and was therefore regarded as a goddess who bestowed long life and all that contributes to it. About full moon on the Ides (fifteenth) of March (then the first month of the year), in a grove of fruit trees at the first milestone on the Flaminian Way, the Romans held a merry feast under the open sky, wishing each other as many years of life as they drank cups of wine. The learned men of the Augustan age identified Anna with Dido's sister, who, on the death of that queen, had fled from Carthage to Æneas in Italy, but, having excited Lavinia's jealousy, threw herself into the Numīcius, and became the nymph of that river.
Annōna. A Latin word meaning the year's produce, especially in wheat, the staple food of the city population; it was afterwards applied to the corn provided by the State to feed that population. As Italian agriculture decayed, and the city population steadily increased, the question of its maintenance became a constant care to the State, which, on the conquest of the first two provinces, Sicily and Sardinia, at once doomed them, especially the former, to the task of victualling the armies and feeding Rome, by imposing a tithe on corn, and forbidding its exportation to any country but Italy. The tenth paid as tribute, and other corn bought up by the State, was sold by the ædiles at a moderate price, usually on terms which prevented the treasury being a loser. Thus till the time of the Gracchi the cura annonæ was confined to the maintenance of a moderate price; but the corn law of Gaius Gracchus, b.c. 123, laid on the State the obligation to deliver to any Roman householder on demand 614 bushels of wheat a month at a fixed price, which even in cheap times was less than half the cost price; and Clodius in b.c. 58 went further, and made the delivery entirely gratuitous. By the year b.c. 46, the number of recipients had risen to 320,000, and the yearly outlay to a sum equivalent to £650,000. Cæsar then reduced the recipients to 150,000; but their number grew again, till Augustus cut it down to 200,000, whose names were inscribed on a bronze table, and who received their monthly portion on presentation of a ticket. This arrangement as a whole remained in force till about the end of the Empire, except that in the 3rd century bread was given instead of grain. And side by side with these gratuitous doles, grain could always be bought for a moderate price at magazines filled with the supplies of the provinces, especially Egypt and Africa, and with purchases made by the State. The expenses of the annona fell mainly on the imperial treasury, but partly on that of the senate. From Augustus' time the cura annonæ formed one of the highest imperial offices, its holder, the præfectus annonæ, having a large staff scattered over Rome and the whole empire. The annona, like so many other things, was personified by the Romans, and became a goddess of the importation of corn, whose attributes were a bushel, ears of wheat, and a horn of plenty.
Antæus. Son of Poseidōn and Gē (the earth); a huge giant in Libya, who grew stronger every time he touched his mother Earth. He forced all strangers to wrestle with him, and killed them when conquered, till Hērǎclēs, on his journey to fetch the apples of the Hespĕrĭdĕs, lifted him off the ground, and held him aloft till he had killed him. His tomb was shown near Tingis in Mauretania.
Antæ. A templum in antīs was a temple in which the hall at either end was formed by prolongations of the side-walls (Lat. antæ), and a row of columns between the terminal pilasters of those prolongations. See Temples, fig. 1.
Anteia (otherwise Sthenobœa). Wife of Prœtus of Tīryns; by slandering Bellĕrŏphōn (q.v.), who had rejected her offers of love, she caused her husband to attempt his life.
Antēnōr. A Trojan of high rank, husband to Athena's priestess Thĕānō, the sister of Hecŭba. When Menelāüs and Odysseus, after the landing of the Greeks, came as envoys to Troy, demanding the surrender of Helen, he received them hospitably, protected them from Paris, and then as always advised peace. Because of this leaning to the Greeks, it was alleged in later times that he betrayed his native city by opening its gates to the enemy; in return for which his house, known by the panther's hide hung out of it, was spared, and he and his friends allowed to go free. One account was, that he sailed with Menelaus, was driven out of his course to Cyrēnē, and settled there, where his descendants the Antenŏrĭdæ were worshipped as heroes. Another, which became the accepted tradition, represented him as leading the Hĕnĕti, when driven out of Paphlagonia, by way of Thrace and Illyria, to the Adriatic, and thence to the mouth of the Padus (Po), where he founded Patavium (Padua), the city of the Vĕnĕti.
Antĕrōs. The god of requited love, brother of Erōs (q.v.).
