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

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​ANTIGONUS GONATAS (c. 319–239 B.C.), Macedonian king, was the son of Demetrius Poliorcetes, and grandson of Antigonus Cyclops. On the death of his father (283), he assumed the title of king of Macedonia, but did not obtain possession of the throne till 276, after it had been successively in the hands of Pyrrhus, Lysimachus, Seleucus, and Ptolemy Ceraunus. Antigonus repelled the invasion of the Gauls, and continued in undisputed possession of Macedonia till 274, when Pyrrhus returned from Italy, and (in 273) made himself master of nearly all the country. On the advance of Pyrrhus into Peloponnesus, he recovered his dominions. He was again (between 263 and 255) driven out of his kingdom by Alexander, the son of Pyrrhus, and again recovered it. The latter part of his reign was comparatively peaceful, and he gained the affection of his subjects by his honesty and his cultivation of the arts. He gathered round him distinguished literary men—philosophers, poets, and historians. He died in the eightieth year of his age, and the forty-fourth of his reign. His surname was usually derived by later Greek writers from the name of his supposed birthplace, Gonni (Gonnus) in Thessaly; some take it to be a Macedonian word signifying an iron plate for protecting the knee; neither conjecture is a happy one, and in our ignorance of the Macedonian language it must remain unexplained.
Plutarch, Demetrius, Pyrrhus, Aratus; Justin xxiv. 1; xxv. 1-3; Polybius ii. 43-45, ix. 29, 34. See Thirlwall, History of Greece, vol viii. (1847); Holm, Griech. Gesch. vol. iv. (1894); Niese, Gesch. d. griech. u. maked. Staaten, vols. i. and ii. (1893, 1899); Beloch, Griech. Gesch. vol. iii. (1904); also Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Antigonos von Karystos (1881).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Antilia

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​ANTILIA or Antillia, sometimes called the Island of the Seven Cities (Portuguese Isla das Sete Cidades), a legendary island in the Atlantic ocean. The origin of the name is quite uncertain. The oldest suggested etymology (1455) fancifully connects it with the name of the Platonic Atlantis, while later writers have endeavoured to derive it from the Latin anterior (i.e. the island that is reached “before” Cipango), or from the Jezirat al Tennyn, “Dragon’s Isle,” of the Arabian geographers. Antilia is marked in an anonymous map which is dated 1424 and preserved in the grand-ducal library at Weimar. It reappears in the maps of the Genoese B. Beccario or Beccaria (1435), and of the Venetian Andrea Bianco (1436), and again in 1455 and 1476. In most of these it is accompanied by the smaller and equally legendary islands of Royllo, St Atanagio, and Tanmar, the whole group being classified as insulae de novo repertae, “newly discovered islands.” The Florentine Paul Toscanelli, in his letters to Columbus and the Portuguese court (1474), takes Antilia as the principal landmark for measuring the distance between Lisbon and the island of Cipango or Zipangu (Japan). One of the chief early descriptions of Antilia is that inscribed on the globe which the geographer Martin Behaim made at Nuremberg in 1492 (see Map: History). Behaim relates that in 734—a date which is probably a misprint for 714—and after the Moors had conquered Spain and Portugal, the island of Antilia or “Septe Cidade” was colonized by Christian refugees under the archbishop of Oporto and six bishops. The inscription adds that a Spanish vessel sighted the island in 1414. According to an old Portuguese tradition each of the seven leaders founded and ruled a city, and the whole island became a Utopian commonwealth, free from the disorders of less favoured states. Later Portuguese tradition localized Antilia in the island of St Michael’s, the largest of the Azores. It is impossible to estimate how far this legend commemorates some actual but imperfectly recorded discovery, and how far it is a reminiscence of the ancient idea of an elysium in the western seas which is embodied in the legends of the Isles of the Blest or Fortunate Islands.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Antilles

