OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology/Heras

​HERAS ("Upas), a physician of Cappadocia, who lived after Heracleides of Tarentum (Galen, De Compos. Medicam. sec. Gen. v. 6, vol. xiii. p. 812), and before Andromachus (Galen, De Com- pos. Medicam. sec. Loc. vi. 9, vol. xii. p. 989), and therefore probably in the first century b. c. He wrote some works on pharmacy, which are very frequently quoted by Galen, but of which nothing but a few fragments remain. Ilis prescriptions oia ​quoted also by other ancient medical writers, and he may perhaps be the physician mentioned by Martial {Epigr. vi. 78. 3). See C. G. Kuhn, Additam. ad Elench. Medic. Vet. a J. A. Fabric. in Bibl. Graeca " exUhitum. [W. A. G.]
# Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology/Herculius Maximianus

​HERCU′LIUS MAXIMIA′NUS. [Maxi- MIANUS.]
# Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology/Herculius

​HERCU′LIUS ('EpKovXios)^ praefectns prae- torio lUyrici, A. D. 408 — 412, is probably the Herculius to whom one of the^letters of Chrysostom is addressed. It is in answer to a letter from Herculius to Chrysostom, and expresses Chrysos- tom's appreciation of the affection of Herculius for him, which was " known by all the city," i. e. of Constantinople. The letter was written during Chrysostom's exile, a.d. 404 — 407. (Chrysostom, Opera, vol. iii. p. 859, ed. Paris, 1834, &c.; Cod. Theod. 11. tit. 17. § 4; tit. 22. § 5; 12. tit. 1. § 172; 15. tit. 1. §49.) [J.C. M.]
# Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology/Heraclius 2.

​HERA′CLIUS (greek missing}}), a cynic philosopher, against whom the emperor Julian composed an harangue. Suidas calls him Heracleitus ((Greek characters)). (Julian, Orai. vii.; Suidas, a. v. (Greek characters) ​avSs ; Fabric. Bibl. Gr. vol. ii. p. 626, iii. p. 519, vi. p. 727.) [J.C. M.]
# Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology/Heragoras

​HERA′GORAS ('Upaydpas), a Greek historian of uncertain date. A work of his, called MeyapiKci, is quoted by Eudocia (p. 440), and by the scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius (i. 211), who calls him Hesagoras. [E. E.]
# Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology/Hercules

​HE′RCULES. [Heracles.]
# Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology/Heraclius II.

​HERA′CLIUS II. [CONSTANTINUS III.]
# Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology/Heracon

​HE′RACON ('UpaKuv), an officer in the service of Alexander, who, together with Cleander and Sitalces, succeeded to the command of the army in Media, which had previously been under the orders of Parmenion, when the latter was put to death by order of Alexander, b.c. 330. In common with many others of the Macedonian governors, he per- mitted himself many excesses during the absence of Alexander in the remote provinces of the East : among others he plundered a temple at Susa, noted for its wealth, on which charge he was put to death by Alexander after his return from India, B. c. 325. (Arrian, Anab. vi. 27. §§ 8, 12 ; Curt. X. 1.) [E. H. B.]
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Duncan, Philip Bury

