Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition
The Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition is a 29-volume reference work, an edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. It was developed during the encyclopaedia's transition from a British to an American publication; some of its articles were written by the best-known scholars of the time. This edition of the encyclopedia, containing 40,000 entries, is now in the public domain, many of its articles have been used as a basis for articles in Wikipedia. However, the outdated nature of some of its content makes its use as a source for modern scholarship problematic; some articles have special value and interest to modern scholars as cultural artifacts of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The 1911 eleventh edition was assembled with the management of American publisher Horace Everett Hooper. Hugh Chisholm, who had edited the previous edition, was appointed editor in chief, with Walter Alison Phillips as his principal assistant editor. Hooper bought the rights to the 25-volume 9th edition and persuaded the British newspaper The Times to issue its reprint, with eleven additional volumes as the tenth edition, published in 1902.
Hooper's association with The Times ceased in 1909, he negotiated with the Cambridge University Press to publish the 29-volume eleventh edition. Though it is perceived as a quintessentially British work, the eleventh edition had substantial American influences, not only in the increased amount of American and Canadian content, but in the efforts made to make it more popular. American marketing methods assisted sales; some 14% of the contributors were from North America, a New York office was established to coordinate their work. The initials of the encyclopedia's contributors appear at the end of selected articles or at the end of a section in the case of longer articles, such as that on China, a key is given in each volume to these initials; some articles were written by the best-known scholars of the time, such as Edmund Gosse, J. B. Bury, Algernon Charles Swinburne, John Muir, Peter Kropotkin, T. H. Huxley, James Hopwood Jeans and William Michael Rossetti. Among the lesser-known contributors were some who would become distinguished, such as Ernest Rutherford and Bertrand Russell.
Many articles were carried over from some with minimal updating. Some of the book-length articles were divided into smaller parts for easier reference, yet others much abridged; the best-known authors contributed only a single article or part of an article. Most of the work was done by British Museum scholars and other scholars; the 1911 edition was the first edition of the encyclopædia to include more than just a handful of female contributors, with 34 women contributing articles to the edition. The eleventh edition introduced a number of changes of the format of the Britannica, it was the first to be published complete, instead of the previous method of volumes being released as they were ready. The print type was subject to continual updating until publication, it was the first edition of Britannica to be issued with a comprehensive index volume in, added a categorical index, where like topics were listed. It was the first not to include long treatise-length articles. Though the overall length of the work was about the same as that of its predecessor, the number of articles had increased from 17,000 to 40,000.
It was the first edition of Britannica to include biographies of living people. Sixteen maps of the famous 9th edition of Stielers Handatlas were translated to English, converted to Imperial units, printed in Gotha, Germany by Justus Perthes and became part this edition. Editions only included Perthes' great maps as low quality reproductions. According to Coleman and Simmons, the content of the encyclopedia was distributed as follows: Hooper sold the rights to Sears Roebuck of Chicago in 1920, completing the Britannica's transition to becoming a American publication. In 1922, an additional three volumes, were published, covering the events of the intervening years, including World War I. These, together with a reprint of the eleventh edition, formed the twelfth edition of the work. A similar thirteenth edition, consisting of three volumes plus a reprint of the twelfth edition, was published in 1926, so the twelfth and thirteenth editions were related to the eleventh edition and shared much of the same content.
However, it became apparent that a more thorough update of the work was required. The fourteenth edition, published in 1929, was revised, with much text eliminated or abridged to make room for new topics; the eleventh edition was the basis of every version of the Encyclopædia Britannica until the new fifteenth edition was published in 1974, using modern information presentation. The eleventh edition's articles are still of value and interest to modern readers and scholars as a cultural artifact: the British Empire was at its maximum, imperialism was unchallenged, much of the world was still ruled by monarchs, the tragedy of the modern world wars was still in the future, they are an invaluable resource for topics omitted from modern encyclopedias for biography and the history of science and technology. As a literary text, the encyclopedia has value as an example of early 20th-century prose. For example, it employs literary devices, such as pathetic fallacy, which are not as common in modern reference texts.
