which he belonged, even to absurdity, and, by the force | sonal attractions, even in her infancy, that Theseus, of consequences, came to a result directly opposite to that of the founder of the school. From the position that pleasure is the sovereign good, he deduced the inference that man cannot be truly happy, since, as his body is exposed to too many evils, of which the soul also partakes, he cannot attain to the sovereign good: hence it follows that death is more desirable than life. Hegesias upheld this doctrine with so much ability and success, that many of his auditors, on leaving his lectures, put an end to their existence. Ptolemy I. judged it necessary to send him into exile. (Schöll, Hist. Litt. Gr., vol. 3, p. 249.) in company with his friend Pirithoüs, carried her off, when only a child, from a festival at which they saw her dancing in the temple of Diana Orthia. It was agreed, during their flight, that he who should, by lot, become possessor of the prize, should assist in procuring a wife for the other. The lot fell to Theseus, and he accordingly conveyed Helen to Aphidna, and there placed her under the care of his mother Æthra till she should have attained to years of maturity. From this retreat, however, her brothers, Castor and Pollux, recovered her by force of arms, and restored her to her family. According to Pausanias, however, she was of HEGESIPPUS, I. an historian, mentioned by Diony- nubile years when carried off by Theseus, and became sius of Halicarnassus (Ant. Rom., 1, 49 et 72). He by him the mother of a daughter, who was given to wrote on the antiquities of Pallene, a peninsula of Clytemnestra to rear. (Pausan., 2, 22.)—Among the Thrace, where Eneas was supposed to have taken most celebrated of the young princes of Greece, who, refuge after the capture of Troy. He made the Tro- from the reputation of her personal charms, subsejan chief to have ended his days here.-II. A comic quently became her suiters, were, Ulysses, son of Lapoet, a native of Tarentum, surnamed Crobylus (Kpw- ertes; Antilochus, son of Nestor; Sthenelus, son of búλoç), or "Toupee," from his peculiar manner of Capaneus; Diomedes, son of Tydeus; Amphilochus, wearing his hair. His pieces have not reached us: son of Cteatus; Meges, son of Phileus; Agapenor, we have eight epigrams ascribed to him, which are son of Ancæus; Thalpius, son of Eurytus; Mnesthremarkable for their simplicity.-III. An ecclesiastical eus, son of Peteus; Schedius, son of Epistrophus ; historian, by birth a Jew, and educated in the religion Polyxenus, son of Agasthenes: Amphilochus, son of of his fathers. He was afterward converted to Chris- Amphiaraus; Ascalaphus and Ialmus, sons of the god tianity, and became bishop of Rome about the year 177, Mars; Ajax, son of Oïleus; Eumelus, son of Admewhere he died in the reign of the Emperor Commodus, tus; Polypotes, son of Pirithous; Elpenor, son of about the year 180. He was the author of an eccle- Chalcodon; Podalirius and Machaon, sons of Æsculasiastical history, from the period of our Saviour's death pius; Leontus, son of Coronus; Philoctetes, son of down to his own time, which, according to Eusebius, Pæan; Protesilaus, son of Iphiclus; Eurypylus, son contained a faithful relation of the apostolic preaching, of Evemon; Ajax and Teucer, sons of Telamon; Pawritten in a very simple style. The principal value troclus, son of Menatius; Menelaüs, son of Atreus; of the existing fragments, which have been preserved Thoas, Idomeneus, and Merion. Tyndarus was rathfor us by Eusebius and Photius, arises from the testi- er alarmed than pleased at the sight of so great a mony that may be deduced from scriptural passages number of illustrious princes, who eagerly solicited quoted in them in favour of the genuineness of the each to become his son-in-law. He knew that he books of the New Testament. There has been as- could not prefer one without displeasing all the rest, cribed to Hegesippus a history of the destruction of and from this perplexity he was at last extricated by Jerusalem, written in Latin, under the title of "De the artifice of Ulysses, who began to be already known Bello Judaico et urbis Hierosolymitana excidio histo- in Greece by his prudence and sagacity. This prince, ria." It is not, however, by Hegesippus; and appears, who clearly saw that his pretensions to Helen would indeed, to be nothing more than a somewhat enlarged not probably meet with success in opposition to so translation of Josephus. A Milan manuscript ascribes many rivals, proposed to free Tyndarus from all his it to St. Ambrose, and perhaps correctly, since there difficulties if he would promise him his niece Penelis a great conformity between its style and that of the ope in marriage. Tyndarus consented, and Ulysses prelate just mentioned. The fragments of the eccle- advised the king to bind, by a solemn oath, all the siastical history of Hegisippus were published at Ox-suiters, that they