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​ANTILLES, a term of somewhat doubtful origin, now generally used, especially by foreign writers, as synonymous with the expression “West India Islands.” Like “Brazil,” it dates from a period anterior to the discovery of the New World, “Antilia,” as stated above, being one of those mysterious lands, which figured on the medieval charts sometimes as an archipelago, sometimes as continuous land of greater or lesser extent, constantly fluctuating in mid-ocean between the Canaries and East India. But it came at last to be identified with the land discovered by Columbus. Later, when this was found to consist of a vast archipelago enclosing the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico, Antilia assumed its present plural form, Antilles, which was collectively applied to the whole of this archipelago.
A distinction is made between the Greater Antilles, including Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, and Porto Rico; and the Lesser Antilles, covering the remainder of the islands.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Antigone

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​ANTIGONE, (1) in Greek legend, daughter of Oedipus and Iocaste (Jocasta), or, according to the older story, of Euryganeia. When her father, on discovering that Iocaste, the mother of his children, was also his own mother, put his eyes out and resigned the throne of Thebes, she accompanied him into exile at Colonus. After his death she returned to Thebes, where Haemon, the son of Creon, king of Thebes, became enamoured of her. When her brothers Eteocles and Polyneices had slain each other in single combat, she buried Polyneices, although Creon had forbidden it. As a punishment she was sentenced to be buried alive in a vault, where she hanged herself, and Haemon killed himself in despair. Her character and these incidents of her life presented an attractive subject to the Greek tragic poets, especially Sophocles in the Antigone and Oedipus at Colonus, and Euripides, whose Antigone, though now lost, is partly known from extracts incidentally preserved in later writers, and from passages in his Phoenissae. In the order of the events, at least, Sophocles departed from the original legend, according to which the burial of Polyneices took place while Oedipus was yet in Thebes, not after he had died at Colonus. Again, in regard to Antigone’s tragic end Sophocles differs from Euripides, according to whom the calamity was averted by the intercession of Dionysus and was followed by the marriage of Antigone and Haemon. In Hyginus’s version of the legend, founded apparently on a tragedy by some follower of Euripides, Antigone, on being handed over by Creon to her lover Haemon to be slain, was secretly carried off by him, and concealed in a shepherd’s hut, where she bore him a son Maeon. When the boy grew up, he went to some funeral games at Thebes, and was recognized by the mark of a dragon on his body. This led to the discovery that Antigone was still alive. Heracles pleaded in vain with Creon for Haemon, who slew both Antigone and himself, to escape his father’s vengeance. On a painted vase the scene of the intercession of Heracles is represented (Heydermann, Über eine nacheuripideische Antigone, 1868). Antigone placing the body of Polyneices on the funeral pile occurs on a sarcophagus in the villa Pamfili in Rome, and is mentioned in the description of an ancient painting by Philostratus (Imag. ii. 29), who states that the flames consuming the two brothers burnt apart, indicating their unalterable hatred, even in death.
(2) A second Antigone was the daughter of Eurytion, king of Phthia, and wife of Peleus. Her husband, having accidentally killed Eurytion in the Calydonian boar hunt, fled and obtained expiation from Acastus, whose wife made advances to Peleus. Finding that her affection was not returned, she falsely accused Peleus of infidelity to his wife, who thereupon hanged herself (Apollodorus, iii. 13).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Antigonus of Carystus

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​ANTIGONUS OF CARYSTUS (in Euboea), Greek writer on various subjects, flourished in the 3rd century B.C. After some time spent at Athens and in travelling, he was summoned to the court of Attalus I. (241–197) of Pergamum. His chief work was the Lives of Philosophers drawn from personal knowledge, of which considerable fragments are preserved in Athenaeus ​and Diogenes Laertius. We still possess his Collection of Wonderful Tales, chiefly extracted from the Θαυμάσια Ἀκούσματα attributed to Aristotle and the Θαυμάσια of Callimachus. It is doubtful whether he is identical with the sculptor who, according to Pliny (Nat. Hist. xxxiv. 19), wrote books on his art.
Text in Keller, Rerum Naturalium Scriptores Graeci Minores, i. (1877); see Köpke, De Antigono Carystio (1862); Wilamowitz-Möllendorff, “A. von Karystos,” in Philologische Untersuchungen, iv. (1881).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Antilochus

