Freya = Freyja (Norse) Much more is told of Freyr, the son of Njörd. His name means "Lord" (compare Old English Frea), but Freyr had other names as well; he was called Yngvi or Yngvi-Freyr, and this name suggests that he was the eponymous father of the north Germans whom Tacitus calls Ingvæones (Ingævones). The Old English Runic Poem indicates that the god Ing was seen first among the eastern Danes; he departed eastward over a wave and his chariot went after him. It is remarkable how the chariot persists in the cult of the Vanir, Nerthus, Ing, and Freyr. A comparatively late source tells how the idol of Freyr was carried in a chariot to bring fertility to the crops in Sweden. In an early saga of Iceland, where crops were little cultivated, Freyr still appears as the guardian of the sacred wheatfield. Freyr's name often is found as the first element of a place-name, especially in eastern Sweden; the second element often means "wheatfield," or "meadow." The Eddic poem Skírnismál ("The Lay of Skírnir") relates the wooing of Freyr's bride, Gerd (Gerðr), a giant-maiden. This story has often been considered as a fertility myth. Gerdr (from garðr, "field") is held fast in the clutches of the frost-giants of winter. Thus, Freyr, as sun-god, would free her. However, this interpretation rests entirely on disputable etymologies. The narrative indicates that Freyr's bride belongs to the otherworld, and her wooing may rather symbolize the affinities of the fertility god with the chthonian powers, dominating the cycle of life and death. Several animals were sacred to Freyr, particularly the horse and, because of his great fertility, the boar. The centre of Freyr's cult was Uppsala, and he was once said to be king of the Swedes. His reign was one of peace and plenty. While Freyr reigned in Sweden, a certain Frodi ruled the Danes, and the Danes attributed this age of prosperity to him. Frodi (Fróði) was also conveyed ceremoniously in a chariot, and some have seen him as no other than a doublet of Freyr. Freyr was said to be ancestor of the Ynglingar, the Swedish royal family. Such myths are connected with the concept of "divine kingship" in the Germanic world, but earlier views on "sacral royalty" are now being challenged. Freyja Freyr's sister, Freyja, shares several features with her brother. She was the goddess of love, wealth, and fertility. She owned precious jewels such as the famous Brísingamen necklace, forged by dwarfs. She is said to be weeping tears of gold for her absent husband, but she is also blamed for being promiscuous. She practiced a disreputable kind of magic, called seiðr, which she taught Odin. She was known under various names, some obscure such as Mardöll, and others, such as Sýr ("Sow"), referring to her association with animals. Taking half of those who fall in battle, Freyja had some affinity with the chthonian deities of death. This relation of fertility goddesses with the otherworld is already illustrated by the Germanic mother goddesses or matronae, whose cult was widespread along the lower Rhine in Roman imperial times. They are often represented with chthonian symbols such as the dog, the snake, or baskets of fruit. The same applies to the goddess Nehalennia, worshiped near the mouth of the Scheldt River. Her name may be related to Greek nekués, "spirits of the dead." Guardian spirits Besides gods and goddesses, medieval writers frequently allude to female guardian spirits called dísir and fylgjur. The conceptions underlying these two certainly differed originally, although some of the later writers used the words interchangeably. Reference is made several times to sacrifice to the dísir, held at the beginning of winter. The ritual involved a festive meal and seems to have been a private ceremony, suggesting that the dísir belonged to one house, one district, or one family. In an Eddic poem the dísir are described as "dead women," and in actuality they may have been dead female ancestors, assuring the prosperity of their descendants. There is no record of a cult of the fylgja (plural fylgjur), a word best translated as "fetch," or "wraith." The fylgja may take the form of a woman or an animal that is rarely seen except in dreams or at the time of death. It may be the companion of one man or of a family and is transferred at death from father to son. The elves (álfar) also stood in fairly close relationship to men. An Icelandic Christian poet of the 11th century described a sacrifice to the elves early in winter among the pagan Swedes. The elves lived in mounds or rocks. An old saga tells how the blood of a bull was smeared on a mound inhabited by elves. A good deal is told of land spirits (landvoettir). According to the pre-Christian law of Iceland, no one must approach the land in a ship bearing a dragonhead, lest he frighten the land spirits. An Icelandic poet, cursing the king and queen of Norway, enjoined the landvoettir to drive them from the land. Heimdal Minor Aesir A number of minor deities are also ranked among the Aesir. The god Heimdall (Heimdal[l]r) is particularly interesting, but rather enigmatic. His antagonism with Loki, with whom he struggles for the possession of the Brísingamen necklace, results in their killing each other in the Ragnarök, according to Snorri. Heimdall is of mysterious origin: he is the son of nine mothers, said to be sisters, all of whom bear names of giantesses, though they are mostly identified with the storm waves. Heimdall lives in Himinbjörg ("Heavenly Fells"), at the edge of the world of the Aesir, which he guards against the giants. He is endowed with a wonderful hearing, detecting anything in the world, but he is blamed with drinking too much mead. When the Ragnarök draws near, he will blow his ringing horn (Gjallarhorn). Another myth in which he appears as Rigr (Rígr), a name probably derived from the Irish rí ("king"), makes Heimdall the father of mankind. He consorted with three women, from whom descend the three classes of men--serf (thrall), freeman (karl), and nobleman (jarl). Information about the Scandinavian gods is based chiefly on poetry composed late in the pagan period and on the remarks of outside observers, who generally had little interest in what they considered to be heathendom. Many gods were nearly forgotten when these authors mentioned them, as is the case with Ull, described above. Similarly, memories had apparently faded about Tyr (Týr), who must have been a major god in early times. His name, derived from Germanic Tîwaz (Old English Tiw) and related to the Greek god Zeus, suggests that he was originally a sky-god, but in Roman times, he was equated with Mars, and hence dies Martis (Mars's day; French mardi) became Tuesday (Icelandic Týs dagr). Tyr is the one-handed god, because one of his hands had been bitten off by the wolf Fenrir. He is brave and warlike; in the Ragnarök he will face the hellhound Garm (Garmr), and they will kill each other. Like other gods, Tyr is said to be a son of Odin, but, according to one early poem, he was the son of a giant. Tyr's cult is remembered in place-names, particularly those of Denmark. Masamune (Legendary Swords) - The Swords of Sôshû by Jim Kurrasch In the history of Japan there were many well noted important swords, those of Sôshû had a very good representation of these. In 1714 (the 4th year of Kyôho) the Kyôho Meibutsu Cho was written, by the Honami, at the order of the Tokugawa Shogunate. It was a set of 3 books which listed the best swords that Japan had. The first book contained the blades by the "Nihon Sansaku". "The Nihon Sansaku" were Etchu Matsukura Go Umanosuke Yoshihiro (16 blades), Awataguchi Toshiro Yoshimitsu (16 blades), and Goro Nyudo Masamune (41 blades in the first book and 61 total blades in the three books). Toyotomi Hideyoshi had choosen these as supreme sword smiths, so their blades had a elevated status. The second book contained 100 blades of other smiths. And the third book contained 81 blades that had been excellent but had been ruined or lost. This book also contains 29 additional blades. These books also contain information about many other Sôshû blades. 21 Sadamune + 3 more burnt, 5 Yukimitsu + 7 more burnt, 2 Shintôgo Kunimitsu, and 1 Hiromitsu. This brings the number of Sôshû blades to 100, which is over 1/3 of the blades in this set of books. There are also a number of blades by Sô-den smiths such as the 10 students of Masamune, and the 3 students of Sadamune. So the fact that Masamune was in the Nihon Sansaku, and his blades were listed in the first book of the Kyôho Meibutsu Cho gave some special status to him and his blades. Many of his blades have a noted history, and very interesting stories about them. 'Fudo Masamune' is a tantô of 8 sun 6.5 bun, with a carving of Fudo on the Omote, as well as gomabashi, and kurikara on the ura (at this point only the gomabashi are present on the back). This is one of the very few existing signed blades were the signature is not in question. Lord Hidetsugu bought this blade for 500 Kan, and later gave it to the Shogun Ieyasu. Then it was given to Lord Toshiie. Later Lord Toshitsune gave it to Lord Ieyasu (after retirement?). After that it was handed down in the Owari Tokugawa. This shows how blades traveled between the Japanese lords. The 'Hocho Sukashi Masamune' is one of the famous Masamune kitchen knives that makes people think that he made these very long wide blades. Masamunes tantô tend to be slim, and elegant. On this blade there is gomabashi carved in sukashi (cutout). After the restoration (1919?) this blade was purchased for 10 Hiki in a antique store. The value at that time was about 14¢ US. Even with the inflation since then, that comes up to very little, now days. The 'Honjo Masamune' which was the Katana passed between generations of the Tokugawa, as a symbol of the Shogun, was taken as a Trophy of War (not by a Tokugawa). In the late 16th. century it had split the helmet of Shigenaga, one of the generals of Uesugi Kenshin, prior to Shigenaga killing it's owner Umanosuke. Shigenaga had a deep wound on his head, but he survived. To make matters worse for the Honjo Masamune, when Umanosuke attacked Shigenaga he was already carrying several 'trophy heads' so that blade probably had already made many severe cuts that day.Shigenaga examined it and it had some chips but was still sound. Kenshin did not wind up with the blade, Shigenaga did. I assume that Kenshin was smart enough to not push around his major supporters too much. Unfortunately for Shigenaga in Bunroku (1592 - 1595) Uesugi was required to care for the Fushimi Castle. He sent Shigenaga to do this. Shigenaga did not have the money, so he had to sell the Honjo Masamune. The price was 13 Mai = 13 O-Ban = 13 large gold coins. Hidetsugu (Hideyoshi's younger brother) was the buyer. When one considers that in the Kyoho Meibutsu Cho the Wakasa Masamune was valued by the Honnami at 1,000 Mai. And the Shikibu Masamune was valued at 700 Mai. But in Shotoku (1711 - 1716) the Shikibu Masamune sold for 2,375 Ryo (Mai?). And the price for a good sword went for about 10 Mai. Then when one remembers that Hideyoshi was the one who started the Masamune craze, the plan plot becomes clearer. Own a Masamune and the Shogunate was going to see that you would end up with money problems, and wish a quick sale of it. Anyway this Masamune went from Shigenaga, to Hidetsugu, to Shimazu Hyogo Yoshihiro, who gave it to Ieyasu. It was given to Ietsuna when Yorinobu retired (1667). After Ietsuna, the forth Tokugawa Shogun, it was passed to the each following Shogun as part of the Ceremony. The 'Kotegiri Masamune' is a katana that gained it's name when it cut the steel mail off the arm of a opposing Samurai at the Battle of Toji in Kyôto. It was used by Asakura Ujikage for this cut. Asakura Yoshikage was defeated by Oda Nobunaga. Nobunaga took this sword and had it shortened. It passed through sevral other hands and in 1615 came to the Maeda clan, who passed it down through generations until 1882. In 1882 Emperor Meiji visited the Maeda and was given this sword. Emperor Meiji was a very well known sword collector, so was this another example of the person in charge claiming all of the 'good toys'? Fenrir also called Fenrisúlfr, monstrous wolf of Norse mythology. He was the son of the demoniac god Loki and a giantess, Angerboda. Fearing Fenrir's strength and knowing that only evil could be expected of him, the gods bound him with a magical chain made of the sound of a cat's footsteps, the beard of a woman, the breath of fish, and other occult elements. When the chain was placed upon him, Fenrir bit off the hand of the god Tyr. He was gagged with a sword and was destined to lie bound to a rock until the Ragnarök (Doomsday), when he will break his bonds and fall upon the gods. According to one version of the myth, Fenrir will devour the sun, and in the Ragnarök he will fight against the chief god Odin and swallow him. Odin's son Vidar will avenge his father, stabbing the wolf to the heart according to one account and tearing his jaws asunder according to another. Fenrir figures prominently in Norwegian and Icelandic poetry of the 10th and 11th centuries, and the poets speak apprehensively of the day when he will break loose. Odin also called Wodan, Woden, or Wotan, one of the principal gods in Norse mythology. His exact nature and role, however, are difficult to determine because of the complex picture of him given by the wealth of archaeological and literary sources. The Roman historian Tacitus stated that the Teutons worshiped Mercury; and because dies Mercurii ("Mercury's day") was identified with Wednesday ("Woden's day"), there is little doubt that the god Woden (the earlier form of Odin) was meant. Though Woden was worshiped preeminently, there is not sufficient evidence of his cult to show whether it was practiced by all the Teutonic tribes or to enable conclusions to be drawn about the nature of the god. Later literary sources, however, indicate that at the end of the pre-Christian period Odin was the principal god in Scandinavia. From earliest times Odin was a war god, and he appeared in heroic literature as the protector of heroes; fallen warriors joined him in Valhalla. The wolf and the raven were dedicated to him. His magical horse, Sleipnir, had eight legs, teeth inscribed with runes, and the ability to gallop through the air and over the sea. Odin was the great magician among the gods and was associated with runes. He was also the god of poets. In outward appearance he was a tall, old man, with flowing beard and only one eye (the other he gave in exchange for