would approve of the uninfluenced ford in 1698, in the 2d volume of Grabe's Spicileg. choice which Helen should make of one among them, ss. Patrum, p. 205; in the 2d volume of Halloix's and engage to unite together to defend her person work" De Scriptorum Oriental. vitis," p. 703; and in and character, if ever any attempts were made to carGalland's Biblioth. Gr. Lat. Vet. Patr., Venet., 1788, ry her off from her husband. The advice of Ulysses fol., vol. 2, p. 59. was followed, the princes consented, and Helen fixed her choice upon Menelaus, and married him. Hermione was the early fruit of this union, which continued for three years with mutual happiness. After this, Paris, son of Priam, king of Troy, came to Lacedæmon on pretence of sacrificing to Apollo. He was kindly received by Menelaus; but, taking advantage of the temporary absence of the latter in Crete, corrupted the fidelity of Helen, and persuaded her to flee with him to Troy. Menelaus, returning from Crete, assembled the Grecian princes, and reminded them of their solemn promises. They resolved to make war against the Trojans; but they previously sent ambassadors to Priam to demand the restitution of Helen. The influence of Paris at his father's court prevented her restoration, and the Greeks returned home without receiving the satisfaction they required. Soon after their return, their combined forces assembled and sailed for the coast of Asia.-When Paris had been slain, in the ninth year of the war, Helen married Deiphobus,son of Priam; but, on the capture of the city, betrayed him into the hands of Menelaus, through a wish of ingratiating herself into the favour of her former husband. On her return to Greece, Helen lived many HELENA, the most beautiful woman of her age. There are different accounts of her birth and parentage. The common, and probably the most ancient, one is, that she was the daughter of Leda by Jupiter, who took the form of a white swan. According to the Cyprian Epic, she was the offspring of Jupiter and Nemesis, who had long fled the pursuit of the god, and, to elude him, had taken the form of all kinds of animals. (Athen., 8, p. 334.) At length, while she was under that of a goose, the god became a swan, and she laid an egg, which was found by a shepherd in the woods. He brought it to Leda, who laid it up in a coffer, and in due time Helena was produced from it. (Apollod., 3, 10, 4.) Hesiod, on the other hand, calls Helena the daughter of Oceanus and Tethys. (Schol. ad Pind., Nem., 10, 150) In the Iliad, Helena is termed "begotten of Jupiter" (I., 3, 418); and she calls Castor and Pollux" her own brothers, whom one mother bore with her." (Il., 3, 238.) In the Odyssey these are expressly called the sons of Tyndarus. This, however, does not prove that Helena was held to be his daughter.-The beauty of Helena was proverbial. She was so renowned, indeed, for her per years with Menelaüs, who forgave her infidelity; but, | charms. But if there were the least truth in the upon his death, she was driven from the Peloponnesus history of this personage and in the chronology of by Megapenthes and Nicostratus, the illegitimate sons the times, she must have been at this period a very of her husband, and she retired to Rhodes, where at old woman. For her brothers were in the Argothat time Polyxo, a native of Argos, reigned over the nautic expedition, and in a state of complete man. country. Polyxo remembered that her widowhood ori- hood. One of them is mentioned as contending in ginated in Helen, and that her husband, Tlepolemus, fight with Amycus, the Bebrycian, a person of un had been killed in the Trojan war, and she therefore common stature and strength: his opponent, therefore, resolved upon revenge. While Helen one day retired could not have been a stripling. We cannot well alto bathe in the river, Polyxo disguised her attendants in low less than twenty-five years for his time of life. the habits of Furies, and sent them with orders to mur- Now, from the Argonautic expedition to the taking der her enemy. Helen was tied to a tree and stran- of Troy, there were, according to Scaliger (Animadv. gled, and her misfortunes were afterward commemo- in Euseb., p. 46), seventy-nine years. If, then, we add rated, and the crime of Polyxo expiated, by the tem- to these her age at the time of the Argonauts, which ple which the Rhodians raised to Helena Dendritis, or we have presumed to have been twenty-five years, it Helena" tied to a tree."