the name of Arta (q.v.). Some fragmentary walls of large, well-dressed blocks near this latter town indicate the early prosperity of Ambracia.
Authorities.—Thucydides ii. 68–iii. 114; Aristotle, Politics, 1303a sqq.; Strabo p. 325; Polybius xxii. 9-13; Livy xxxviii. 3-9; G. Wolfe, Journal of Geographical Society (London), iii. (1833) pp. 77-94; E. Oberhummer, Akarnanien, Ambrakien, &c. im Altertum (Munich, 1887). (M. O. B. C.)
AMBRIZ, a West African seaport belonging to Portugal, at the mouth of the Loje River, in 7° 50' S., 13° E., some 70 m. N. of Loanda. It forms a part of the province of Angola (q.v.). The town is within the free-trade area of the conventional basin of the Congo river. Its chief exports are rubber, gum, coffee and copper. Pop. about 2500. Ambriz was, previously to 1884, the northernmost point of Africa south of the equator acknowledged as Portuguese territory.
AMBROS, AUGUST WILHELM (1816–1876), Austrian composer and historian of music, was born at Mauth near Prague. His father was a cultured man, and his mother was the sister of R. G. Kiesewetter (1773–1850), the musical archaeologist and collector. Ambros was well educated in music and the arts, which were his abiding passion; but he was destined for the law and an official career in the Austrian civil service, and he occupied various important posts under the ministry of justice, music being the employment of his leisure. From 1850 onwards he became well known as a critic and essay-writer, and in 1860 he began working on his magnum opus, his History of Music, which was published at intervals from 1864 in five volumes, the last two (1878, 1882) being edited and completed by Otto Kade and Langhaus. Ambros became professor of the history of music at Prague in 1869. He was an excellent pianist, and the author of numerous compositions somewhat reminiscent of Mendelssohn. He died at Vienna on the 28th of June 1876.
AMBROSE (fl. 1190), Norman poet, and chronicler of the Third Crusade, author of a work called L’Estoire de la guerre sainte, which describes in rhyming French verse the adventures of Richard Coeur de Lion as a Crusader. The poem is known to us only through one Vatican MS., and long escaped the notice of historians. The credit for detecting its value belongs to the late Gaston Paris, although his edition (1897) was partially anticipated by the editors of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, who published some selections in the twenty-seventh volume of their Scriptores (1885). Ambrose followed Richard I. as a non-combatant, and not improbably as a court-minstrel. He speaks as an eye-witness of the king’s doings at Messina, in Cyprus, at the siege of Acre, and in the abortive campaign which followed the capture of that city. Ambrose is surprisingly accurate in his chronology; though he did not complete his work before 1195, it is evidently founded upon notes which he had taken in the course of his pilgrimage. He shows no greater political insight than we should expect from his position; but relates what he had seen and heard with a naive vivacity which compels attention. He is prejudiced against the Saracens, against the French, and against all the rivals or enemies of his master; but he is never guilty of deliberate misrepresentation. He is rather to be treated as a biographer than as a historian of the Crusade in its broader aspects. None the less he is the chief authority for the events of the years 1190–1192, so far as these are connected with the Holy Land. The Itinerarium Regis Ricardi (formerly attributed to Geoffrey Vinsauf, but in reality the work of Richard, a canon of Holy Trinity, London) is little more than a free paraphrase of Ambrose. The first book of the Itinerarium contains some additional facts; and the whole of the Latin version is adorned with flowers of rhetoric which are foreign to the style of Ambrose. But it is no longer possible to regard the Itinerarium as a firsthand narrative. Stubbs’s edition of the Itinerarium (Rolls Series, 1864), in which the contrary hypothesis is maintained, appeared before Gaston Paris published his discovery.
See the edition of L’Estoire de la guerre sainte by Gaston Paris in the Collection des documents inédits sur l’histoire de France (1897); the editor discusses in his introduction the biography of Ambrose, the value of the poem as a historical source, and its relation to the Itinerarium. R. Pauli’s remarks (in Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Scriptores, xxvii.) also deserve attention. (H. W. C. D.)
AMBROSE, SAINT (c. 340–307), bishop of Milan, one of the most eminent fathers of the church in the 4th century, was a citizen of Rome, born about 337–340 in Trèves, where his father was prefect of Gallia Narbonensis. His mother was a woman of intellect and piety. Ambrose was early destined to follow his father’s career, and was accordingly educated in Rome. He made such progress in literature, law and rhetoric, that the praetor Anicius Probus first gave him a place in the council and then made him consular prefect of Liguria and Emilia, with headquarters at Milan, where he made an excellent administrator. In 374 Auxentius, bishop of Milan, died, and the orthodox and Arian parties contended for the succession. An address delivered to them at this crisis by Ambrose led to his being acclaimed as the only competent occupant of the see; though hitherto only a catechumen, he was baptized, and a few days saw him duly installed as bishop of Milan. He immediately betook himself to the necessary studies, and acquitted himself in his new office with ability, boldness and integrity. Having apportioned his money among the poor, and settled his lands upon the church, with the exception of making his sister Marcellina tenant during life, and having committed the care of his family to his brother, he entered upon a regular course of theological study, under the care of Simplician, a presbyter of Rome, and devoted himself to the labours of the church, labours which were temporarily interrupted by an invasion of Goths, which compelled Ambrose and other churchmen to retire to Illyricum.
The eloquence of Ambrose soon found ample scope in the dispute between the Arians and the orthodox or Catholic party, whose cause the new bishop espoused. Gratian, the son of the elder Valentinian, took the same side; but the younger Valentinian, who had now become his colleague in the empire, adopted the opinions of the Arians, and all the arguments and eloquence of Ambrose could not reclaim the young prince to the orthodox faith. Theodosius, the emperor of the East, also professed the orthodox belief; but there were many adherents of Arius scattered throughout his dominions. In this distracted state of religious opinion, two leaders of the Arians, Palladius and Secundianus, confident of numbers, prevailed upon Gratian to call a general council from all parts of the empire. This request appeared so equitable that he complied without hesitation; but Ambrose, foreseeing the consequence, prevailed upon the emperor to have the matter determined by a council of the Western bishops. A synod, composed of thirty-two bishops, was accordingly held at Aquileia in the year 381. Ambrose was elected president; and Palladius, being called upon to defend his opinions, declined, insisting that the meeting was a partial one, and that, all the bishops of the empire not being present, the sense of the Christian church concerning the question in dispute could not be obtained. A vote was then taken, when Palladius and his associate Secundianus were deposed from the episcopal office.
Ambrose was equally zealous in combating the attempt made by the upholders of the old state religion to resist the enactments of Christian emperors. The pagan party was led by Quintus Aurelius Symmachus (q.v.), consul in 391, who presented to Valentinian II. a forcible but unsuccessful petition praying for the restoration of the altar of Victory to its ancient station in the hall of the senate, the proper support of seven vestal virgins, and the regular observance of the other pagan ceremonies. To this petition Ambrose replied in a letter to Valentinian, arguing that the devoted worshippers of idols had often been forsaken by their deities; that the native valour of the Roman soldiers had gained their victories, and not the pretended influence of pagan priests; that these idolatrous worshippers requested for themselves what they refused to Christians; that voluntary was more honourable than constrained virginity; that as the Christian ministers declined to receive temporal emoluments, they should also be denied to pagan priests; that it was absurd to suppose that God would inflict a famine upon the empire for neglecting to support a religious system contrary to His will as revealed in the Scriptures; that the whole process of nature encouraged innovations, and that all nations had