wisdom). He was usually depicted wearing a cloak and a wide-brimmed hat and carrying a spear. Ragnarök (Old Norse: "Doom of the Gods"), in Scandinavian mythology, the end of the world of gods and men. The Ragnarök is fully described only in the Icelandic poem Völuspá ("Sibyl's Prophecy"), probably of the late 10th century, and in the 13th-century Prose Edda of Snorri Sturluson (d. 1241), which largely follows the Völuspá. According to those two sources, the Ragnarök will be preceded by cruel winters and moral chaos. Giants and demons approaching from all points of the compass will attack the gods, who will meet them and face death like heroes. The sun will be darkened, the stars will vanish, and the earth will sink into the sea. Afterward, the earth will rise again, the innocent Balder will return from the dead, and the hosts of the just will live in a hall roofed with gold. Hades - Hades Hades and Persephone in the underworld, interior of a red-figured cup, Gree ... Greek AÏDES ("THE UNSEEN"), also called PLUTO, OR PLUTON ("the Rich"), in Greek religion, son of the Titans Cronus and Rhea, and brother of the deities Zeus and Poseidon. After Cronus was killed, the kingdom of the underworld fell by lot to Hades. There he ruled with his queen, Persephone, over the infernal powers and over the dead, in what was often called "the House of Hades," or simply Hades. Though he supervised the trial and punishment of the wicked after death, he was not normally one of the judges in the underworld; nor did he personally torture the guilty, a task assigned to the Furies (Erinyes). Hades was depicted as stern and pitiless, unmoved (like death itself) by prayer or sacrifice. Forbidding and aloof, he never quite emerges as a distinct personality from the shadowy darkness of his realm, not even in the myth of his abduction of Siren - Siren in Greek mythology, a creature half bird and half woman who lured sailors to destruction by the sweetness of her song. According to Homer there were two Sirens on an island in the western sea between Aeaea and the rocks of Scylla. Later the number was usually increased to three, and they were located on the west coast of Italy, near Naples. They were variously said to be the daughters of the sea god Phorcys or of the river god Achelous. The Greek hero Odysseus, advised by the sorceress Circe, escaped the danger of their song by stopping the ears of his crew with wax so that they were deaf to the Sirens; yet he was able to hear the music and had himself tied to the mast so that he could not steer the ship out of course. Another story relates that when the Argonauts sailed that way, Orpheus sang so divinely that none of them listened to the Sirens. In later legend, after one or other of these failures the Sirens committed suicide. In art they appeared first as birds with the heads of women, later as women, sometimes winged, with bird legs. The Sirens seem to have evolved from a primitive tale of the perils of early exploration combined with an Oriental image of a bird-woman. Anthropologists explain the Oriental image as a soul-bird--i.e., a winged ghost that stole the living to share its fate. In that respect the Sirens had affinities with the Harpies. Leviathan Hebrew LIVYATAN, in Jewish mythology, a primordial sea serpent. Its source is in prebiblical Mesopotamian myth, especially that of the sea monster in the Ugaritic myth of Baal (see Yamm). In the Old Testament, Leviathan appears in Psalms 74:14 as a multiheaded sea serpent that is killed by God and given as food to the Hebrews in the wilderness. In Isaiah 27:1, Leviathan is a serpent and a symbol of Israel's enemies, who will be slain by God. In Job 41, it is a sea monster and a symbol of God's power of creation. (Final Fantasy IX), item, peridot also called PRECIOUS OLIVINE, gem-quality, transparent green olivine in the forsterite-fayalite series. Gem-quality olivine has been valued for centuries; the deposit on Jazirat Zabarjad (Saint Johns Island), Egypt, in the Red Sea that is mentioned by Pliny in his Natural History (ad 70) still produces fine gems. Very large crystals are found in the Mogok district of Myanmar (Burma); peridots from the United States are seldom larger than two carats. Yellow-green peridot has been called chrysolite (Greek: "golden stone"); this term, used for various unrelated minerals, has become less common for the gemstone. Peridot is generally faceted with a step cut. Mandragora (Final Fantasy IX), monster - mandrake any of six plant species belonging to the genus Mandragora (family Solanaceae) that are native to the Mediterranean region and the Himalayas. The best-known species, M. officinarum, has a short stem bearing a tuft of ovate flowers, with a thick, fleshy root that is often forked. The flowers are solitary, with a purple bell-shaped corolla, and the fruit is a fleshy orange-coloured berry. The mandrake has long been known for its poisonous properties. In ancient times it was used as a narcotic and an aphrodisiac, and it was also believed to have certain magical powers. Its forked root, seemingly resembling the human form, was thought to be in the power of dark earth spirits. It was believed that the mandrake could be safely uprooted only in the moonlight, after appropriate prayer and ritual, by a black dog attached to the plant by a cord. Human hands were not to come in contact with the plant. In medieval times it was thought that as the mandrake was pulled from the ground it uttered a shriek that killed or drove mad those who did not block their ears against it. After the plant had been freed from the earth, it could be used for beneficent purposes, such as healing, inducing love, facilitating pregnancy, and providing soothing sleep. In North America, the name mandrake is often used for the mayapple of the order Ranunculales. Zidane (Final Fantasy IX), Character - probably not related. Hollywood fiction could hardly have improved on World Cup reality for Zinedine Zidane. Starting the France 98 tournament as the best hope of the host nation in its campaign to win the gold medal, the Marseille-born association football (soccer) star quickly showed his class and outstanding ability, inspiring France to beat South Africa in the opening match in front of adoring fans in his home city. Then came disaster. He was sent off the field in the match against Saudi Arabia for the uncharacteristic act of stamping on an opponent. In addition, he was banned for two matches and disgraced, and there were even rumours that he might be dropped from the French team completely. France, however, needed him, and so he returned and in the final against Brazil became the hero everyone in the country had wanted him to be, scoring two goals and giving France its first major trophy. They were his 10th and 11th international goals. In the World Soccer poll he was voted player of the year. Zidane was born on June 23, 1972, the son of Berber immigrants from Algeria. After playing for minor teams Castellane and Septimes-les-Vallons, he joined Cannes and soon developed as a rangy looking, 1.85-m (6-ft, 1-in)-tall midfield player with great upper body strength and a somewhat ungainly gait that masked exceptional vision, a deft sleight of foot, and an ability to outwit the most determined defenders. He made his debut for Cannes on May 20, 1989, at Nantes. Operating behind the two main strikers, "Zizou" (as he was known to all) became the focal point of the attack. In 1992 he was transferred to Bordeaux. Two years later, when voted Best Young Player in France, he played in his first full international competition for France, scoring both goals in a 2-2 draw with the Czech Republic. In 1995 he played an incredible 57 matches overall for club and country and helped secure a place in the UEFA Cup final for his Bordeaux club. The exhausting year took a toll on his stamina, however, and worse followed: he narrowly escaped serious injury in a car crash. Despite performing below his usual form, he played in the finals of the 1996 European Championship, in which France reached the semifinals. That summer the Italian club Juventus paid Bordeaux a transfer fee of £3.2 million for Zidane's services, starting in September 1996. In Italy he soon became as much of a favourite as he had been in France, appearing on Juventus's winning team at the World Club Championship and European Super Cup as well as on its 1997 Italian league-winning squad. Juventus also reached the European Champions League final in 1997 and 1998, and Zidane finished third in the European Player of the Year vote in 1997. In January 1998 he scored the only goal when France beat Spain 1-0 in a match to inaugurate the Stade de France, the new stadium that was to be the scene six months later of France's--and Zidane's--World Cup triumph. Alexander (Guardian Force - FF) referance "Holy" = Pope, Alexander b. May 21, 1688, London, Eng. d. May 30, 1744, Twickenham, near London poet and satirist of the English Augustan period, best known for his poems An Essay on Criticism (1711), The Rape of the Lock (1712-14), The Dunciad (1728), and An Essay on Man (1733-34). He is one of the most quotable of all English authors. Pope's father, a wholesale linen merchant, retired from business in the year of his son's birth and in 1700 went to live at Binfield in Windsor Forest. The Popes were Roman Catholics, and at Binfield they came to know several neighbouring Catholic families who were to play an important part in the poet's life. Pope's religion procured him some lifelong friends, notably the wealthy squire John Caryll (who persuaded him to write The Rape of the Lock, on an incident involving Caryll's relatives) and Martha Blount, to whom Pope addressed some of the most memorable of his poems and to whom he bequeathed most of his property. But his religion also precluded him from a formal course of education, since Catholics were not admitted to the universities. He was trained at home by Catholic priests for a short time and attended Catholic schools at Twyford, near Winchester, and at Hyde Park Corner, London, but he was mainly self-educated. He was a precocious boy, eagerly reading Latin, Greek, French, and Italian, which he managed to teach himself, and an incessant scribbler, turning out verse upon verse in imitation of the poets he read. The best of these early writings are the "Ode on Solitude" and a paraphrase of St. Thomas à Kempis, both of which he claimed to have written at the age of 12. Early works Windsor Forest was near enough to London to permit Pope's frequent visits there. He early grew acquainted with former members of John Dryden's circle, notably William Wycherley, William Walsh, and Henry Cromwell. By 1705 his "Pastorals" were in draft and were circulating among the best literary judges of the day. In 1706 Jacob Tonson, the leading publisher of poetry, had solicited their publication, and they took the place of honour in his Poetical Miscellanies in 1709. This early emergence of a man of letters may have been assisted by Pope's poor physique. As a result of too much study, so he thought, he acquired a curvature of the spine and some tubercular infection, probably Pott's disease, that limited his growth and seriously impaired his health. His full-grown height was four feet six inches; but the grace of his profile and fullness of his eye gave him an attractive appearance. He was a lifelong sufferer from headaches, and his deformity made him abnormally sensitive to physical and mental pain. Though he was able to ride a horse and delighted in travel, he was inevitably precluded from much normal physical activity, and his energetic, fastidious mind was largely directed to reading and writing. When the "Pastorals" were published, Pope was already at work on a poem on the art of writing. This was An Essay on Criticism, published in 1711. Its brilliantly polished epigrams (e.g., "A little learning is a dangerous thing," "To err is human, to forgive, divine," and "For fools rush in where angels fear to tread"), which have become part of the proverbial heritage of the language, are readily traced to their sources in Horace, Quintilian, Boileau, and other critics, ancient and modern, in verse and prose; but the charge that the poem is derivative, so often made in the past, takes insufficient account of Pope's success in harmonizing a century of conflict in critical thinking and in showing how nature may best be mirrored in art. The well-deserved success of the Essay on Criticism brought Pope a wider circle of friends, notably Richard Steele and Joseph Addison, who were then collaborating on The Spectator. To this journal Pope contributed the most original of his pastorals, "The Messiah" (1712), and perhaps other papers in prose. He was clearly influenced by The Spectator's policy of correcting public morals by witty admonishment, and in this vein he wrote the first version of his mock-epic, The Rape of the Lock (two cantos, 1712; five cantos, 1714), to reconcile two Catholic families. A young man in one family had stolen a lock of hair from a young lady in the other. Pope treated the dispute that followed as though it were comparable to the mighty quarrel between Greeks and Trojans, which had been Homer's theme. Telling the story with all the pomp and circumstance of epic made not only the participants in the quarrel but also the society in which they lived seem ridiculous. Though it was a society where . . . Britain's statesmen oft the fall foredoom Of foreign tyrants, and of nymphs at home; as if one occupation concerned them as much as the other; and though in such a society a young lady might do equally ill to . . . Stain her honour, or her new brocade; Forget her pray'rs, or miss a masquerade; Pope managed also to suggest what genuine attractions existed amid the foppery and glitter. He acknowledged how false the sense of values was that paid so much attention to external appearance, but ridicule and rebuke slide imperceptibly into admiration and tender affection as the heroine, Belinda, is conveyed along the Thames to Hampton Court, the scene of the "rape": But now secure the painted vessel glides, The sunbeams trembling on the floating tides: While melting music steals upon the sky, And soften'd sounds along the waters die; Smooth flow the waves, the zephyrs gently play, Belinda smil'd, and all the world was gay. A comparable blend of seemingly incompatible responses--love and hate, bawdiness and decorum, admiration and ridicule--is to be found in all Pope's later satires. Pope had also been at work for several years on "Windsor-Forest." In this poem, completed and published in 