03 



ALBUQUERQUE, ALFONSO DE. 



ALCAMENES. 



94 



In the course of the year strong reinforcements were sent out from 

 Portugal, and, at the same time, Lemos was recalled, and his com- 

 mand made over to Albuquerque. The same autumn Albuquerque 

 attacked Goa a second time, and carried it by storm, NOT. 25. Early 

 in the next year he meditated new conquests. A detachment of the 

 fleet, which had been sent out in the preceding year, was especially 

 ordered to proceed to Malacca under the command of Diego de 

 Vasconcellos. This Albuquerque forcibly prevented, seizing Vascon- 

 cellos, and sending him back to Portugal, and three of his officers 

 were put to death. As soon as Vasconcellos was removed, Albu- 

 querque sailed himself on the expedition against Malacca, which 

 hitherto he had put off on different pretexts, and, with some diffi- 

 culty, captured the town, which was given" up to plunder. Immense 

 wealth was obtained. The fifth of the booty, which was set apart for 

 the king, was valued at 200,000 gold crusadoes, exclusive of naval 

 and military stores, among which 3000 cannon were said to have 

 been found. In this expedition his troops amounted only to 800 

 Portuguese, and 200 Malabar auxiliaries : the Malayan prince is said 

 to have had 30,000 men under arma. 



Albuquerque had it much at heart to establish the Portuguese 

 power as firmly at Malacca as at Goa. He built a citadel, coined 

 money, established a new system of law and police, and lost no oppor- 

 tunity of conciliating the natives. He received and sent embassies 

 to the kings of Siarn, Pegu, and other neighbouring princes, who 

 were deeply impressed by the rapid growth of the power of these 

 European strangers. After remaining at Malacca near a year, he set 

 sail for Goa. On his voyage he encountered a violent storm ; his ship 

 was wrecked, and he himself, washed into the sea, narrowly escaped 

 with his life. He reached Cochin with the scattered remains of his 

 squadron at the end of February, 1512. His first object was to proceed 

 to the relief of Goa, which in his absence was hard pressed by Idalcan, 

 and where he arrived Sept. 13, 1512. He was received with lively 

 joy ; his presence soon removed all cause for disquietude, and estab- 

 lished the power of the Portuguese more firmly than ever. He 

 relaxed the king's dues, and gave every encouragement to commerce, 

 and Goa soon, became the most flourishing city of the Portuguese 

 dominions. It was observed, even then, that the king's revenue was 

 increased, instead of suffering, by the reduction of duties. Idalcan 

 and the Zainorin of Calicut, thinking further resistance hopeless, sued 

 for peace, and the Portuguese influence was effectually and surely 

 established along the Malabar coast from Cape Comorin to Goa. 



The orders of the court were still urgent to prosecute the war in 

 the Red Sea; and seeing India quiet, he now, in 1513, directed his 

 efforts to the reduction of Aden, a considerable commercial town 

 of Arabia. Hia force, much larger than usual, consisted of 20 ships, 

 and 1000 Portuguese and 400 Malabar troops (Barros, 'Decad.' 

 II. lib. vii. cap. 9) ; but he reaped neither honour nor profit by this 

 voyage. Repulsed at Aden, he entered the lied Sea, leading the firs! 

 European fleet that ever sailed in its waters ; but ho experienced 

 much hardship and danger from heat, want, and difficulty of naviga- 

 tion, and returned to India without striking a blow. 



His last enterprise was a second attempt upon Ormuz, in which he 

 succeeded (1507) without recourse to arms, by the effects of terror 

 and negociation ; and the place remained in the hands of the Portu 

 guese till it waa taken from them in 1622, by the English and Shah 

 Abbas. [ABBAS.] 



Albuquerque, after his first failure, vowed never to cut his bean 

 till he had regained Ormuz, and it is said that he wore it till he couU 

 knot it to his girdle. Soon after the accomplishment of this favourite 

 wish he fell sick, and was obliged to return to Goa. At the mouth o 

 the Gulf he met a vessel bearing dispatches from Europe. They 

 signified his recall; that Lopez Soarez d'Albergaria was nominatec 

 his successor ; and that Diego Pereira and Diego Mendez de Vascon 

 cellos were appointed to high offices. His proud spirit was deepl; 

 hurt. " What ! " he said, " Soarez governor ! Vasconcelloa an< 

 I'ereira, whom I sent home as criminals, sent out again in posts o; 

 honour ! I have gained the hate of men for the love of the king 

 and am disgraced by the king for the love of men. To the grave 

 miserable old man ! to the grave, it is time I " He might have seei 

 something more in this a just return for his unworthy treatment o 

 Vasconcellos. His illness, aggravated by vexation, proved fatal. H 

 died December 16, 1515, in his sixty-third year. Hia body was con 

 veyed to Goa, and buried in the church of Our Lady, which he hat 

 built ; and in future years a touching testimony to the uprightnes 

 of his government Moors and Indians repaired to his tomb, as t 

 that of a father, to implore redress from the injustice and tyranny o 

 his successors. Hia bones, more than fifty years after his death 

 were transported to Portugal. 



Albuquerque has undoubted claims to the name of a great man. A 

 a public servant he was scrupulously honest; as governor of a 

 obedient people, scrupulously just; though his temper was auster 

 and arbitrary, and bis punishments were awfully severe. His view 

 as a statesman were enlarged and judicious, his skill great as a 

 general, hia courage as a soldier daring to rashness. On the other 

 hand, where territory was to be gained to his country, or renown to 

 himself, he was stopped by no considerations of right or wrong. 