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​ANTILOCHUS, in Greek legend, son of Nestor, king of Pylos. One of the suitors of Helen, he accompanied his father to the Trojan War. He was distinguished for his beauty, swiftness of foot, and skill as a charioteer; though the youngest among the Greek princes, he commanded the Pylians in the war, and performed many deeds of valour. He was a favourite of the gods, and an intimate friend of Achilles, to whom he was commissioned to announce the death of Patroclus. When his father was attacked by Memnon, he saved his life at the sacrifice of his own (Pindar, Pyth. vi. 28), thus fulfilling an oracle which had bidden him “beware of an Ethiopian.” His death was avenged by Achilles. According to other accounts, he was slain by ​Hector (Hyginus, Fab. 113), or by Paris in the temple of the Thymbraean Apollo together with Achilles (Dares Phrygius 34). His ashes, with those of Achilles and Patroclus, were deposited in a mound on the promontory of Sigeum, where the inhabitants of Ilium offered sacrifice to the dead heroes (Odyssey, xxiv. 72; Strabo xiii. p. 596). In the Odyssey (xi. 468) the three friends are represented as united in the underworld and walking together in the fields of asphodel; according to Pausanias (iii. 19) they dwell together in the island of Leukē.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Antilegomena

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​ANTILEGOMENA (ἀντιλεγόμενα, contradicted or disputed), an epithet used by the early Christian writers to denote those books of the New Testament which, although sometimes publicly read in the churches, were not for a considerable time admitted to be genuine, or received into the canon of Scripture. They were thus contrasted with the Homologoumena, or universally acknowledged writings. Eusebius (Hist. Eccl. iii. 25) applies the term Antilegomena to the Epistle of James, the Epistle of Jude, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, the Acts of Paul, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Teaching of the Apostles, the Apocalypse of John, and the Gospel according to the Hebrews. In later usage it describes those of the New Testament books which have obtained a doubtful place in the Canon. These are the Epistles of James and Jude, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, the Apocalypse of John, and the Epistle to the Hebrews.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Antimacassar

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​ANTIMACASSAR, a separate covering for the back of a chair, or the head or cushions of a sofa, to prevent soiling of the permanent fabric. The name is attributable to the unguent for the hair commonly used in the early 19th century,—Byron calls it “thine incomparable oil, Macassar.” The original antimacassar was almost invariably made of white crochet-work, very stiff, hard, and uncomfortable, but in the third quarter of the 19th century it became simpler and less inartistic, and was made of soft coloured stuffs, usually worked with a simple pattern in tinted wools or silk.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Alternation

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​ALTERNATION (from Lat. alternare, to do by turns), strictly, the process of “alternating,” i.e. of two things following one another regularly by turns, as night alternates with day. A somewhat different sense is attached to some usages of the derivatives. Thus, in American political representative bodies and in the case of company directors, a substitute is sometimes called an “alternate.” An “alternative” is that which is offered as a choice of two things, the acceptance of the one implying the rejection of the other. It is incorrect to speak of more than two alternatives, though Mr Gladstone wrote in 1857 of a fourth (Oxf. Essays, 26). When there is only one course open there is said to be no alternative.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Alting, Johann Heinrich

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​ALTING, JOHANN HEINRICH (1583–1644), German divine, was born at Emden, where his father, Menso Alting (1541–1612), was minister. Johann studied with great success at the universities of Gröningen and Herborn. In 1608 he was appointed tutor of Frederick, afterwards elector-palatine, at Heidelberg, and in 1612 accompanied him to England. Returning in 1613 to Heidelberg, after the marriage of the elector with Princess Elizabeth of England, he was appointed professor of dogmatics, and in 1616 director of the theological department in the Collegium Sapientiae. In 1618, along with Abraham Scultetus, he represented the university in the synod of Dort. When Count Tilly took the city of Heidelberg (1622) and handed it over to plunder, Alting found great difficulty in escaping the fury of the soldiers. He first retired to Schorndorf; but, offended by the “semi-Pelagianism” of the Lutherans with whom he was brought in contact, he removed to Holland, where the unfortunate elector and “Winter King” Frederick, in exile after his brief reign in Bohemia, made him tutor to his eldest son. In 1627 Alting was appointed to the chair of theology at Gröningen, where he continued to lecture, with increasing reputation, until his death in 1644. Though an orthodox Calvinist, Alting laid little stress on the sterner side of his creed and, when at Dort he opposed the Remonstrants, he did so mainly on the ground that they were “innovators.” Among his works are:—Notae in Decadem Problematum Jacobi Behm (Heidelberg, 1618); Scripta Theologica Heidelbergensia (Amst., 1662); Exegesis Augustanae Confessionis (Amst., 1647).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Alten, Sir Charles