1713, he proceeded, as Virgil had done, from the pastoral vein to the georgic and celebrated the rule of Queen Anne as the Latin poet had celebrated the rule of Augustus. In another early poem, "Eloisa to Abelard," Pope borrowed the form of Ovid's "heroic epistle" (in which an abandoned lady addresses her lover) and showed imaginative skill in conveying the struggle between sexual passion and dedication to a life of celibacy. Homer and "The Dunciad" These poems and other works were collected in the first volume of Pope's Works in 1717. When it was published, he was already far advanced with the greatest labour of his life, his verse translation of Homer. He had announced his intentions in October 1713 and had published the first volume, containing the Iliad, Books I-IV, in 1715. The Iliad was completed in six volumes in 1720. The work of translating the Odyssey (vol. i-iii, 1725; vol. iv and v, 1726) was shared with William Broome, who had contributed notes to the Iliad, and Elijah Fenton. The labour had been great, but so were the rewards. By the two translations Pope cleared about £10,000 and was able to claim that, thanks to Homer, he could " . . . live and thrive/Indebted to no Prince or Peer alive." The merits of Pope's Homer lie less in the accuracy of translation and in correct representation of the spirit of the original than in the achievement of a heroic poem as his contemporaries understood it: a poem Virgilian in its dignity, moral purpose, and pictorial splendour, yet one that consistently kept Homer in view and alluded to him throughout. Pope offered his readers the Iliad and the Odyssey as he felt sure Homer would have written them had he lived in early 18th-century England. Political considerations had affected the success of the translation. As a Roman Catholic his affiliations were Tory rather than Whig; and though he retained the friendship of such Whigs as William Congreve, Nicholas Rowe, and the painter Charles Jervas, his ties with Steele and Addison grew strained as a result of the political animosity that occurred at the end of Queen Anne's reign. He found new and lasting friends in Tory circles--Jonathan Swift, John Gay, John Arbuthnot, Thomas Parnell, the Earl of Oxford, and Viscount Bolingbroke. With the first five he was associated (1713-14) in the Scriblerus Club to write joint satires on pedantry, later to mature as Peri Bathouse, Or the Art of Sinking in Poetry (1728) and the "Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus" (1741); and these were the men who encouraged his translation of Homer. The Whigs, who associated with Addison at Button's Coffee-House, put up a rival translator in Thomas Tickell, who published his version of Iliad, Book I, two days after Pope's. Addison preferred Tickell's manifestly inferior version; his praise increased the resentment Pope already felt owing to a series of slights and misunderstandings; and when Pope heard gossip of further malice on Addison's part, he sent him a satirical view of his character, published later as the character of Atticus, the insincere arbiter of literary taste in "An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot" (1735). Even before the Homer quarrel, Pope had found that the life of a wit was one of perpetual warfare. There were few years when either his person or his poems were not objects of attacks from the critic John Dennis, the bookseller Edmund Curll, the historian John Oldmixon, and other writers of lesser fame. The climax was reached over his edition of Shakespeare. He had emended the plays, in the spirit of a literary editor, to accord with contemporary taste (1725); but his practice was exposed by the scholar Lewis Theobald in Shakespeare Restored (1726). Though Pope had ignored some of these attacks, he had replied to others with squibs in prose and verse. But he now attempted to make an end of the opposition and to defend his standards, which he aligned with the standards of civilized society, in the mock-epic The Dunciad (1728). Theobald was represented in it as the Goddess of Dullness' favourite son, a suitable hero for those leaden times; and others who had given offense were preserved like flies in amber. Pope dispatches his victims with such sensuousness of verse and imagery that the reader is forced to admit that if there is petulance here, as has often been claimed, it is, to parody Wordsworth, petulance recollected in tranquility. Pope reissued the poem in 1729 with an elaborate mock-commentary of prefaces, notes, appendixes, indexes, and errata; this burlesque of pedantry whimsically suggested that The Dunciad had fallen a victim to the spirit of the times and been edited by a dunce. Pope, Alexander Life at Twickenham Pope and his parents had moved from Binfield to Chiswick in 1716. There his father died (1717), and two years later he and his mother rented a villa on the Thames at Twickenham, then a small country town where several Londoners had retired to live in rustic seclusion. This was to be Pope's home for the remainder of his life. There he entertained such friends as Swift, Bolingbroke, Oxford, and the painter Jonathan Richardson. These friends were all enthusiastic gardeners, and it was Pope's pleasure to advise and superintend their landscaping according to the best contemporary principles, formulated in his "Epistle to the Right Honourable Richard Earl of Burlington" (1731). This poem, one of the most characteristic works of his maturity, is a rambling discussion in the manner of Horace on false taste in architecture and design, with some suggestions for the worthier employment of a nobleman's wealth. Pope now began to contemplate a new work on the relations of man, nature, and society that would be a grand organization of human experience and intuition, but he was destined never to complete it. An Essay on Man (1733-34) was intended as an introductory book discussing the overall design of this work. The poem has often been charged with shallowness and philosophical inconsistency, and there is indeed little that is original in its thought, almost all of which can be traced in the work of the great thinkers of Western civilization. Subordinate themes were treated in greater detail in "Of the Use of Riches, An Epistle to Bathurst" (1732), "An Epistle to Cobham, Of the knowledge and characters of men" (1733), and "Of The Characters of Women: an Epistle to a Lady" (1735). Pope was deflected from this "system of ethics in the Horatian way" by the renewed need for self-defense. Critical attacks drove him to consider his position as satirist. He chose to adapt for his own defense the first satire of Horace's second book, where the ethics of satire are propounded, and, after discussing the question in correspondence with Dr. John Arbuthnot, he addressed to him an epistle in verse (1735), one of the finest of his later poems, in which were incorporated fragments written over several years. His case in "An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot" was the satirist's traditional case: that depravity in public morals had roused him to stigmatize outstanding offenders beyond the reach of the law, concealing the names of some and representing others as types, and that he was innocent of personal rancour and habitually forbearing under attack. The success of his "First Satire Of the Second Book Of Horace, Imitated" (1733) led to the publication (1734-38) of 10 more of these paraphrases of Horatian themes adapted to the contemporary social and political scene. Pope's poems followed Horace's satires and epistles sufficiently closely for him to print the Latin on facing pages with the English; but whoever chose to make the comparison would notice a continuous enrichment of the original by parenthetic thrusts and compliments, as well as by the freshness of the imagery. The series was concluded with two dialogues in verse, republished as the "Epilogue to the Satires" (1738), where, as in "An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot," Pope ingeniously combined a defense of his own career and character with a restatement of the satirist's traditional apology. In these imitations and dialogues Pope directed his attack upon the materialistic standards of the commercially minded Whigs in power and upon the corrupting effect of money, while restating and illustrating the old Horatian standards of serene and temperate living. His anxiety about prevailing standards was shown once more in his last completed work, The New Dunciad (1742), reprinted as the fourth book of a revised Dunciad (1743), in which Theobald was replaced as hero by Colley Cibber, the poet laureate and actor-manager, who not only had given more recent cause of offense but seemed a more appropriate representative of the degenerate standards of the age. In Dunciad, Book IV, the Philistine culture of the city of London was seen to overtake the court and seat of government at Westminster, and the poem ends in a magnificent but baleful prophecy of anarchy. Pope had begun work on Brutus, an epic poem in blank verse, and on a revision of his poems for a new edition, but neither was complete at his death. Assessment Pope's favourite metre was the 10-syllable, iambic pentameter rhyming (heroic) couplet. He handled it with increasing skill and adapted it to such varied purposes as the epigrammatic summary of the Essay on Criticism, the pathos of "Verses to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady," the mock-heroic of The Rape of the Lock, the discursive tones of the Essay on Man, the rapid narrative of the Homer translation, and the Miltonic sublimity of the conclusion of The Dunciad. But his greatest triumphs of versification are found in the "Epilogue to the Satires," where he moves easily from witty, spirited dialogue to noble and elevated declamation, and in "An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot," which opens with a scene of domestic irritation suitably conveyed in broken rhythm: Shut, shut the door, good John! fatigu'd, I said: Tie up the knocker, say I'm sick, I'm dead. The Dog-star rages! nay 'tis past a doubt, All Bedlam, or Parnassus, is let out: Fire in each eye, and papers in each hand, They rave, recite, and madden round the land; and closes with a deliberately chosen contrast of domestic calm, which the poet may be said to have deserved and won during the course of the poem: Me, let the tender office long engage To rock the cradle of reposing age, With lenient arts extend a mother's breath, Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death, Explore the thought, explain the asking eye, And keep a while one parent from the sky! Pope's command of diction is no less happily adapted to his theme and to the type of poem, and the range of his imagery is remarkably wide. He has been thought defective in imaginative power, but this opinion cannot be sustained in view of the invention and organizing ability shown notably in The Rape of the Lock and The Dunciad. He was the first English poet to enjoy contemporary fame in France and Italy and throughout the European continent and to see translations of his poems into modern as well as ancient languages. Alexander II Alexander Nevsky, Saint b. c. 1220,, Vladimir, Grand Principality of Vladimir d. Nov. 14, 1263, Gorodets; canonized in Russian Church 1547; feast days November 23, August 30 Russian ALEKSANDR NEVSKY, original name ALEKSANDR YAROSLAVICH, prince of Novgorod (1236-52) and of Kiev (1246-52) and grand prince of Vladimir (1252-63), who halted the eastward drive of the Germans and Swedes but collaborated with the Mongols in imposing their rule on Russia. By defeating a Swedish invasion force at the confluence of the Rivers Izhora and Neva (1240), he won the name Nevsky, "of the Neva." Alexander was the son of Yaroslav II Vsevolodovich, grand prince of Vladimir, the foremost among the Russian rulers. In 1236 Alexander was elected prince--a figure who functioned as little more than military commander--of the city of Novgorod. In 1239 he married the daughter of the Prince of Polotsk. When in 1240 the Swedes invaded Russia to punish the Novgorodians for encroaching on Finnish tribes and to bar Russia's access to the sea, Alexander defeated the Swedes at the confluence of the Rivers Izhora and Neva. His standing enhanced by his victory, he apparently began to intervene in the affairs of the city and was expelled a few months later. When, urged by Pope Gregory IX to "Christianize" the Baltic region, the Teutonic Knights shortly thereafter invaded Russia, Novgorod invited Alexander to return. After a number of battles, Alexander decisively defeated the Germans in the famous "massacre on the ice" in April 1242 on a narrow channel between Lakes Chud (Peipus) and Pskov. Alexander, who continued to fight both the Swedes and Germans and eventually stopped their eastward expansion, also won many victories over the pagan Lithuanians and the Finnic peoples. In the east, however, Mongol armies were conquering most of the politically fragmented Russian lands. Alexander's father, the grand prince Yaroslav, agreed to serve the new rulers of Russia but died in September 1246 of poisoning after his return from a visit to the Great Khan in Mongolia. When, in the ensuing struggle for the grand princely throne, Alexander and his younger brother Andrew appealed to Khan Batu of the Mongol Golden Horde, he sent them to the Great Khan. Violating Russian customs of seniority, the Great Khan appointed Andrew grand prince of Vladimir and Alexander prince of Kiev--probably because Alexander was Batu's favourite and Batu was in disfavour with the Great Khan. When Andrew began to conspire against the Mongol overlords with other Russian princes and western nations, Alexander went to Saray on the Volga and denounced his brother to Sartak, Batu's son, who sent an army to depose Andrew and installed Alexander as grand prince. Henceforth, for over a century, no northeastern Russian prince challenged the Mongol conquest. Alexander proceeded to restore Russia by building fortifications and churches and promulgating laws. As grand prince, he continued to rule Novgorod through his son Vasily, thus changing the constitutional basis of rule in Novgorod from personal sovereignty by invitation to institutional sovereignty by the principal Russian ruler. When, in 1255, Novgorod, tiring of grand princely rule, expelled Vasily and invited an opponent of Mongol hegemony, Alexander assembled an army and reinstalled his son. In 1257 the Mongols, in order to levy taxes, took a census in most of Russia. It encountered little opposition, but when news of the impending