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ARVAL BROTHERS 200.00%
The Latin name for a college of priests consisting of twelve life-members, who performed the worship of Dea Dia, a goddess not otherwise mentioned, but probably identical with the old Roman goddess of cornfields, Acca Larentia (q.v.), who also is said to have founded this fraternity. Our more accurate knowledge of it we owe to its annual reports inscribed on the marble tablets, ninety-six in number, which have been dug up (1570-1869) on the site of its meeting-place, a grove at the fifth milestone from Rome, and which extend from A.D. 14-241. About its condition under the Republic we have no information; but under the Empire its members were persons of the highest rank. The emperors themselves belonged to it, either as ordinary members, or, if the numbers were filled up, as extraordinary. The election was by co-optation on the motion of the president (magister), who himself, together with a flamen, was elected for one year; their badge was a white fillet and a wreath of ears of corn. The Arvales held their chief festival on three days in May, on the 1st and 3rd in Rome, on the 2nd in the grove, with a highly complicated ceremonial, including a dance in the temple of the goddess, to which they sang the written text of a hymn so antiquated that its meaning could scarcely be understood. This Arval Hymn, in which the Lares and Mars are invoked, is one of the oldest monuments we possess of the Latin tongue. Amongst other duties of this priesthood should especially be mentioned the expiatory sacrifices in the grove. These had to be offered if any damage had been done to it through the breaking of a bough, the stroke of lightning, or other such causes; or again if any labour had been performed in it, though ever so necessary, especially if iron tools had been used. The Arval brothers had also to offer solemn vows on behalf of the Imperial House, both statedly on January 3rd, and on extraordinary occasions, and were bound to fulfil them.
 
ACCA LARENTIA 143.00%

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According to the common legend, wife of the herdsman Faustulus, and nurse to Romalus and Remus; according to another, a favourite of Hercules, and wife to a rich Etruscan, Tarutius, whose possessions she bequeathed to Romulus or (according to another account) the Roman people. She is said to have had twelve sons, with whom she sacrificed once a year for the fertilizing of the Roman fields (arva), and who were thence named Arval Brothers (fratres arvales). One of them having died, Romulus took his place, and founded the priesthood so called. (See ARVAL BROTHERS.) She at last disappeared on the spot where, afterwards, at the feast of Larentalia (Dec. 23), the flamen of Quirinus and the pontiffs sacrificed to her while invoking Jupiter. All this, together with her name, meaning "mother of the Lares," shows that she was originally a goddess of the earth, to whose care men entrusted their seed-corn and their dead. (See LARES.) In particular she personified the city lands and their crops. Probably she is the Dea Dia worshipped by the Arval Brothers.
 
THYESTES 86.02%
Son of Pelops, brother of Atreus (q.v.).
 
AMBARVALIA 80.58%
The Italian festival of blessing the fields, which was kept at Rome on May 29th. The country people walked in solemn procession three times round their fields in the wake of the su-ove-taur-ilia, i.e. a hog, ram, and bull, which were sacri- ficed after a prayer originally addressed to Mars, afterwards usually to Ceres and other deities of agriculture, that the fruits of the fields might thrive. Comp. ARVAL BROTHERS.
 
PODARCES 70.54%
Brother of Proteslaus (q.v.), and after his death commander of his troops.
 
ALPHESIBOEA 70.45%
Daughter of Phegeus and first wife of Alcmaeon, whom, though unfaithful, she continued to love, and was angry with her brothers for killing him. Her brothers shut her up in a box, and brought her to Agapenor, king of Tegea, pretending that she had killed her husband. Here she came by her end, having compassed her brothers' death by the hand of Alcmaeon's sons.
 