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​ALTEN, SIR CHARLES [Karl] (1764–1840), Hanoverian and British soldier, son of Baron Alten, a member of an old Hanoverian family, entered the service of the elector as a page at the age of twelve. In 1781 he received a commission in the Hanoverian guards, and as a captain took part in the campaigns of 1793–1795 in the Low Countries, distinguishing himself particularly on the Lys in command of light infantry. In 1803 the Hanoverian army was disbanded, and Alten took service with the King’s German Legion in British pay. In command of the light infantry of this famous corps he took part with Lord Cathcart in the Hanoverian expedition of 1805 and in the siege of Copenhagen in 1807, and was with Moore in Sweden and Spain, as well as in the disastrous Walcheren expedition. He was soon employed once more in the Peninsula, and at Albuera commanded a brigade. In April 1813 Wellington placed him at the head of the famous “Light Division” (43rd, 52nd, 95th, and Caçadores), in which post he worthily continued the records of Moore and Robert Craufurd at Nivelle, Nive, Orthez and Toulouse. His officers presented him with a sword of honour as a token of their esteem. In 1815 Alten commanded Wellington’s 3rd division and was severely wounded at Waterloo. His conduct won for him the rank of Count von Alten. When the King’s German Legion ceased to exist, Alten was given the command of the Hanoverians in France, and in 1818 he returned to Hanover, where he became subsequently minister of war and foreign affairs, and rose to be field-marshal, being retained on the British Army list at the same time as Major-General Sir Charles Alten, G. C. B. He died in 1840. A memorial to Alten has been erected at Hanover.
See Gentleman’s Magazine, 1840; N. L. Beamish, Hist. of the King’s German Legion, 2 vols. (1832–1837).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Altenstein

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​ALTENSTEIN, a castle upon a rocky mountain in Saxe-Meiningen, on the south-western slope of the Thüringerwald, not far from Eisenach. It is the summer residence of the dukes of Meiningen, and is surrounded by a noble park, which contains, among other objects of interest, a remarkable underground cavern, 500 ft. long, through which flows a large and rapid stream. Boniface, the apostle of the Germans, lived and preached at Altenstein in 724; and near by is the place where, in 1521, Luther was seized, by the order of the elector Frederick the Wise, to be carried off to the Wartburg. An old beech called “Luther’s tree,” which tradition connected with the reformer, was blown down in 1841, and a small monument now stands in its place.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Altdorf

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​ALTDORF, the capital of the Swiss canton of Uri. It is built at a height of 1516 ft. above sea-level, a little above the right bank of the Reuss, not far above the point where this river is joined on the right by the Schächen torrent. In 1900 the population was 3117, all Romanists and German-speaking. Altdorf is 34 m. from Lucerne by the St Gotthard railway and 22 m. from Goeschenen. Its port on the Lake of Lucerne, Flüelen, is 2 m. distant. There is a stately parish church, while above the little town is the oldest Capuchin convent in Switzerland (1581). Altdorf is best known as the place where, according to the legend, William Tell shot the apple from his son’s head. This act by tradition happened on the market-place, where in 1895, at the foot of an old tower (with rude frescoes commemorating the feat), there was set up a fine bronze statue (by Richard Kissling of Zürich) of Tell and his son. In 1899 a theatre was opened close to the town for the sole purpose of performing Schiller’s play of Wilhelm Tell. The same year a new carriage-road was opened from Altdorf through the Schächen valley and over the Klausen Pass (6404 ft.) to the village of Linththal (30 m.) and so to Glarus. One and a half mile from Altdorf by the Klausen road is the village of Bürglen, where by tradition Tell was born; while he is also said to have lost his life, while saving that of a child, in the Schächen torrent that flows past the village. On the left bank of the Reuss, immediately opposite Altdorf, is Attinghausen, where the ruined castle (which belonged to one of the real founders of the Swiss Confederation) now houses the cantonal museum of antiquities. (W. A. B. C.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Altena

