the Roman general Sulla destroyed an army of Mithradates VI. of Pontus. Apart from this event its later history is obscure, and its decadence is further attested by the neglectful drainage of the plain and the consequent encroachments of Lake Copaïs. Since medieval times the site has been occupied by a village named Skripou. Since 1867 drainage operations have been resumed, and the land thus reclaimed has been divided into small holdings. The most remarkable relic of the early power of Orchomenus is the so-called " treasury " (of " Minyas ") which resembles the buildings of similar style at Mycenae (see Mycenae), and is almost exactly the same size as the treasury of Atreus. The admiration which Pausanias expresses for it is justified by the beautiful ornamentation, especially of the roof, which has been brought to light by Schliemann's excavations in the inner chamber opening out of the circular vaulted tomb. The monument, undoubtedly the tomb of some ancient ruler, or of a dynasty, lies outside the city walls. Other remains of early date have been found upon this site.
The worship of the Charites (see Graces) was the great cultus of Orchomenus, and the site of the temple is now occupied by a chapel, the Κοίμησις τῆς Παναγίας. The Charites were worshipped under the form of rude stones, which had fallen from heaven during the reign of Eteocles; and it was not till the time of Pausanias that statues of the goddesses were placed in the temple. Near this was another temple dedicated to Dionysus, in whose festival, the Άγριώνια, are apparent the traces of human sacrifice in early times (see Agrionia).
See Strabo viii. p. 374, ix. pp. 407, 414-416; Pausanias ix. 34-38; Thucydides i. 12, iv. 76; Xenophon, Hellenica, iii. 5, iv. 3, vi. 4; Diodorus XV., xvi.; Plutarch, Sulla, chs. 30-31; K. O. Müller, Orchomenos und die Minyer (Breslau, 1844); B. V. Head, Historia numorum (Oxford, 1877), pp. 293-294; Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. ii. pls. xii., xiii.
2. An Arcadian city, situated in a district of the same name, north of Mantineia and west of Stymphalus. The district was mountainous, but embraced two valleys—the northern containing a lake which is drained, like all Arcadian lakes, by a katavothron; the southern lying under the city, separated from Mantineia by a mountain ridge called Anchisia. The old city occupied a strong and lofty situation; in the time of Strabo it was a ruin, but Pausanias mentions that a new town was built below the old. A primitive wooden image of Artemis Cedreatis stood in a large cedar tree outside the city. Orchomenus is mentioned in the Homeric catalogue with the epithet πολύμηλος.
In early history Orchomenus figures as a town of some importance, for its kings until the late 7th century B.C. held some sort of sovereignty over all Arcadia. In the 5th century it was overshadowed by its southern neighbour Mantineia, with whom it is henceforth generally found to be at variance. In 418 B.C. Orchomenus fell for a time into the hands of the Mantineians; in 370 it held aloof from the new Arcadian League which the Mantineians were organizing. About this time it further declined in importance through the loss of some possessions on the east Arcadian watershed to the new Arcadian capital Megalopolis. In the 3rd century Orchomenus belonged in turn to the Aetolian League, to the Lacedaemonians, and, since 222, to the Achaean League. Though a fairly extensive settlement still existed on the site in the 2nd century A.D., its history under the Roman rule is quite obscure.
See Pausanias, viii. chs. 5, 11-13, 27; B. V. Head, Historia numorum (Oxford, 1887), pp. 377-378.
ORCIN, a dioxytoluene, C6H3(CH3)(OH)2 (1 : 3 : 5), found
in many lichens, e.g. Rocella tinctoria, Lecanora, and formed
by fusing extract of aloes with potash. It may be synthesized
from toluene; more interesting is its production when acetone
dicarboxylic ester is condensed with the aid of sodium. It
crystallizes in colourless prisms with one molecule of water,
which redden on exposure. Ferric chloride gives a bluish-violet
coloration with the aqueous solution. Unlike resorcin
it does not give a fluoresce in with phthalic anhydride. Oxidation
of the ammonia cal solution gives orcein, C28H24N2O7, the chief
constituent of the natural dye archil (q.v.). Homo-pyrocatechin
is an isomer (CH3 : OH : OH= 1 : 3 : 4), found as its methyl
ether (creosol) in beech-wood tar.
