting than almost any before it’ (pp. 358, 360). There are many kindred pathetic notices of these humble martyrs of the Scottish persecution. ​Helen Alexander was born at Linton in 1654, and from her youth up was an earnest Christian. She resolutely avowed her adherence to presbyterianism and ‘the covenant’ before the lordliest of the land. She ‘ministered’ dauntlessly to the fugitives. She stood by the friendless at the bars. She spent days and nights in prison with ‘the suffering remnant.’ She died in March 1729, aged 75.
A. B. G.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Aldred the Glossator (10th cent.)

​ALDRED the Glossator (10th cent.) was the writer of the glosses in the Northumbrian dialect which are inserted in the Latin manuscript of the Gospels, known as the ‘Lindisfarne Gospels,’ or ‘Durham Book,’ and ​written about the year 700 in honour of St. Cuthberht (Brit. Mus., Cotton MS., Nero D. iv.). In a note at the end of the manuscript Aldred calls himself the son of Alfred and Tilwin—‘Alfredi natus Aldredus vocor; bonæ mulieris (i.e. Tilwin) filius eximius loquor.’ It has been maintained that he wrote with his own hand only the glosses to St. John, and that the rest were penned by other scribes under his direction; but there is reason to believe that he wrote the whole of them himself.
It has been suggested (Bibl. MS. Stowensis, 1818–19, vol. ii. p. 180) that Aldred may have been the bishop of Durham (Chester-le-Street) of that name, 957–68. He has also been wrongly identified with Aldred the Provost, the writer of a few collects inserted at the end of a manuscript known as the ‘Durham Ritual’ (Durham Chapter Library, MS. A. iv. 19). The body of this manuscript contains glosses which, from a certain resemblance, have been erroneously thought to be in the same handwriting as those of the Lindisfarne Gospels. The writing of the above-mentioned collects is quite different. But when once it was assumed that the glosses in the two manuscripts were the work of one writer, it was only a step further to confuse the two Aldreds; and this, although the provost had no hand even in the glosses of the Ritual.
E. M. T.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Aled, Tudur

​ALED, TUDUR (fl, 1480–1525), was a Welsh poet of Llansannan in Denbighshire, his bardic name being derived from the river Aled, which flows through his native place. From his own poems it appears that he was the pupil of his uncle Dafydd ab Edmwnd, and that he was a Franciscan friar. He was the bardic teacher of Gruffydd Hiraethog, a more distinguished poet than himself, and was pencerdd of the first Eisteddfod of Caerwys, held in 1525. Seven elegies and two other poems by Tudur Aled are printed in Rhys Jones's ‘Gorchestion Beirdd Cymru,’ 1773, in which is also given a short biographical notice of the poet. In this notice he is said to be ‘one of the most ardent, gifted, and skilful poets whom Wales has ever produced.’
[Jones's Gorcheston Beirdd Cymru, 1773.]
A. M.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Alefounder, John

​ALEFOUNDER, JOHN (d. 1795), portrait and miniature painter, studied at the Royal Academy, and gained a silver medal in 1782. He exhibited first, in 1777, an architectural design, following in successive years with work in various kinds. In 1784 he exhibited some theatrical portraits and portrait groups. He left England and realised some fortune by his paintings in India. He died from the effect of the climate of that country.
Bartolozzi engraved after Alefounder ‘Peter the Wild Boy’ in 1784, and a portrait by him of Edwin, the actor, as Lingo in the ‘Pleasant Surprise,’ was engraved in the same year by C. N. Hodges. At the Society of Arts may be seen a portrait by him of John Shipley.
[Redgrave's Dict. of Painters; Edwardes's Anecdotes of Painters; Nagler's Künstler-Lexicon, ed. 1872.]
E. R.
# Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology/Herennius 13.

​13. L. Herennius Balbus, demanded that the slaves (familia) of Milo and Fausta his wife should be submitted to the torture, in order to elicit their ​evidence respecting the murder of P. Clodiiis on the 20th of January, B. C. 52. (Ascon. in Cic. Milonian. p. 35. Orelli.)
# Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology/Herennius 14.

​14. Herennius, a young man of profligate habits, whom Augustus expelled from the army. When the order was issued, he asked, " How shall I present myself at home? What can I say to my father? " " Tell him," replied Augustus, " that you did not like me." Herennius had been scarred on the forehead by a stone, and boasted of it as an honourable wound. But Augustus counselled him : " Herennius, next time you run away, do not look behind you." (Macrob. Sat. ii. 4.)
# Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology/Herennius 16.