enumeration reached Novgorod an uprising broke out. In 1258 Alexander, fearing that the Mongols would punish all of Russia for the Novgorodian revolt, helped force Novgorod to submit to the census and to Mongol taxation. This completed the process of imposing the Mongol yoke on northern Russia. In 1262 uprisings broke out in many towns against the Muslim tax farmers of the Golden Horde, and Alexander made a fourth journey to Saray to avert reprisals. He succeeded in his mission, as well as in obtaining exemption for Russians from a draft of men for a planned invasion of Iran. Returning home, Alexander died on Nov. 14, 1263, in Gorodets on the Volga. After his death Russia once more disintegrated into many feuding principalities. His personal power, based upon support of the princes, boyars, and clergy, as well as the fear of Mongols, could not be transmitted to any other man, including his weak sons. Whether Alexander was a quisling in his dealings with the Mongol conquerors is a question seldom posed by Russian historians, because some Russian princes had for centuries concluded alliances with Turkic steppe nomads in order to gain advantage in domestic rivalries. Because Alexander was a willing collaborator, he may have reduced the common people's suffering by interceding for them with the Khan. He was supported by the church, which thrived under Mongol protection and tax exemption and feared the anti-Mongol princes who negotiated with the papacy. For these reasons, Alexander by 1381 was elevated to the status of a local saint and was canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1547. Alexander's son Daniel founded the house of Moscow, which subsequently reunited the northern Russian lands and ruled until 1598. Alexander was one of the great military commanders of his time, who protected Russia's western frontier against invasion by Swedes or Germans. This image of him was popular in northwestern Russia and has in succeeding centuries been adduced for propaganda purposes. Thus, after the conclusion of the war with Sweden, the Order of Alexander Nevsky was created in 1725, and during World War II (in July 1942), when Germany had deeply penetrated into the Soviet Union, Stalin pronounced Alexander Nevsky a national hero and established a military order in his name. Alexander III Alexander Of Aphrodisias b. c. 200 philosopher who is remembered for his commentaries on Aristotle's works and for his own studies on the soul and the mind. Toward the end of the 2nd century, Alexander became head of the Lyceum at Athens, an academy then dominated by the syncretistic philosophy of Ammonius Saccas, who blended the doctrines of Plato and Aristotle. Alexander's commentaries were intended to reestablish Aristotle's views in their pure form. Among the extant commentaries are those on Aristotle's Prior Analytics I, the Topics, the Meteorology, the De sensu, and the Metaphysics I-V. Fragments of lost commentaries are found in later discussions by other writers. In antiquity Alexander's influence was due primarily to the commentaries, which earned him the title "the expositor," but in the Middle Ages he was better known for his original writings. The most important of these are On Fate, in which he defends free will against the Stoic doctrine of necessity, or predetermined human action; and On the Soul, in which he draws upon Aristotle's doctrine of the soul and the intellect. According to Alexander, the human thought process, which he calls the "mortal intellect," can function only with the help of the "active intellect," which lies in every man and is yet identical with God. This doctrine was frequently and intensely debated in Europe after the beginning of the 13th century. In these disputes, which reflected disagreements over the proper interpretation of Aristotle's attitude toward personal immortality, the Alexandrists accepted Alexander's interpretation that man's intellect does not survive the death of the physical body. Alexander 4 Alexander, Samuel Samuel Alexander, chalk drawing by Francis Dodd, 1932; in the National Port ... b. Jan. 6, 1859, Sydney, N.S.W. [Australia] d. Sept. 13, 1938, Manchester, Eng. philosopher who developed a metaphysics of emergent evolution involving time, space, matter, mind, and deity. After studying in Melbourne, Alexander went to Balliol College, Oxford, in 1877 on a scholarship. In 1887 he received the Green Prize for "Moral Order and Progress" (1889), an essay on evolutionary ethics. Alexander's interest in evolution led him to relinquish a fellowship at Lincoln College, Oxford, in order to study (1890-91) experimental psychology under Hugo Münsterberg in Germany. In 1893 he became a professor at Owens College (later Victoria University of Manchester), where he remained until his retirement in 1924. He was awarded the Order of Merit in 1930. As Gifford lecturer at Glasgow University, Alexander organized his philosophical thought into a comprehensive system published as Space, Time and Deity (1920), his only major work. It explains the world as a single cosmic process with space-time as the basic cosmic matrix. "Emergents" (Gestalt-like properties) periodically arise as higher syntheses. Space-time thus produced matter, and matter in turn gave rise to mind (or "awareness") as a further, higher, qualitative synthesis. "Deity" signifies the upper goal, the next higher level toward which the cosmic order spontaneously tends. In this hierarchy of change, the higher synthesis emerges from below but possesses genuinely new characteristics; hence in each instance the new synthesis is unpredictable. Alexander did not attempt to give an ultimate explanation for the world's existence; he tried merely to explain the world in terms of spontaneous creative tendencies. Alexander 5 Alexander Of Hales b. c. 1170, /85, Hales, Gloucestershire, Eng. d. 1245, Paris theologian and philosopher whose doctrines influenced the teachings of such thinkers as St. Bonaventure and John of La Rochelle. The Summa theologica, for centuries ascribed to him, is largely the work of followers. Alexander studied and taught in Paris, receiving the degrees of master of arts (before 1210) and theology (1220). He was archdeacon of Coventry in 1235 and became a Franciscan (c. 1236). In Paris he founded the Schola Fratrum Minorum, where he was the first holder, possibly until his death, of the Franciscan chair. Only the most general features of Alexander's theology and philosophy have been made clear: basically an Augustinian, he had to some extent taken into account the psychological, physical, and metaphysical doctrines of Aristotle, while discarding popular Avicennian tenets of emanations from a Godhead. The "Franciscan" theories of matter and form in spiritual creatures, of the multiplicity of forms, and of illumination combined with experience are probably Alexander's adaptations of similar theories of the Augustinian and other traditions. His original works, apart from sections of the Summa and of an Expositio regulae ("Exposition of the Rule"), include a commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard; Quaestiones disputatae antequam esset frater ("Questions Before Becoming a Brother . . ."); Quodlibeta; sermons; and a treatise on difficult words entitled Exoticon. Alexander was known to the Scholastics by the title Doctor Irrefragabilis (Impossible to Refute). Alexander 6 Campbell, Alexander b. Sept. 12, 1788, near Ballymena, County Antrim, Ire. d. March 4, 1866, Bethany, W.Va., U.S. American clergyman, writer, and founder of the Disciples of Christ and Bethany College. He was the son of Thomas Campbell (1763-1854), a Presbyterian minister who emigrated in 1807 to the United States, where he promoted his program for Christian unity. In 1809 Alexander and the remainder of the family also went to the United States. There he espoused his father's program and emerged as the leader of a movement for religious reform. He began preaching without a salary in 1810 and soon settled in what is now Bethany, W. Va. He and his followers accepted baptism by immersion in 1812 and joined the Baptists the next year, but tension on other issues led to their dissociation from the Baptists in 1830. In 1832 his followers, known as Disciples of Christ, or Christians (nicknamed Campbellites), joined Kentucky "Christians," followers of Barton W. Stone, to form the Disciples of Christ (Christian Church). Campbell presented a rationalistic and deliberative Christianity that was based on the New Testament and was opposed to both speculative theology and emotional revivalism. He exercised his leadership through preaching, addresses, and extensive debates with the Roman Catholic bishop of Cincinnati, John Purcell, the social reformer Robert Owen, and others. Campbell founded (1823) and edited the Christian Baptist (later the Millennial Harbinger). Among some 60 volumes that he wrote or edited are The Living Oracles, a version of the New Testament first issued in 1826, and a hymnal. He was also a member of the Virginia Constitutional Convention in 1829. In 1840 he founded Bethany College and was its president until his death. Alexander 7 Henderson, Alexander Alexander Henderson, detail from a portrait attributed to Sir Anthony Van D ... b. 1583?, Creich, Fife, Scot. d. Aug. 19, 1646, Edinburgh Scottish Presbyterian clergyman primarily responsible for the preservation of the presbyterian form of church government in Scotland, who was influential in the defeat of the English king Charles I during the Civil War of 1642-51. In 1612 Henderson was nearly prevented from assuming duties in Leuchars, Fife, by parishioners who were angered by his intransigence and unorthodoxy. Henderson soon adjusted to standard Presbyterian practice, however, and his pastorate remained uneventful for the next 25 years. Only through an ecclesiastical dispute in 1637 did he emerge from his role as a quiet, efficient country minister. Because he refused to procure copies for his parish of the newly issued book of canons (1636) and of a subsequent book of worship imposed by Charles I, he was summoned to Edinburgh. There he boldly defended his disobedience and gained recognition as a leader. Henderson was largely responsible for the resistance that found expression in the National Covenant of 1638, a Presbyterian statement that led to a general assembly of churchmen in Glasgow later that year. Henderson furthered his reputation as a leader by his conduct as moderator of the assembly and was soon transferred to Edinburgh. He became the major figure in the negotiations following the two Bishops' Wars, in which native Scottish bishops vied with English loyalists for control of the Church of Scotland. At the onset of the first war, he wrote the pamphlet Instructions for a Defensive Arms (1638), a justification of the people's right to self-defense. Charles I lost his struggle to subordinate the Scottish Church to that of England, and in 1641 the presbyterian system was made secure in Scotland. For the next two years Henderson occupied himself with reorganization of the restored church. With the outbreak of civil war in England in 1642, Henderson led the great majority of Scotsmen to side with the English Parliament against the King. Through the Solemn League and Covenant of 1643, the Scots committed military support on behalf of Parliament and won representation in the English assembly of Westminster, a religious body that advised Parliament. This assembly was commissioned to reconstitute church rule in the British Isles. With the Scottish clergymen Samuel Rutherford, Robert Baillie, and George Gillespie, Henderson engaged in preaching and propagandizing for the Church of Scotland in the Westminster Assembly. Second only to John Knox (c. 1514-72) as a leader in the reformed Church of Scotland, Henderson was the author of numerous tracts, most effective among them being The Bishops' Doom (1638) and The Government and Order of the Church of Scotland (1641), composed for the assembly at Westminster. Alexander 8 Duff, Alexander b. April 26, 1806, Moulin, Perthshire, Scot. d. Feb. 12, 1878, Edinburgh the Church of Scotland's first missionary to India, highly influential on later missionary endeavours through his promotion of higher education. Duff was twice shipwrecked before reaching Calcutta (May 1830), where he opened an English language school for Hindus and Muslims, combining Bible studies with aspects of Western science that challenged local religious beliefs. In 1844 Duff cofounded the Calcutta Review and served as editor from 1845 to 1849, after which time he returned to Scotland. In 1851 he was elected moderator of the Free Church assembly but returned to India in 1856, the year the Bengal army mutinied against the British colonial government. Condemnation of the government's policy was voiced in The Indian Mutiny: Its Causes and Results (1858). Duff was offered the post of vice chancellor of the University of Calcutta in 1863 but declined because of poor health. He returned to Scotland, where in 1873 he was again appointed moderator of the Free Church assembly. Alexander 9 Dowie, John Alexander b. May 25, 1847, Edinburgh d. March 9, 1907, City of Zion, Ill., U.S. U.S. evangelist and faith healer who founded the Christian Catholic Church and the City of Zion. Dowie moved with his family to Australia as a boy but returned to Edinburgh to study theology. He entered the Congregational ministry in 1870 as a pastor in Alma, Australia, and spent the next several years campaigning against the use of tobacco and alcohol. From a personal experience of healing he developed an interest in spiritual healing and eventually founded the International Divine Healing Association. In 1888 he went to the U.S. After receiving little attention in San Francisco, he settled in Chicago. There he became increasingly successful as an evangelist and healer and won every one of nearly a hundred suits brought against him by doctors and clergymen who opposed his practices. In 1896 he founded the Christian Catholic Church, which emphasized spiritual healing but otherwise differed little from the more millennialist of the Protestant churches. In 1901 he established the City of Zion on the shore of Lake Michigan, about 40 miles north of Chicago, with about 5,000 of his followers. In the same year he proclaimed himself Elijah the Restorer and, later, First Apostle of the church. He ruled the community as a theocracy, forbade physicians' offices, dance halls, theatres, drugstores, and smoking and drinking. Various industries were begun and the town prospered, with Dowie in sole control