​DUNCAN, PHILIP BURY (1772–1863), keeper of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, was born in 1772 at South Warnborough, Hampshire, where his father was rector. He was educated at Winchester College (where he afterwards founded the ‘Duncan Prizes’), and at New College, Oxford, of which he became a fellow in 1792. He graduated B.A. 1794, M.A. 1798. Among the school and college friends with whom he continued intimate were Archbishop Howley, Bishop Mant, and Sidney Smith. He was called to the bar in 1796, and for a few years attended the home and the western circuits. From 1801 till his death he lived much at Bath, and promoted many local scientific and philanthropic schemes. He was elected president of the Bath United Hospital in 1841. In 1826 he was made keeper of the Ashmolean Museum, in succession to his elder brother, John Shute Duncan, author of ‘Hints to the Bearers of Walking Sticks and Umbrella,’ anonymous, 3rd edit. 1809; ‘Botano Theology,’ 1825; and ‘Analogies of Organised Beings,’ 1831. Philip Duncan increased the Ashmolean zoological collections, and himself gave many donations. He also presented to the university casts of antique statues and various models. Duncan advocated the claims of physical science and mathematics to a prominent place in Oxford studies. He was instrumental in establishing at Oxford, as also at Bath, a savings bank and a society for the suppression of mendicity. He resigned his keepership in 1855, and was then given the honorary degree of D.C.L. He had published in 1836 ‘A Catalogue of the Ashmolean Museum,’ 8vo, and in 1845 had printed at considerable cost a ‘Catalogue of the MSS. bequeathed by Ashmole to the University of Oxford’ (edited by W. H. Black). Among Duncan's other publications were: 1. ‘An Essay on Sculpture’ [1830?], 8vo. 2. ‘Reliquiæ Romanæ’ (on Roman antiquities in England and Wales), Oxford, 1836, 8vo. 3. ‘Essays on Conversation and Quackery,’ 1836, 12mo. 4. ‘Literary Conglomerate,’ Oxford, 1839, 8vo. 5. ‘Essays and Miscellanea,’ Oxford, 1840, 8vo. 6. ‘Motives of Wars,’ London, 1844, 8vo. Duncan died on 12 Nov. 1863, at Westfield Lodge, his residence, near Bath, aged 91. He was unmarried. He was a man of simple habits and refined tastes. Archbishop Howley said of him and his brother: ‘I question whether any two men with the same means have ever done the same amount of good.’
W. W.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Duncan, William (1717-1760)

​DUNCAN, WILLIAM (1717–1760), professor of philosophy at Aberdeen, son of William Duncan, an Aberdeen tradesman, by his wife Euphemia Kirkwood, daughter of a wealthy farmer in Haddingtonshire, was born in Aberdeen in 1717. He was sent to the Aberdeen grammar school, and afterwards to Foveran boarding school under George Forbes. When sixteen he entered the Marischal College, and studied Greek under Thomas Blackwell (1701–1757) [q. v.] In 1737 he took his M.A. degree. Having a dislike for the ministry, for which he was intended, he proceeded to London and wrote for the booksellers. His first works were published anonymously. He assisted David Watson with his ‘Works of Horace,’ 2 vols. 1741, 8vo. He published: 1. ‘Cicero's Select Orations,’ in English with the original Latin, London, 17 …, 8vo (a well-known school book often republished. Sir Charles Wentworth issued the English portion only in 1777). 2. ‘The Elements of Logick,’ divided into four books, part of Dodsley's ‘Preceptor,’ London, 1748, 8vo, and often reprinted. 3. ‘The Commentaries of Cæsar, translated into English, to which is prefixed a Dissertation concerning the Roman Art of War,’ illustrated with cuts, London, 1753, fol. Other editions in 1755, 1832, 1833.
Duncan was appointed by the king to be professor of natural and experimental philosophy in the Marischal College, Aberdeen, on 18 May 1752. He did not enter upon his duties until August 1753.
Duncan died unmarried 1 May 1760. He was sociable, but subject to fits of depression caused by sedentary habits. He was an elder of the church session of Aberdeen. He had several sisters and a younger brother, John, a merchant, three times chief magistrate of Aberdeen.
J. W.-G.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Duncan, William Augustine

