AUGUSTA HISTORIA AUGUSTIN 111 AUGUSTA HISTORIA, the name gwen to a series of Roman biographers of the ?mperors from the accession of Hadrian (117) to the death of Carinus (385), the predecessor of Dio- cletian. The writers included in this collection are /Elins Spartianus, Julius Capitolinns, ./Elius Latnpridius, Vulcatius Gallicanus, Trebellius Pollio, and Flavius Vopiscus of Syracuse. Some editors have included others, as Eutropius and Paulus Diaconus. There is a break in the Au- r/'tnta Hiatoria in the absence of the lives of Philippus, Deems, and Gallus. The Bipontine edition is the best. AUGUSTA, Maria Louisa Catharine, empress of Germany and queen of Prussia, born in Wei- mar, Sept. 30, 1811. She is the daughter of the grand duke Charles Frederick of Saxe- Weimar (died July 8, 1853), and her mother (died June 23, 1859) was a daughter of Paul I., emperor of Russia. She was brought up at the court of her grandfather Charles Augustus, the friend of Goethe, who speaks in one of his letters of the " many-sided and harmonious cul- ture of the princess Augusta." Her elder sis- ter Maria married Prince Charles of Prussia, and she married the prince's brother, the pres- ent Emperor William, June 11, 1829. She attended personally to the education of her two children, the present crown prince and the princess Louisa, since 1856 grand duchess of Baden. She is much respected for her love of science, letters, and art, and for her benevo- lent disposition, displayed especially in 1870-'71 in labors for the relief of the wounded soldiers. In 1872 she founded at Charlottenburg a semi- nary for the education of orphan daughters of officers who fell in the war, and has designed buildings for the poor in Berlin after the plan of those of Mr. Peabody in London. AUGUSTAN AGE, the Roman literary epoch which culminated in the reign of Augustus Csesar. During this period Cicero, Horace, Ovid, Virgil, Catullus, Tibullus, and other writ- trs flourished; also great patrons of literature like Maecenas. The purest Latinity belongs to the authors of the Augustan age. In English literature it was common in the last century to apply the phrase " Augustan age of English lit- erature " to the times of Addison, Steele, Swift, and Defoe, and the writers during the reign of Queen Anne. The gitcle (CAvgwteof French literature is the latter years of the reign of Louis XIV. This metaphor has no modern ap- plication beyond the literature of France and England. AUGUSTEXBURG, a village on the formerly Danish and now German island of Alsen; pop. about 500. It grew up round the palace of the same name, built in 1651 by Duke Ernst Gun- ther, and rebuilt in the latter part of the 18th century on a magnificent scale by Fried- rich Christian the elder, duke of Schleswig- Holstein-Sonderburg-Aufrnstenburg, whose son Christian August (bom July 9, 1708, died May 28, 1810) was in 1810 adopted by the childless King Charles XIII. of Sweden, and was suc- 60 VOL. ii. 8 ceeded by Bernadotte as crown prince. The male lineage of the ancient royal Holstein-Den- mark dynasty became extinct in 1863, and its female lineage has since been known as the Hol- stein-Sonderburg family, the present king of Denmark belonging to the junior or Schleswig- Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg branch, and the dukes of Augustenburg to the senior or Schleswig-Holstein - Sonderburg -Augustenburg branch. Prominent among the latter was Chris- tian Karl Friedrich August (born July 19, 1798, died March 11, 1869). His father was the duke Friedrich Christian the younger, and his mother was a daughter of Christian VII. of Denmark. He sold his hereditary estates to Denmark in 1852, and in 1863 relinquished his claims to the succession in the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, which were unsuccess- fully revived during the Schleswig-Holstein war by his elder son Friedrich Christian Au- gust (born July 6, 1829), who has since the annexation of his former possessions to Prussia chiefly resided in Gotha. His eldest son, Au- gust, was born in 1858. AUGUST!, Johann Christian Wilhelm, a German theologian, born at Eschenberg, in Gotha, about 1772, died in Coblentz in 1841. He studied at Jena, became professor of philosophy and oriental languages in that university, was ap- pointed professor of theology in 1812 at Bres- lau and in 1819 at Bonn, and some years later was placed at the head of the ecclesiastical affairs of the Rhenish province of Prussia as director of the consistory of Coblentz. The most important of his numerous works is the Denkwurdiglceiten aus der christlichen Archa- ologie( vols. 8vo, Leipsic, 1817-'31). As an oriental scholar he was eminent. In doctrine he was an orthodox Lutheran. AUGCSTIN, or Austin, Saint, archbishop of Canterbury, sometimes called the apostle of the English, born probably in the first half of the 6th century, died at Canterbury between 604 and 614. He was a Benedictine monk in the monastery of St. Andrew at Rome, when he was selected by Pope Gregory I. with other monks to convert the Saxons of England to Christianity. He landed in the dominions of Ethelbert, king of Kent, in 596 or 597, and was hospitably received and allowed to preach to the people, although the king himself firm- ly refused to forsake the gods of his fathers. The influence of his wife, a Christian princess, aided by the preaching of Augustin, finally pre- vailed, and Ethelbert was baptized, after which the efforts of the missionaries were crowned with complete success throughout the whole Saxon heptarchy. The ascetic habits of Au- gustin and his brethren, a reputation for mirac- ulous power in the restoration of sight and even of life, the example of the king, and the fact that the southern races of Europe which had embraced Christianity were far before them in civilization and prosperity, made a deep im- pression upon the Saxon people, never very devotedly attached to their national religion,
