played a larger part than is conceded to them by Herodotus.
The Athenian tradition, which he follows in the main, would
naturally seek to obscure their services. It was to Aegina
rather than Athens that the prize of valour at Salamis was
awarded, and the destruction of the Persian fleet appears to
have been as much the work of the Aeginetan contingent as of
the Athenian (Herod. viii. 91). There are other indications,
too, of the importance of the Aeginetan fleet in the Greek
scheme of defence. In view of these considerations it becomes
difficult to credit the number of the vessels that is assigned
to them by Herodotus (30 as against 180 Athenian vessels,
cf. GREEK HISTORY, sect. Authorities). During the
next twenty years the Philo-laconian policy of Cimon (q.v.)
secured Aegina, as a member of the Spartan league, from
attack. The change in Athenian foreign policy, which was
consequent upon the ostracism of Cimon in 461, led to what
is sometimes called the First Peloponnesian War, in which
the brunt of the fighting fell upon Corinth and Aegina.
The latter state was forced to surrender to Athens after a
siege, and to accept the position of a subject-ally (c. 456
B.C.). The tribute was fixed at 30 talents. By the terms
of the Thirty Years' Truce (445 B.C.) Athens covenanted to
restore to Aegina her autonomy, but the clause remained a dead
letter. In the first winter of the Peloponnesian War (431
B.C.) Athens expelled the Aeginetans, and established a
cleruchy in their island. The exiles were settled by Sparta in
Thyreatis, on the frontiers of Laconia and Argolis. Even in
their new home they were not safe from Athenian rancour.1 A
force landed under Nicias in 424, and put most of them to the
sword. At the end of the Peloponnesian War Lysander restored
the scattered remnants of the old inhabitants to the island,
which was used by the Spartans as a base for operations against
Athens in the Corinthian War. Its greatness, however, was at an
end. The part which it plays henceforward is insignificant.
It would be a mistake to attribute the fall of Aegina solely
to the development of the Athenian navy. It is probable that
the powor of Aegina had steadily declined during the twenty
years after Sabamis, and that it had declined absolutely,
as well as relatively, to that of Athens. Commerce was the
source of Aegina's greatness, and her trade, which appears
to have been principally with the Levant, must have suffered
seriously from the war with Persia. Her medism in 491 is
to be explained by her commercial relations with the Persian
Empire. She was forced into patriotism in spite of herself,
and the glory won by Salamis was paid for by the loss of
her trade and the decay of her marine. The completeness
of the ruin of so powerful a state--we should look in
vain for an analogous case in the history of the modern
world--finds an explanation in the economic conditions of
the island, the prosperity of which rested upon a basis of
slave-labour. It is impossible, indeed, to accept
Aristotle's (cf. Athenaeus vi. 272) estimate of 470,000 as the
1Pericles called Aegina the ``eye-sore'' (leme) of the Peiraeus.
number of the slave-population; it is clear, however, that
the number must have been out of all proportion to that of
the free inhabitants. In this respect the history of Aegina
does but anticipate the history of Greece as a whole. The
constitutional history of Aegina is unusually simple. So long
as the island retained its independence the government was an
oligarchy. There is no trace of the heroic monarchy and no
tradition of a tyrannis. The story of Nicodromus, while
it proves the existence of a democratic party, suggests,
at the same time, that it could count upon little support.
(2) Modern.---Aegina passed with the rest of Greece under
the successive dominations of Macedon, the Aetolians, Attalus
of Pergamum and Rome. In 1537 the island, then a prosperous
Venetian colony, was overrun and ruined by the pirate Barbarossa
(Khair-ed-Din). One of the last Venetian strongholds in the
Levant, it was ceded by the treaty of Passarowitz (1718)
to the Turks. In 1826-1828 the town became for a time
the capital of Greece and the centre of a large commercial
population (about 10,000), which has dwindled to about 4300.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.---Herodotus loc. cit.; Thucydides i. 105,
108, ii. 27, iv. 56, 57. For the criticism of Herodotus's
account of the relations of Athens and Aegina, Wilamowitz,
Aristoteles und Athen, ii. 280-288, is indispensable. See
also Macan, Herodotus iv.-vi., ii. 102-120. (E. M. W.)
AEGINETA, PAULUS, a celebrated surgeon of the island of
Aegina, whence he derived his name. According to Le Clerc's
calculation, he lived in the 4th century of the Christian era;
but Abulfaragius (Barhebraeus) places him with more probability
in the 7th. The title of his most important work, as given by
Suidas, is Epitomes 'Iatrikes Biblia 'Epta (Synopsis
of Medicine in Seven Books), the 6th book of which, treating
of operative surgery, is of special interest for surgical
history. The whole work in the original Greek was published at
Venice in 1528, and another edition appeared at Basel in 1538.
Several Latin translations have been published, and an excellent
English version, with commentary, by Dr F. Adams (1844-1848).