In 1917, using the pseudonym of S. S. Van Dine, the US art critic and author Willard Huntington Wright published Misinforming a Nation, a 200+
Aryan
"Aryan" is a term, used as a self-designation by Indo-Iranian people. The word was used by the Indic people of the Vedic period in India as an ethnic label for themselves and to refer to the noble class as well as the geographic region known as Āryāvarta, where Indo-Aryan culture is based; the related Iranian people used the term as an ethnic label for themselves in the Avesta scriptures, the word forms the etymological source of the country name Iran. It was believed in the 19th century that Aryan was a self-designation used by all Proto-Indo-Europeans, a theory that has now been abandoned. Scholars point out that in ancient times, the idea of being an "Aryan" was religious and linguistic, not racial. Drawing on misinterpreted references in the Rig Veda by Western scholars in the 19th century, the term "Aryan" was adopted as a racial category through the works of Arthur de Gobineau, whose ideology of race was based on an idea of blonde northern European "Aryans" who had migrated across the world and founded all major civilizations, before being diluted through racial mixing with local populations.
Through the works of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Gobineau's ideas influenced the Nazi racial ideology which saw "Aryan peoples" as innately superior to other putative racial groups. The atrocities committed in the name of this racial ideology have led academics to avoid the term "Aryan", replaced, in most cases, by "Indo-Iranian"; the English word "Aryan" was borrowed from the Sanskrit word ārya, आर्य, in the 18th century and thought to be the self-designation used by all Indo-European people. Philologist J. P. Mallory argues that "As an ethnic designation, the word is most properly limited to the Indo-Iranians, most justly to the latter where it still gives its name to the country Iran. In early Vedic literature, the term Āryāvarta was the name given to northern India, where the Indo-Aryan culture was based; the Manusmṛti gives the name Āryāvarta to "the tract between the Himalaya and the Vindhya ranges, from the Eastern to the Western Sea". The term was used as a national name to designate those who worshipped the Vedic deities and followed Vedic culture.
The Sanskrit term comes from proto-Indo-Iranian *arya- or *aryo-, the name used by the Indo-Iranians to designate themselves. The Zend airya'venerable' and Old Persian ariya are derivates of *aryo-, are self-designations. In Iranian languages, the original self-identifier lives on in ethnic names like "Alans" and "Iron"; the name of Iran is the Persian word for land/place of the Aryans. The Proto-Indo-Iranian term is hypothesized to have proto-Indo-European origins, while according to Szemerényi it is a Near-Eastern loanword from the Ugaritic ary, kinsmen, it has been postulated the Proto-Indo-European root word is *haerós with the meanings "members of one's own group, freeman" as well as the Indo-Iranian meaning of Aryan. Derived from it were words like the Hittite prefix arā- meaning member of one's own group, peer and friend; the word *haerós itself is believed to have come from the root *haer- meaning "put together". The original meaning in Proto-Indo-European had a clear emphasis on the "in-group status" as distinguished from that of outsiders those captured and incorporated into the group as slaves.
While in Anatolia, the base word has come to emphasize personal relationship, in Indo-Iranian the word has taken a more ethnic meaning. A review of numerous other ideas, the various problems with each is given by Oswald Szemerényi. Proto-Indo-Europeans: during the 19th century, it was proposed that "Aryan" was the self-designation of the Proto-Indo-Europeans, a hypothesis, abandoned. "Aryan language family": the Indo-Aryan languages, Iranian languages and Nuristani languages, Indo-Aryan languages also called Indic. The term "Aryan" is used by Iranian nationalists to refer themselves. During the 19th century it was proposed that "Aryan" was the self-designation of the Proto-Indo-Europeans. Based on speculations that the Proto-Indo-European homeland was located in northern Europe, a 19th-century hypothesis, now abandoned, the word developed a racialist meaning; the Nazis used the word "Aryan" to describe people in a racial sense. The Nazi official Alfred Rosenberg believed that the Nordic race was descended from Proto-Aryans, who he believed had prehistorically dwelt on the North German Plain and who had originated from the lost continent of Atlantis.