-There is a tradition men- makes her no less than a hundred and four in the last tioned by Herodotus, which says that Paris was driven, year of the siege. Or if we allow her to have been as he returned from Sparta, upon the coast of Egypt, only twenty at the time of the expedition, still she will where Proteus, king of the country, expelled him from prove sufficiently old to have been Hecuba's mother. his dominions for his ingratitude to Menelaus, and Hence Seneca says very truly (Epist., 384), when confined Helen. From that circumstance, therefore, he is treating of the priority of Hesiod and Homer, Priam informed the Grecian ambassadors that nei- "Utrum major ætate fuerit Homerus an Hesiodus, non ther Helen nor her possessions were in Troy, but in magis ad rem pertinet quam scire, an minor Hecuba futhe hands of the King of Egypt. In spite of this as- erit quam Helena; et quare tam male tulerit ætatem." sertion, the Greeks besieged the city, and took it after Petavius makes the interval between this celebrated ten years' siege; and Menelaus, visiting Egypt as he expedition and the fall of Troy of the same extent returned home, recovered Helen at the court of Pro- as Scaliger. (Rationale Temp., p. 290, seqq.) The teus, and was convinced that the Trojan war had been former he places in the year 3451 of the Julian period, undertaken upon unjust grounds. Herodotus adds, and the latter in 3530. The difference in both is 79. that, in his opinion, Homer was acquainted with these To these, if we add 25 for her age at that era, it will circumstances, but did not think them so well calcu- amount to 104. After the seduction of Helen by Parlated as the popular legend for the basis of an epic is, the Grecians are said to have been ten years in poem. (Herod., 2, 112, 116, seqq.)-It was fabled, preparing for the war, and ten years in carrying it on. that, after death, Helen was united in marriage with This agrees with the account given by Helen of herAchilles, in the island of Leuce, in the Euxine, where self in the last year of the siege, which was the twenshe bore him a son named Euphorion. (Pausanias, tieth from her first arrival from Sparta. (Il., 24, 75.) 3, 19.-Conon, 18.-Ptol., Hephast., 4.) Nothing, If we then add these twenty years to the seventy-nine, however, can be more uncertain than the whole history and likewise twenty-five for her age at the time of the of Helen. The account of Herodotus has been al- Argonautic expedition, it will make her still older than ready given in the course of this article. According she was estimated above, and increase her years to 124. to Euripides (Helena, 25, seqq.), Juno, piqued at be- Telemachus, the son of Ulysses, is said to have seen holding Venus bear away the prize of beauty, caused her at Sparta ten years afterward, and she is repreMercury to carry away the true Helen from Greece to sented even then to have been as beautiful as Diana Egypt, and gave Paris a phantom in her stead. After (Od., 4, 122), though at that time, if these computathe destruction of Troy, the phantom bears witness to tions are true, she must have been 134 years old. the innocence of Helen, a storm carries Menelaus to These things are past all belief. Another difficulty the coast of Egypt, and he there regains possession of will be found in the history of those princes, who, achis bride. Others pretend that Helen never married cording to the common account, formed the grand conMenelaus; that she preferred Paris to all the princes federacy in order to recover her, if she should at any that sought her in marriage; and that Menelaus, irri- time be stolen away. They are said to have been for tated at this, raised an army against Troy. Some wri- the most part her suiters, who bound themselves by an ters think they see, in these conflicting and varying oath to unite for that purpose whenever they should be statements, a confirmation of the opinion entertained by called upon. At what time of life may we suppose Helmany, that the ancient quarrel of Hercules and Laome-en to have been, when these engagements were made don, and the violence offered to Hesione, the daughter in her favour, in consequence of her superior beauof that monarch, and not the carrying off of Helen, were ty? We may reasonably conclude she was about her the causes of the Trojan war. Others treat the story twentieth or twenty-fifth year; and her suiters could of the oath exacted from the suiters with very little cer- not well be younger. But, at this rate, the principal emony, and make the Grecian princes to have followed leaders of the Grecians at the siege of Troy must have Agamemnon to the field as their liege lord, and as stand-been 100 years old. But the contrary is evinced in ing at the head of the Achæan race, to whom therefore every part of the poem, wherever these heroes are introthey, as commanding the several divisions and tribes duced. Still farther; it has been mentioned, that, beof that race, were bound to render service. But the fore the seduction of Helen by Paris, she was said to more we consider the history of Helen, the greater will have been stolen from her father's house by Theseus ; be the difficulties that arise. It seems strange indeed, and we are told by some writers that she was then but supposing the common account to be true, that so seven years old. This has been said in order to lower many cities and states should combine to