Sidebilder
PDF
ePub

may, with some probability, be dated from the victory gained by Eurylochus and the Amphictyonic army. The exercise of this right had the effect of preserving to the council permanently a considerable degree of importance. In early times the Delphic god had enjoyed immense authority. He sent out colonies, founded cities, and originated weighty measures of various kinds. Before the times of which we have lately been speaking, his influence had been somewhat diminished; but the oracle was still most anxiously consulted both on public and private matters. The custody of the temple was also an object of jealous interest on account of the vast treasures contained within its walls.

The Greek writers, who notice the religious jurisdiction of the council, point our attention almost exclusively to Delphi; but it may be inferred from a remarkable fact mentioned by Tacitus (Ann. iv. 14), that it was much more extensive. The Samians, when petitioning in the time of the Emperor Tiberius for the confirmation of a certain privilege to their temple of Juno, pleaded an ancient decree of the Amphictyons in their favour. The words of the historian seem to imply that the decree was made at an early period in the existence of Greek colonies in Asia Minor, and he says that the decision of the Amphictyons on all matters had at that time pre-eminent authority.

the inhabitants were reduced to slavery, their lands consecrated to Apollo, and a curse was pronounced on all who should hereafter cultivate them. We are told that Solon acted a prominent part on this occasion, and that great deference was shown to his counsels. Mr. Mitford, indeed, has discovered without help from history, which is altogether silent on the subject, that he was the author of sundry important innovations, and that he in fact remodelled the constitution of the Amphictyonic body. He has even been able to catch a view of the secret intentions of the legislator, and of the political principles which guided him. But in further assigning to Solon the command of the Amphictyonic army, he is opposed to the direct testimony of the ancient historiaus.

From the conclusion of the Cirrhæan war to the time of Philip of Macedon, an interval exceeding two centuries, we hear little more of the Amphictyons, than that they rebuilt the temple at Delphi, which had been destroyed by fire B.C. 548; that they set a price on the head of Ephialtes, who betrayed the cause of the Greeks at Thermopylæ, and conferred public honours on the patriots who died there; and that they erected a monument to the famous diver Scyllias as a reward for the information which, as the story goes, he conveyed under water from the Thessalian coast to the commanders of the Grecian fleet at Artemisium. If Plutarch The sacred wars, as they were called, may be trusted, the power of the Amphicwhich were originated by the Amphic- tyons had not at this time fallen into contyons in the exercise of their judicial tempt. When a proposition was made authority, can here be noticed only so far by the Lacedæmonians to expel from the as they help to illustrate the immediate council all the states which had not taken subject of inquiry. The Cirrhæan war, part in the war against the Persians, it in the time of Solon, has already been was resisted successfully by Themistocles, incidentally mentioned. The port of on the ground that the exclusion of three Cirrha, a town on the Crissæan bay, af- considerable states, Argos, Thebes, and forded the readiest access from the coast the Thessalians, would give to the more to Delphi. The Cirrhæans, availing them-powerful of the remaining members a selves of their situation, grievously op- preponderating influence in the council, pressed by heavy exactions the numerous dangerous to the rest of Greece. pilgrims to the Delphic temple. The Amphictyons, by direction of the oracle, proclaimed a sacred war to avenge the cause of the god; that is, to correct an abuse which was generally offensive, and particularly injurious to the interests of the Delphians. Cirrha was destroyed,

After having, for a long period, nearly lost sight of the Amphictyons in history, we find them venturing, in the fallen fortunes of Sparta, to impose a heavy fine on that state as a punishment for an old offence, the seizure of the Theban Cadmeia, the payment of which, how