​DUNCAN, WILLIAM AUGUSTINE (1811–1885), journalist, a native of Aberdeenshire, was born in 1811, and educated for the Scottish national church. He subsequently embraced catholicism, was accepted as a student at the Scots Benedictine College, Ratisbon, and afterwards at the new college at Blairs, Kincardineshire, but having offended the authorities there by too outspoken criticism on a sermon, he gave up all thoughts of entering the priesthood. He started a publishing and bookselling business in Aberdeen, out of which he came some five years later rather poorer than when he began. He then resorted to teaching and to writing for the press, and was an earnest advocate of the Reform Bill of 1832 and of Lord Stanley's Irish education scheme. In July 1838 Duncan went out to New South Wales, becoming a publisher in Sydney. The following year he was appointed editor of a newly established Roman catholic journal, the ‘Australasian Chronicle.’ On relinquishing this post in 1843 he issued a paper of his own, ‘Duncan's Weekly Register of Politics, Facts, and General Literature.’ In 1846 he was appointed by Sir George Gipps sub-collector of customs at Moreton Bay, and soon after settling at Brisbane he was placed on the commission of the peace, made water police magistrate, guardian of minors, and local immigration commissioner. In January 1859 he succeeded Colonel Gibbes as collector of customs for New South Wales, which appointment he held until 1881. On his return to Sydney, after thirteen years' absence, he declined the chairmanship of the National Board of Education; but afterwards accepted an ordinary seat at the board, of which he remained a prominent member until its dissolution. Duncan was afterwards on the council of education, and was also chairman of the free public library. For his services to the colony he was awarded the distinction of C.M.G. in 1881, together with a pension from the colonial government. He died in 1885.
Duncan, whose acquaintance with modern languages was unusually extensive, translated from the Spanish of Pedro Fernandes de Queiros an ‘Account of a Memorial presented to his Majesty [Philip III., king of Spain], concerning the Population and Discovery of the Fourth Part of the World, Australia the unknown, its great Riches and Fertility, printed anno 1610,’ Spanish and English, 8vo, Sydney, 1874, to which he appended an introductory notice. He was the author of ‘A Plea for the New South Wales Constitution,’ 8vo, Sydney, 1856, of pamphlets on education, and an unpublished history of the colony until the government of Sir George Gipps.
G. G.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Duncan, Jonathan (1756-1811)

​DUNCAN, JONATHAN, the elder (1756–1811), governor of Bombay, son of Alexander Duucan, was born at Wardhouse, Forfarshire, on 15 May 1756. He received a nomination to the East India Company's civil service, and reached Calcutta in 1772. After serving in various subordinate capacities, he was selected, because of his known uprightness, to fill the important office of resident and superintendent at Benares by Lord Cornwallis in 1788. This was the situation in which most scandals had been caused by the eager desire for gain of the company's servants; Duncan put down these scandals with a strict hand, and thus made himself very unpopular with his subordinates. Yet he also found time to look into matters of native administration, and was the first resident who devoted himself to putting down the practice of infanticide at Benares. When Lord Comwallis returned to England, he did not forget to praise Duncan to the court of directors, and entirely without solicitation from himself he was appointed to the important office of governor of Bombay in 1795. He held this post for sixteen years, the most important perhaps in the whole history of the English in India. The effects of his long government are still to be seen in the present composition and administration of the Bombay presidency, for this was the period in which the company's servants were engaged in making the company the paramount power in India. Duncan went on the principle of recognising any petty chieftain, who had a right to the smallest tribute from the smallest village, as a sovereign prince. This policy accounts for the innumerable small states, nearly six hundred in number, now ruled through the Kathiáwár, Mahi Kantha, and Rewá Kantha agencies, which forms the distinguishing feature of the Bombay presidency, as distinguished from the rest of India, where only important chieftains were recognised as sovereigns, and the smaller ones treated as only hereditary zemindars. Though recognising their sovereign rights, Duncan had no hesitation in regulating the local government of these little princelets, and exerted himself especially for the suppression of infanticide in Kathiáwár. While thus occupied in local affairs, Duncan did not forget to take his full share in the great wars by which Lord Wellesley broke the power of Tippoo Sultan and the Maráthás. He equipped and sent a powerful force under Major-general James Stuart, which marched upon Mysore from the Malabar coast, and assisted in the capture of Seringapatam in 1799; he supplied troops for Sir David Baird's expedition to Egypt in 1801; he warmly seconded Major-general Arthur Wellesley in his campaign against the Maráthás in 1803; and he directed the occupation and final pacification of Guzerat and Kathiáwár by Colonel Keating's expedition in 1807. He died at Bombay on 11 Aug. 1811, and is buried in St. Thomas's Church there, where a fine monument has been erected to him. His eldest son Jonathan is noticed below.
[Higginbotham's Men whom India has known; the Cornwallis Correspondence; Wellesley Despatches.]
H. M. S.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Begha