of the businesses. Zion's commercial success was increasingly jeopardized, however, by Dowie's several expensive and futile trips, first to New York to convert the city in 1903 and next to Mexico to establish the "Zion Paradise Plantation." Opposition to his fiscal irresponsibility (and to alleged polygyny) led to his removal in 1906 and his replacement by Wilbur Voliva, a trusted friend whom he had earlier named temporary head of the church. Tantalus (Final Fantasy IX), plot element Tantalus Greek TANTALOS, in Greek legend, son of Zeus or Tmolus (a ruler of Lydia) and Pluto (daughter of Cronus and Rhea) and the father of Niobe and Pelops. He was the king of Sipylus in Lydia (or of Phrygia) and was the intimate friend of the gods, to whose table he was admitted. The punishment of Tantalus in the underworld was occasioned by one of several crimes, according to various ancient authors: (1) He abused divine favour by revealing to mankind the secrets he had learned in heaven. (2) He offended the gods by killing his son Pelops and serving him to them, in order to test their power of observation. (3) He stole nectar and ambrosia, the food of the gods, from heaven and gave them to men. In Hades Tantalus stood up to his neck in water, which flowed from him when he tried to drink it; over his head hung fruits that the wind wafted away whenever he tried to grasp them (hence the word tantalize). According to another story, a rock hung over his head ready to fall and crush him. Ifrit (Final Fantasy General), guardian force ifrit also spelled AFREET, AFRIT, AFRITE, OR EFREET, Arabic (MALE) 'IFRIT, or (female)'ifritah, in Islamic mythology, a class of infernal jinn (spirits below the level of angels and devils) noted for their strength and cunning. An ifrit is an enormous winged creature of smoke, either male or female, who lives underground and frequents ruins. Ifrits live in a society structured along ancient Arab tribal lines, complete with kings, tribes, and clans. They generally marry one another, but they can also marry humans. While ordinary weapons and forces have no power over them, they are susceptible to magic, which humans can use to kill them or to capture and enslave them. As with the jinn, an ifrit may be either a believer or an unbeliever, good or evil, but he is most often depicted as a wicked and ruthless being. The rare appearance of the term ifrit in the Qur'an (the sacred scripture of Islam) and in Hadith (eyewitness narratives recounting Muhammad's words, actions, or approbations) is always in the phrase "the ifrit of the jinn" and probably means "rebellious." The word subsequently came to refer to an entire class of formidable, rebellious beings, but, in the confused world of chthonic (underworld) spirits, it was difficult to differentiate one from another. The ifrit thus became virtually indistinguishable from the marid, also a wicked and rebellious demon. See also jinni. Shiva (Final Fantasy General), Guardian Force/summon also spelled SIWA, OR SHIVA, one of the main deities of Hinduism, worshiped as the paramount lord by the Saiva (Shaivite) sects of India (see Saivism). Siva (Sanskrit: "Auspicious One") is one of the most complex gods of India, embodying seemingly contradictory qualities. He is both the destroyer and the restorer, the great ascetic and the symbol of sensuality, the benevolent herdsman of souls and the wrathful avenger. Though some of the combinations of roles may be explained by Siva's identification with earlier mythological figures, they also arise from a tendency in Hinduism to combine complementary qualities in a single ambiguous figure. Siva's female consort is known under various manifestations as Uma, Sati, Parvati, Durga, and Kali (Siva is also sometimes paired with the supreme goddess, Sakti). The divine couple, together with their sons--the six-headed Skanda and the elephant-headed Ganesa--are said to dwell on Mount Kailasa in the Himalayas. Siva's mount and animal image is the bull Nandi; a sculpture of Nandi sits opposite the main sanctuary of every Siva temple. In temples and in private shrines Siva is worshiped in his fundamental form of the linga, or phallus. Siva is usually depicted in painting and sculpture as white or ash-coloured, with a blue neck (from holding in his throat the poison thrown up at the churning of the cosmic ocean, which threatened to destroy humankind), his hair arranged in a coil of matted locks (jatamakuta) and adorned with the crescent moon and the Ganges (according to legend he brought the Ganges River to earth by allowing her to trickle through his hair, thus breaking her fall). He has three eyes, the third eye bestowing inward vision but capable of burning destruction when focused outward. He wears a garland of skulls and a serpent around his neck and carries in his two (sometimes four) hands a deerskin, a trident, a small hand drum, or a club with a skull at the end. Siva is represented in a variety of forms: in a pacific mood with his consort Parvati and son Skanda, as the cosmic dancer (Nataraja), as a naked ascetic, as a mendicant beggar, as a yogin, and as the androgynous union of Siva and his consort in one body, half-male and half-female (Ardhanarisvara). Among his common epithets are Sambhu ("Benignant"), Sankara ("Beneficent"), Pasupati ("Lord of Beasts"), Mahesa ("Great Lord"), and Mahadeva ("Great God"). Quezacotl (Final Fantasy VIII), guardian Force Quetzalcóatl (from Nahuatl quetzalli, "tail feather of the quetzal bird [Pharomachrus mocinno]," and coatl, "snake"), the Feathered Serpent, one of the major deities of the ancient Mexican pantheon. Representations of a feathered snake occur as early as the Teotihuacán civilization (3rd to 8th century AD) on the central plateau. At that time, Quetzalcóatl seems to have been conceived as a vegetation god--an earth and water deity closely associated with the rain god Tlaloc. With the immigration of Nahua-speaking tribes from the north, Quetzalcóatl's cult underwent drastic changes. The subsequent Toltec culture (9th through 12th centuries), centred at the city of Tula, emphasized war and human sacrifice linked with the worship of heavenly bodies. Quetzalcóatl became the god of the morning and evening star, and his temple was the centre of ceremonial life in Tula. In Aztec times (14th through 16th centuries) Quetzalcóatl was revered as the patron of priests, the inventor of the calendar and of books, and the protector of goldsmiths and other craftsmen; he was also identified with the planet Venus. As the morning and evening star, Quetzalcóatl was the symbol of death and resurrection. With his companion Xolotl, a dog-headed god, he was said to have descended to the underground hell of Mictlan to gather the bones of the ancient dead. Those bones he anointed with his own blood, giving birth to the men who inhabit the present universe. One important body of myths describes Quetzalcóatl as the priest-king of Tula, the capital of the Toltecs. He never offered human victims, only snakes, birds, and butterflies. But the god of the night sky, Tezcatlipoca, expelled him from Tula by performing feats of black magic. Quetzalcóatl wandered down to the coast of the "divine water" (the Atlantic Ocean) and then immolated himself on a pyre, emerging as the planet Venus. According to another version, he embarked upon a raft made of snakes and disappeared beyond the eastern horizon. The legend of the victory of Tezcatlipoca over the Feathered Serpent probably reflects historical fact. The first century of the Toltec civilization was dominated by the Teotihuacán culture, with its inspired ideals of priestly rule and peaceful behaviour. The pressure of the northern immigrants brought about a social and religious revolution, with a military ruling class seizing power from the priests. Quetzalcóatl's defeat symbolized the downfall of the Classic theocracy. His sea voyage to the east should probably be connected with the invasion of Yucatán by the Itzá, a tribe that showed strong Toltec features. Quetzalcóatl's calendar name was Ce Acatl (One Reed). The belief that he would return from the east in a One Reed year led the Aztec sovereign Montezuma II to regard the Spanish conqueror Hernán Cortés and his comrades as divine envoys, because 1519, the year in which they landed on the Mexican Gulf coast, was a One Reed year. In addition to his guise as a plumed serpent, Quetzalcóatl was often represented as a man with a beard; as Ehécatl, the wind god, he was shown with a mask with two protruding tubes (through which the wind blew) and a conical hat typical of the Huastec tribe of northeastern Mexico. The temple of Quetzalcóatl at Tenochtitlán, the Aztec capital, was a round building, a shape that fitted the god's personality as Ehécatl. Circular temples were believed to please Ehécatl because they offered no sharp obstacles to the wind. Round monuments occur particularly often in Huastec territory. Quetzalcóatl ruled over the days that bore the name ehécatl ("wind") and over the eighteenth 13-day series of the ritual calendar. He was also the ninth of the 13 gods of the daytime hours. Although he was generally listed as one of the first-rank deities, no ceremonial month was dedicated to his cult. As the god of learning, of writing, and of books, Quetzalcóatl was particularly venerated in the calmecac, religious colleges annexed to the temples, in which the future priests and the sons of the nobility were educated. Outside of Tenochtitlán, the main centre of Quetzalcóatl's cult was Cholula, on the Puebla plateau. Lapis Lazuli (Final Fantasy IX), item lapis lazuli semiprecious stone valued for its deep blue colour. The source of the pigment ultramarine, it is not a mineral but a rock coloured by lazurite (see sodalite). In addition to the sodalite minerals in lapis lazuli, small amounts of white calcite and of pyrite crystals are usually present. Diopside, amphibole, feldspar, mica, apatite, titanite (sphene), and zircon may also occur. Because lapis is a rock of varying composition, its physical properties are variable. It usually occurs in crystalline limestones and is a product of contact metamorphism. The most important sources are the mines in Badakhshan, northeastern Afghanistan, and those near Ovalle, Chile, where it is usually pale rather than deep blue. Much of the material that is sold as lapis is an artificially coloured jasper from Germany that shows colourless specks of clear, crystallized quartz and never the goldlike flecks of pyrite that are characteristic of lapis lazuli and have been compared with stars in the sky. Narciss (Final Fantasy IX), plot element Narcissus d. AD 54 freedman who used his position as correspondence secretary (ab epistulis) to the Roman emperor Claudius (ruled 41-54) to become, in effect, a minister of state. Narcissus exercised great influence over Claudius and accumulated immense wealth. At first he allied himself with Claudius' third wife, Messalina Valeria, but fear that she and her lover, Gaius Silius, were conspiring to seize power made him join with others to have her executed (48). By failing to support Claudius' subsequent marriage to Agrippina the Younger, Narcissus lost influence in the government. The finance secretary, Pallas, who had favoured the match, became Claudius' favourite. Narcissus' power was further undermined when he backed Britannicus, son of Claudius and Messalina, for the succession even after Agrippina had persuaded Claudius to designate as his successor her own son (by a previous marriage), Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus. In 54 Claudius died, perhaps poisoned by Agrippina. Domitius took power as the emperor Nero and immediately had Narcissus arrested. Shortly afterward the freedman committed suicide. Ozma (Final Fantasy IX), plot element Ozma, Project attempt undertaken in 1960 to detect radio signals generated by hypothetical intelligent beings living near stars other than the Sun. Some 150 hours of intermittent observation during a four-month period detected no recognizable signals. Frank D. Drake, director of the search, named the project for the princess of Oz, an imaginary and marvelous distant place described in tales by the American writer L. Frank Baum. The search was carried out with the aid of a special receiver attached to a radio telescope 26 m (85 feet) in diameter at the U.S. National Radio Astronomy Observatory at Green Bank, W.Va. The receiver was tuned to wavelengths near 21 cm, which is the wavelength of radiation emitted naturally by interstellar hydrogen; it was thought that this would be familiar, as a kind of universal standard, to anyone attempting interstellar radio communication. The telescope was aimed at two nearby stars (Epsilon Eridani and Tau Ceti, both about 11 light-years from the Earth) that resemble the Sun and seem reasonably likely to have inhabited planets. A second experiment, called Ozma II, was conducted at the same observatory by Benjamin Zuckerman and Patrick Palmer, who intermittently monitored more than 650 nearby stars for about four years (1973-76). Sephiroth (Final Fantasy VII), character Sephiroth: The figure comprised of ten circles and 22 lines , which is the primary glyph or mandala of the Qabalah or Kabalah. In western culture it is called The Tree Of Life. The Tree Of Life illustrates, symbolically, a process of manifestation, or FORCE precipitating into FORM. Force in organization undergoes an increase in complexity and density on descending the Tree. The circles are called Sephiroth or Major Paths of Wisdom, and represent established forms of existence (form concepts). The lines are called the Minor Paths of Wisdom and represent established forms of consciousness (force concepts). From top to bottom, here are the ten Sephiroth of the Tree of Life: Kether, meaning Crown Chokmah, meaning Wisdom Binah, meaning Understanding Chesed, meaning Mercy Geburah, meaning Severity Tiphareth, meaning Beauty Netzach, meaning Victory Hod, meaning Splendor Yesod, meaning Foundation Malkuth, meaning Kingdom There are several correspondences or associations for each Sephirah. There are also paths which connect the Sephiroth to each other, but the Sephiroth themselves are called paths. Hence, there are said to be thirty-two Paths of Wisdom, the ten Sephiroth and the twenty-two paths between them. The twenty-two paths correspond to the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Many modern studies also correlate the twenty-two paths to the twenty-two cards of Tarot's Major Arcana. The ten Sephiroth are arranged in three columns. Kether, Tiphareth, Yesod, and Malkuth are all