ever, they made no attempt to enforce. In this case, as well as in the celebrated Phocian war, the Amphictyonic council can be considered only as an instrument in the hands of the Thebans, who, after their successful resistance to Sparta, appear to have acquired a preponderating influence in it, and who found it convenient to use its name and authority, whilst prosecuting their own schemes of vengeance or ambition. Though the charge brought against the Phocians was that of impiety in cultivating a part of the accursed Cirrhæan plain, there is no reason to think that any religious feeling was excited, at least in the earlier part of the contest; and Amphictyonic states were eagerly engaged as combatants on both sides. For an account of this war the reader is referred to a general history of Greece. The council was so far affected by the result, that it was compelled to receive a new member, and in fact a master, in the person of Philip of Macedon, who was thus rewarded for his important services at the expense of the Phocians, who were expelled from the confederacy. They were, however, at a subsequent period restored, in consequence of their noble exertions in the cause of Greece and the Delphic god against the Gauls. It may be remarked, that the testimony of the Phocian general Philomelus, whatever may be its value, is rather in favour of the supposition that the council was not always connected with Delphi. He justifies his opposition to its decrees, on the ground that the right which the Amphictyons claimed was comparatively a modern usurpation. In the case of the Amphissians, whose crime was similar to that of the Phocians, the name of the Amphictyons was again readily employed; but Eschines, who seems to have been the principal instigator of the war, had doubtless a higher object in view than that of punishing the Amphissians for impiety.

The Amphictyonic council long survived the independence of Greece, and was, probably, in the constant exercise of its religious functions. So late as the battle of Actium, it retained enough of its former dignity at least to induce Augustus to claim a place in it for his

new city of Nicopolis. Strabo says that in his time it had ceased to exist. If his words are to be understood literally, it must have been revived; for we know from Pausanias (x. 8), that it was in existence in the second century after Christ. It reckoned at that time twelve constituent states, who furnished in all thirty deputies; but a preponderance was given to the new town of Nicopolis, which sent six deputies to each meeting; Delphi sent two to each meeting, and Athens one deputy: the other states sent their deputies according to a certain cycle, and not to every meeting. For the time of its final dissolution we have no authority on which we can rely.

It is not easy to estimate with much certainty the effects produced on the Greek nation generally by the institution of this council. It is, however, something more than conjecture that the country which was the seat of the original members of the Amphictyonic confederacy was also the cradle of the Greek nation, such as it is known to us in the historical ages. This country was subject to incursions from barbarous tribes, especially on its western frontier, probably of a very different character from the occupants of whom we have been speaking. In the pressure of these incursions, the Amphictyonic confederacy may have been a powerful instrument of preservation, and must have tended to maintain at least the separation of its members from their foreign neighbours, and so to preserve the peculiar character of that gifted people, from which knowledge and civilization have flowed over the whole western world. It may also have aided the cause of humanity; for it is reasonable to suppose that in earlier times differences between its own members were occasionally composed by interference of the council; and thus it may have been a partial check on the butchery of war, and may at least have diminished the miseries resulting from the cruel lust of military renown. In one respect its influence was greatly and permanently beneficial. In common with the great public festivals, it helped to give a national unity to numerous independent states, of which the Greek nation was composed. But it had a

merit which did not belong to those festivals in an equal degree. It cannot be doubted that the Amphictyonic laws, which regulated the originally small confederacy, were the foundation of that international law which was recognised throughout Greece; and which, imperfect as it was, had some effect in regulating beneficially national intercourse among the Greeks in peace and war, and, so far as it went, was opposed to that brute force and lawless aggression which no Greek felt himself restrained by any law from exercising towards those who were not of the Greek name. To the investigator of that dark but interesting period in the existence of the Greek nation which precedes its authentic records, the hints which have been left us on the earlier days of this council, faint and scanty as they are, have still their value. They contribute something to those fragments of evidence with which the learning and still more the ingenuity of the present generation are converting mythical legends into a body of ancient history. ANARCHY (from the Greek ȧvapxía, anarchia, absence of government) properly means the entire absence of political government; the condition of a collection of human beings inhabiting the same country, who are not subject to a common sovereign. Every body of persons living in a state of nature (as it is termed) is in a state of anarchy; whether that state of nature should exist among a number of persons who have never known political rule, as a horde of savages, or should rise in a political society in consequence of resistance on the part of the subjects to the sovereign, by which the person or persons in whom the sovereignty is lodged are forcibly deprived of that power. Such intervals are commonly of short duration; but after most revolutions, by which a violent change of government has been effected, there has been a short period during which there was no person or body of persons who exercised the executive or legislative sovereignty, that is to say, a period of anarchy.