regain her the time of her birth, that she may not appear so old when she went away voluntarily with Paris, and that in the last year of the war. But this is a poor expenot a single hamlet should rise in her favour when she dient, which in some degree remedies one evil, but, at was forcibly carried away by Theseus. Again, the the same time, creates another. How can it be conbeauty of Helen is often mentioned by the poet. The ceived that a king of Athens should betake himself to very elders of Troy, when they saw her pass by, could Sparta, in order to run away with a child seven years not help expressing their admiration. (Il., 3, 158.) old and how could she, at that age, have been officiAgamemnon promises to Achilles the choice of twen-ating at the altar of Diana Orthia? This leads to anty female captives, the fairest after Helen. (Il., 9, 140.) other circumstance equally incredible. For if she By this he strongly intimates the superiority of her were so young, her brothers must have been precisely HELIADES, I. the daughters of the Sun and Clymene. They were three in number, Lampetie, Phaëtusa, and Lampethusa; or seven, according to Hyginus, Merope, Helie, Egle, Lampetie, Phoebe, Ethe ria, and Dioxippe. They were so afflicted at the death of their brother Phaethon (Vid. Phaethon), that they were changed by the gods into poplars, and their tears into amber, on the banks of the river Po. (Ovid, Met., 2, 340.-Hygin., fab., 154.)—II. Children of the Sun and the nymph Rhodus. They were seven in number, and were fabled to have been the first inhabitants of the island of Rhodes. (Vid. Rhodus.) of the same age; for one, if not both, was hatched | ated by deterring him from sailing with the rest of the from the same egg. Yet these children, so little past Greeks, who (he foretold) would be exposed to a se their infant state, are said to have pursued Theseus, vere tempest on leaving the Trojan shore. Pyrrhus and to have regained their sister. They must have not only manifested his gratitude by giving him Anbeen sturdy urchins, and little short of the sons of dromache in marriage, but nominated him his succesAloeus. (Consult, on this whole subject, Bryant, Dis- sor in the kingdom of Epirus, to the exclusion of his sertation on the War of Troy, p. 9, seqq.)—It is more son Molossus, who did not ascend the throne until afthan probable, indeed, that the whole legend relative to ter the death of Helenus. A son named Cestrinus Helen was originally a religious and allegorical myth. was the offspring of the union of Helenus with AnThe remarkable circumstance of her two brothers liv- dromache. (Virg., En., 3, 294, seqq.-Consult the ing and dying alternately, leads at once to a suspicion authorities quoted by Heyne, Excurs. 10, ad En., 3.) of their being personifications of natural powers and objects. This is confirmed by the names in the myth, all of which seem to refer to light or its opposite. Thus Leda differs little from Leto, and may therefore be regarded as darkness. She is married to Tyndarus, a name which seems to belong to a family of words relating to light, flame, or heat (Vid. Tyndarus); her children by him or Jupiter, that is, by Jupiter-Tyndarus, the bright god, are Helena, Brightness (E2a, "light"); Castor, Adorner, (kúw, " to adorn"); and Polydeukes, Dewful (dɛvw, devкýs). In Helen, therefore, we have only another form of Selene; the Adorner is a very appropriate term for the day, the light of which adorns all nature; and nothing can be more apparent than the suitableness of Dewful to the night. (Keightley's Mythology, p. 432.)-II. (commonly known in ecclesiastical history by the name of St. Helena), the first wife of Constantius Chlorus, was born of obscure parents, in a village called Drepanum, in Bithynia, which was afterward raised by her son Constantine to the rank of a city, under the name of Helenopolis. Her husband Constantius, on being mnade Cæsar by Dioclesian and Maximian (A.D. 292), repudiated Helena, and married Theodora, daughter of Maximian. Helena withdrew into retirement unti! her son Constantine, having become emperor, called his mother to court, and gave her the title of AugusHe also supplied her with large sums of money, which she employed in building and endowing churches, and in relieving the poor. About A.D. 325 she set out on a pilgrimage to Palestine, and, having explored the site of Jerusalem, she thought that she had discovered the sepulchre of Jesus, and also the cross on which he died. The identity of the cross which she found has been, of course, much doubted: she, however, built a church on the spot, supposed to be that of the Sepulchre, which has continued to be venerated by that name to the present day. She also built a church at Bethlehem, in honour of the nativity of our Saviour. From Palestine she rejoined her son at Nicomedia, in Bithynia, where she expired, in the year 327, at a very advanced age. She is numbered by the Roman church among the saints. (Euseb., Vit. Const. -Hübner, de Crucis Dominica per Helenam inventione, Helmstädt, 1724.)