Page:EB1911 - Volume 13.djvu/317

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HENZADA—HEPHAESTUS

experience a second series of Observations on Metalliferous Deposits, and on Subterranean Temperature (reprinted from Trans. R. Geol. Soc. Cornwall, 2 vols., 1871). In 1874 he contributed a paper on the Detrital Tin-ore of Cornwall (Journ. R. Inst. Cornwall). The Murchison medal of the Geological Society was awarded to him in 1875, and the mineral Henwoodite was named after him. He died at Penzance on the 5th of August 1875.


HENZADA, a district of Lower Burma, formerly in the Pegu, but now in the Irrawaddy division. Area, 2870 sq. m. Pop. (1901) 484,558. It stretches from north to south in one vast plain, forming the valley of the Irrawaddy, and is divided by that river into two nearly equal portions. This country is protected from inundation by immense embankments, so that almost the whole area is suitable for rice cultivation. The chief mountains are the Arakan and Pegu Yoma ranges. The greatest elevation of the Arakan Yomas in Henzada, attained in the latitude of Myan-aung, is 4003 ft. above sea-level. Numerous torrents pour down from the two boundary ranges, and unite in the plains to form large streams, which fall into the chief streams of the district, which are the Irrawaddy, Hlaing and Bassein, all of them branches of the Irrawaddy. The forests comprise almost every variety of timber found in Burma. The bulk of the cultivation is rice, but a number of acres are under tobacco. The chief town of the district is Henzada, which had in 1901 a population of 24,756. It is a municipal town, with ten elective and three ex-officio members. Other municipal towns in the district are Zalun, with a population of 6642; Myan-aung, with a population of 6351; and Kyangin, with a population of 7183, according to the 1901 census. The town of Lemyethna had a population of 5831. The steamers of the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company call at Henzada and Myan-aung.

The district was once a portion of the Talaing kingdom of Pegu, afterwards annexed to the Burmese empire in 1753, and has no history of its own. During the second Burmese war, after Prome had been seized, the Burmese on the right bank of the Irrawaddy crossed the river and offered resistance to the British, but were completely routed. Meanwhile, in Tharawaddy, or the country east of the Irrawaddy, and in the south of Henzada, much disorder was caused by a revolt, the leaders of which were, however, defeated by the British and their gangs dispersed.


HEPBURN, SIR JOHN (c. 1598–1636), Scottish soldier in the Thirty Years’ War, was a son of George Hepburn of Athelstaneford near Haddington. In 1620 and in the following years he served in Bohemia, on the lower Rhine and in the Netherlands, and in 1623 he entered the service of Gustavus Adolphus, who, two years later, appointed him colonel of a Scottish regiment of his army. He took part with his regiment in Gustavus’s Polish wars, and in 1631, a few months before the battle of Breitenfeld he was placed in command of the “Scots” or “Green” brigade of the Swedish army. At Breitenfeld it was Hepburn’s brigade which delivered the decisive stroke, and after this he remained with the king, who placed the fullest reliance on his skill and courage, until the battle of the Alte Veste near Nuremberg. He then entered the French service, and raised two thousand men in Scotland for the French army, to which force was added in France the historic Scottish archer bodyguard of the French kings. The existing Royal Scots (Lothian) regiment (late 1st Foot) represents in the British army of to-day Hepburn’s French regiment, and indirectly, through the amalgamation referred to, the Scottish contingent of the Hundred Years’ War. Hepburn’s claim to the right of the line of battle was bitterly resented by the senior French regiments. Shortly after this, in 1633, Hepburn was under a maréchal de camp, and he took part in the campaigns in Alsace and Lorraine (1634–36). In 1635 Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar, on entering the French service, brought with him Hepburn’s former Swedish regiment, which was at once amalgamated with the French “régiment d’Hébron,” the latter thus attaining the unusual strength of 8300 men. Sir John Hepburn was killed shortly afterwards during the siege of Saverne (Zabern) on the 8th of July 1636. He was buried in Toul cathedral. With his friend Sir Robert Monro, Hepburn was the foremost of the Scottish soldiers of fortune who bore so conspicuous a part in the Thirty Years’ War. He was a sincere Roman Catholic. It is stated that he left Gustavus owing to a jest about his religion, and at any rate he found in the French service, in which he ended his days, the opportunity of reconciling his beliefs with the desire of military glory which had led him into the Swedish army, and with the patriotic feeling which had first brought him out to the wars to fight for the Stuart princess, Queen Elizabeth of Bohemia.