Legendary according to the ODNB; see similar article Bega
​BEGHA, also called BEG, BEGGA, and BEGAGH (d. 660?), saint, was an Irish virgin of royal birth. To avoid being given in marriage against her will, she fled to Scotland, where she received the veil at the hands of Aidan, and afterwards became the first abbess of nuns in England in the reign of king Oswald. Her chief foundation, ​however (circ. 656), was in the kingdom of Strathclyde, at the spot on the sea-coast which, under the designation of St. Bees, still preserves the memory of her name. A priory was afterwards founded here by William de Meschines, lord of Copeland temp. Henry I. In her old age Begha resigned her abbacy in Oswald's Kingdom into the hands of St. Hilda, under whose rule she lived till her death, the year of which cannot be fixed, but her festival was kept on 31 Oct.
[Bolland. Acta SS. Sept., ii. 694; Faber's Life of St. Bega, 1844; Montalembert's Monks of the West, iv. 58-9, v. 248-52; Forbes's Cal. of Scotch Saints; Tomlinson's Vita S. Begæ in Carlisle Hist. Tracts.]
W. R. W. S.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Beesley, George

​BEESLEY or BISLEY, GEORGE (d. 1591), catholic missioner, was born at a place called the Mount, in Goosnargh parish, in Lancashire. He was an alumnus of Douay College while it was located at Rheims. Ordained priest in 1587 he was sent upon the English mission in 1588. Falling into the hands of the persecutors he was so frequently tortured by the notorious Topcliffe that he was reduced to a mere skeleton. He steadily refused, however, to divulge anything that might have brought others into danger. He was condemned on account of his priestly character, and for remaining in England contrary to the statute of the 27th Elizabeth, and was executed in Fleet Street, London, on 2 July 1591. Another priest, Monford Scot, suffered at the same time and place.
T. C.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Begbie, James (1798-1869)

​BEGBIE, JAMES (1798–1869), physician, was born in 1798 and educated at the high school and university of Edinburgh, where he took the degree of M.D. in 1821. He became F.R.C.S. Edin. 1822. He was the pupil, and afterwards for some years the assistant, of Abercrombie, whose instructions and example had great influence on his character and professional life. After many years' successful general practice, Begbie became in 1847 fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, and devoted himself to consulting practice, in which he obtained great reputation and popularity. For several years he was physician in ordinary to the queen for Scotland. He died at Edinburgh on 26 Aug. 1869.
Begbie's writings consisted of a series of medical essays and memoirs, collected into a ​volume as 'Contributions to Practical Medicine,' 8vo, Edinburgh, 1862. They show considerable originality and practical ability. The most important is an 'Essay on Anæmia,' giving an account of the remarkable disease Exophthalmic Goitre (also called Basedow's and Graves's disease), of which Begbie was an independent investigator and one of the earliest. James Warburton Begbie [q. v.] was his son.
J. F. P.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Bega

Legendary according to the ODNB; see similar article in Begha
​BEGA (8th cent.?) was a saint whose history is wrapped in much obscurity, and has been much mixed up with that of others. According to Butler (6 Sept.) she was an Irish virgin (7th cent.) who lived as an anchoret, and founded a nunnery in Copeland. Leland (Coll. iii. 36) follows another version, according to which, after founding her monastery in Cumberland, she passed into Northumbria and founded another north of the Wear; after which her history seems to become confused with that of St. Heiu and St. Begu.
In the Aberdeen breviary there is a lesson for a Saint Bega, with whom she may perhaps be identified. This St. Bega is described as an anchoret who lived in an island called Cumbria in the ocean sea, where she was sometimes visited by St. Maura. She was buried in her island, and was especially venerated at Dunbar.
W. R. W. S.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Behnes, Henry

​BEHNES or BURLOWE, HENRY (d. 1837), sculptor, was the younger brother of William Behnes, the sculptor. Both brothers were determined in their choice of a profession by the same circumstance [see Behnes, William]. Henry, being a much inferior artist, was honourably anxious to prevent confusion in the public mind, and took the name of Burlowe. The irregularities of William Behnes are considered to have added a strong incentive to this act of repudiation. Henry exhibited at the Academy in 1831-2-3. He afterwards went to Rome, and was much employed as a bust modeller. He died of cholera in that city in August 1837. According to an account in the 'Art Journal' he was a person 'of sterling character and generous impulses, who sacrificed his life in devotion to those of his friends who had been seized with cholera.' Though 'every way superior to his brother as a man,' he was, says the same writer, 'his inferioras an artist' ... 'the difference in the instant apprehension of form and manipulative power in the two brothers was very remarkable. The composition of the one was hard, piecemeal, and disjointed, while the modelling of the other was rapid, certain, soft, and accurate.' Against this critique may be set the remark of Redgrave: 'He was original in his art and of much promise.'
E. R.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Forbes, Alexander (d.1491)