in the center column or pillar. Chokmah, Chesed, and Netzach are all on the right pillar, called the Pillar of Mercy, which is considered the masculine pillar, the pillar of force. Binah, Geburah, and Hod are all on the left pillar, which is called the Pillar of Severity and is considered a feminine pillar, the pillar of form. The middle pillar is called the Pillar of Mildness and represents the power of equilibrium SEPHIROT: The Infinite God's 10 emanations or attributes Carbuncle (Final Fantasy General), guardian force, carbuncle in medicine, a type of inflammatory staphylococcal infection of the skin. A carbuncle typically consists of two or more interconnected boils called furuncles; these are painful red nodules that form yellowish heads which burst to release pus and dead tissue. Carbuncles, however, are larger than furuncles, generally involve deeper layers of the skin, and have multiple openings for the drainage of pus. They occur most often in hairy skin areas or areas that are subject to friction--e.g., the back of the neck, the armpits, and the buttocks. While simple boils can be eliminated by the application of hot, moist dressings followed by washing with soap, carbuncles may have to be lanced and drained, a procedure that is often followed by antibiotic treatment. After the treatment, poor hygiene may lead to a recurrence. carbuncle in mineralogy, a deep red, cabochon-cut almandine, which is an iron aluminum garnet. Yggdrasil (Xenogears), plot element There is a tradition familiar all Norse poets: namely, the tradition that depicts the entire world as a tree of prodigious dimensions - a tree on which was supported the universe. This tree whose foliage was always green was the ash tree Yggdrasil. It is the Ever Green, the axial pole of the World, the Mighty Ash, the fountain of life, eternal life and immortality. There is no distinct myth anywhere pointing to the creation of Yggdrasil. The roots of the great ash tree tied together the three tricentric levels or planes, which made up the existing world. The three planes consisted of: Asgard, Vanaheim, and Alfheim(being the constitution of the first level), Midgard, Jotunheim, Nidavellir, and Svartalfheim(being the second level). The third level housed Hel and Nifelheim. There was a space which separated each of these planes as well. Its trunk drove ever upwards, passing from underworld depths; on through the world of men, where it united the waves, soil, and sky; and on above to overshadow Valhalla. One of Yggdrasil's roots reached down into the depths of the subterranean kingdom and its mighty boughs rose to the heights of the sky, where the infinite expanse of the universe was rested upon its branches. In the poetic language of the skalds Yggdrasil signified the 'Steed of the Redoubtable' (Odin) and the gigantic tree received its name because, they said, Odin's charger was in the habit of browsing in its foliage. Near the root which plunged into Niflhel, the underworld, gushed forth the fountain Hvergelmir, the bubbling source of the primitive rivers, where time was measured in its laughter. Beside the second root, which penetrated the land of giants, covered with frost and ice, flowed the fountain of Mimir, in which all wisdom dwelt and from which Odin himself desired to drink even though the price demanded for a few draughts was the loss of an eye. He even hung himself for nine nights from Yggdrasil; this act applying to a rejuvenation sacrifice symbol. Finally under the third root of Yggdrasil - which according to one tradition was in the very heavens - was the fountain of the wisest of the Norns, Urd. Every day the Norns drew water from the well with which they sprinkled the ash tree so that it should not wither and rot away. In the highest branches of the tree was perched a solar(or golden) cock, representing vigilance, surveyed the horizon and warned the gods whenever their ancient enemies, the Giants, prepared to attack them. The boughs gave hold to the eagle and serpent as well - who as light and darkness, were in perpetual conflict. There continual battles created the dichotomy of the days; light usurping darkness, but falling to it ever the same. The squirrel known as Ratatoskr, known as the mischief maker, constantly created strife between the two warring powers. Under the ash tree the horn of the god Heimdall was hidden. One day this trumpet would sound to announce the final battle of the Aesir against all those who wished to cause their downfall. Near the vigorous trunk of the tree there was a consecrated space, a place of peace where the gods met daily to render justice. In its branches the goat Heidrun browsed; she gave Odin's warriors the milk with which they were nourished. Malevolent demons continually schemed to destroy the ash Yggdrasil. A cunning monster, the serpent Nidhogg, also known as the Dread Biter, lurked under the third root and gnawed at it ceaselessly - representing the malevolent forces of the universe. Four stags wandered among its foliage and nibbled off all the young buds. There among the lower branches, the stags became the four winds, creating the sweeping winds upon the earthly lands. There most concentrated efforts to clean the tree of green buds were stifled, as new ones would spring forth at each moment. Thanks however to the care and attention of the Norns the tree continued to put forth green shoots and rear its indestructible trunk through the center of the earth. Symbolic interpretations applied to Yggdrasil are many. It is a subject of constant decay and renewal. The immortal beasts enact this cyclic play in the woven mesh which constitutes its branches. This stage also sets the groundwork for universal notions in life, time, and destiny - in linear and cyclic proportions. "Decay is the beginning of all birth, the midwife of very great things. This is one of the deepest mysteries." Christian religion would see this as being the definition of a miracle; this union of life and death is the most profound aspect, ". . .which God has revealed to men." (From Paracelsus: Selected Writings, edited by Jolande Jacobi) Not much longer until we see how Yggdrasil touched other cultures - and also, we will talk of the battles between the giants. Cinna (Final Fantasy IX), character - Cinna, Gaius Helvius fl. 1st century BC Roman poet who wrote a mythological epic poem Smyrna. He was a friend of the poet Catullus. The early Christian-era historians Suetonius, Valerius Maximus, Appian, and Dio Cassius all state that at Caesar's funeral (44 BC) a certain Helvius Cinna was killed by mistake for Cornelius Cinna, the conspirator. The last three writers identify him as a tribune of the people, while Plutarch states that he was a poet. On the other hand, two lines in the 9th eclogue of Virgil, supposed to have been written in 41 or 40 BC, seem to imply that Helvius Cinna was then alive. Apart from his epic the Smyrna, Cinna is credited with having written a Propempticon Pollionis, a poem in the form of a "send-off" to his friend Asinius Pollio. In both these poems, the language of which was so obscure that they required special commentaries, his model appears to have been Parthenius of Nicaea, the Greek poet and teacher of Virgil. Pierre Corneille, detail of an oil painting attributed to Charles Le Brun, ... Corneille, Pierre Major tragedies. Corneille seems to have taken to heart the criticisms levelled at Le Cid, and he wrote nothing for three years (though this time was also taken up with a lawsuit to prevent the creation of a legal office in Rouen on a par with his own). In 1640, however, appeared the Roman tragedy Horace; another, Cinna, appeared in 1641. In 1641 also Corneille married Marie de Lampérière, the daughter of a local magistrate, who was to bear him seven children to whom he was a devoted father. Corneille's brother Thomas married Marie's sister, and the two couples lived in extraordinary harmony, their households hardly separated; the brothers enjoyed literary amity and mutual assistance. Le Cid, Horace, Cinna, and Polyeucte, which appeared in 1643, are together known as Corneille's "classical tetralogy" and together represent perhaps his finest body of work for the theatre. Horace was based on an account by the Roman historian Livy of a legendary combat between members of the Horatii and Curiatii families, representing Rome and Alba; Corneille, however, concentrated on the murder by one of the patriots of his pacifist sister, the whole case afterward being argued before the king (a "duplicity" of action admitted by Corneille himself, who otherwise seems by now to have decided to follow the classical rules). Cinna was about a conspiracy against the first Roman emperor, Augustus, who checkmates his adversaries by granting them a political pardon instead of dealing them the expected violent fate, boasting that he has strength enough to be merciful. The hero of Polyeucte (which many critics have considered to be Corneille's finest work), on adopting Christianity seeks a martyr's death with almost militaristic fervour, choosing this as the path to la gloire ("glory") in another world, whereas his wife insists that the claims of marriage are as important as those of religion. These four plays are charged with an energy peculiar to Corneille. Their arguments, presented elegantly, rhetorically, in the grand style, remain firm and sonorous. The alexandrine verse that he employed (though not exclusively) was used with astonishing flexibility as an instrument to convey all shades of meaning and expression: irony, anger, soliloquy, repartee, epigram. Corneille used language not so much to illumine character as to heighten the clash between concepts, hence the "sentences" in his poetry which are memorable even outside their dramatic context. Action here is reaction. These plays concern not so much what is done as what is resolved, felt, suffered. Their formal principle is symmetry: presentation, by a poet who was also a lawyer, of one side of the case, then of the other, of one position followed by its opposite. Lucretia (Final Fantasy VII) character, plot element - relationship Lucretius??? Lucretius fl. 1st century BC in full TITUS LUCRETIUS CARUS, Latin poet and philosopher known for his single, long poem, De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things). The poem is the fullest extant statement of the physical theory of the Greek philosopher Epicurus; it also alludes to his ethical and logical doctrines. Life Apart from Lucretius' poem almost nothing is known about him. What little evidence there is, is quite inconclusive. Jerome, a leading Latin Church Father, in his chronicle for the year 94 BC (or possibly 96 or 93 BC), stated that Lucretius was born in that year and that years afterward a love potion drove him insane; and in lucid intervals having written some books, which Cicero afterward emended, he killed himself in his 44th year (51 or 50 BC). Aelius Donatus, a grammarian and teacher of rhetoric, in his "Life" of Virgil noticed that Virgil put on the toga virilis (the toga of an adult) in his 17th year, on his birthday (i.e., 54 or 53 BC), and that Lucretius died that same day. But Donatus contradicted himself by stating that the consuls that year were the same as in the year of Virgil's birth (i.e., Crassus and Pompey, in 55 BC). This last date seems partly confirmed by a sentence in Cicero's reply to his brother in 54 BC (Ad Quintum fratrem 2, 9, 3), which suggests that Lucretius was already dead and also that Cicero may have been involved in the publication of his poem: "The poems of Lucretius are as you write in your letter--they have many highlights of genius, yet also much artistry." Excepting the single mention in Cicero, the only contemporary who named Lucretius was a Roman historian, Cornelius Nepos (Atticus 12, 4), in the phrase "after the death of Lucretius and Catullus," and the only contemporary whom Lucretius named was one Memmius, to whom he dedicated his poem, probably Gaius Memmius (son-in-law of Sulla, praetor of 58 BC, and patron of Catullus and Gaius Helvius Cinna), for whose friendship Lucretius "hopes." De rerum natura. The title of Lucretius' work translates that of the chief work of Epicurus, Peri physeos (On Nature), as also of the didactic epic of Empedocles, a pluralist philosopher of nature, of whom Lucretius spoke with admiration only less than that with which he praised his master Epicurus. Lucretius distributed his argument into six books, beginning each with a highly polished introduction. Books I and II established the main principles of the atomic universe, refuted the rival theories of the pre-Socratic cosmic philosophers Heracleitus, Empedocles, and Anaxagoras, and covertly attacked the Stoics, a school of moralists rivaling that of Epicurus. Book III demonstrated the atomic structure and mortality of the soul and ended with a triumphant sermon on the theme "Death is nothing to us." Book IV described the mechanics of sense perception, thought, and certain bodily functions and condemned sexual passion. Book V described the creation and working of this world and the celestial bodies and the evolution of life and human society. Book VI explained remarkable phenomena of the earth and sky, in particular, thunder and lightning. The poem ends with a description of the plague at Athens, a sombre picture of death contrasting with that of spring and birth in the invocation to Venus, with which it opened. Argument of the poem. The argument in outline is as follows: 1. No thing is either created out of or reducible to nothing. The universe has an infinite extent of empty space (or void) and an infinite number of irreducible particles of matter (or atoms)--though their kinds are finite. Atoms differ only in shape, size, and weight and are impenetrably hard, changeless, everlasting, the limit of physical division. They are made up of inseparable minimal parts, or units. Larger atoms have more such parts, but even the larger are minute. All atoms would have moved everlastingly downward in infinite space and never have collided to form atomic systems had they not swerved at times to a minimal degree. To these indeterminate swerves is due the creation of an infinite plurality of worlds; they also interrupt the causal chain and so make room for free will. All things are ultimately systems of moving atoms, separated by greater or smaller intervals of void, which cohere more or less according to their shapes. All systems are divisible and therefore perishable (except the gods), and all change is explainable in terms of the addition, subtraction, or rearrangement of changeless atoms. 