See James Grant, Memoirs of Sir John Hepburn.


HEPHAESTION, a Macedonian general, celebrated as the friend of Alexander the Great, who, comparing himself with Achilles, called Hephaestion his Patroclus. In the later campaigns in Bactria and India, he was entrusted with the task of founding cities and colonies, and built the fleet intended to sail down the Indus. He was rewarded with a golden crown and the hand of Drypetis, the sister of Alexander’s wife Stateira (324). In the same year he died suddenly at Ecbatana. A general mourning was ordered throughout Asia; at Babylon a funeral pile was erected at enormous cost, and temples were built in his honour (see Alexander the Great).


HEPHAESTION, a grammarian of Alexandria, who flourished in the age of the Antonines. He was the author of a manual (abridged from a larger work in 48 books) of Greek metres (Ἐγχειρίδιον περὶ μέτρων), which is most valuable as the only complete treatise on the subject that has been preserved. The concluding chapter (Περὶ ποιήματος) discusses the various kinds of poetical composition. It is written in a clear and simple style, and was much used as a school-book.

Editions by T. Gaisford (1855, with the valuable scholia); R. Westphal (1886, in Scriptores metrici Graeci) and M. Consbruch (1906); translation by T. F. Barham (1843); see also W. Christ, Gesch. der griech. Litt. (1898); M. Consbruch, De veterum Περὶ ποιήματος doctrina (1890); J. E. Sandys, Hist. Class. Schol. i. (1906).


HEPHAESTUS, in Greek mythology, the god of fire, analogous to, and by the ancients often confused with, the Roman god Vulcan (q.v.); the derivation of the name is uncertain, but it may well be of Greek origin. The elemental character of Hephaestus is far more apparent than is the case with the majority of the Olympian gods; the word Hephaestus was used as a synonym for fire not only in poetry (Homer, Il. ii. 426 and later), but also in common speech (Diod. v. 74). It is doubtful whether the origin of the god can be traced to any specific form of fire. As all earthly fire was thought to have come from heaven, Hephaestus has been identified with the lightning. This is supported by the myth of his fall from heaven, and by the fact that, according to the Homeric tradition, his father was Zeus, the heaven-god. On the other hand, the lightning is not associated with him in literature or cult, and his connexion with volcanic fires is so close as to suggest that he was originally a volcano-god. The connexion, however, though it may be early, is probably not primitive, and it seems reasonable to conclude that Hephaestus was a general fire-god, though some of his characteristics were due to particular manifestations of the element.

In Homer the fire-god was the son of Zeus and Hera, and found a place in the Olympian system as the divine smith. The Iliad contains two versions of his fall from heaven. In one account (i. 590) he was cast out by Zeus and fell on Lemnos; in the other, Hera threw him down immediately after his birth in disgust at his lameness, and he was received by the sea-goddesses Eurynome and Thetis. The Lemnian version is due to the prominence of his cult at Lemnos in very early times; and his fall into the sea may have been suggested by volcanic activity in Mediterranean islands, as at Lipara and Thera. The subsequent return of Hephaestus to Olympus is a favourite theme in early art. His wife was Charis, one of the Graces (in the Iliad) or Aphrodite (in the Odyssey). The connexion of the rough Hephaestus with these goddesses is curious; it may be due to the beautiful works of the smith-god (χαριέντα ἔργα), but it is possibly derived from the supposed fertilizing and productive power of fire, in which case Hephaestus is a natural mate of Charis, a goddess of spring, and Aphrodite the goddess