Anarchy is sometimes used in a transferred or improper sense to signify the condition of a political society, in which,

|

according to ne writer or speaker, there has been an undue remissness or supineness of the sovereign, and especially of those who wield the executive scvereignty. In the former sense, anarchy means the state of a body of persons among whom there is no political government; in its second sense, it means the state of a political society in which there has been a deficient exercise of the sovereign power. As an insufficiency of government is likely to lead to no government at all, the term anarchy has, by a common exaggeration, been used to signify the small degree, where it properly means the entire absence. [SOVEREIGNTY.]

ANATOMY ACT. Before the passing of 2 & 3 Will. IV. c. 75, on the 1st of August, 1832, the medical profession was placed in a situation at once anomalous and discreditable to the intelligence of the country. The law rendered it illegal for the medical practitioner or teacher of anatomy to possess any human body for the purposes of dissection, save that of murderers executed pursuant to the sentence of a court of justice, whilst it made him liable to punishment for ignorance of his profession; and while the charters of the medical colleges enforced the duty of teaching anatomy by dissection, the law rendered such a course impracticable. But as the interests of society require anatomy to be taught, the laws were violated, and a new class of offenders and new crimes sprung up as a consequence of legislation being inconsistent with social wants. By making anatomical dissection a penalty for crime, the strong prejudices which existed respecting dissection were magnified tenfold. This custom existed in England for about three centuries, having commenced early in the sixteenth century, when it was ordered that the bodies of four criminals should be assigned annually to the corporation of barber-surgeons. The 2 & 3 Will. IV. c. 75, repealed s. 4, 9 Geo. IV. c. 31, which empowered the court, when it saw fit, to direct the body of a person convicted of murder to be dissected after execution. Bodies are now obtained for anatomical purposes under the following regulations enacted in 2 & 3 Will. IV. c.

75, which is entitled 'An act for regulating | until forty-eight hours after death, nor Schools of Anatomy. The preamble of until twenty-four hours' notice after death this act recites that the legal supply of to the anatomical inspector of the district human bodies for anatomical examination of the intended removal, such notice to was insufficient, and that in order further be accompanied by a certificate of the to supply human bodies for such purpose cause of death, signed by the physician, various crimes were committed, and lately surgeon, or apothecary who attended murder, for the sole object of selling the during the illness whereof the deceased bodies of the persons so murdered. The person died; or if not so attended, the act then empowers the principal Secre- body is to be viewed by some physician, tary of State, and the Chief Secretary for surgeon, or apothecary after death, and Ireland, to grant a licence to practise who shall not be concerned in examining anatomy to any member or fellow of any the body after removal. Their certificollege of physicians or surgeons, or to cate is to be delivered with the body to any graduate or licentiate in medicine, or the party receiving the same for exato any person lawfully qualified to prac- mination, who within twenty-four hours tise medicine, or to any professor or must transmit the certificate to the inspecteacher of anatomy, medicine, or surgery; tor of anatomy for the district, accomor to any student attending any school of panied by a return stating at what day anatomy, on application countersigned and hour and from whom the body was by two justices of the place where the received, the date and place of death, the applicant resides, certifying that to their sex, and (as far as known) the name, age, knowledge or belief such person is about and last abode of such person; and these to carry on the practice of anatomy. (s. 1.) particulars, with a copy of the certificate, Notice is to be given of the place where are also to be entered in a book, which is it is intended to examine bodies anatoto be produced whenever the inspector mically, one week at least before the first requires. The body on being removed is receipt or possession of a body. The to be placed in a decent coffin or shell and Secretary of State appoints inspectors of be removed therein; and the party replaces where anatomical examinations ceiving it is to provide for its interment are carried on, and they make a quar- after examination in consecrated ground, terly return of every deceased person's or in some public burial-ground of that body removed to each place in their district religious persuasion to which the person where anatomy is practised, distinguish-whose body was removed belonged; and ing the sex, and the name and age. Executors and others (not being undertakers, &c.) may permit the body of a deceased person, lawfully in their possession, to undergo anatomical examination, unless, to the knowledge of such executors or others, such person shall have expressed his desire, either in writing or verbally during the illness whereof he died, that his body might not undergo such examination; and unless the surviving husband or wife, or any known relative of the deceased person shall require the body to be interred without. Although a person may have directed his body after death to be examined anatomically, yet if any surviving relative objects, the body is to be interred without undergoing such examination. (s. 8.) When a body may be lawfully removed for anatomical examination, such removal is not to take place |

a certificate of the interment is to be transmitted to the inspector of anatomy for the district within six weeks after the body was received for examination. Offences against the act may be punished with imprisonment for not less than three months, or a fine of not more than 50%.