2. The soul is made of exceedingly fine atoms and has two connected parts: the anima distributed throughout the body, which is the cause of sensation, and the animus in the breast, the central consciousness. The soul is born and grows with the body, and at death it is dissipated like "smoke." 3. Though the gods exist, they neither made nor manipulate the world. As systems of exceedingly fine atoms, they live remote, unconcerned with human affairs, examples to men of the ideal life of perfect happiness (absence of mental fear, emotional turmoil, and bodily pain). 4. Men know by sense perception and argue by reason according to certain rules. Though the senses are infallible, reason can make false inferences. Objects can be seen because they discharge from their surface representative films, which strike the eye just as smells strike the nose. Separate atoms are in principle imperceptible, having no dischargeable parts. The senses perceive the properties and accidents of bodies; reason infers the atoms and the void, which exists to explain the perceived movement of bodies. 5. Men naturally seek pleasure and avoid pain. Their aim should be so to conduct their lives that they get, on balance, the maximum of pleasure and the minimum of pain. They will succeed in this only if they are able, through philosophy, to overcome the fear of death and of the gods. Literary qualities of the poem. The linguistic style and spirit of the poem are notable. The problem of Lucretius was to render the bald and abstract Greek prose of Epicurus into Latin hexameters at a time when Latin had no philosophic vocabulary. He succeeded by applying common words to a technical use. Thus, he used concilium ("assembly of people") for a "system of atoms" and primordia ("first weavings") for the "atoms" that make up the texture of things. When necessary, he invented words. In poetic diction and style he was in debt to the older Latin poets, especially to Quintus Ennius, the father of Roman poetry. He freely used alliteration and assonance, solemn and often metrically convenient archaic forms, and old constructions. He formed expressive compound adjectives of a sort rejected by Augustan taste--e.g., "the light-sleeping hearts of dogs," "forest-breaking winds." He imitated or echoed Homer; the dramatists Aeschylus and Euripides; Callimachus, a poet and critic; the historian Thucydides; and the physician Hippocrates. His hexameters stand halfway between those of Ennius, who introduced the metre into Latin, and Virgil, who perfected it. There is also some incoherence of rhythm, as well as harsh elisions and examples of unusual prosody. The influence of Lucretius on Virgil was pervasive, especially in Virgil's Georgics; and it is in clear allusion to Lucretius that Virgil wrote "Happy is the man who can read the causes of things" (Georgics II, 490). Lucretius spoke in austere compassion for the ignorant, unhappy human race. His moral fervour expressed itself in gratitude to Epicurus and in hatred of the seers who inculcated religious fears by threats of eternal punishment after death, of the Etruscan soothsayers with their lore of thunder and lightning, of the false philosophers--Stoics with their belief in divine providence or Platonists and Pythagoreans who taught the transmigration of immortal souls. The first appearance of religio in the poem is as a monster that thrusts its fearful head from the regions of the sky. Epicurus, not intimidated by these spectres, had ranged beyond the "flaming ramparts of the world" through the infinite universe, broken into the citadel of nature, and brought back in triumph the knowledge of what can and what cannot be, of that "deep-set boundary stone" that divides the separate properties of things, the real from the not real. And "so religion is crushed beneath our feet and his [Epicurus'] victory lifts us to the skies." ei·do·lon (-dln) n., pl. ei·do·lons or ei·do·la (-l). A phantom; an apparition. An image of an ideal. Excalibur, (Final Fantasy General) Excalibur in Arthurian legend, King Arthur's sword. As a boy Arthur alone was able to draw the sword out of a stone in which it had been magically fixed. This account is contained in Sir Thomas Malory's 15th-century prose rendering of the Arthurian legend, but another story in the same work suggests that it was given to Arthur by the Lady of the Lake and that, when the king lay mortally wounded after his last battle, he ordered the faithful Sir Bedivere to go to the water and throw the sword into it. An arm rose to catch it, brandished Excalibur three times, and then disappeared. There was a famous sword in Irish legend called Caladbolg, from which Excalibur is evidently derived by way of Geoffrey of Monmouth, whose Historia regum Britanniae refers to Arthur's sword as Caliburn. Malory says that Excalibur means "cut-steel." Mesopotamian Religion Mesopotamian religion Akkadian literature The first centuries of the 2nd millennium BC witnessed the demise of Sumerian as a spoken language and its replacement by Akkadian. Because of its role as bearer of Sumerian culture, as the language of religion, literature, and many arts, however, Sumerian (much as Latin in the Middle Ages) continued to be taught and spoken in the scribal schools throughout the 2nd and 1st millennia BC. New compositions were even composed in Sumerian. As time passed these grew more and more corrupt in grammar. Akkadian, when it supplanted Sumerian as the spoken language of Mesopotamia, was not without its own literary tradition. Writing, to judge from Akkadian orthographic peculiarities, was very early borrowed from the Sumerians. By Old Babylonian times (c. 19th century BC), the literature in Akkadian, partly under the influence of Sumerian models and Sumerian literary themes, had developed myths and epics of its own, among them the superb Old Babylonian Gilgamesh epic (dealing with the problem of death; see below Epics) as well as hymns, disputation texts (evaluations of elements of the cosmos and society), penitential psalms, and not a few independent new handbook genres--e.g., omina, rituals, laws and legal phrasebooks (often translated from Sumerian), mathematical texts, and grammatical texts. There was a significant amount of translation from Sumerian; translations include incantation series such as the Utukke limnuti ("The Evil Spirits"), laments for destroyed temples, penitential psalms, and others. The prestige of Sumerian as a literary language, however, is indicated by the fact that translations were rarely, if ever, allowed to supersede the original Sumerian text. The Sumerian text was kept with an interlinear translation to form a bilingual work. The continued study and copying of literature in the schools, both Sumerian and Akkadian, by the middle of the 2nd millennium led to a remarkable effort of standardizing, or canonizing. Texts of the same genre were collected, often under royal auspices and with royal support, and were then sifted and finally edited in series that from then on were recognized as the canonical form. Authoritative texts were established for incantations, laments, omina, medical texts, lexical texts, and others. In myths and epics, such major and lengthy compositions as the Akkadian creation story Enuma elish, the Erra myth, the myth of Nergal and Ereshkigal, the Etana legend, the Gilgamesh epic, and the Tukulti-Ninurta epic were reworked or re-created. Of special interest are philosophical compositions, such as the Akkadian Ludlul bel nemeqi, "Let me praise the expert," and theodicies (justification of divine ways) that deal with the problem of the just sufferer, similar to the biblical Job. They constitute a high point in the genre of wisdom literature. From the 1st millennium BC the rise of factual historical chronicles and a spate of political and religious polemical writings reflecting the rivalry between Assyria and Babylonia deserve mention. Very late in the millennium, the first astronomical texts appeared. Myths The Akkadian myths are in many ways dependent on Sumerian materials, but they show an originality and a broader scope in their treatment of the earlier Sumerian concepts and forms; they address themselves more often to existence as a whole. Fairly close to Sumerian prototypes is an Akkadian version of the myth of "Inanna's Descent." An Old Babylonian myth about the Thunderbird Ansud, who stole the tablets of fates and was conquered by Ninurta, who was guided by Enki's counsel, is probably closely related to the Sumerian story of Ninurta's contest with Enki. Also important is an Old Babylonian "Myth of Atrahasis," which, in motif, shows a relationship with the account of the creation of man to relieve the gods of toil in the "Enki and Ninmah" myth, and with a Sumerian account of the Flood in the "Eridu Genesis." The Atrahasis myth, however, treats these themes with noticeable originality and remarkable depth. It relates, first, how the gods originally had to toil for a living, how they rebelled and went on strike, how Enki suggested that one of their number--the god We, apparently the ringleader who "had the idea"--be killed and mankind created from clay mixed with his flesh and blood, so that the toil of the gods could be laid on man and the gods left to go free. But after Enki and the birth goddess Nintur (another name for Ninmah) had created man, man multiplied at such a rate that the din he made kept Enlil sleepless. At first Enlil had Namtar, the god of death, cause a plague to diminish mankind's numbers, but the wise Atrahasis, at the advice of Enki, had man concentrate all worship and offerings on Namtar. Namtar, embarrassed at hurting people who showed such love and affection for him, stayed his hand. Next Enlil had Adad, the god of rains, hold back the rains and thus cause a famine, but, because of the same stratagem, Adad was embarrassed and released the rains. After this, Enlil planned a famine by divine group action that would not be vulnerable as the earlier actions by individual gods had been. Anu and Adad were to guard the heavens, he himself earth, and Enki the waters underground and the sea so that no gift of nature could come through to man. The ensuing famine was terrible. By the seventh year one house consumed the other and people began eating their own children. At that point Enki--accidentally he maintained--let through a wealth of fish from the sea and so saved man. With this, however, Enlil's patience was at an end and he thought of the Flood as a means to get rid of humanity once and for all. Enki, however, warned Atrahasis and had him build a boat in which he saved himself, his family, and all animals. After the flood had abated and the ship was grounded, Atrahasis sacrificed, and the hungry gods, much chastened, gathered around the offering. Only Enlil was unrelenting until Enki upbraided him for killing innocent and guilty alike and--there is a gap in the text--suggested other means to keep human numbers down. In consultation with the birth goddess Nintur, Enki then developed a scheme of birth control by inventing the barren woman, the demon Pashittu who kills children at birth, and the various classes of priestesses to whom giving birth was taboo. The myth uses the motif of the protest of the gods against their hard toil and the creation of man to relieve it, which was depicted earlier in the Sumerian myth of "Enki and Ninmah," and also the motif of the Flood, which occurred in the "Eridu Genesis." The import of these motifs here is, however, new: they bring out the basic precariousness of man's existence; man's usefulness to the gods will not protect him unless he takes care not to annoy them, however innocently. He must stay within bounds; there are limits set for his self-expression. A far more trustful and committed attitude toward the powers that rule existence finds expression in the seemingly slightly later Babylonian creation story, Enuma elish, which may be dated to the later part of the 1st dynasty of Babylon (c. 1894-c. 1595 BC). Babylon's archenemy at that time was the Sealand, which controlled Nippur and the country south of it--the ancestral country of Sumerian civilization. This lends political point to the battle of Marduk (thunder and rain deity), the god of Babylon, with the Sea, Tiamat; it also accounts for the odd, almost complete silence about Enlil of Nippur in the tale. The myth tells how in the beginning there was nothing but Apsu, the sweet waters underground, and Tiamat, the sea, mingling their waters together. In these waters the first gods came into being, and generation followed generation. The gods represented energy and activity and thus differed markedly from Apsu and Tiamat, who stood for rest and inertia. True to their nature the gods gathered to dance, and in so doing, surging back and forth, they disturbed the insides of Tiamat. Finally, Apsu's patience was at an end, and he thought of doing away with the gods, but Tiamat, as a true mother, demurred at destroying her own offspring. Apsu, however, did not swerve from his decision, and he was encouraged in this by his page Mummu, "the original (watery) form." When the youngest of the gods, the clever Ea (Sumerian Enki), heard about the planned attack he forestalled it by means of a powerful spell with which he poured slumber on Apsu, killed him, and built his temple over him. He seized Mummu and held him captive by a nose rope. In the temple thus built the hero of the myth, Marduk, was born. From the first he was the darling of his grandfather, the god of heaven, Anu, who engendered the four winds for him to play with. As they blew and churned up waves, the disturbing of Tiamat--and of a faction of the gods who shared her desire for rest--became more and more unbearable. At last these gods succeeded in rousing her to resistance, and she created a mighty army with a spearhead of monsters to destroy the gods. She placed her consort Kingu ("Task[?]") at the head of it and gave him absolute powers. When news of these developments reached the gods there was consternation. Ea was sent to make Tiamat desist, and then Anu, but to no avail. Finally Anshar, god of the horizon and king of the gods, thought of young Marduk. Marduk proved willing to fight Tiamat but demanded absolute authority. Accordingly, a messenger was sent to the oldest of the gods, Lahmu and Lahamu ("Silt[?]"), to call the gods to assembly, and in the assembly the gods conferred absolute authority on Marduk, tested it by seeing whether his word of command alone could destroy a constellation and then again make it whole, hailed him king, and set him on the road