103 



AMMIANUS MARCELLINUS. 



AMORY, THOMAS. 



104 



AMMIA'NUS MARCELLI'NUS, a soldier and author who lived in 

 the 4th century, and wrote a history of the emperors from the acces- 

 sion of Nerva, A.D. 96, to the death of Valens in 378 ; the last profane 

 history written by a Roman subject in the Latin language. He was 

 of a Greek family, and born at Antioch ; at least Libanius claims him 

 as a fellow-citizen. At an early age he entered the army, in the distin- 

 guished service of the household guards of Constantius, son of Constan- 

 tino. He was peculiarly attached to the fortunes of Ursicinus, the 

 master of the horse, under whom he served, first in the East in 350, 

 afterwards in Gaul, whither he went in 355. He was again sent with 

 Ursicinus into the East, and served under the Emperor Julian in his 

 Persian war, which he related at length and with considerable power. 

 Later in life he retired to Rome, where he wrote his history, in 

 thirty-one books. The first thirteen are lost, which contained an 

 epitome of the history of two centuries and a half. The fourteenth 

 begins just before the death of Constantius, and the transactions of the 

 reign of Julian extend nearly to the end of the twenty-fifth. The 

 question whether Ammianus was a Christian or a Pagan has been 

 agitated. Though he has not expressly stated his sentiments, yet 

 from the terms he applies to the heathen deities, it seems evident that 

 at least he was not a Christian. In style he is inflated and vicious ; 

 but passages of considerable effect and eloquence occur in his work, 

 which has every appearance of being a faithful and unprejudiced narra- 

 tion of public transactions, in many of which he had been personally 

 engaged. Gibbon calls him " an accurate and faithful guide." Some 

 suppose the Greek life of Thucydides to be written by him. The 

 edition of Gronovius, 4to., Lugd. Bat., 1693, contains the life and 

 prefatory matter of the Valesii. This has been the base of two other 

 editions, with the notes of later commentators, both published at 

 Leipzig, one by Ernest i in 1773, one by Erfurdt in 1808. There is an 

 old English translation by Philemon Holland (Loud. 1609), and a 

 French one by Moulines (Berlin, 1775; Lyon, 1778). 



AMMO'NIUS, an eminent ancient surgeon of Alexandria, whose 

 date is not exactly known, but who must certainly have lived some 

 time before Christ, and who (from the date of the other surgeons with 

 whom hig name is coupled by Celsus, 'De Medic.' vii. Prsefat. p. 368, 

 ed. Argent.) may be conjectured to have lived in the reign of Ptole- 

 mcus Philadelphus, B.C. 283-247. He is said (Celsus, lib. vii. cap. xxvi. 

 8. 3, p. 436) to have been the first person who thought of breaking a 

 calculus in the bladder, and so extracting it piecemeal, when it was 

 found to be too large to be taken out entire. For this invention he 

 received the cognomen of Lithotomus, a word which is used by the 

 ancients in reference to the operation called by the moderns ' litho- 

 trity,' and not to that of lithotomy. His mode of operating is described 

 by Celsus with tolerable minuteness, and very much resembles that 

 introduced by Civiale and Heurteloup ; proving that, however much 

 credit they may deserve for bringing it out of oblivion into public 

 notice, the praise of having originally thought of it belongs to the 

 ancients. (Biographical Dictionary of the Society for the Diffusion of 

 Uteful Knowledge.} 



AMO, ANTONY WILLIAM, a negro born in Guinea about the 

 year 1703, was brought when an infant to Amsterdam, and presented 

 in 1707 to Antony Ulric, duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbtittel, who gave 

 him to his son Antony William. At a proper age he was sent to study 

 at the university of Halle, where in 1729 he sustained a thesis and 

 published a dissertation ' De Jure Maurorum." He afterwards removed 

 to the university of Wittenberg, where in 1734 he published another 

 treatise, on the occasional absence of sensation in the human mind 

 while still present in the body. In the same year Amo was praises at 

 a thesis sustained by John Theodore Mainer, ' on those things which 

 are suitable to the mind or body.' He was afterwards made a coun- 

 cillor of state by the court of Berlin ; but on the death of his patron, 

 the Duke of Brunswick, he quitted Europe. In the life of David Henry 

 Gallandat, the founder of the Zealand Scientific Society, it is stated 

 that in 1753, on a voyage to the Gold Coast, he visited Amo at Axim. 