​16. Here'nnius Ca'pito, was procurator of Iamnia, near the coast of Palestine. He arrested Herodes Agrippa [Agrippa, Herodes 1.] for a debt to the imperial treasury, and reported his defalcation and consequent flight to the emperor Tiberius, A. D. 35—6. (Joseph. Antiq. xviii. 6. § 3, 4.) [W. B. D.]
# Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology/Herennius 3.

​3. Herennius Cerrinius, was the son of Paculla Minia, a Campanian woman, who lived at Rome. Paculla was the arch-priestess, and Herennius one of the chief hierophants of the Bacchanalia in that city, b. c. 186. (Liv, xxxix. 13, 19.) It is probable that the son of Paculla became an Herennius by marriage with Herennia, according to the Sabellian practice of annexing the wife's name to the paternal or family appellation. (See Herennia Gens and Göttling, Staatsverfassung der Röm. p. 5.)
# Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology/Herennius 5.

​5. C. Herennius, was the hereditary patron of the Marii, and possessed probably a patrimonial estate near Arpinum. When C. Marius the elder, about b. c. 115, was impeached for bribery at his praetorian comitia, Herennius was cited, but refused to give evidence against him, alleging that it was unlawful for a patron to injure his client. (Plut. Mar. 5.)
# Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology/Herennius 7.

​7. C. Herennius, was tribune of the plebs in b. c. 80, and opposed a rogatio of L. Sulla, the dictator, for recalling Cn. Pompey from Africa. (Sall. Hist. ii. ap. Gell. x. 20 ; comp. Plut. Pomp. 13.) After the death of Sulla, this Herennius probably joined Sertorius in Spain, b. c. 76 — 72 ; since a legatus of that name was defeated and slain by Pompey near Valentia. (Plut. Pomp. 18; Zonar. x. 2 ; Sall. Hist. iii. fragm. p. 215, ed. Gerlach. min.) Whether C. Herennius, a senator, convicted (before b. c. 69) of peculation (Cic. in Verr. i. 13. § 39), were the same person, is uncertain.
# Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology/Herennius 6.

​6. M. Herennius, Avas consul in b. c. 93. (Fast. ; Obseq. 112.) Although a plebeian and an indifferent orator, he carried his election against the high-born and eloquent L. Marcius Philippus. (Cic. Brut. 45, pro Muren. 17.) Pliny (H. N. 19, 3) mentions the consulate of Herennius as remarkable for the quantity of Cyrenaic silphium — ferula Tingitana (Sprengel, Rei Herbar. p. 84.), then brought to Rome. This costly drug was worth a silver denarius the pound ; and the mercantile connections of the Herennii in Africa may have caused this unusual supply.
# Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology/Herennius 15.

​15. M. Herennius, M. f. Picens, was consul suffectus in the last two months of B. C. 34. The cognomen Picens is doubtful. As Picenum was a Sabellian district, Picens may indicate a branch of the Herennia Gens settled therein. [W. B. D.]
# Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology/Herennius 2.

​2. Herennius Bassus, was one of the principal citizens of Nola in Campania. The ruling order in Nola was Sabellian (Liv. ix. 28 ; Strab. v. p. 249) ; but from its zealous emulation of Cumae and Neapolis, Nola was almost a Greek city (Dionys. XV. 5. fragm. Mai), and thence may have proceeded its staunch preference of a Roman to a Carthaginian alliance: for Herennius was the spokesman of his fellow-citizens when, in b. c. 215, they rejected Hanno's proposals to revolt to Hannibal. (Liv. xxiii. 43.)
# Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology/Herennius 4.

​4. M. Octavius Herennius, was originally a flute-player, but afterwards engaged in trade, and throve so well that he dedicated to Hercules a tenth of his gains. Once, while sailing with his wares, Herennius was attacked by pirates, but he beat them off valiantly, and saved his liberty and cargo. Then Hercules showed Herennius in a dream that it was he who had given him strength in his need. So, when he came back to Rome, Herennius besought the senate for a piece of ground, whereon he built a chapel to Hercules, and placed in it an image of the god, and wrote underneath the image " Herculi Victori," in token of his deliverance from the pirates. The chapel stood near the Porta Trigemina, at the foot of the Aventine. The story of its foundation is probably a temple legend. (Masurius Sabinus, Memorial, ii, ap. Macrob. Sat. iii. 6 ; Serv. ad Aen. viii. 363.) The latter, indeed, calls the pious merchant M. Octavius Eserninus, but his version of the story is substantially the same with that in Macrobius.
# Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology/Diogenes Oenomaus

