Page:EB1911 - Volume 04.djvu/514

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496
BRENNUS—BRENTFORD
  

many side passes in the end join this great thoroughfare. It was crossed no fewer than 66 times by various emperors, between 793 and 1402. A carriage road was constructed over it as far back as 1772, while the railway over it was built in 1864–1867. From Innsbruck to the summit of the pass is a distance by rail of 25 m. The line then descends through the Eisack valley past Brixen (34 m.) to Botzen (24 m.). Thence it follows the valley of the Adige to Trent (35 m.) and on to Verona (561/2 m.)—in all 1741/2 m. by rail from Innsbruck to Verona.  (W. A. B. C.) 


BRENNUS, the name, or perhaps the official title, of two chiefs of the Celtic Gauls.

(1) The first Brennus crossed the Apennines in 391 B.C., ravaged Etruria, and annihilated a Roman army of about 40,000 men on the Allia some 12 m. from Clusium (July 16, 390). Rome thus lay at his mercy, but he wasted time, and the Romans were able to occupy and provision the Capitol (though they had not sufficient forces to defend their walls) and to send their women and children to Veii. When on the third day the Gauls took possession, they found the city occupied only by those aged patricians who had held high office in the state. For a while the Gauls withheld their hands out of awe and reverence, but the ruder passions soon prevailed. The city was sacked and burnt; but the Capitol itself withstood a siege of more than six months, saved from surprise on one occasion only by the wakefulness of the sacred geese and the courage of Marcus Manlius. At last the Gauls consented to accept a ransom of a thousand pounds of gold. As it was being weighed out, the Roman tribune complained of some unfairness. Brennus at once threw his heavy sword into the scale; and when asked the meaning of the act, replied that it meant Vae victis (“woe to the conquered”). The Gauls returned home with their plunder, leaving Rome in a condition from which she took long to recover. A later legend, probably an invention, represents M. Furius Camillus as suddenly appearing with an avenging army at the moment when the gold was being weighed, and defeating Brennus and all his host.

See Livy v. 33-49; Plutarch, Camillus, 17, 22, 28; Polybius i. 6, ii. 18; Dion. Halic. xiii. 7.

(2) The second Brennus is said to have been one of the leaders of an inroad made by the Gauls from the east of the Adriatic into Thrace and Macedonia (280), when they defeated and slew Ptolemy Ceraunus, then king of Macedonia. Whether Brennus took part in this first invasion or not is uncertain; but its success led him to urge his countrymen to a second expedition, when he marched with a large army through Macedonia and Thessaly until he reached Thermopylae. To this point the united forces of the northern Greeks—Athenians, Phocians, Boeotians and Aetolians—had fallen back; and here the Greeks a second time held their foreign invaders in check for many days, and a second time had their rear turned, owing to the treachery of some of the natives, by the same path which had been discovered to the Persians two hundred years before. Brennus and his Gauls marched on to Delphi, of whose sacred treasures they had heard much. But the little force which the Delphians and their neighbours had collected—about 4000 men—favoured by the strength of their position, made a successful defence. They rolled down rocks upon their enemies as they crowded into the defile, and showered missiles on them from above. A thunderstorm, with hail and intense cold, increased their confusion, and on Brennus himself being wounded they took to flight, pursued by the Greeks all the way back to Thermopylae. Brennus killed himself, “unable to endure the pain of his wounds,” says Justin; more probably determined not to return home defeated.

See Justin xxiv. 6; Diod. Sic. xxii. 11; Pausanias x. 19-23; L. Contzen, Die Wanderungen der Kelten (Leipzig, 1861).


