HIEBAX. 59 HIEROGLYPHICS. lowed Origen in allegorizing Scripture. From this apparently Manichaean view ol matrimony, taken with his denial of the resurrection and of a visible paradise, and his assertion that infants, as incapable of 'striving lawfully,' cannot inherit the kingdom of God, liicrax was regarded as a heret ic. HIERO (hi'e-rO) I. (Lat., from Gk. 'Upuv) . A tyrant of Syracuse, who succeeded his brother Gelo in B.C. 478, having already, a short time be- fore, distinguished himself in the battle of Hiniera. Being jealous of his brother Polyzelus, w ho had command of the army, he dispatched him on an expedition against the Crotonians, but Polyzelus lied to his brother-in-law, Theron of Agrigentum. Hiero undertook to make war on the two, but a reconciliation was effected, it is said, by the poet Simonides. Some time after this reconciliation Hiero assisted the people of Cunue in driving off the Etruscan pirates, by whom they were harassed. lie transferred the inhabitants of Xaxos and Catana to Leontini, and repeopling Catana with citizens from Syra- cuse. Gela. and elsewhere, called the place ^-Etna. After the death of Theron. about B.C. 472, war broke out between Theron's son, Thrasydipus. and Hiero. The former was defeated and compelled to llee from Sicily. Hiero was now supreme in the island. He died, however, shortly after, having reigned ten years. As a ruler Hiero was jealous, cruel, and rapacious: fearing for his life, he sur- roimded himself with mercenaries and spies. He was, however, a patron of poets and philosophers, and he competed successfully at the Grecian games. HIERO II. (c.308-216 B.C.). A king of Syracuse, son of a noble Syracusan named Hierocles. He first distinguished himself in the wars with Pyrrhus. and then, after Pyrrhus"s de- parture from Sicily, B.C. 275, in the war with the Maniertines. In consequence of his military suc- cesses he was. in B.C. 270. chosen King of Syra- cuse. In B.C. 264 he assisted the Carthaginians in the siege of Messana, but was himself defeated by the Roman consul, Appius Claudius, and in B.C. 2G.S concluded a treaty with the Romans, to whom he thereafter remained faithful. In both Punic wars he assisted them with money and troops. During the interval of peace between the two wars he visited Rome and was received with great honors, while he himself on this occasion distributed a vast quantity of com to the people. Hiero was a wise and merciful sovereign, simple in his ways and just in bis rule. We are told that he was prevented from laying aside the kingly power only by the unanimous votes of his subjects. He bestowed great care upon the finan- cial department of his government, and his agri- cultural laws {leges Ilieroitica:) were in force in Cicero's time. He was also a patron of the arts, and beautified his city with many fine public buildings. His kinsman Archimedes he employed in the construction of a number of powerful en- gines of war. HIEROCTLES, liliir'cVklez (Lat.. from Gk. "IfpoicX^s, Hierokirs). (1) A Greek writer of tt'.e sixtli century A.Ii., who composed, under the title Trarelinp Compnnion CSw^irrifuK), a work containing a description of the ti4 jirovinces of the Byzantine Km|u're and of 012 cities in it. It is best edited by Hurekhardt (Leipzig, 1893). (2) An Alexandrian Xeo-Platonist of Vou. X. — 5, the fifth century a.d. He wrote a commentary on the Golden Verses of Pythagoras, and a treatise On Providence and Fate. Of the latter work only a few- extracts have been preserved by Photius, and there is also an anonymous abridg- ment. The commentary is printed by Mullach, t'ragmenla Philusophorum Urwcorum, vol. i. (Paris, 1875). Under the name of Hierocles we also possess a very old collection of jokes and amusing stories ( ' AartXa) , edited by Eberhard (Berlin, 18G9). HIEROCLES OF BITHYN'IA. A Roman proconsul in the reign of Diocletian (a.d. 284- 305 ) , said to have been the instigator of the fierce persecution of the Christians under Ga- lerius Ca-sar in 303. He was a man of consider- able intellectual culture, and wrote a work in two books, in which he endeavored to persuade Christians that their sacre<l books were full of contradictions, and that in moral influence and miraculous power Christ was inferior to Apol- louius of Tyana. This treatise has not come down to our times, and is known to us through Lactantius. and still more through Eusebius. who is the author of a refutation. HIEROGLYPHICS, or HI'EROGLYPHS (Lat. hieroglyphicux. from Gk. iepoy'/.vipiKOc:. hi- eror/li/phikos, hieroglyphic, from if/wj/.r^of, hiero- glyphos, carver of hieroglyphics, from !Ep<is, "fcjeros, ^acred + -yXiifxiv, glyphein, to carve). The term applied to those systems of writing in which figures of objects take the place of purely conventional signs, and especially used to desig- nate the. writing of the Egyptians and Mexicans. The system of Babylonia (whence the cuneiform writing developed )" and that of China were like- wise originally picture-writings, but were very early simplified and conventionalized, and thus lost'their hieroglyphic character. These two sys- tems present so many striking analogies to the Egyptian that a connection is often assumed, but these analogies appear merely to afford an illus- tration of the tendency of the human mind to run, under certain conditions, in the same chan- nel, and this view is strengthened by some analo- gies from American pictographs and hieroglyph- ics. Hieroglyphic systems are also represented by the monuments of the Hittites and the early Cretans. l)otli as yet undeciphered; an Egyptian origin would, in these cases, be less improbable than in the cases of Babylonian and Chinese characters. The Phoenician alphaliet cannot be proved to descend from a hieroglyphic system; the names of the letters (ox. house, etc.) seem to have been merely mnemotechnic helps for learners. The Egyptian system is the most remarkable of all. because it always retained the most primitive form, although developing to a high degree of philological perfe<tion. It is impossible to trace this system back to its origin in descriptive pictures: siich pictures, for ex- ample, as the North .-Vmerican Indians sometimes used for communications, though without de- veloping a real writing. The very earliest monu- ments of Egypt, anterior to Menes, the first historical king, exhibit the system already per- fected, differing in many details from the later orthography, but what were then the principles are the same as at all later periods. The inven- tion must therefore belong to a very remote age. The most primitive part is represented by the so-called ideographs or word-signs. Some of
