embassy to Delphi, was murdered by the priests there, is pure fiction. Under his name were propagated in all parts of Greece, at first only by tradition in the mouth of the people, a multitude of prose tales teaching the lessons of life under the guise of fables about animals. We know how Socrates, during his last days in prison, was engaged in turning the fables of Æsop into verse. The first written collection appears to have been set on foot by Demetrius of Phalērum, b.c. 300. The collections of Æsop's Fables that have come down to us are, in part, late prose renderings of the version in choliambics by Babrius (q.v.), which still retain here and there a scrap of verse; partly products of the rhetorical schools, and therefore of very different periods and degrees of merit.
Æsymnētæ ("regulators," "judges"). A name given in some Greek cities to the ordinary magistrates and judicial functionaries. In earlier times the term was also applied to persons appointed for a definite term (or until the completion of their task) for putting an end, by legislation, to internal quarrels. Sometimes an æsymnetēs was voluntarily chosen by the community for life, and entrusted with supreme and unlimited power. The office of æsymnetes may to a certain extent be compared with the Roman dictatorship, though the latter was never conferred without a strict limitation of time.
Æthra, daughter of Pittheus, king of Trœzēn, mother of Thēseus by Ægeus or, according to another account, by Poseidon. While Homer merely mentions her as a servant of Helen at Troy, later legend adds that, when the Dioscūri took Aphidnæ and set free their sister whom Theseus had carried off, they conveyed Æthra to Sparta as a slave, whence she accompanied Helen to Troy; and that on the fall of that city, they brought her grandsons Acămas and Demŏphoön back to Athens.
Aëtiōn. A Greek painter in the latter half of the 4th century b.c., especially famed for his picture of Alexander the Great's wedding with the beautiful Roxāna, b.c. 328.
Aëtius (Gr. Aĕtiŏs). Of Amĭda in Mesopotamia, a Greek physician of the 6th century a.d., who lived at Constantinople as imperial physician in ordinary. He was the author of a great miscellany on pathology and diagnosis in sixteen books.
Afrānius (Lucius). The chief master of the Fābŭla Togāta. (See Comedy.) Flourished b.c. 100. In his pictures of Roman life he took Menander for his model, and with great success. Cicero calls him witty and a master of language. To judge by the number of the titles of his comedies which have survived (more than forty, with scanty fragments), he was a prolific author; from them we gather that his subjects were mostly taken from family life. His plays kept possession of the stage longer than those of most comic poets, being still acted in Nero's time.
Agămēdēs. Son of Ergīnus of Orchŏmĕnus, and a hero of the building art, like his brother Trophōnius (q.v.).
Agămemnōn. The Atreïd, i.e. son of Atreus, and brother of Menelāus. Driven from Mycēnæ after the murder of Atreus (q.v.) by Thyestes, the two young princes fly to Sparta, where king Tyndareos gives them his daughters in marriage, Clytæmnēstra to Agamemnon, and Hĕlĕna to Menelaus. While the latter inherits his father-in-law’s kingdom, Agamemnon not only drives his uncle out of Mycenæ, but so extends his dominions that in the war against Troy for the recovery of Helena the chief command is entrusted to him as the mightiest prince in Greece. He contributes one hundred ships manned with warriors, beside lending sixty to the Arcadians. (On the immolation of his daughter Iphigeneia at Aulis, see Iphigeneia.) In Homer he is one of the bravest fighters before Troy; yet, by arrogantly refusing to let Chryses, priest of Apollo, ransom his daughter Chrysēïs, who had fallen to Agamemnon as the prize of war, he brings a plague on the Grecian host, which he afterwards almost ruins by ruthlessly carrying off Brisēïs the prize of Achilles, who henceforth sits sulking in his tents, and refuses to fight. After the fall of Troy, Agamemnon comes home with his captive, the princess Cassandra; but at supper he and his comrades are murdered by his wife's lover Ægisthus, while the queen herself kills Cassandra. Such is Homer's account; the tragic poets make Clytæmnestra, in revenge of her daughter's immolation, throw a net over Agamemnon while bathing, and kill him with the help of Ægisthus. In Homer his children are Iphianassa, Chrysŏthĕmis, Laŏdĭcē, and Orestes; the later legend puts Iphigeneia and Electra in the place of Iphianassa and Laodice. Agamemnon was worshipped as a hero.
Agănippē, a spring sacred to the Muses on Mount Hĕlĭcon, near Thespiæ in Bœōtia,