ORDEAL (O.Eng. ordal, ordael, judgment), a term corresponding
to modern Ger. Urteil, but bearing the special sense of the
medieval Lat. Dei judicium, a miraculous decision as to the
truth of an accusation or claim. The word is adopted in the late
Lat. ordalium, Fr. ordalie. The ordeal had existed for many
ages before it was thus named in Europe. In principle, and
often in the very forms used, it belongs to ancient culture,
thence flourishing up to the medieval European and modern
Asiatic levels, but dying out before modern civilization. Some
ordeals, which possibly represent early stages of the practice,
are simply magical, being processes of divination turned to
legal purpose. Thus in Burma suits are still determined by
plaintiff and defendant being each furnished with a candle,
equal in size and both lighted at once—he whose candle outlasts
the other being adjudged, amid the acclamations of his friends,
to have won his cause (Shway Yoe, The Burman, ii. 254).
Even quainter is a Dyak ordeal in Borneo, where the two
parties are represented by two shell-fish on a plate, which are
irritated by pouring on some lime-juice, and the one first moving
settles the guilt or innocence (as has been before arranged) of
its owner (St John, Forests of the Far East, i.89). The administration
of ordeals has been much in the hands of priests, and
they are more often than not worked on a theological basis, the
intervention of a deity being invoked and assumed to take place
even when the process is in its nature one of symbolic magic.
For instance, an ancient divining instrument consisted of a sieve
held suspended by a thread or by a pair of shears with the points
stuck into its rim, and considered to move at the mention of the
name to be discovered, &c. Thus girls consulted the “ sieve-witch ”
(KOdKLvbixavTis) about lovers (Theocr., Idyll, iii. 31).
This coscinomancy served in the same way to discover a thief,
when, with prayer to the gods for direction, the names of the
suspected persons were called over to it (Potter, Greek Antiquities,
i. 352). When a suspended hatchet was used in the same way
to turn to the guilty, the process was called axinomancy. The
sieve-ordeal remained popular in the middle ages (see the description
and picture in Cornelius Agrippa, De Occ. Phil.); it is
mentioned in Hudibras (ii. 3):
“... th' oracle of sieve and shears
That turns as certain as the spheres.”
From this ancient ordeal is evidently derived the modern Christian form of the key and Bible, where a Psalter or Bible is suspended by a key tied in at Psalm 1. 18: &ldqo; When thou sawest a thief, then thou consentedst with him ”; the bow of the key being balanced on the fingers, and the names of those suspected being called over, he or she at whose name the book turns or faUs is the culprit (see Brand, Popular Antiquities, ed. Bohn, iii. 351).
One of the most remarkable groups of divination's passing into ordeals are those which appeal to the corpse itself for discovery of its murderer. The idea is rooted in that primitive state of mind which has not yet realized the full effect of death, but regards the body as still able to hear and act. Thus the natives of Australia will ask the dead man carried on his bier of boughs, who bewitched him; if he has died by witchcraft he will make the bier move round, and if the sorcerer who killed him be present a bough will touch him (Eyre, Australia, ii. 344). That this is no isolated fancy is shown by its recurrence among the negroes of Africa, where, for instance, the corpse causes its bearers to dash against some one's house, which accuses the owner of the murder (J. L. Wilson, Western Africa, p. 231; Waitz, ii. 193). This somewhat resembles the well-known ordeal of the bier in Europe in the middle ages, which, however, seems founded on a different principle, the imagination that a sympathetic action of the blood causes it to flow at the touch or neighbourhood of the murderer. Apparently the liquefaction of the blood which in certain cases takes place after death may have furnished the ground for this belief. On Teutonic ground, this ordeal appears in the Nibelungenlied, where the murdered Siegfried is laid on his bier, and Hagen is called on to prove his innocence by going to the