—III. A deserted and rugged island in the Egean, opposite to Thorikos, and extending from that parallel to Sunium. It received its name from the circumstance of Paris's having landed on it, as was said, in company with Helena, when they were fleeing from Sparta. (Plin., 4, 12.—Mela, 2. 7.) Strabo, who follows Artemidorus, conceived it was the Crane of Homer. (Il., 3, 444.) Pliny calls it Macris. The modern name is Macronisi. ta. HELIASTÆ, a name given to the judges of the most numerous tribunal at Athens. (Harpocr., p. 138.Bekk., Anecd. Gr., p. 310, 32.) Of all the courts which took cognizance of civil affairs, the 'Halaia was the most celebrated and frequented. It derived its name, àñò тov áλíšeσbai, from the thronging of the people; or, according to others, áñò тоû hλíov, from the sun, because it was in an open place, and exposed to the sun's rays. (Dorv., ad Charit., p. 242.) The judges, or, rather, jurymen of the Heliæa, amounted in all to 6000, being citizens of above thirty years of age, selected annually by the nine archons and their secretary; probably 600 from each tribe. The Heliasta, however, seldom all met, being formed into ten divisions, the complement of each of which was strictly 500, although it varied according to circumstances; sometimes diminishing to 200 or 400, while on other occasions appears to have been raised to 1000 or 1500, by the union of two or three divisions. The 1000, therefore, to make up the full 6000, must have acted as supernumeraries. (Wachsmuth, Hellen. Alterthumsk., vol. 2, pt. 1, p. 314.) Every one to whose lot it fell to serve as juryman, received, after taking the oath, a tablet inscribed with his name, and the number of the division to which he was to belong during the year. On the morning of every court day, recourse was again had to lots, to decide in which court the divisions should respectively sit for that day.-For other particulars, consult Hermann, Polit. Antiq., p. 265.-Tillmann, Darstell. der Gr. Staatsverf., p. 213, seqq. HELICE, I. another name for the Ursa Major, or "Greater Bear." (Vid. Arctos.)-II. One of the chief cities of Achaia, situate on the shore of the Sinus Corinthiacus, near Bura. (Herod., 1, 46.) It was celebrated for the temple and worship of Neptune, thence called Heliconius. Here also the general meeting of the Ionians was convened, while yet in the possession of Ægialus, and the festival which then took place is supposed to have resembled that of the Panionia, which they instituted afterward in Asia Minor. (Pausan., HELENUS, an eminent soothsayer, son of Priam and 7, 24.-Strab., 384.) A prodigious influx of the sea, Hecuba, and the only one of their sons who survived caused by a violent earthquake, overwhelmed and the siege of Troy. He was so chagrined, according completely destroyed Helice two years before the batto some, at having failed to obtain Helen in marriage tle of Leuctra, B.C. 373. The details of this catasafter the death of Paris, that he retired to Mount Ida, trophe will be found in Pausanias (7, 24) and Ælian and was there, by the advice of Calchas, surprised and (Hist. Anim., 11, 19). It was said, that some vesticarried away to the Grecian camp by Ulysses. Among ges of the submerged city were to be seen long after other predictions, Helenus declared that Troy could the terrible event had taken place. (Ovid, Met., 15, not be taken unless Philoctetes could be prevailed on 293.) Eratosthenes, as Strabo reports, beheld the site to quit his retreat and repair to the siege. After the of this ancient city, and he was assured by mariners destruction of Troy, he, together with Andromache, that the bronze statue of Neptune was still visible befell to the share of Pyrrhus, whose favour he concili-neath the waters, holding an hippocampo, or sea-horse in his hand, and that it formed a dangerous shoal for discovered a short time after the death of Cicero, when their vessels. Heraclides, of Pontus, relates that this the villa of the orator had come into the possession of disaster, which took place in his time, occurred during Antistius Vetus (Plin., 31, 1), the poet Heliodorus the night; the town, and all that lay between it and must have been subsequent to Cicero's time, while, on the sea, a distance of twelve stadia, being inundated the other hand, the elegance of his description forbids in an instant. Two thousand workmen were after- his being placed lower than the first or second century ward sent by the Achæans to recover the dead bodies, of our era. Some suppose him to have been the same but without success. The same writer affirmed, that with the rhetorician Heliodorus mentioned by Horace this inundation was commonly attributed to divine (Sat., 1, 5, 2), as one of the companions of his journey vengeance, in consequence of the inhabitants of Hel- to Brundisium. (Schöll, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 4, p. 65, ice having obstinately refused to deliver up the statue seqq.)