An anachronism is an error of chronology by which things are represented as coexisting which did not coexist. The term is also applied also to anything foreign to or out of keeping with a specified time. Thus it is an anachronism when Shakespeare, in Troilus and Cressida, makes Hector quote Aristotle. Research Anachronism
Antonio Canova was an Italian sculptor. He was born in 1757 at Possagno, in Venetian territory and died in 1822. He was first an apprentice to a statuary in Bassano, from whom he went to the Academy of Venice, where he had a brilliant career. In 1779 he was sent by the senate of Venice to Rome with a salary of 300 ducats, and there produced his Theseus and the Slain Minotaur. In 1783 Antonio Canova undertook the execution of the tomb of Pope Clement XIV in the Church of the Apostles, a work in the Bernini manner, and inferior to his second public monument the tomb of Pope Clement XIII (1792) in St Peter's.
From 1783 his fame rapidly increased. He established a school for the benefit of young Venetians, and amongst other works produced his group of Venus and Adonis, the Psyche and Butterfly, a Repentant Magdalene, the well-known Hebe, the colossalHerculeshurling Lichas into the Sea, the Pugilists, and the group of Cupid and Psyche. In 1796 and 1797 Antonio Canova finished the model of the celebrated tomb of the Archduchess Christina of Austria, and in 1797 made the colossal model of a statue of the King of Naples executed in marble in 1803. He afterwards executed in Rome his Perseus with the Head of Medusa, which, when the BelvidereApollo was carried to France, was thought not unworthy of its place and pedestal.
In 1802 he was invited by Bonaparte to Paris to make the model of his colossal statue. Among the later works of the artist are a colossalGeorge Washington, the tombs of the Cardinal of York and of Pius VII; a Venus Rising from the Bath; the colossal group of Theseus Killing the Minotaur; the tomb of Alfieri; the Graces Rising from the Bath; a Dancing Girl; a colossalHector; a Paris, etc. After the second fall of Napoleon, in 1815, Antonio Canova was commissioned by the pope to demand the restoration of the works of art carried from Rome. He went from Paris to London, and returned to Rome in 1816, where he was made Marquis of Ischia, with a pension of 3000 scudi. Research Antonio Canova
Hector Berlioz was a French composer. He was born in 1803 and died in 1869. He gave up medicine to study music at the Paris Conservatoire, where he gained the first prize in 1830 with his cantata Sardanapale. For about two years he studied in Italy, and when on his return he began to produce his larger works, he found himself compelled to take up the pen both in defence of his principles and for his own better maintenance.
As critic of the Journal des Debats and feuilletonist he displayed scarcely less originality than in his music, his chief literary works being the Traite d'Instrumentation, 1844; Voyage Musical, 1845; Les Soirees d'Orchestre, 1853; and A traversChant, 1862. His musical works belong to the Romantic school, and are specially noteworthy for the resource they display in orchestral colouring. The more important are Harolden Italie; Episode de la Vie d'un Artiste, and Le Retour a la Vie; Romeo and Juliette, 1834; Damnation de Faust, 1846; the operas Benvenuto Cellini, Beatrice and Benedict, and Les Troy-ens; L'Enfance du Christ, and the Requiem. He married an English actress, Miss Smithson, but latterly lived apart from her. After his death appeared Memoires written by himself. Research Hector Berlioz
Hector Boece (Hector Boyce) was a Scottish historian. He was born about 1465 at Dundee and died in 1536. He studied first at Dundee, and then at the University of Paris, where he became professor of philosophy in the College of Montaigu, and made the acquaintance of Erasmus. About 1500 he quitted Paris to assume the principalship of the newly-founded university of King's College, Aberdeen. In 1522 he published in Paris a history in Latin of the prelates of Mortlach and Aberdeen. Five years afterward appeared the work on which his fame chiefly rests, the History of Scotland in Latin - Scotorum Historic a prima gentis origine, etc. It abounds in fable, but the narrative seems to have been skilfully adjusted to the conditions of belief in his own time. In 1536 a translation of the history was published, made by John Ballentyne or Bellenden for James V. Research Hector Boece
Hector Hugo Munro (Saki) was a British novelist. He was born in 1870 and died in 1916.
Sir Hector Munro was a British general. He was born in 1726 and died in 1805. In 1764 he suppressed the mutiny at Patnar and won the Battle of Buxar, which virtually subjugated Hindustan. After spending some years at home he returned to India in 1777, captured Pondichery from the French in 1778, helped to gain the port of Porto Novo in 1781, and captured Negapatam. From 1768 to 1801 he sat as a member of Parliament for the Inverness Burghs. Research Hector Munro
Homer (Homeros) was an ancient Greek poet. Nothing is known with certainty about him, some even doubting whether he ever existed. The most probable opinion is that he was a native of some locality on the sea-board of Asia Minor, and that he lived between 950 and 850 BC. The earliest mention of the name of Homer is found in Xenophanes in the 6th century BC. The common statement that he was blind may safely be discarded. The poems that have been generally attributed to Homer are the Iliad and Odyssey. The Batrachomyomachia, or Battle of the Frogs and Mice, and certain hymns to the gods also passed under his name, though belonging to a later period.