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​ALTENA, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Westphalia, on the river Lenne, 38 m. S.S.E. from Dortmund. Pop. (1900) 12,769. It consists of a single street, winding up a deep valley for about 3 m. There are three churches, a museum, high grade and popular schools. Its hardware industries are important, and embrace iron rolling, the manufacture of fine wire, needles, springs and silver ornaments. On the neighbouring Schlossberg is the ancestral castle of the counts of La Marck, ancestors, on the female side, of the Prussian royal house.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Altdorfer, Albrecht

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​ALTDORFER, ALBRECHT (? 1480–1538), German painter and engraver, was born at Regensburg (Ratisbon), where in 1505 he was enrolled a burgher, and described as “twenty-five years old.” Soon afterwards he is known to have been prosperous, and as city architect he erected fortifications and a public slaughterhouse. Altdorfer has been called the “Giorgione of the North.” His paintings are remarkable for minute and careful finish, and for close study of nature. The most important of them are to be found in the Pinakothek at Munich. A representation of the battle of Arbela (1529), included in that collection, is usually considered his chief work. His engravings on wood and copper are very numerous, and rank next to those of Albrecht Dürer. The most important collection is at the Berlin museum. Albrecht’s brother, Erhard Altdorfer, was also a painter and engraver, and a pupil of Lucas Cranach.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Altenburg

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​ALTENBURG, a town of Germany, capital of the duchy of Saxe-Altenburg, situated near the river Pleisse, 23 m. S. of Leipzig, and at the junction of the Saxon state railways Leipzig-Hof and Altenburg-Zeitz. Pop. (1905) 38,811. The town from its hilly position is irregularly built, but many of its streets are wide, and contain a number of large and beautiful buildings. Its ancient castle is picturesquely situated on a lofty porphyry rock, and is memorable as the place from which, in 1455, Kunz von Kaufungen carried off the young princes Albert and Ernest, the founders of the present royal and ducal families of Saxony. Its beautiful picture gallery, containing portraits of several of the famous princes of the house of Wettin, was almost totally destroyed by fire in January 1905. Altenburg is the seat of the higher courts of the Saxon duchies, and possesses a cathedral and several churches, schools, a library, a gallery of pictures and a school of art, an infirmary and various learned societies. There is also a museum, with natural history, archaeological, and art collections, and among other buildings may be mentioned St Bartholomew’s church (1089), the town hall (1562–1564), a lunatic asylum, teachers’ seminary and an agricultural academy. There is considerable traffic in grain and cattle brought from the surrounding districts; and twice a year there are large horse fairs. Cigars, woollen goods, gloves, hats and porcelain are among the chief manufactures. There are lignite mines in the vicinity.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Althaea

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​ALTHAEA, in classical legend, daughter of Thestius, king of Aetolia, wife of Oeneus, king of Calydon, and mother of Meleager (q.v.).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bann

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​BANN, the principal river in the north of Ireland. Rising in the Mourne mountains in the south of the Co. Down it runs N.W. until it enters Lough Neagh (q.v.), which it drains N.N.W. to an estuary at Coleraine, forming Lough Beg immediately below the larger lough. The length of its valley (excluding the lesser windings of the river) is about 90 m. The total drainage area, including the other important feeders of Lough Neagh, is about 2300 sq. m., extending westward to the confines of the Co. Fermanagh, and including parts of the Cos. Down and Antrim, Armagh and Monaghan, Tyrone and Londonderry. The river has valuable salmon fisheries, but is not of much importance for navigation. Above Lough Neagh it is known as the Upper Bann and below as the Lower Bann.