Page 1628 : ROMANCE — ROME
Individual articles:
and Fall of the Roman Empire, Merivale’s Romans under the Empire, Duruy’s History of Rome, Bryce’s Holy Roman Empire and Bury’s The Later Roman Empire. See, also, Rome.
Romance′, a term derived from Roman, was originally applied to the languages which have been derived from Latin, as French, Italian or Spanish, and to anything written in these languages. But, because during the middle ages the favorite literature in these languages was a certain type of fiction, romance came to be the special designation of the tales of chivalry and adventure which were sung by troubadours generally in verse. Romances of this type sprang from the epic. Thus it has been pointed out that the Odyssey is more a romance than the Iliad; because to a greater degree than the Iliad it obviously is imaginative rather than historical. The romances of the middle ages were developed into what are called cycles, in each of which a related group of persons and their achievements became grouped around a central figure. The greatest of these cycles were those which centered around the siege of Troy and the adventures of Alexander the Great, Charlemagne and King Arthur respectively. In the tales about Arthur, Sir Tristram won so great a place that a cycle of Tristram also grew up almost independently of the tales of Arthur's court. There were English cycles of romance spun about the legendary names of Guy of Warwick and Bevis of Hampton. The Norse sagas and the Teutonic Nibelungenlied are modified forms of the romance.
Out of these medieval romances developed the notion of the modern romance or novel. The beginning of the modern romance may be traced in the Spanish tale of Amadis of Gaul, the famous Arcadia of Sir Philip Sidney, the French L’Astrée of Honoré d’ Urfé and the long stories of Madeline de Scudery. The first modern novels in the strict technical sense of the term were those of Richardson and Fielding in the eighteenth century.
In music, romance has reference to a type of song which lies between the epic and lyric and suggests a ballad, except that its theme belongs to the realm of chivalry. The word romance has not lost the significance which became attached to it in the middle ages. It suggests chivalry, especially towards women, lofty endeavors, gallantry pushed to foolhardiness, an elaborate and artificial code of honor and conduct, a purely aristocratic attitude and an appeal to the imagination rather than to nature.
Romanes (rṓ-mä′nĕs), George John, British biologist, author and lecturer, was born at Kingston, Canada, May 20, 1848. and died at Oxford, May 23, 1894. Educated at Cambridge, England, his taste for natural science led him to study, investigate and write upon that branch of knowledge and to lecture at the Royal Institution, London, and later at Oxford, on natural history, physiology and animal and plant life. Making acquaintance with Darwin, he devoted much of his talent to the scientific exposition of evolution, taking ground adverse at first to the accepted Christian view of that doctrine, though finally expressing belief in the theistic position and opposing the mechanical theories of the origin of things. His publications include (besides a number of articles on instinct, hybridism and animal intelligence) A Candid Examination of Theism, Mental Evolution in Animals, Mental Evolution in Man, Organic Evolution, Darwin and after Darwin, Jelly-Fish, Star-Fish and Sea-Urchins, Examination of Weismannism and Thoughts on Religion. See Life and Letters, edited by his wife.
Romanoff (rṓ-mä′nṓf), The House of, has furnished the sovereigns of Russia since the beginning of the seventeenth century. Rurik, the chief of the Varangians or Rus, laid the foundation of the Russian empire, and he and his family reigned over it for more than seven centuries. Feodor, the last descendant of the Rurik dynasty, dying childless in 1594, the government fell a prey to many adventurers. The legitimate heir to the throne, Dimitri, of the Rurik dynasty, was assassinated, and no less than four impostors arose, claiming to be the dead Dimitri. Conflicts between aspirants for the crown continued until 1613, when a large number of nobles offered the throne to the king of Poland. A sentiment was aroused against this, and the Russian army drove the Poles from Moscow. They then determined to elect a czar. A council, composed of nobles, clergy and burgesses assembled in Lent of 1613. After several days of strong debate the choice fell to Michael Romanoff, a member of a distinguished though not royal Prussian family in Moscow. He was crowned in April of the same year and reigned for 32 years. His successors in the male line ruled until the death of Peter II in 1730, when the succession reverted to the female line. Another change took place with the death of Elizabeth in 1762, when her nephew, the son of the Duke of Hoistein-Gottorp, a branch of the House of Oldenburg, succeeded to the throne with the title of Peter III, thus founding the House of Romanoff-Oldenburg to which the present reigning family belongs. Frequent intermarriages with German princely families have, however, made the strain far more German than Russian.
Rome, Ga., county-seat of Floyd County, on Coosa River, 61 miles northwest of Atlanta. It has iron-foundries and manufactories of plows and nails, and ships cotton.