According to Nazi racial theory, the term "Aryan" described the Germanic peoples. However, a satisfactory definition of "Aryan" remained problematic during Nazi Germany; the Nazis considered the purest Aryans to be those that belonged to the "Nordic race" physical ideal, known as the "master race" during Nazi Germany. Although the physical ideal of the Nazi racial theorists was the tall, fair-haired and light-eyed Nordic individual, such theorists accepted the fact that a considerable variety of hair and eye colour existed within the racial categories they recognised. For example, Adolf Hitler and many Nazi officials had dark hair and were still considered members of the Aryan race under Nazi racial doctrine, because the deter
Ligures
The Ligures were an Indo-European people who appear to have originated in, gave their name to, Liguria, a region of north-western Italy. Elements of the Ligures appear to have migrated to other areas of western Europe, including the Iberian peninsula. Little is known of the Old Ligurian language, the lack of inscriptions does not allow a certain linguistic classification: Pre-Indo-European or an Indo-European language; the problem is related to the lack of inscriptions, to the mysterious origin of the ancient Ligurian people. The linguistic hypotheses are based on toponyms and names of persons; because of the strong Celtic influences on their language and culture, they were known in antiquity as Celto-Ligurians. and it is believed, after a certain point, that Old Ligurian became an Indo-European language with strong Celtic affinities, as well as similarities to Italic languages. Only some proper names have survived, such as the inflectional suffix -asca or -asco "village". According to Plutarch, the Ligurians called themselves Ambrones, which could indicate a relationship with the Ambrones of northern Europe.
Strabo tells that they were of a different race from the Celts, who inhabited the rest of the Alps, though they resembled them in their mode of life. Aeschylus, in a fragment of Prometheus Unbound, represents Hercules as contending with the Ligures on the stony plains, near the mouths of the Rhone, Herodotus speaks of Ligures inhabiting the country above Massilia. Thucydides speaks of the Ligures having expelled the Sicanians, an Iberian tribe, from the banks of the river Sicanus, in Iberia; the Periplus of Pseudo-Scylax describes the Ligyes as living along the Mediterranean coast from Antion as far as the mouth of the Rhone and intermingled with the Iberians from the Rhone to Emporion in Spain. The Ligures seem to have been ready to engage as mercenary troops in the service of others. Ligurian auxiliaries are mentioned in the army of the Carthaginian general Hamilcar I in 480 BC. Greek leaders in Sicily continued to recruit Ligurian mercenary forces from the same quarter as late as the time of Agathocles.
The Ligures fought long and hard against the Romans, but as a result of these hostilities many were displaced from their homeland and assimilated into Roman culture during the 2nd century BC. Roman sources describe the Ligurians as smaller framed than the Gauls, but physically stronger, more ferocious and fiercer as warriors, hence their reputation as mercenary troops. Lucan in his Pharsalia described Ligurian tribes as being long-haired, their hair a shade of auburn:... Ligurian tribes, now shorn, in ancient days First of the long-haired nations, on whose necks Once flowed the auburn locks in pride supreme. People with Ligurian names were living south of Placentia, in Italy, as late as 102 AD. Traditional accounts suggested that the Ligures represented the northern branch of an ethno-linguistic layer older than, different from, the proto-Italic peoples, it was believed that a "Ligurian-Sicanian" culture occupied a wide area of southern Europe, stretching from Liguria to Sicily and Iberia. However, while any such area would be broadly similar to that of the paleo-European "Tyrrhenian culture" hypothesized by modern scholars, there are no known links between the Tyrrenians and Ligurians.
In the 19th century, the origins of the Ligures drew renewed attention from scholars. Amédée Thierry, a French historian, linked them to the Iberians, while Karl Müllenhoff, professor of Germanic antiquities at the Universities of Kiel and Berlin, studying the sources of the Ora maritima by Avienus, held that the name'Ligurians' generically referred to various peoples who lived in Western Europe, including the Celts, but thought the "real Ligurians" were a Pre-Indo-European population. Italian geologist and paleontologist Arturo Issel considered Ligurians to be direct descendants of the Cro-Magnon people that lived throughout Gaul from the Mesolithic period. Dominique-François-Louis Roget, Baron de Belloguet, claimed a "Gallic" origin of the Ligurians. During the Iron Age the spoken language, the main divinities and the workmanship of the artifacts unearthed in the area of Liguria were similar to those of Celtic culture in both style and type; those in favor of an Indo-European origin included Henri d'Arbois de Jubainville, a 19th-century French historian, who argued in Les Premiers habitants de l'Europe that the Ligurians were the earliest Indo-European speakers of Western Europe.