of "security and obedience," a formula of allegiance that based his power and authority on the pressing need for protection of the moment. In the ensuing encounter with Tiamat's forces Kingu and his army lost heart when they saw Marduk. Only Tiamat stood her ground, seeking first to throw him off his guard by flattery about his quick rise to leadership, but Marduk angrily denounced her and the older generation: "The sons (had to) withdraw (for) the fathers were acting treacherously, and (now) you, who gave birth to them, bear malice to the offspring." At this Tiamat, furious, attacked, but Marduk loosed the winds against her, pierced her heart with an arrow, and killed her. Kingu and the gods who had sided with her he took captive. Having thus won a lasting victory for his suzerain, King Anshar, he gave thought to what he might do further. Cleaving the carcass of Tiamat, he raised half of her to form heaven, ordered the constellations, the calendar, the movements of Sun and Moon, and, keeping control of atmospheric phenomena for himself, made the Earth out of the other half of her, arranging its mountains and rivers. Having organized the various administrative tasks, he put their supervision in Ea's hands; to Anu he gave the tablets of fate he had taken from Kingu. His prisoners he paraded in triumphal procession before his fathers, and as a monument to his victory he set up images of Tiamat's monsters at the gate of his parental home. The gods were overjoyed to see him; Anshar rushed toward him and Marduk formally announced to him the state of security he had achieved. He then bathed, dressed, and seated himself on his throne, with the spear "Security and Obedience," named from his mandate, at his side. By now, however, the situation had subtly altered. The old fear and urgent need for protection was gone, but in its stead had come a promise held out by Marduk's organizational powers; so when the gods reaffirmed their allegiance to him as king they used a new formula: "benefits and obedience." From then on Marduk would take care of their sanctuaries and they, in turn, would obey him. Marduk then announced his intention of building a city for himself, Babylon, with room for the gods when they come there for assembly. His fathers suggested that they move to Babylon themselves to be with him and help in the administration of the world he had created. Next, he pardoned the gods who had sided with Tiamat and had been captured, charging them with the building tasks. Grateful for their lives, they prostrated themselves before him, hailed him as king, and promised to do the building. Pleased with their willingness, Marduk magnanimously wanted to relieve them even from this chore and planned to create man to do the toil for them. At the advice of his father Ea, he then had them indict Kingu as instigator of the rebellion. Kingu was duly sentenced and executed, and from his blood Ea created man. Then Marduk divided the gods into a celestial and a terrestrial group, assigned them their tasks in the cosmos, and allotted them their stipends. Thus freed from all burdens, the gods wanted to show their gratitude to Marduk, and as a token they took, of their own free will, for one last time, spade in hand to build Babylon and Marduk's temple Esagila. In the new temple the gods then assembled and distributed the celestial and terrestrial offices. The "great gods" went into session and permanently appointed the "seven gods of destinies," or better "of the decrees," who would formulate in final form the decrees enacted by the assembly. Marduk then presented his weapons, and Anu adopted the bow as his daughter and gave it a seat among the gods. Lastly, Marduk was enthroned, and after the gods had prostrated themselves before him they bound themselves by oath--touching their throats with oil and water--and formally gave him kingship, appointing him permanently lord of the gods of heaven and earth. After this they solemnly named his 50 names expressive of his power and achievements. The myth ends with a plea that it be handed on from father to son and told to future rulers, that they may heed Marduk: it is the song of Marduk who bound Tiamat and assumed the kingship. The motifs from which this myth is built up are in large measure known from elsewhere. The initial generation of the gods is a variant form of the genealogy of Anu in the great god list An: Anum. The threat to annihilate the disturbers of sleep are known from the Atrahasis and the Sumerian Flood traditions. The battle of Marduk with Tiamat seems to stem from western myths of a battle between the thunder god and the sea. The organization of the universe after victory recalls the organization of conquered territory in Lugal-e. The killing of a rebel god to create man to take over the gods' toil is found in the Atrahasis myth and--without the rebel aspect--in a bilingual creation myth found in Assur. New and original, however, is the way in which they have all been grouped and made dependent on the figure of the young king. The political form of the monarchy is seen as embracing the universe; it was the prowess of a young king that overcame the forces of inertia; it was his organizational genius that created and organized all; and it is he that--like his counterpart on earth, the human king--grants benefits in return for obedience. The high value set on the monarchy as a guarantor of security and order in the Enuma elish can hardly have seemed obvious in Babylonia in the first troubled years of Assyrian rule in the second quarter of the 1st millennium BC. From this period (c. 700 BC) comes a myth usually called the Erra epic, which reads almost like a polemic against Enuma elish. It tells how the god of affray and indiscriminate slaughter, Erra, persuaded Marduk to turn over the rule of the world to him while Marduk was having his royal insignia cleaned, and how Erra, true to his nature, used his powers to institute indiscriminate rioting and slaughter. Royal power here stands no longer for security and order but for the opposite: license to kill and destroy. Two other Akkadian myths may be mentioned--both probably dating from the middle of the 2nd millennium--the myth of the "Dynasty of Dunnum" and the myth of "Nergal and Ereshkigal." The first of these tells of succeeding divine generations ruling in Dunnum, the son usually killing his father and marrying, sometimes his mother, sometimes his sister, until--according to a reconstruction of the broken text--more acceptable mores came into vogue with the last generation of gods, Enlil and Ninurta. This myth, as has been mentioned, underlies the Greek poet Hesiod's Theogony. The myth of Nergal and Ereshkigal relates the unorthodox way in which the god Nergal became the husband of Ereshkigal and king of the netherworld. Gilgamesh (Final Fantasy VIII), guardian Force Gilgamesh the best known of all ancient Mesopotamian heroes. Numerous tales in the Akkadian language have been told about Gilgamesh, and the whole collection has been described as an odyssey--the odyssey of a king who did not want to die. The fullest extant text of the Gilgamesh epic is on 12 incomplete Akkadian-language tablets found at Nineveh in the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal (reigned 668-627 BC). The gaps that occur in the tablets have been partly filled by various fragments found elsewhere in Mesopotamia and Anatolia. In addition, five short poems in the Sumerian language are known from tablets that were written during the first half of the 2nd millennium BC; the poems have been entitled "Gilgamesh and Huwawa," "Gilgamesh and the Bull of Heaven," "Gilgamesh and Agga of Kish," "Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Nether World," and "The Death of Gilgamesh." The Gilgamesh of the poems and of the epic tablets was probably the Gilgamesh who ruled at Uruk in southern Mesopotamia sometime during the first half of the 3rd millennium BC and who was thus a contemporary of Agga, ruler of Kish; Gilgamesh of Uruk was also mentioned in the Sumerian list of kings as reigning after the flood. There is, however, no historical evidence for the exploits narrated in poems and epic. The Ninevite version of the epic begins with a prologue in praise of Gilgamesh, part divine and part human, the great builder and warrior, knower of all things on land and sea. In order to curb Gilgamesh's seemingly harsh rule, the god Anu caused the creation of Enkidu, a wild man who at first lived among animals. Soon, however, Enkidu was initiated into the ways of city life and traveled to Uruk, where Gilgamesh awaited him. Tablet II describes a trial of strength between the two men in which Gilgamesh was the victor; thereafter, Enkidu was the friend and companion (in Sumerian texts, the servant) of Gilgamesh. In Tablets III-V the two men set out together against Huwawa (Humbaba), the divinely appointed guardian of a remote cedar forest, but the rest of the engagement is not recorded in the surviving fragments. In Tablet VI Gilgamesh, who had returned to Uruk, rejected the marriage proposal of Ishtar, the goddess of love, and then, with Enkidu's aid, killed the divine bull that she had sent to destroy him. Tablet VII begins with Enkidu's account of a dream in which the gods Anu, Ea, and Shamash decided that he must die for slaying the bull. Enkidu then fell ill and dreamed of the "house of dust" that awaited him. Gilgamesh's lament for his friend and the state funeral of Enkidu are narrated in Tablet VIII. Afterward, Gilgamesh made a dangerous journey (Tablets IX and X) in search of Utnapishtim, the survivor of the Babylonian flood, in order to learn from him how to escape death. He finally reached Utnapishtim, who told him the story of the flood and showed him where to find a plant that would renew youth (Tablet XI). But after Gilgamesh obtained the plant, it was seized by a serpent, and Gilgamesh unhappily returned to Uruk. An appendage to the epic, Tablet XII, related the loss of objects called pukku and mikku (perhaps "drum" and "drumstick") given to Gilgamesh by Ishtar. The epic ends with the return of the spirit of Enkidu, who promised to recover the objects and then gave a grim report on the underworld. cuirass, (RPG general), item cuirass body armour that protects the torso of the wearer above the waist or hips. Originally it was a thick leather garment covering the body from neck to waist, consisting of a breastplate and a backpiece fastened together with straps and buckles and a gorget, a collar protecting the throat. In Homeric and Hellenistic times, it was made of bronze. Cuirasses of leather as well as iron were worn by officers in the armies of the Roman Empire. Later made of steel, the cuirass was forerunner to the body armour worn to deflect bullets. Elixir, (RPG General), item elixir in alchemy, substance thought to be capable of changing base metals into gold. The same term, more fully elixir vitae, "elixir of life," was given to the substance that would indefinitely prolong life--a liquid that was believed to be allied with the philosopher's stone. Chinese Taoists not only sought the "pill of immortality" but developed techniques (meditation, breathing exercises, diet) that were thought to confer immortality by internal alchemy. In pharmacy, an elixir is usually defined as a sweetened hydroalcoholic solution containing flavouring materials and usually medicinal substances. catoblepas (monster) The catoblepas was a creature in some tales, was like a bull with scales. It was mentioned in a book by Gustave Flaubert, but it was first "sighted" by Pliny on a travel between Ethiopia and Egypt. He said that the locals called it "Catoblepas." garuda (monster) The Garuda is a golden-bodied bird recorded by the Buddhist culture. Garuda has an eagle's beak and wings, and a human body. His face is white, his wings are scarlet, and his body is golden. Garuda is possibly the oldest of the great birds. It is so large that it can blot out the sun, darkening the sky. The beneficent Garuda, also called the "Bird of Life", is the mount of Vishnu. Garuda used to be fond of daily killing and eating a snake, until a Buddhist prince taught him the value of abstinence. The penitent Garuda then brought back to life the bones of the many generations of serpents he had fed upon. Garuda is the enemy of the Nagas and the Kirata. According to the Mahabharata, the parents of the Garuda gave it permission to devour bad men, but not Brahmans. griffin The Griffin is a legendary creature with the head, beak and wings of an eagle, the body of a lion and occasionally the tail of a serpent or scorpion. Its origin lies somewhere in the Middle East where it is found in the paintings and sculptures of the ancient Babylonians, Assyrians and Persians. In Greek mythology, they took gold from the stream Arimaspias and, neighbors of the Hyperboreans, they belonged to Zeus. The later Romans used them for decoration and even in Christian times the Griffin motif often appears. Griffins were frequently used as gargoyles on medieval churches and buildings. In more recent times, the Griffin only appears in literature and heraldry. Gargoyle -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Gargoyles are the grotesque carvings of faces and bodies of humans and animals. Serving originally as water spouts to direct the water clear of a wall, they can often be found on (Gothic) buildings and churches. In medieval times, the function of Gargoyles changed. They became representations of religious events, created for the illiterate population to "read". From the fact that Gargoyles are such hideous creatures stems the notion that they were created to avert evil. Placed on the outside of buildings supposedly kept evil out. In later times, most of them became mainly ornamental and served no other purpose than decoration. Kraken - In Norwegian sea folklore, the Kraken is an enormous sea monster which would sometimes attack ships and feed upon the sailors. It is part octopus and part crab, although others refer to it as a giant squid Lamia - A water sprite or mermaid in Basque stories. She has none of the malignancy of the conventional Lamia of classical mythology. Chimera -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In Greek mythology, the Chimera is a monster, depicted as an animal with the head of a lion, the body of a she-goat, and the tail of a dragon (sometimes it has multiple heads). It is a child of Typhon and Echidna. It terrorized Lycia (in Asia Minor), but was eventually killed by the Corinthian hero Bellerophon.

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