CICERO 68.55%
Quintus Tullius Cicero, the younger brother of Marcus, was born in B.C. 102. He was praetor in 62, and legatus to Caesar in Gaul and Britain from 54-62 B.C.. In the civil war he took the side of Pompey, but was pardoned by Caesar. In 43 he was made an outlaw, at the same time as his brother, and in 42 was murdered in Rome. Like Marcus, he was a gifted man, and not unknown in literature, especially as a writer of history and poetry. In 54 B.C. , for example, when engaged in the Gallic campaign, he wrote four tragedies in sixteen days, probably after Greek models. We have four letters of his I besides a short paper addressed to his brother in 64 B.C. , on the line to be taken in canvassing for the consulship.
 
ZETES 66.78%
Son of Boreas and Orithyia, and brother of Calais (q.v.).
 
PERSES 63.42%

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Brother of Aeetes of Colehis. (See MEDEA.)
 
AGAMEDES 60.62%
Son of Erginus of Orchomenus, and a hero of the building art, like his brother Trophonius (q.v.).
 
LYNCEUS 60.42%

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Brother of Idas. (See IDAS AND LYNCEUS.)
 
EPIMETHEUS 53.69%

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Brother of Prometheus and husband of Pandora. (See PROMETHEUS.)
 
ACAMAS 53.17%
 
XUTHUS 52.91%
Brother of Aeolus (q.v., 1), and husband of Creusa, the daughter of Erechtheus; adoptive father of Ion (q.v.).
 
PALLAS 49.11%
Son of Pandion, who robbed his brother of the dominion of Athens, but was, together with his fifty gigantic sons, slain by the youthful Theseus.
 
AGENOR 48.72%
Son of Poseidon and Libya, king of Plicenicia, brother to Belus, and father of Cadmus and Europa (q.v.).
 
ANTEROS 48.06%
The god of requited love, brother of Eros (italics>q.v.). <entry>Antesignani.
 
ETEOCLES 47.50%

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Son of CEdipus king of Thebes and Iocaste, brother of Polynices and Antigone. He broke the agreement he had made with his brother to give him the kingdom of Thebes for one year. Polynices accordingly organized tha campaign of the Seven Chiefs against Thebes, and fell in single combat with Eteocles. (See CEDIPUS and SEVEN AGAINST THEBES.)
 
LYSIAS 46.78%
in point of time the third of the Ten Attic Orators, was born at Athens about B.C.45. He was a son of the rich Syracusan Cephalus, who had been invited by Pericles to settle at Athens. At the age of fifteen he went with his two brothers to Thurii, in South Italy, and there studied under the Syracusan rhetorician Tisias. He returned to Athens in 412, and lived in the Piraeus in comfortable circumstances, being joint possessor, with his eldest brother Polemarchus, of several houses and a manufactory of shields, where 120 slaves were employed. Under the rule of the Thirty Tyrants, however, the brothers were accused in 404 of being enemies to the existing government; their property was confiscated and Polemarchus executed, while Lysias with the greatest difficulty managed to escape to Megara. After the fall of the Thirty, in which he had eagerly co-operated, he returned to Athens, and gave his time to the lucrative occupation of writing legal speeches for others, after obtaining high repute as an orator, in 403, by his accusation of Eratosthenes, the murderer of his brother. He died in his eighty-third year, esteemed by all. Of the 425 speeches to which the ancients assigned his name, but of which the greater number (233) were regarded as not genuine, there remain-besides numerous and sometimes considerable fragments-thirty-one, though they are not all quite complete; and of these five must be looked upon as certainly not genuine, and four others are open to grave suspicion. Only one of these speeches, that against Eratosthenes, mentioned above, was delivered by Lysias in person. He is the first really classical orator of the Greeks, and a model of the plain style, which avoids grandiloquence and seeks to obtain its effect by a sober and clear representation of the case. The ancient critics justly praised the purity and simplicity of his language, the skill shown in always adapting style to subject, the combination of terseness with graphic lucidity of description, particularly noticeable in narrative, and, lastly, his power of painting character.
 
PODALIRIUS 45.11%
Son of Asclepius and Epione. Like his brother Machaon (q.v.), leech to the Greeks before Troy, and a brave warrior besides.
 
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