Jubainville's "Celto-Ligurian hypothesis", as it became known, was expanded in the second edition of his initial study. It inspired a body of contemporary philological research, as well as some archaeological work; the Celto-Ligurian hypothesis became associated with the Funnelbeaker culture and "expanded to cover much of Central Europe". Julius Pokorny adapted the Celto-Ligurian hypothesis into one linking the Ligures to the Illyrians, citing an array of similar evidence from Eastern Europe. Under this theory the "Ligures-Illyrians" became associated with the prehistoric Urnfield peoples. There are others such as Dominique Garcia, who question whether the Ligures can be considered a distinct ethnic group or culture from the surrounding cultures. List of ancient Ligurian tribes Ancient peoples of Italy Torrean civilization ARSLAN E. A. 2004b, LVI.14 Garlasco, in I Liguri. Un antico popolo europeo tra Alpi e Mediterraneo, Catalo
Danube
The Danube is Europe's second longest river, after the Volga. It is located in Eastern Europe; the Danube was once a long-standing frontier of the Roman Empire, today flows through 10 countries, more than any other river in the world. Originating in Germany, the Danube flows southeast for 2,850 km, passing through or bordering Austria, Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria and Ukraine before draining into the Black Sea, its drainage basin extends into nine more countries. The Danube river basin is home to fish species such as pike, huchen, Wels catfish and tench, it is home to a large diversity of carp and sturgeon, as well as salmon and trout. A few species of euryhaline fish, such as European seabass and eel, inhabit the Danube Delta and the lower portion of the river. Since ancient times, the Danube has become a traditional trade route in Europe, nowadays 2,415 km of its total length being navigable; the river is an important source of energy and drinking water. Danube is an Old European river name derived from a Proto-Indo-European *dānu.
Other river names from the same root include the Dunaj, Dzvina/Daugava, Donets, Dniestr, Dysna and Tuoni. In Rigvedic Sanskrit, dānu means "fluid, drop", in Avestan, the same word means "river". In the Rigveda, Dānu once appears as the mother of Vrtra, "a dragon blocking the course of the rivers"; the Finnish word for Danube is Tonava, most derived from the word for the river in Swedish and German, Donau. Its Sámi name Deatnu means "Great River", it is possible that dānu in Scythian as in Avestan was a generic word for "river": Dnieper and Dniestr, from Danapris and Danastius, are presumed to continue Scythian *dānu apara "far river" and *dānu nazdya- "near river", respectively. The river was known to the ancient Greeks as the Istros a borrowing from a Daco-Thracian name meaning "strong, swift", from a root also encountered in the ancient name of the Dniester and akin to Iranic turos “swift” and Sanskrit iṣiras "swift", from the PIE *isro-, *sreu “to flow”. In the Middle Ages, the Greek Tiras was borrowed into Italian as Tyrlo and into Turkic languages as Tyrla, the latter further borrowed into Romanian as a regionalism.
The Thraco-Phrygian name was Matoas, "the bringer of luck". In Latin, the Danube was variously known as Ister; the Latin name is masculine, except Slovenian. The German Donau is feminine, as it has been re-interpreted as containing the suffix -ouwe "wetland". Romanian differs from other surrounding languages in designating the river with a feminine term, Dunărea; this form was not inherited from Latin. To explain the loss of the Latin name, scholars who suppose that Romanian developed near the large river propose that the Romanian name descends from a hypotetical Thracian *Donaris that shares the same PIE root with the Iranic don-/dan-, with the suffix -aris encountered in the ancient name of the Ialomița River, in the unidentified Miliare river mentioned by Jordanes in his Getica. Gábor Vékony says that this hypothesis is not plausible, because the Greeks borrowed the Istros form from the native Thracians, he proposes. The modern languages spoken in the Danube basin all use names related to Dānuvius: German: Donau.
Dunav. Dunai. Classified as an international waterway, it originates in the town of Donaueschingen, in the Black Forest of Germany, at the confluence of the rivers Brigach and Breg; the Danube flows southeast for about 2,730 km, passing through four capital cities before emptying into the Black Sea via the Danube Delta in Romania and Ukraine. Once a long-standing frontier of the Roman Empire, the river passes through or touches the borders of 10 countries: Romania, Serbia, Germany, Slovakia, Croatia and Moldova, its drainage basin extends into nine more. In addition to the bordering countries, the drainage basin includes parts of nine more countries: Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Czech Republic, Montenegro, Italy, North Macedonia and Albania, its total drainage basin is 801,463 km2. The highest point of the drainage basin is the summit of Piz Bernina at the Italy–Switzerland border, at 4,049 metres; the land drained by the Danube extends into many other countries. Many Danubian tributaries are important rivers in their own right, navigable by barges and other shallow-draught boats.