BRENTANO, KLEMENS (1778–1842), German poet and novelist, was born at Ehrenbreitstein on the 8th of September 1778. His sister was the well-known Bettina von Arnim (q.v.), Goethe’s correspondent. He studied at Jena, and afterwards resided at Heidelberg, Vienna and Berlin. In 1818, weary of his somewhat restless and unsettled life, he joined the Roman Catholic Church and withdrew to the monastery of Dülmen where he lived for some years in strict seclusion. The latter part of his life he spent in Regensburg, Frankfort and Munich, actively engaged in Catholic propaganda. He died at Aschaffenburg on the 28th of July 1842. Brentano, whose early writings were published under the pseudonym Maria, belonged to the Heidelberg group of German romantic writers, and his works are marked by excess of fantastic imagery and by abrupt, bizarre modes of expression. His first published writings were Satiren und poetische Spiele (1800), and a romance Godwi (1801–1802); of his dramas the best are Ponce de Léon (1804), Victoria (1817) and Die Gründung Prags (1815). On the whole his finest work is the collection of Romanzen vom Rosenkranz (published posthumously in 1852); his short stories, and more especially the charming Geschichte vom braven Kasperl und dem schönen Annerl (1838), which has been translated into English, are still popular. Brentano also assisted Ludwig Achim von Arnim, his brother-in-law, in the collection of folk-songs forming Des Knaben Wunderhorn (1806–1808).

Brentano’s collected works, edited by his brother Christian, appeared at Frankfort in 9 vols. (1851–1855). Selections have been edited by J. B. Diel (1873), M. Koch (1892), and J. Dohmke (1893). See J. B. Diel and W. Kreiten, Klemens Brentano (2 vols., 1877–1878), the introduction to Koch’s edition, and R. Steig, A. von Arnim und K. Brentano (1894).


BRENTANO, LUDWIG JOSEPH [called Lujo] (1844–  ), German economist, a member of the same family as the preceding, was born at Aschaffenburg on the 18th of December 1844. He received some of his academical education in Dublin. In 1868 he made a thorough study of trade-unionism in England, which resulted in his principal work, Die Arbeitergilden der Gegenwart (Leipzig, 1871–1872; Eng. trans, by L. T. Smith). The book was assailed by Bamberger and other economists, but is important not only as an authority on modern associations of workmen, but for having given an impetus to the study of the gilds of the middle ages, and the examination of the great stores of neglected information bearing upon the condition of the people in olden days. Brentano’s other works are of a more theoretical character, and chiefly relate to political economy, of which he was professor at Breslau from 1872 to 1882, at Strassburg from 1882 to 1888, at Vienna 1888–1889, at Leipzig 1889–1891, and at Munich since 1891. We may mention Das Arbeitsverhältnis gemäss dem heutigen Recht (1877); Die christlich-soziale Bewegung in England (1883); Über das Verhältnis von Arbeitslohn und Arbeitszeit zur Arbeitsleistung (1893); Agrarpolitik (1897).


BRENTFORD, a market town in the Brentford parliamentary division of Middlesex, England, 101/2 m. W. of Waterloo terminus, London, by the London & South-Western railway, at the junction of the river Brent with the Thames. Pop. of urban district (1901) 15,171. The Grand Junction Canal joins the Brent, affording ample water-communications to the town, which has considerable industries in brewing, soap-making, saw-milling, market-gardening, &c. The Grand Junction waterworks are situated here. Brentford has been the county-town for elections since 1701.

In 1016 Brentford, or, as it was often called Braynford, was the scene of a great defeat inflicted on the Danes by Edmund Ironside. In 1280 a toll was granted by Edward I., who granted the town a market, for the construction of a bridge across the river, and in the reign of Henry VI. a hospital of the Nine Orders of Angels was founded near its western side. In 1642 a battle was fought here in which the royalists defeated the parliamentary forces. For his services on this occasion the Scotsman Ruthven, earl of Forth, was made earl of Brentford, a title afterwards conferred by William III. on Marshal Schomberg. Brentford was during the 16th and 17th centuries a favourite resort of London citizens; and its inn of the Three Pigeons, which was kept for a time by John Lowin, one of the first actors of Shakespeare’s plays, is frequently alluded to by the dramatists of the period. Falstaff is disguised as the “Fat Woman of Brentford” in Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor, and numerous other references to the town in literature point, in most cases, to its reputation for excessive dirt. The “two kings of Brentford” mentioned in Cowper’s Task, and elsewhere, seem to owe their