-II. An Athenian physician, of whom Galen of Neptune and a model of the Temple to the Ionians makes mention (De Antid., 2, p. 77, ed. Ald.), and after they had settled in Asia Minor. (ap. Strab., 385. who also wrote a didactic poem, under the title of 'Aπо-Compare the remarks of Bernhardy, Eratosthenica, p. 2vriká, "justification," of which Galen cites seven hex84.-Diod. Sic., 15, 49.-Pausan., 7, 24.-Elian, H.ameters. The fragment preserved by Stobæus, and A., 11, 19.) Seneca affirms, that Callisthenes the alluded to in the preceding article, might have belonged, philosopher, who was put to death by Alexander the perhaps, to this Heliodorus, and not to the individual Great, wrote a voluminous work on the destruction of mentioned under No. I. (Compare Meineke, ComHelice (9, 23.-Compare Aristot., de Mund., c. 4.—ment. misc. fasc., 1, Halæ, 1822, p. 36, and also the Polyb., 2, 41). Pausanias informs us, that there was still a small village of the same name close to the sea, and forty stadia from Ægium. (Cramer's Ancient Greece, vol. 3, p. 61.) HELICON, a famous mountain in Boeotia, near the Gulf of Corinth. It was sacred to Apollo and the Muses, who were thence called Heliconiades. This mountain was famed for the purity of its air, the abundance of its waters, its fertile valleys, the goodness of its shades, and the beauty of the venerable trees which clothed its sides. Strabo (409) affirms, that Helicon nearly equals in height Mount Parnassus, and retains its snow during a great part of the year. Pausanias observes (9, 28), that no mountain of Greece produces such a variety of plants and shrubs, though none of a poisonous nature; on the contrary, several have the property of counteracting the effects produced by the sting or bite of venomous reptiles. On the summit was the grove of the Muses, where these divinities had their statues, and where also were statues of Apollo and Mercury, of Bacchus by Lysippus, of Orpheus, and of famous poets and musicians. (Pausan., 9, 30.) A little below the grove was the fountain of Aganippe. The source Hippocrene was about twenty stadia above the grove; it is said to have burst forth when Pegasus struck his foot into the ground. (Pausan., 9, 31.-Strab., 9, 410.) These two springs supplied two small rivers named Olmius and Permessus, which, after uniting their waters, flowed into the lake Copaïs, near Haliartus. Hesiod makes mention of these his favourite haunts in the opening of his Theogonia. The modern name of Helicon is Paleovouni or Zagora. The latter is the more general appellation the name of Palæovouni is more correctly applied to that part of the mountain which is near the modern village Kakosia, that stands on the site of ancient Thisbe. (Cramer's Ancient Greece, vol. 2, p. 204.-Compare Dodwell, Tour, vol. 1, p. 260.)-II. A river of Macedonia, near Dium, the same, according to Pausanias (9, 30), with the Baphyrus. The same author informs us, that, after flowing for a distance of seventy-five stadia, it loses itself under ground for the space of twenty-two stadia; it is navigable on its reappearance, and is then called Baphyrus. According to Dr. Clarke, it is now known as the Mauro nero. (Cramer's Anc. Greece, vol. 1, p. 209.) HELICONIADES, a name given to the Muses, from their fabled residence on Mount Helicon, which was sacred to them. (Lucret., 3, 1050.) HELIODORUS, I. a Greek poet, sixteen hexameters of whose are cited by Stobæus (Serm., 98), containing a description of that part of Campania situate between the Lucrine Lake and Puteoli, and where Cicero had a country residence. The verses in question make particular mention of certain mineral waters at the foot of Mount Gyarus, reputed to have a salutary effect in cases of ophthalmia. Now, as these waters were addenda to that work.)—III. A native of Larissa, who has left us a treatise on optics, under the title of Kɛoúλaia Twν 'ORTIKOV, which is scarcely anything more than an abridgment of the optical work ascribed to Euclid. He cites the optics of Ptolemy. The time when he flourished is uncertain; from the manner, however, in which he speaks of Tiberius, it is probable that he lived a long time after that emperor. Oribasius has preserved for us a fragment of another work of Heliodorus's, entitled Пɛpì diapopūs kataptioμwv. This fragment treats of the Koxías, a machine for drawing water furnished with a screw. Some MSS. call this writer Damianus Heliodorus. The best edition is that of Bartholini, Paris, 1657, 4to. The work also appears in the Opuscula Mythologica, Ethica et Physica, of Gale, Cantabr., 1670, 12mo.