From its source to its outlet into the Black Sea, its main tribu
Iazyges
The Iazyges (singular Iazyx, were an ancient Sarmatian tribe that traveled westward in c. 200 BC from Central Asia to the steppes of what is now Ukraine. In c. 44 BC, they moved into modern-day Hungary and Serbia near the Dacian steppe between the Danube and Tisza rivers, where they adopted a semi-sedentary lifestyle. In their early relationship with Rome, the Iazyges were used as a buffer state between the Romans and the Dacians. Throughout this relationship, the Iazyges carried out raids on Roman land, which caused punitive expeditions to be made against them. All of the major events of the Iazyges, such as the two Dacian Wars—in both of which the Iazyges fought, assisting Rome in subjugating the Dacians in the first war and conquering them in the second—are connected with war. Another such war is the Marcomannic War that occurred between 169 and 175, in which the Iazyges fought against Rome but were defeated by Marcus Aurelius and had severe penalties imposed on them. Although nomads, after the Iazyges had migrated to the Tisza plain they became semi-sedentary and lived in towns, between which they migrated to feed their cattle.
Their language was a dialect of Old Iranian, different from most of the other Sarmatian dialects of Old Iranian. When an Iazyx became too old to fight in battle, they were killed by their sons or, according to Roman geographer Pomponius Mela, threw themselves from a rock; the Iazyges' name was Latinized as Iazyges Metanastae and Jazyges, sometimes as Iaxamatae. They were called the Iazyigs, Iasians and Iazuges. Several corruptions of their names, such as Jazamatae, Iasidae and Cizyges existed; the root of the name may be Proto-Iranian *yaz-, "to sacrifice" indicating a caste or tribe specializing in religious sacrifices. The graves made by the Iazyges were rectangular or circular, although some were ovoid, hexagonal, or octagonal, they were grouped like burials in modern cemeteries. Most of the graves' access openings face southeast, or southwest; the access openings are between 1.1 m wide. The graves themselves are between 5 13 m in diameter. After their migration to the Tisza plain, the Iazyges were in serious poverty.
This is reflected in the poor furnishings found at burial sites, which are filled with clay vessels and sometimes brooches. Iron daggers and swords were rarely found in the burial site, their brooches and arm-rings were of the La Tène type, showing the Dacians had a distinct influence on the Iazyges. Tombs showed an increase in material wealth. Iazygian tombs along the Roman border show a strong Roman influence; the Iazyges used hanging, barrel-shaped pots that had uneven weight distribution. The rope used to hang the pot was wrapped around the edges of the side collar. Due to the spinning motion, there are several theories about the pot's uses, it is believed the small hanging pots were used to ferment alcohol using the seeds of touch-me-not balsam, larger hanging pots were used to churn butter and make cheese. The Iazyges were cattle breeders. According to Cassius Dio, the Iazyges received grain from the Romans; the Iazyges wore heavy armor, such as Sugarloaf helms, scale armor made of iron, horn, or horse hoof, sown onto a leather gown so the scales would overlap.
They used long, two-handed lances called Contus. Their military was cavalry, they are believed to have used saddle blankets on their horses. Although it was Gaulic, it is believed the Iazyges used the Carnyx, a trumpet-like wind instrument. One of the Iazygian towns, Bormanon, is believed to have had hot springs because settlement names starting with "Borm" were used among European tribes to denote that the location had hot springs, which held religious importance for many Celtic tribes, it is not known, whether the religious significance of the hot springs was passed on to the Iazyges with the concept itself. The Iazyges used horse-tails in their religious rituals; when the Iazyges migrated to the plain between the Tisza and the Danube, their economy suffered severely. Many explanations have been offered for this, such as their trade with the Pontic Steppe and Black Sea being cut off and the absence of any mineable resources within their territory making their ability to trade negligent. Additionally, Rome proved more difficult to raid than the Iazyges' previous neighbors due to Rome's well-organized army.
The Iazyges had no large-scale organized production of goods for most of their history. As such, most of their trade goods were gained via small-scale raids upon neighboring peoples, although they did have some incidental horticulture. Several pottery workshops have been found in Banat, within the territory of the Iazyges, close to their border with Rome; these pottery workshops were built from the late 3rd century and have been found at Vršac–Crvenka, Grădinari–Selişte, Timişoara–Freidorf, Timişoara–Dragaşina, Pančevo and Izvin şi Jabuca. The Iazyges' trade with the Pontic Steppe and Black Sea was important to their economy.
