ALBURY, a town in Goulburn county, New South Wales, Australia, 386 m. by rail W.S.W. of Sydney. Pop. (1901) 5821. It stands near the border of Victoria, on the right bank of the Murray river, here crossed by two bridges, one built of wood carrying a road, the other of iron bearing the railway. The Murray is navigable for small steamers from this town to its mouth, a distance of 1800 miles. Albury is the centre of a sheep-rearing and agricultural district; grapes, cereals and tobacco are largely grown, and the wine produced here is held in high repute throughout Australia. The tree under which the first explorers encamped here in November 1824 is still standing in an enclosed space. Albury became a municipality in 1859.
ALCAEUS (Alkaios), Greek lyric poet, an older contemporary of Sappho, was a native of Mytilene in Lesbos and flourished about 600 B.C. His life was greatly mixed up with the political disputes and internal feuds of his native city. He belonged to one of the noble families, and sided with his class against the “tyrants” who at that time set themselves up in Mytilene. He was in consequence obliged to leave his native country, and spent a considerable time in exile. He is said to have become reconciled to Pittacus, the ruler set up by the popular party, and to have returned to Lesbos. The date of his death is unknown. The subjects of his poems, which were composed in the Aeolic dialect, were of various kinds: some were hymns to the gods; others were of a martial or political character; others breathed an ardent love of liberty and hatred of tyrants; lastly, some were love-songs. Alcaeus was allotted the second place among the nine lyric poets in the Alexandrian canon. The considerable number of fragments extant, and the well-known imitations of Horace, who regarded Alcaeus as his great model, enable us to form a fair idea of the character of his poems. A new fragment has recently been discovered, together with some fragments of Sappho (Classical Review, May 1902).
See Bergk, Poetae Lyrici Graeci (1882); also The Songs of Alcaeus, by J. Easby-Smith (Washington, 1901); Plehn, Lesbiacorum Liber (1826); Flach, Geschichte der griechischen Lyrik (1883–1884); Farnell, Greek Lyric Poets (1891).
ALCAICS, in ancient poetry, a name given to several kinds of verse, from Alcaeus, their reputed inventor. The first kind consists of five feet, viz. a spondee or iambic, an iambic, a long syllable and two dactyles; the second of two dactyles and two trochees. Besides these, which are called dactylic Alcaics, there is another, simply styled Alcaic, consisting of an epitrite, two choriambi and a bacchius; thus—
Cur timet fla|vum Tiberim | tangere, cur | olivum?
The Alcaic ode is composed of several strophes, each consisting of four verses, the first two of which are always eleven-syllable alcaics of the first kind; the third verse is an iambic dimeter hypercatalectic consisting of nine syllables; and the fourth verse is a ten-syllable alcaic of the second kind. The following strophe is of this species, which Horace calls Alcaei minaces camenae—
Non possidentem multa vocaveris
Recte beatum; rectius occupat
Nomen beati, qui deorum
Muneribus sapienter uti.
There is also a decasyllabic variety of the Alcaic metre.
The Alcaic measure was one of the most splendid inventions of Greek metrical art. In its best examples it gives an impression of wonderful vigour and spontaneity. Tennyson has attempted to reproduce it in English in his
O mighty-mouthed inventor of harmonies,
O skilled to sing of time or eternity,
God-gifted organ-voice of England,
Milton, a name to resound for ages.
German is, however, the only modern literature in which alcaics have been written with much success. They were introduced by Klopstock, and used by Hölderlin, by Voss in his translations of Horace, by A. Kopisch and other modern German poets.