-IV. A Greek romance-writer, who was born at Emesa in Phoenicia, and flourished under the Emperors Theodosius and Arcadius at the close of the fourth century. He was raised to the dignity of a bishop of Tricca in Thessaly (Socrates, Hist. Eccles.), and is supposed to have written an Iambic poem on Alchymy, entitled, Iepì The TV pihoσóówv μvotikйs téxνns, “On the occult science of the philosophers." It contains 169 verses. The authorship of this poem is assigned to Heliodorus by Georgius Cedrenus (compare Amyot's remarks in his French translation of the Ethiopica); but, notwithstanding the testimony of Cedrenus, this point has never been clearly ascertained. Heliodorus is better known as the author of a Greek romance, entitled, Aiotomikά, being the history of Theagenes and Chariclea, the latter a daughter of a king of Ethiopia. It is in ten books. This work was unknown in the West until a soldier of Anspach, under the Margrave Casimir of Brandenburgh, assisting at the pillage of the library of Matthias Corvinus, at Buda, in 1526, being attracted by the rich binding of a manuscript, carried it off. He sold the prize afterward to Vincent Obsopæus, who published it at Basle in 1534. This was the celebrated romance of Heliodorus. "Until this period," observes Huet, in his treatise on the origin of romances, "nothing had been seen better conceived, or better executed, than these adventures of Theagenes and Chariclea. Nothing can be more chaste than their loves, in which the author's own virtuous mind assists the religion of Christianity, which he professed, in diffusing over the whole work that air of honnêteté, in which almost all the earlier romances are deficient. The incidents are numerous, novel, probable, and skilfully unfolded. The denoûement is admirable; it is natural; it grows out of the subject, and is in the highest degree touching and pathetic.' Schöll (Hist. Litt. Gr., vol. 6, p. 229) remarks, that "the romance of Heliodorus is well conceived, and wrought up with great power; the episodes are to the purpose, and the characters and manners of the per sonages skilfully sustained." "No one can doubt," observes Villemain, "that Heliodorus, when he wrote | Sun. Lampridius, however (Vit. Heliog., c. 1), fluc the work, was at least initiated in Christian senti- tuates between the Sun and Jupiter, while Spartianus ments. This is felt by a kind of moral purity which (Vit. Caracall., c. 11) leaves it uncertain. The orcontrasts strongly with the habitual license of the thography of the name is also disputed, some writing it Greek fables; and the style even, as the learned Coray Elagabalus, others Eleagabalus and Alagabalus. Scaremarks, contains many expressions familiar to the ec- liger (ad Euseb., p. 212) makes the name of this diclesiastical writers. This style is pure, polished, sym-vinity equivalent to the Hebrew Elah-Geba!., i. e., metrical; and the language of love receives a charac- "Gebalitarum Deus." (Consult, for other etymologies ter of delicacy and reserve, which is very rare among of the term, the remarks of Hamaker, Miscell. Phathe writers of antiquity." It must not be disguised, nic., p. 119, seqq.) Herodian gives us an accurate however, that Huet, a courtier of Louis XIV., and the description of the form under which this deity was contemporary and admirer of Mademoiselle de Scu- worshipped (5, 3, 10, seqq.); he also informs us that dery, judged after the models of romance which were by this appellation the Sun was meant, and that the fashionable in his own century. Poetry, battles, cap- deity in question was revered not only by the Syrtivities, and recognitions fill up the piece; there is no ians, but that the native satraps and barbarian kings picture of the mind, no history of the character carried were accustomed to send splendid presents to his on with the development of the action. The incidents shrine. According to Herodian, the god Heliogabalus point to no particular era of society, although the learn- was worshipped under the form of a large black stone, ed in history may perceive, from the tone of sentiment round below, and terminating above in a point; in throughout, that the struggle had commenced between other words, of a conical shape. This description is the pure and lofty spirit of Christianity and the gross- confirmed by the medals of Emesa, the principal seat ness of pagan idolatry. Egypt, as Villemain remarks, of his worship, on which the conical stone is repreis neither ancient Egypt, nor the Egypt of the Ptole- sented. So also, on the medals of Antoninus Pius, mics, nor the Egypt of the Romans. Athens is nei-struck in this same city, an eagle appears perched on ther Athens free nor Athens conquered: in short, a cone. (Mionnet., Rec. de Med., vol. 5, p. 227, there is no individuality either in the places or persons; and the vague pictures of the French romances of the seventeenth century give scarcely a caricatured idea of the model from which they were drawn.