Herodotus
Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian, born in Halicarnassus in the Persian Empire. He is known for having written the book The Histories, a detailed record of his "inquiry" on the origins of the Greco-Persian Wars, he is considered to have been the first writer to have treated historical subjects using a method of systematic investigation—specifically, by collecting his materials and critically arranging them into an historiographic narrative. On account of this, he is referred to as "The Father of History", a title first conferred on him by the first-century BC Roman orator Cicero. Despite Herodotus's historical significance, little is known about his personal life, his Histories deals with the lives of Croesus, Cambyses, Smerdis and Xerxes and the battles of Marathon, Artemisium, Salamis and Mycale. Herodotus has been criticized for the fact that his book includes a large number of obvious legends and fanciful accounts. Many authors, starting with the late fifth-century BC historian Thucydides, have accused him of making up stories for entertainment.
Herodotus, states that he is reporting what he has been told. A sizable portion of the information he provides has since been confirmed by historians and archaeologists. Herodotus announced the purpose and scope of his work at the beginning of his Histories as such: Here are presented the results of the enquiry carried out by Herodotus of Halicarnassus; the purpose is to prevent the traces of human events from being erased by time, to preserve the fame of the important and remarkable achievements produced by both Greeks and non-Greeks. His record of the achievements of others was an achievement in itself, though the extent of it has been debated. Herodotus's place in history and his significance may be understood according to the traditions within which he worked, his work is the earliest Greek prose. However, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a literary critic of Augustan Rome, listed seven predecessors of Herodotus, describing their works as simple, unadorned accounts of their own and other cities and people, Greek or foreign, including popular legends, sometimes melodramatic and naïve charming – all traits that can be found in the work of Herodotus himself.
Modern historians regard the chronology as uncertain, but according to the ancient account, these predecessors included Dionysius of Miletus, Charon of Lampsacus, Hellanicus of Lesbos, Xanthus of Lydia and, the best attested of them all, Hecataeus of Miletus. Of these, only fragments of Hecataeus's works survived, the authenticity of these is debatable, but they provide a glimpse into the kind of tradition within which Herodotus wrote his own Histories. In his introduction to Hecataeus's work, Genealogies: Hecataeus the Milesian speaks thus: I write these things as they seem true to me; this points forward to the "international" outlook typical of Herodotus. However, one modern scholar has described the work of Hecataeus as "a curious false start to history", since despite his critical spirit, he failed to liberate history from myth. Herodotus mentions Hecataeus in his Histories, on one occasion mocking him for his naive genealogy and, on another occasion, quoting Athenian complaints against his handling of their national history.
It is possible that Herodotus borrowed much material from Hecataeus, as stated by Porphyry in a quote recorded by Eusebius. In particular, it is possible that he copied descriptions of the crocodile and phoenix from Hecataeus's Circumnavigation of the Known World misrepresenting the source as "Heliopolitans", but Hecataeus did not record events that had occurred in living memory, unlike Herodotus, nor did he include the oral traditions of Greek history within the larger framework of oriental history. There is no proof that Herodotus derived the ambitious scope of his own work, with its grand theme of civilizations in conflict, from any predecessor, despite much scholarly speculation about this in modern times. Herodotus claims to be better informed than his predecessors by relying on empirical observation to correct their excessive schematism. For example, he argues for continental asymmetry as opposed to the older theory of a circular earth with Europe and Asia/Africa equal in size. However, he retains idealizing tendencies, as in his symmetrical notions of the Nile.
His debt to previous authors of prose "histories" might be questionable, but there is no doubt that Herodotus owed much to the example and inspiration of poets and story-tellers. For example, Athenian tragic poets provided him with a world-view of a balance between conflicting forces, upset by the hubris of kings, they provided his narrative with a model of episodic structure, his familiarity with Athenian tragedy is demonstrated in a number of passages echoing Aeschylus's Persae, including the epigrammatic observation that the defeat of the Persian navy at Salamis caused the defeat of the land army. The debt may have been repaid by Sophocles because there appear to be echoes of The Histories in his plays a passage in Antigone that resembles Herodotus's account of the death of Intaphernes. However, this point is one of the most contentious
Adriatic Sea
The Adriatic Sea is a body of water separating the Italian Peninsula from the Balkan peninsula. The Adriatic is the northernmost arm of the Mediterranean Sea, extending from the Strait of Otranto to the northwest and the Po Valley; the countries with coasts on the Adriatic are Albania and Herzegovina, Italy and Slovenia. The Adriatic contains over 1,300 islands located along the Croatian part of its eastern coast, it is divided into three basins, the northern being the shallowest and the southern being the deepest, with a maximum depth of 1,233 metres. The Otranto Sill, an underwater ridge, is located at the border between the Adriatic and Ionian Seas; the prevailing currents flow counterclockwise from the Strait of Otranto, along the eastern coast and back to the strait along the western coast. Tidal movements in the Adriatic are slight, although larger amplitudes are known to occur occasionally; the Adriatic's salinity is lower than the Mediterranean's because the Adriatic collects a third of the fresh water flowing into the Mediterranean, acting as a dilution basin.