The Iliad in its present form consists of twenty-four books, and tells the story of the siege of Troy from the quarrel of Achilles with Agamemnon to the burial of Hector, with subordinate episodes.
The Odyssey is also in twenty-four books, and records the adventures of Odysseus (Ulysses) on his return voyage to his home in Ithaca after the fall of Troy.
Even as early as the beginning of the Christian era, certain Greek critics (the Separatists) maintained that the two poems were the work of different poets, but the general belief continued to be that there was one author for both. The entire system of Homeric criticism, however, was revolutionized in 1795 by F. A. Wolf in his Prolegomena to Homer. He asserted that the Iliad and Odyssey were not originally committed to writing, and were not two complete and independent poems, but originally a series of songs of different poets (Homer and others), celebrating single exploits of heroes, and first connected as wholes by Pisistratus, about 540 BC. Some of Wolf's arguments have been proved erroneous, but since his time the old views in regard to the Iliad and Odyssey have been held by comparatively few of the ablest scholars, though what theory is now the most common is difficult to say.
Among the most conservative theories is that which assigns to Homer a central or basal portion of both Iliad and Odyssey, to which additions by other poets were gradually united; but generally the Odyssey is regarded as of somewhat later date than the Iliad, and not by the poet who produced the Iliad in its original form. Research Homer
In Greek mythology, Achilles was a Greek hero. He is the chief character in Homer's Iliad. His father was Peleus, ruler of Phthia in Thessaly, his mother the sea-goddess Thetis. When only six years of age he was able to overcome lions and bears. His guardian, Cheiron the Centaur, having declared that Troy could not be taken without his aid, his mother, fearing for his safety, disguised him as a girl, and introduced him among the daughters of Lycomedes of Scyros. Her desire for his safety made her also try to make him invulnerable when a child by anointing him with ambrosia, and again by dipping him in the river Styx, from which he came out proof against wounds, all but the heel, by which she held him.
His place of concealment was discovered by Odysseus (Ulysses), and he promised his assistance to the Greeks against Troy. Accompanied by his close friend, Patroclus, he joined the expedition with a body of followers (Myrmidons) in fifty ships, and occupied nine years in raids upon the towns neighbouring to Troy, after which the siege proper commenced. On being deprived of his prize, the maiden Briseis, by Agamemnon, he refused to take any further part in the war, and
disaster attended the Greeks.
Patroclus now persuaded Achilles to allow him to lead the Myrmidons to battle dressed in his armour, and he having been slain by Hector, Achilles vowed revenge on the Trojans, and forgot his anger against the Greeks. He attacked the Trojans and drove them back to their walls, slaying them in great numbers, chased Hector, who fled before him three times round the walls of Troy, slew him, and dragged his body at his chariot-wheels, but afterwards gave it up to Priam, who came in person to beg for it. He then performed the funeral rites of Patroclus, with which the Iliad closes. He was killed in a battle at the Scasan Gate of Troy by an arrow from the bow of Paris which struck his vulnerable heel. In discussions on the origin of the Homeric poems the term Achilleid is often applied to those books (i. viii. and xi.-xxii.) of the Iliad in which Achilles is prominent, and which some suppose to have formed the original nucleus of the poem. Research Achilles
Aeneas was a Trojan hero. According to Homer, he was, next to Hector, the bravest of the warriors of Troy. When that town was taken and set on fire, Aeneas, according to the narrative of Virgil, with his father, son, and wife Creusa, fled, but the latter was lost in the confusion of the flight. Having collected a fleet he sailed for Italy, but after numerous adventures he was driven by a tempest on the coast of Africa, where Queen Dido of Carthage received him kindly, and would have married him. Jupiter, however, sent Mercury to Aeneas, and commanded him to sail for Italy. Whilst the deserted Dido ended her life on the funeral pile Aeneas set sail with his companions, and after further adventures by land and sea reached the country of King Latinus, in Italy. The king's daughter Lavinia was destined by an oracle to a stranger, this stranger being Aeneas, but was promised by her mother to Turnus, king of the Rutuli. This occasioned a war, after the termination of which, Turnus having fallen by his hand, Aeneas married Lavinia. His son by Lavinia, Aeneas Sylvius, was the ancestor of the kings of Alba Longa, and of Romulus and Remus, the founders of the city of Rome. Research Aeneas
The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by
Matt and Leela Probert
Abbreviations
Research Anachronism