-It may not be amiss to mention here an incident relative to the poet Racine and the work of Heliodorus which we have been considering. When Racine was at Port Royal learning Greek, his imagination almost smothered to death by the dry erudition of the pious fathers, he laid hold instinctively on the romance of Heliodorus, as the only prop by which he might be preserved for his high destiny, even then, perhaps, shadowed dimly forth in his youthful mind. A tale of love, however, surprised in the hands of a Christian boy, filled his instructers with horror, and the book was seized and thrown into the fire. Another and another copy met the same fate; and poor Racine, thus excluded from the benefits of the common typographical art, printed the romance on his memory. A first love, wooed by stealth, and won in difficulty and danger, is always among the last to loose her hold on the affections; and Racine, in riper age, often fondly recurred to his for-diers, Mesa availed herself of this feeling to induce bidden studies at Port Royal. From early youth, his son tells us, he had conceived an extraordinary passion for Heliodorus; he admired both his style and the wonderful art with which the fable is conducted. -In the ecclesiastical history of Nicephorus Calistus, a story is told of Heliodorus, which, if true, would exhibit, on the part of the Thessalian church, somewhat of the fanatical spirit which in Scotland expelled Home from the administration of the altar. Some young persons having fallen into peril through the reading of such works, it was ordered by the provincial council, that all books whose tendency it might be to incite the rising generation to love, should be burned, and their authors, if ecclesiastics, deprived of their dignities. Heliodorus, rejecting the alternative which was offered him of suppressing his romance, lost his bishopric. This story, however, is nothing more than a mere romance itself, as Bayle has shown, by proving that the requisition to suppress it could neither have been given nor refused at a time when the work was spread over all Greece. (Foreign Quarterly Review, No. 9, p. 125, seqq.)-Various editions have been published of the romance of Heliodorus. The best is that of Coray, Paris, 1804, 2 vols. 8vo. The edition of Mitscherlich, Argent, 1798, 2 vols. 8vo, forming part of his Erotici Græci, is not held in much estimation. HELIOGABALUS or ELAGABALUS, I. a deity among the Phoenicians. This deity, according to Capitolinus (Vit. Macrin., c. 9) and Aurelius Victor, was the seqq.) The same thing appears on medals of Caracalla (Id., p. 229, n. 608), and on one (n. 607), an eagle with expanded wings stands before a conical stone in the middle of a hexastyle temple.-II. M. Aurelius Antoninus, a Roman emperor. He was the grandson of Mæsa, sister to the Empress Julia, the wife of Septimius Severus. Masa had two daughters, Soæmis or Semiamira, the mother of the subject of this article, and Mammæa, mother of Alexander Severus. The true name of Heliogabalus was Varius Avitus Bassianus, and he was reported to have been the illegitimate son of Caracalla. He was born at Antioch, A.D. 204. Mæsa took care of his infancy, and placed him, when five years of age, in the temple of the Sun at Emesa, to be educated as a priest; and through her influence he was made, while yet a boy, high-priest of the Sun. That divinity was called in Syria Helagabal or Elagabal, whence the young Varius assumed the name of Heliogabalus or Elagabalus. After the death of Caracalla and the elevation of Macrinus, the latter having incurred by his severity the dislike of the solthe officers to rise in favour of her grandson, whom she presented to them as the son of the murdered Caracalla. Heliogabalus, who was then in his fifteenth year, was proclaimed emperor by the legion stationed at Emesa. Having put himself at their head, he was attacked by Macrinus, who at first had the advantage; but he and his mother Soæmis, with great spirit, brought the soldiers again to the charge, and defeated Macrinus, who was overtaken in his flight and put to death, A.D. 218. Heliogabalus, having entered Antioch, wrote a letter to the senate, professing to take for his model Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, a name revered at Rome; and he also assumed that emperor's name. The senate acknowledged him, and he set out for Rome, but tarried several months on his way amid festivities and amusements, and at last stopped at Nicomedia for the winter. In the following year he arrived at Rome, and began a career of debauchery, extravagance, and cruelty, which lasted the remaining three years of his reign, and the disgusting details of which are given by Lampridius, Herodian, and Dio Cassius. Some critics have imagined, especially from the shortness of his reign, that there must be some exaggeration in these accounts, for he could hardly have done, in so short a time, all the mischief that is attributed to him. That he was extremely dissolute, and totally unfit for reigning, is certain; and this is not to be wondered at, from his previous Eastern education, his extreme youth, the corrupt example of his mother, his |