The surface water temperatures range from 30 °C in summer to 12 °C in winter moderating the Adriatic Basin's climate. The Adriatic Sea sits on the Apulian or Adriatic Microplate, which separated from the African Plate in the Mesozoic era; the plate's movement contributed to the formation of the surrounding mountain chains and Apennine tectonic uplift after its collision with the Eurasian plate. In the Late Oligocene, the Apennine Peninsula first formed, separating the Adriatic Basin from the rest of the Mediterranean. All types of sediment are found in the Adriatic, with the bulk of the material transported by the Po and other rivers on the western coast; the western coast is alluvial or terraced, while the eastern coast is indented with pronounced karstification. There are dozens of marine protected areas in the Adriatic, designed to protect the sea's karst habitats and biodiversity; the sea is abundant in flora and fauna—more than 7,000 species are identified as native to the Adriatic, many of them endemic and threatened ones.
The Adriatic's shores are populated by more than 3.5 million people. The earliest settlements on the Adriatic shores were Etruscan and Greek. By the 2nd century BC, the shores were under Rome's control. In the Middle Ages, the Adriatic shores and the sea itself were controlled, to a varying extent, by a series of states—most notably the Byzantine Empire, the Croatian Kingdom, the Republic of Venice, the Habsburg Monarchy and the Ottoman Empire; the Napoleonic Wars resulted in the First French Empire gaining coastal control and the British effort to counter the French in the area securing most of the eastern Adriatic shore and the Po Valley for Austria. Following Italian unification, the Kingdom of Italy started an eastward expansion that lasted until the 20th century. Following World War I and the collapse of Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, the eastern coast's control passed to Yugoslavia and Albania; the former disintegrated during the 1990s. Italy and Yugoslavia agreed on their maritime boundaries by 1975 and this boundary is recognised by Yugoslavia's successor states, but the maritime boundaries between Slovenian, Bosnian-Herzegovinian, Montenegrin waters are still disputed.
Italy and Albania agreed on their maritime boundary in 1992. Fisheries and tourism are significant sources of income all along the Adriatic coast. Adriatic Croatia's tourism industry has grown faster economically than the rest of the Adriatic Basin's. Maritime transport is a significant branch of the area's economy—there are 19 seaports in the Adriatic that each handle more than a million tonnes of cargo per year; the largest Adriatic seaport by annual cargo turnover is the Port of Trieste, while the Port of Split is the largest Adriatic seaport by passengers served per year. The origins of the name Adriatic are linked to the Etruscan settlement of Adria, which derives its name from the Illyrian adur meaning water or sea. In classical antiquity, the sea was known as Mare Adriaticum or, less as Mare Superum, " upper sea"; the two terms were not synonymous, however. Mare Adriaticum corresponds to the Adriatic Sea's extent, spanning from the Gulf of Venice to the Strait of Otranto; that boundary became more defined by Roman authors – early Greek sources place the boundary between the Adriatic and Ionian seas at various places ranging from adjacent to the Gulf of Venice to the southern tip of the Peloponnese, eastern shores of Sicily and western shores of Crete.
Mare Superum on the other hand encompassed both the modern Adriatic Sea and the sea off the Apennine peninsula's southern coast, as far as the Strait of Sicily. Another name used in the period was Mare Dalmaticum, applied to waters off the coast of Dalmatia or Illyricum; the names for the sea in the languages of the surrounding countries include Albanian: Deti Adriatik. In Croatian and Slovene, the sea is referred to as Jadran; the Adriatic Sea is a semi-enclosed sea, bordered in the southwest by the Apennine or Italian Peninsula, in the northwest by the Italian regions of Veneto and Friuli-Venezia Giulia, in the northeast by Slovenia, Croatia, B
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Sigynnae". Encyclopædia Britannica. 25 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 84.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the