718 HIERO HIEROGLYPHICS a Christian church in the time of St. Paul, who mentions it in his epistle to the Colossians (iv. 13). Its ruins, with stalactites and incrus- tations formed by its warm springs, are found at an unoccupied place called Bambuk-Kalessi. It was the birthplace of Epictetus the philoso- pher. II. An ancient city of Syria, between Antioch and CarrhsB in Mesopotamia, called Bambyce by the early natives, one of the chief seats of the worship of Astarte or Ashtoreth, and a great emporium under the Seleucidae. HIERO, or Hieron (Gr. 'Itpuv). I. Tyrant of Syracuse, succeeded his brother Gelon about 478 B. 0., died in Catana in 467. After hav- ing made peace with his brother Polyzelus and Theron of Agrigenturn, with whom he had been at variance, he turned his attention to foreign conquest. In Sicily he made himself master of Naxos and Catana, whose inhabi- tants he transferred to Leontini, while he re- peopled those cities with colonists of Dorian origin. In Italy he prevented the destruction of Locri by threatening its enemy Anaxilas with war, and subsequently effected the ex- pulsion of the tyrant Micythus from Rhegium. But the most glorious event of his reign was his great victory over the Etruscan fleet near Cumae, in 474. He was a liberal patron of poets and philosophers. His triumphs at the Olympian and Pythian games are celebrated in the odes of Pindar. II. King of Syracuse, son of Hierocles, born about 307 B. C., died about 216. He was appointed commander after the departure of Pyrrhus in 275, and in consequence of a great victory over the Ma- mertines was raised to the throne by the suf- frages of his fellow citizens in 270. His great object appears to have been the expulsion of the Mamertines from Sicily ; and when the Romans took them under their protection, Hiero allied himself with the Carthaginians, who had just arrived in Sicily with a powerful force in 264. The combined armies of the Carthaginians and Syracusans then proceeded to lay siege to Messana; but Hiero, having been attacked and defeated by Appius Clau- dius, the Roman consul, was panic-struck, and retreated precipitately to Syracuse. Soon after this disaster, seeing his territory laid waste by the Romans, and many of his cities in their possession, he deemed it prudent to abandon the Carthaginian alliance, and con- cluded a treaty with the Romans (263), by which he secured to himself the whole S. E. and E. of Sicily as far as Tauromenium. From this period till his death, nearly half a century, Hiero remained the steady friend of the Romans, and when he visited Rome was re- ceived with the highest honors. In 241 his treaty with them was changed into a perpetual alliance, and in the beginning of the seco'nd Punic war he fitted out a fleet to cooperate with that of Sempronius, and offered to clothe and feed the Roman forces in Sicily at his own expense. After the battles of Lake Thrasy- menus and CannsB he sent troops and liberal supplies of corn and money to Rome, and a gold- en statue of Victory, which was set up in the capitol. His government was singularly wise and popular, and he built numerous magnifi- cent temples, altars, and public works in Syra- cuse and Acrffl. Archimedes was his friend. He was succeeded by his grandson Hieronymus HIEROGLYPHICS, or Hieroglyphs (Gr. hp6<;, sacred, and yTJvtynv, to carve), picture writing, or figures representing animate beings or in- animate objects, and implying words or ideas. They have been found in all parts of the world, and seem to be employed by all peoples in cer- tain stages of civilization. Though some highly cultured nations have failed to abandon their hieroglyphical systems of writing, yet generally hieroglyphs are gradually superseded by alpha- bets. Every attempt at fixing the memory of an event by indicating the objects and persons concerned in it by means of rude images be- longs in a measure to the class of hieroglyphs. The rude inscriptions found on walls and monu- ments of the ruins of Rome, Pompeii, and other ancient cities, generally represent only the scrib- bling of idle persons. Examples of this are found even in the ruined temples and sepulchres of Egypt, and in the tombs at Jerusalem. They have received the name of graffiti. A large majority of them were doubtless written with the stilus or graphium of iron or bone. The drawings are chiefly grotesque, and the writing generally gives quotations from well known po- ets, or simply names of visitors, gladiators, and public men. Some are mere lists of nouns and verbs, probably scribbled by school boys ; others contain good wishes, prayers, and invocations ; others again libels and obscenities. In spite of their general triviality, they are of great value to paleography, philology, and history, since they exhibit the every-day life of the an- cients, and elucidate many obscure passages in the classics. Hieroglyphics, or picture writing proper, are indications of something that the writer desired to commemorate, while ignorant of or not wishing to use a phonetic or alphabet- ical graphic system. It has been attempted to trace the development of such rude images into a regular system of writing. The coarse marks employed for numbering days, sheep, or scalps were followed by attempts at conveying by sim- ilar signs such ideas as were only secondarily connected with them. This picturing of ab- stractions implies a much higher degree of civi- lization than the mere attempts at drawing the outlines of the actual objects. Another advance is indicated by the hieroglyphs which represent only parts of objects as mementoes of the whole. As soon as it has been learned to employ only a few strokes which suggest some distinctive feature of an object, either to call up the object itself or an abstract idea connected with it, tho beginning of systematic writing is reached. It was generally followed by the practice of indi- cating ideas by picturing objects that possessed phonetically the same name. This opened the way for employing signs to represent sounds