ALCALÁ (Moorish al Kala, the “Fortress” or “Castle”), the name of thirteen Spanish towns, all founded or named by the Moors. Alcalá de Henares (pop. (1900) 11,206) is separately described on account of its historical importance. Alcalá la Real (15,973), a picturesque town with a fine abbey, is situated in mountainous country in the extreme south-west of Jaén. Its distinctive name la Real, “the Royal,” was conferred in memory of its capture by Alphonso XI. of Leon in 1340. In 1810 the French under Count Sebastiani here defeated the Spaniards. Alcalá de los Gazules (8877), on the river Barbate, in the province of Cadiz, has a thriving trade in cork and agricultural produce. Alcalá de Guadaira (8198), on the river Guadaira, near Seville, is popularly called Alcalá de los Panadores, or “Alcalá of the Bakers,” because it supplies Seville with large quantities of bread. Alcalá de Chisbert (6293) is situated on the coast of Castellon de la Plana; Alcalá de Río (3006), on the Guadalquivir, 6 m. N. of Seville; Alcalá del Júcar (2968), on the Júcar, in Albacete; Alcalá de la Selva (1490), on the southern slopes of the Sierra del Gúdar, in Teruel; Alcalá de la Vega (712), on the river Cabriel, in Cuenca; Alcalá de Gurrea (632), on the river Seton, in Huesca; Alcalá del Obispo (432), in the same province; Alcalá de Ebro (388) and Alcalá de Moncayo (367), both in Saragossa.
ALCALÁ DE HENARES, a town of Spain, in the province of Madrid, 17 m. E.N.E. of Madrid, on the river Henares, and the Madrid-Saragossa railway. Pop. (1900) 11,206. Alcalá de Henares contains a military academy and various public institutions, but its commercial importance is slight and its main interest is historical. The town has been identified with the Roman Complutum, which was destroyed about the year 1000, and was rebuilt by the Moors in 1083. In later times it was renowned for its richly endowed university, founded by Cardinal Jimenes de Cisneros in 1510, which at the height of its prosperity numbered 12,000 students, and was second only to that of Salamanca. Here the famous edition of the Bible known as the Complutensian Polyglot was prepared from 1514 to 1517. The college of San Ildefonso, completed in 1583, was the chief university building. Its modernized Gothic church, the Colegiata, contains the 16th century marble monument of Jimenes (d. 1517) and a fine reredos. The greatest of Spanish writers, Cervantes, was born at Alcalá de Henares, and baptized in the otherwise insignificant church of S. Maria on the 9th of October 1547. A tablet, set up in 1840, marks the house in which he is said to have been born. Other illustrious natives of the town were the emperor Ferdinand I. (1503–1564) and the Spanish dramatist and historian Antonio de Solis (1610–1686). After the removal of the university to Madrid in 1836 the town rapidly declined, and the government turned most of the principal buildings erected by Cardinal Jimenes in the 16th century into a depot for the archives of various state departments. Here are kept very complete and curious documents of the Inquisition, showing all its workings from the 15th to the 19th century. One of the principal libraries is the former palace of the archbishops of Toledo.
For a fuller description of Alcalá see the Guia del viajero en Alcalá de Henares, by L. A. de la Torre (Alcalá, 1882). The following works are mainly of historical interest:—M. de Ayala and F. Sastre, Alcalá de Henares (Madrid, 1890); J. C. Garcia, Ensayo de una Tipografia Complutense (Madrid, 1889); M. Portilla y Esquivel, Historia de la ciudad de Compluto (Alcalá, 1725–1728); and the “Annales Complutenses” and “Chronicon Complutense” in España Sagrada, by H. Florez and others (Madrid, 1754–1879).
ALCALDE (from the Arab. al-quadi, the “Cadi” or “judge”), the title in Spanish for officials of somewhat varied functions, in which, however, there is always a judicial element. Alcalde de corte was a judge of the palace court, having jurisdiction in and about the residence of the king. But the mayor of a town or village who discharged the functions of a justice of the peace was also an alcalde. It is in this sense that the title is now exclusively used. He is subject to yearly election and the post has often been an undesirable one in Spain. The title of alcalde must be carefully distinguished from alcaide, which is derived from the Arabic al-quāīd, a general, and means the governor of a fortress.
ALCAMENES, a Greek sculptor of Lemnos and Athens. He was a younger contemporary of Pheidias and noted for the delicacy and finish of his works, among which a Hephaestus