The supply, under this act, of the bodies of persons who die friendless in poor-houses and hospitals and elsewhere, is said to be sufficient for the present wants of the teachers of anatomy. The enormities which were formerly practised by "resurrection-men" and "burkers have ceased. The number of bodies annually supplied in London for the purposes of dissection amounts to 600.

[ocr errors]

ANCIENT DEMESNE. [MANOR.] ANGLICAN CHURCH. [ESTABLISHED CHURCH OF ENGLAND AND IRELAND.]

ANNALS, in Latin Annales, is derived from annus, a year. Cicero, in his second book, 'On an Orator' (De Oratore, 12), informs us, that from the commencement of the Roman state down to the time of Publius Mucius, it was the custom for the Pontifex Maximus annually to commit to writing the transactions of the past year, and to exhibit the account publicly on a tablet (in albo) at his house, where it might be read by the people. Mucius was Pontifex Maximus in the beginning of the seventh century from the foundation of Rome. These are the registers, Cicero adds, which we now call the Annales Maximi,' the great annals. It is probable that these annals are the same which are frequently referred to by Livy under the title of the 'Commentarii Pontificum,' and by Dionysius under that of iépai déλToi, or 'Sacred Tablets.' Cicero, both in the passage just quoted, and in another in his first book On Laws' (De Legibus), speaks of them as extremely brief and meagre documents. It may, however, be inferred from what he says, that parts of them at least were still in existence in his time, and some might be of considerable antiquity. Livy says (vi. 1) that most of the Pontifical Commentaries were lost at the burning of the city after its capture by the Gauls. It is evident, however, that they were not in Livy's time to be found in a perfect state even from the date of that event (B.C. 390); for he is often in doubt as to the succession of magistrates in subsequent periods, which it is scarcely to be supposed he could have been, if a complete series of these annals had been preserved.

The word annals, however, was also used by the Romans in a general sense; and it has been much disputed what was the true distinction between annals and history. Cicero, in the passage in his work De Oratore,' says, that the first narrators of public events, both among the Greeks and Romans, followed the same mode of writing with that in the Annales Maximi;' which he further describes as consisting in a mere statement of facts briefly and without ornament. In his work 'De Legibus' he characterizes history as something distinct from this, and

of which there was as yet no example in the Latin language. It belongs, he says, to the highest class of oratorical composition (" opus oratorium maxime").

This question has been considerably perplexed by the division which is commonly made of the historical works of Tacitus, into books of Annals and books called Histories. As what are called his Annals' are mainly occupied with events which happened before he was born, while in his History' he relates those of his own time, some critics have laid it down as the distinction between history and annals, that the former is a narration of what the writer has himself seen, or at least been contemporary with, and the latter of transactions which had preceded his own day.

Aulus Gellius (v. 18), in his discussion on the difference between Annals and History, says that some consider that both History and Annals are a record of events, but that History is properly a narrative of such events as the narrator has been an eye-witness of. He adds that Verrius Flaccus, who states that some people hold this opinion, doubts about its soundness, though Verrius thinks that it may derive some support from the fact that, in Greek, History (ioropía) properly signifies the obtaining of the knowledge of present events. But Gellius considers that all annals are histories, though all histories are not annals; just as all men are animals, but all animals are not men. Accordingly Histories are considered to be the exposition or showing forth of events; Annals, to contain the events of several successive years, each event being assigned to its year. The distinction which the historian Sempronius Asellio made is this, as quoted by Gellius

[blocks in formation]
« ForrigeFortsett »