 The attack on Malacca admits of justification ; but the capture of 

 Ormuz and Ooa were provoked by no acta of hostility, and can be 



auctioned by no law but that of the longest sword. His character 

 well exemplified in a scheme which he is said to have proposed to 

 le Emperor of Ethiopia for destroying the commerce of Egypt by 

 urning the course of the Nile into the Red Sea, and thus converting 

 hat fruitful land into a barren desert. The project is called grand 

 y historians : it is certainly great ; but the very idea of such an im- 

 ossible undertaking throws some discredit upon the General's know- 

 edge. And it seems never to have occurred either to them or to him, 

 bat there would have been any moral guilt in blotting out from the 

 arth a fertile, populous, and extensive country, to gratify the grasping 

 hirst for monopoly of a second-rate European kingdom. 



(The second decade of Barros's History of the Portuguese Conquests 

 n the East is entirely occupied by the transactions of which we have 

 lere given a short sketch, from the sailing of Ua Cunha and Albu- 

 uerque to the death of Albuquerque. Those who do not read 

 'ortuguese may consult Maffei, Jfistoria, Indica ; Lafitau, Hist, des 

 2onquSte> del Portngais dans le Nouveau Monde; and the Modem 

 fntiersal History.) 



ALC^EUS, one of the most celebrated lyric poets of Greece. Of 

 lis compositions, once so much admired, nothing but fragments 

 emain, consisting for the most part only of a few lines, or even words, 

 ['hese have been preserved iu quotations by later authors. Horace 

 makes frequent mention of him, and always in terms of the highest 

 admiration. Alcaeus was a native of Mitylene, in Lesbos ; and wrote 

 .bout the forty-fourth Olympiad, or B.C. 600 ; being the contemporary 

 and countryman, and, it is said, the admirer also, of the celebrated 

 joetess Sappho. He is spoken of by ancient writers as a brave and 

 skilful warrior, although in a battle with the Athenians he sought 

 safety in flight, and he threw away his armour, which the victors 

 dedicated in the temple of Athene, at Sigeum. From Alcteus, the 

 Alcaic, one of the most beautiful of lyric metres, derives its name. 

 His poems, we learn from Quintilian and Horace, were more severo 

 and elevated in style and subject than those of most of the followers 

 of the lyric muse ; of the fragments preserved however, many are in 

 praise of wine. The most striking is one which has been finely 

 expanded by Sir W. Jones. Alcseus aspired to be the poet of liberty ; 

 and directed the full vigour of his genius against Pittacus, who had 

 raised his power above that of his fellow-citizens, or in Greek language 

 made himself tyrant of Mitylene. (The best collection of the frag- 

 ments of Alcaous is in the Cambridge Museum Criticum, vol. i. p. 421, 

 and in Gaisford's Minor Poets, Leipzig, 1823. For additional frag- 

 ments see the Rhenish Museum for 1829, 1833, and 1835; Jahn's 

 Jahrbiicli fur Philolog. for 1830; and Gamer's Anecdola OrcKa, vol. i. 

 Oxf. 1835.) 



Other persons of the name of Alcams are named by ancient writers. 

 We shall only mention two a comic poet, also of Mitylene, who con- 

 tended with Aristophanes for the prize, when he produced the ' Plutus,' 

 01. 98-1, B.C. 388 ; and a Messeniau, the author of a number of 

 epigrams in the Greek anthology. He was contemporary with 

 Philip III. of Macedonia, against whom several of his epigrams are 

 directed. 



ALC'A'MENES, a celebrated ancient sculptor, and a native of 

 Athens. He was the pupil of Phidias, and lived therefore in the 

 middle of the 5th century, B.C., and later. Phidias, Alcamenes, and 

 Polycletus, were the three greatest sculptors of ancient Greece ; 

 Alcamenes survived Phidias some time, as he was still living in the 

 95th Olympiad, according to Pausanias, about 400 B.C., for he made 

 two colossal statues of Minerva and Hercules, to commemorate the 

 victory of Thrasybulus over the thirty tyrants, which he dedicated 

 in the temple of Hercules at Thebes ; this victory took place in the 

 second year of the 94th Olympiad, or B.C. 403. 



Alciinenea was sculptor in marble and statuary in bronze; his 

 most celebrated work was a Venus, known as the 'Venus in the 

 Gardens;' it was in the temple of Venus Urania at Athens. In thu 

 dialogue of the Portraits, Luciuu makes Polystratus term this statue 

 the noblest of all the works of Aloamenes. Many other ancient 

 writers -peak of this statue. Pliny says that Phidias finished it; by 

 which must be understood that he made a few alterations on the 

 finished statue of Alcamenes, which, according to his riper judgment, 

 it required; mere technical finishing is not the work of a great 

 master. 



Alcamenes contended, according to Tzetzes, with Phidias; the 

 subject was a statue of Minerva ; and the work of Alcanieues was at 

 first, on account of its higher finish and proportions, preferred to the 

 work of his master, but when fixed in their destined places, the 

 superiority of the statue of Phidias was evident; the latter gained 

 effect, the former lost it. In this instance, Phidias gave Alcamenes 

 a lesson, from which modern artists might derive a benefit. The 

 great majority of the statues and works of sculpture in the modern 

 churches or other buildings of Europe, appear to have been made 

 without any allowances for either the elevation or the distance from 

 the eye, of the destined locality of the work : that a work iu which 

 this principle ia carried fully out is unfitted for auy but a similar 

 situation, is not a sufficient apology for its neglect, though it may 

 satisfy the artist's vanity. 



Another celebrated statue by Alcamenes was one of Dionysus, of 

 ivory and gold, placed in a temple to that god in Athens. The 

 sculptures also of the posterior pediment of the temple of Jupiter at 