​DIO'GENES OENO'MAUS, a tragic poet, who is said to have begun to exhibit at Athens in B. C. 404. Of his tragedies only a few titles remain, namely, ©uc'o-ttjs, 'Ax'AAeus, 'EAevtj, 'HpaKr)s, MrjSeia, OlSivovs, Xpvaiinros, 2€/xej; and it is remarkable that all of these, except the last, are ascribed by Diogenes Laertius to Diogenes the Cynic, (vi. 80, or 73.) Others ascribe them to Philiscus of Aegina, a friend of Diogenes the Cjmic (Menagius, ad Diog. Laërt. Z. c), and others to Pasiphaon. Melanthius in Plutarch ((de Aud. Poet. 4, p. 41, d.) complains of the obscurity of a certain Diogenes. Aelian /(V. H. iii. 30, N. A. vi. 1) mentions a tragic poet Diogenes, who seems, however, to be a different person from either Diogenes the Cynic or Diogenes Oenomaiis. (Suid. s. v.; Ath. xiv. p. 636, a.; Fabric. Bilb. Graec. ii. p. 295.) [P. S.]
# Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology/Dorieus 2.

DORIEUS（Δωριεύς), the son of Diagoras [Diagoras], one of the noblest of the noble Heracleid family, the Eratids of Ialysus, in Rhodes. He was victor in the pancratium in three successive Olympiads, the 87th, 88th, and 89th, B. C. 432, 428 and 424, the second of which is mentioned by Thucydides (iii. 8); at the Nemean games he won seven, at the Isthmian eight victories. He and his kinsman, Peisidorus, were styled in the announcement as Thurians, so that, apparently, before 424 at latest, they had left their country. (Paus. vi. 7.) The whole family were outlawed as heads of the aristocracy by the Athenians (Xen. Hell. i. 5. § 19), and took refuge in Thurii; and from Thurii, after the Athenian disaster at Syracuse had re-established there the Peloponnesian interest, Dorieus led thirty galleys to the aid of the Spartan cause in Greece. He arrived with them at Cnidus in the winter of 412. (Thuc. viii. 35.) He was, no doubt, active in the revolution which, in the course of the same winter, was effected at Rhodes (Thuc. viii. 44); its revolt from the Athenians was of course accompanied by the restoration of the family of Diagoras. (B. C. 411.) We find him early in the summer at Miletus, joining in the expostulations of his men to Astyochus, who, in the Spartan fashion, raised his staff as if to strike him, and by this act so violently excited the Thurian sailors that he was saved from violence only by flying to an altar. (Thuc. viii. 84.) And shortly after, when the new commander, Mindarus, sailed for the Hellespont, he was sent with thirteen ships to crush a democratical movement in Rhodes. (Diod. xiii. 38.) Some little time after the battle of Cynossema he entered the Hellespont with his squadron, now fourteen in number, to join the main body; and being descried and attacked by the Athenians with twenty, was forced to run his vessels ashore, near Rhoeteum. Here he vigorously maintained himself until Mindarus came to his succour, and, by the advance of the rest of the Athenian fleet, the action became general: it was decided by the sudden arrival of Alcibiades with reinforcements. (Xen. Hell. i. 1. § 2; Diod. xiii. 45.) Four years after, at the close of B. C. 407, he was captured, with two Thurian galleys, by the Athenians, and sent, no doubt, to Athens: but the people, in admiration of his athletic size and noble beauty, dismissed their ancient enemy, though already under sentence of death, without so-much as exacting a ransom. (Xen. Hell. i. 5. § 19.) Pausanias, (l.c.,) on the authority of Androtion, further relates, that at the time when Rhodes joined the Athenian league formed by Conon, Dorieus chanced to be somewhere in the reach of the Spartans, and was by them seized and put to death. [A. H. C.]
# Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology/Drusus 17.

DRUSUS 17. Nero. [Nero.]
# Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology/Dorieus 3.

DORIEUS（Δωριεύς), the author of an epigram upon Milo, which is preserved by Athenaeus (x. p. 412f.) and in the Greek Anthology. (Brunck, Anal. ii. 63; Jacobs, ii. 62.) Nothing more is known of him. [P. S.]