AEGIS (Gr. Aigis), in Homer, the shield or buckler of
Zeus, fashioned for him by Hephaestus, furnished with tassels
and bearing the Gorgon's head in the centre. Originally
symbolical of the storm-cloud, it is probably derived from
aisso, signifying rapid, violent motion. When the god
shakes it, Mount Ida is wrapped in clouds, the thunder rolls
and men are smitten with fear. He sometimes lends it to
Athene and (rarely) to Apollo. In the later story (Hyginus,
Poet. Astronom. ii. 13) Zeus is said to have used the
skin of the goat Amaltheia (aigis=goat-skin) which suckled
him in Crete, as a buckler when he went forth to do battle
against the giants. Another legend represents the aegis as a
fire-breathing monster like the Chimaera, which was slain by
Athene, who afterwards wore its skin as a cuirass (Diodorus
Siculus iii. 70) It appears to have been really the goat's
skin used as a belt to support the shield. When so used it
would generally be fastened on the right shoulder, and would
partially envelop the chest as it passed obliquely round in
front and behind to be attached to the shield under the left
arm. Hence, by transference, it would be employed to denote
at times the shield which it supported, and at other times a
cuirass, the purpose of which it in part served. In accordance
with this double meaning the aegis appears in works of art
sometimes as an animal's skin thrown over the shoulders and arms,
sometimes as a cuirass, with a border of snakes corresponding
to the tassels of Homer, usually with the Gorgon's head in the
centre. It is often represented on the statues of Roman
emperors, heroes and warriors, and on cameos and vases.
See F. G. Welcker, Griechische Gotterlehre (1857); L. Freller,
Griechische Mythologie, i. (1887); articles in Pauly-Wissowa's
Real Encyclopadie, Roscher's Lexikon der Mythologie
Daremberg and Saglio's Dictionnaire des Antiquites, and Smith's
Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (3rd ed., 1890).
AEGISTHUS, in Greek legend, was the son of Thyestes by his Own
daughter Pelopia. Having been exposed by his mother to conceal her
shame, he was found by shepherds and suckled by a goat-whence his
name. His uncle Atreus, who had married Pelopia, took him to
Mycenae, and brought him up as his own son. When he grew up
Aegisthus slew Atreus, and ruled jointly with his father over
Mycenae, until they were deposed by Agamemnon on his return
from exile. After the departure of Agamemnon to the Trojan
war, Aegisthus seduced his wife Clytaemnestra (more correctly
Clytaemestra) and with her assistance slew him on his return.
Eight years later his murder was avenged by his son Orestes.
Homer, Od. iii. 263, iv. 517; Hyginus, Fab. 87.
AEGOSPOTAMI (i.e. ``Goat Streams''), a small creek issuing
into the Hellespont, N.E. of Sestos, the scene of the decisive
battle in 405 B.C. by which Lysander destroyed the last
Athenian armament in the Peloponnesian War (q.v.). The
township of that name, whose existence is attested by coins of
the 5th and 4th centuries, must have been quite insignificant.
AEFRIC, called the ``Grammarian'' (c. 955-1020?), English
abbot and author, was born about 955. He was educated in the
Benedictine monastery at Winchester under AEthelwold, who
was bishop there from 963 to 984. AEthelwold had Carried
on the tradition of Dunstan in his government of the abbey
of Abingdon, and at Winchester he continued his strenuous
efforts. He seems to have actually taken part in the work
of teaching. AElfric no doubt gained some reputation as a
scholar at Winchester, for when, in 987, the abbey of Cernel
(Cerne Abbas, Dorsetshire) was finished, he was sent by Bishop
AElfheah (Alphege), AEthelwold's successor, at the request of
the chief benefactor of the abbey, the ealdorman AEthelmaer, to
teach the Benedictine monks there. He was then in priest's
orders. AEthelmaer and his father AEthelweard were both
enlightened patrons of learning, and became AElfric's faithful
friends. It was at Cernel, and partly at the desire, it
appears, of AEthelweard, that he planned the two series
of his English homilies (ed. Benjamin Thorpe, 1844--1846,
for the AElfric Society), come piled from the Christian
fathers, and dedicated to Sigeric, archbishop of Canterbury
(990-994). The Latin preface to the first series enumerates
some of AElfric's authorities, the chief of whom was Gregory the
Great, but the short hst there given by no means exhausts the
authors whom he consulted. In the preface to the first volume
he regrets that except for Alfred's translations Englishmen had
no means of learning the true doctrine as expounded by the Latin
fathers. Professor Earle (A.S. Literature, 1884) thinks
he aimed at correcting the apocryphal, and to modern ideas
superstitious, teaching of the earlier Blickling Homilies.
The first series of forty homilies is devoted to plain and
direct exposition of the chief events of the Christian year;
the second deals more fully with church doctrine and history,
AElfric denied the immaculate birth of the Virgin (Homilies,
ed. Thorpe, ii. 466), and his teaching on the Eucharist in the
Canons and in the Sermo de sacrificio in die pascae (ibid.
ii. 262 seq.) was appealed to by the Reformation writers as
a proof that the early English church did not hold the Roman
doctrine of transubstantiation.1 His Latin Grammar and
Glossary 2 were written for his pupils after the two books of
homilies. A third series of homilies, the Lives of the
Saints, dates from 906 to 997. Some of the sermons in the second
series had been written in a kind of rhythmical, alliterative
prose, and in the Lives of the Saints (ed. W. W. Skeat,
1881-1900, for the Early English Text Society) the practice is
so regular that most of them are arranged as verse by Professor
Skeat. By the wish of AEthelweard he also began a paraphrase
3 of parts of the Old Testament, but under protest, for the
stories related in it were not, he thought, suitable for simple
minds. There is no certain proof that he remained at Cernel.
It has been suggested that this part of his life was chiefly
spent at Winchester; but his writings for the patrons of
Cernel, and the fact that he wrote in 998 his Canons 4 as
a pastoral letter for Wulfsige, the bishop of Sherborne, the