​FORBES, ALEXANDER, fourth Lord Forbes (d. 1491), was the eldest son of William, third lord Forbes, and succeeded his father in or before 1483. The gift of the fine payable to the crown on his marriage was acquired by Margaret, lady Dirleton, who wished him to marry her own daughter, Margaret Ker. But he declined her proposals, and without her consent married Lady Margaret Boyd, daughter of Thomas, earl of Arran. For this he was condemned by the lords auditors on 5 July 1483 to pay Lady Dirleton double the value of his marriage or two thousand merks. He espoused the cause of James III when the son of that monarch rose in rebellion in 1488 against him. After the king's death at Sauchieburn he was summoned to answer before parliament to a charge of treason and conspiracy, but instead of obeying the summons he exposed the blood-stained shirt of the slain king on his spear at Aberdeen, and raised a considerable force there with the object of avenging his death. But his hopes of success were suddenly extinguished by the defeat of the Earl of Lennox (with whom he had been acting in concert) at Tillymoor, near Stirling, and on submitting to James IV, he was pardoned and received into favour. He died about 1491, survived by his widow, who was a granddaughter of James II, and who in 1509 married David, lord Kennedy, afterwards first earl of Cassilis, but leaving no issue. He was succeeded by his two brothers, Arthur, fifth lord, and John, sixth lord, Forbes.
H. P.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Forbes, David (1777?-1849)

​FORBES, DAVID (1777?–1849), major-general, was the son of a Scotch minister in the county of Elgin, and entered the army when a mere boy as an ensign in the 78th highlanders, or Ross-shire buffs, when Francis Humberstone Mackenzie, afterwards Lord Seaforth, raised that regiment in March 1793. He was promoted lieutenant on 3 May 1794, and in the following September his regiment joined the army in the Netherlands, under the command of Lieutenant-colonel Alexander Mackenzie Fraser [q. v.] He served with distinction in all the affairs of the disastrous retreat before Pichegru, and was especially noticed for his behaviour at Geldermalsen on 5 Jan. 1795. He was present at the affair of Quiberon and the attack on Belle Isle in that year, and in 1796 he proceeded with his regiment first to the Cape and then to India. He remained in India more than twenty years, seeing much service. In 1798 his regiment formed the escort of Sir John Shore when he advanced into Oude to dethrone the nawab, and it was engaged throughout the Maráthá campaign of 1803, and especially at the storm of Ahmednagar. For his services in this campaign Forbes was promoted captain on 25 June 1803, and he remained in garrison until 1811, when his regiment was selected to form part of the expedition sent against Java in 1811, under Sir Samuel Auchmuty. He was placed in command of the flank companies of the various British regiments, and at their head led the assaults on the lines of Waltevreede and the lines of Cornelis, and was to the front in every engagement with the Dutch troops. For these services he was five times thanked in general orders, received the gold medal for Java, and was promoted major on 29 Aug. 1811. In May 1812 he commanded the grenadiers of the 59th regiment and the light companies of the 78th in an expedition for the reduction of the sultan of Djocjocarta, and in May 1813 he suppressed the serious insurrection which broke out among the Malays at Probolingo in the east of the island of Java. In this insurrection Lieutenant-colonel Fraser of the 78th was killed, and Forbes, as major, received the step in promotion on 28 July 1814. In 1817 he returned to Scotland, being the only officer who returned out of forty-two, and bringing with him only thirty-six out of twelve hundred rank and file. He went on half-pay and settled at Aberdeen, where he lived without further employment for the rest of his life. On 10 Jan. 1837 he was promoted colonel, in 1838 made a C.B., and in 1846 promoted major-general. He died at Aberdeen on 29 March 1849.
H. M. S.