 " He was living there like a hermit," according to Winckelman, the 

 biographer of Gallandat, " and had the reputation of being a sooth- 

 sayer. He spoke several languages Hebrew, Greek (?), Latin, French, 

 German, and Dutch.'' He was then about fifty years of age. Amo 

 afterwards left Axim, and removed to St. Sebastian, a fort belonging 

 to the Dutch at Chamah, another town on the Gold Coast, after which 

 nothing further is known of him. (Biographical Dictionary of the 

 Society for the Diffusion of i'feful Knowledge.) 



AMUNTONS, GUILLAUME, a diligent mechanician and experi- 

 menter in natural philosophy, was born at Paris in August, 1663. He 

 was, during all his life, afflicted with deafness, in consequence of a fever 

 in bis childhood ; and, after a sickness which lasted but a few days, he 

 died in October, 1705, being in the forty-third year of his age. 



The taste of Amontons led him, at first, to the study of architecture 

 and the processes of land-surveying; and he appears to have been 

 occasionally employed in the practice of both those branches of art 

 It is said that he was induced to apply himself to the study of mathe- 

 matics by the desire of constructing a machine which should exhibit a 

 perpetual motion : an opinion of the possibility of such a machine 

 certainly lingered among the half-learned of that age; and, if Amontons 

 really attempted to form one, his failure had the good effect of disposing 

 him to cultivate the legitimate branches of science. 



At that time the instruments employed for measuring the density, 

 BIOO. DIV. VOL. I. 



temperature, and humidity of the atmosphere were in an imperfect 

 state ; and several years of the life of Amontons were spent in improving 

 them or in devising others. He invented a barometer, consisting of a 

 slender conical tube of glass containing a column of mercury whose 

 length varied by the variations in the upward pressure of the atmos- 

 phere on the base of the column ; the open end of the tube, which was 

 the greatest, being below, and the mercury being retained in the tube by 

 a leathern bag. He also invented one, consisting of a tube bent so as 

 to form three parallel columns, of which the first and the third con- 

 tained mercury, and the intermediate one only air. Amoutons 

 contrived what he called a ' universal thermometer ; ' it was a tuba of 

 glass, 30 inches long, containing mercury, and to which was adapted 

 a scale of inches ; and, by comparing its indications with those of a 

 column of mercury in an ordinary barometer, he was able to deter- 

 mine the expansion due to temperature alone : he also invented a 

 species of hygrometer, consisting of a coloured fluid contained in a 

 glass tube which terminated below in a leathern bag. The contraction 

 or expansion of this bag, in consequence of variations in the humidity 

 of the air, produced corresponding variations in the length of the 

 column of fluid. 



But the most remarkable circumstance in the life of Amontons is 

 his invention of what must be considered as a species of telegraph. 

 His proposal was to have signal-posts established at intervals between 

 the two extreme stations, which were to be Paris and Rome : a man 

 at each post, being provided with a telescope, was to observe the 

 signal (a letter of the alphabet) made at one station, and to repeat it 

 to the next ; the process being carried on thus along the whole line. 

 Two experiments are said to have been made by him in 1702, in 

 presence of the royal family of France, but it is not said with what 

 success. Dr. Hooke had however anticipated the discovery about 

 eighteen years. 



The only work which Amontons published is one entitled 'Retnarques 

 et Experiences Physiques sur la Construction d'une N ouvelle Clepsydre, 

 sur les Baromctres, Thermometres, et Hygrometres,' Paris, 1695. He 

 was, subsequently to the publication of this work, chosen a member 

 of the Academic des Sciences ; and among the ' Me"moires ' of that 

 body are those of Amontons on the Expansion of Fluids by Heat, 

 on the Muscular Strength of Men and Animals, and on the Friction of 

 Materials. 



(-Biographic Universelle; Fontenelle, Eloge d' Amontons.) 

 AMOROS, COLONEL FRANCIS, the first establisher of gymnastic 

 education in France, was born at Valencia in Spain in 1769. He 

 entered the military service of his country in 1787, and was raised by 

 successive steps, each one the recompense of some distinguished action, 

 until he attained the rank of colonel. When called upon to serve in an 

 administrative capacity he was successively employed by Charles IV. 

 and by Joseph-Napoleon as councillor of state, governor of a province, 

 minister of police, and commissary-royal of the army in Portugal. In 

 1807 he was entrusted with the education of the Infant Don Francisco 

 do Paula. Forced to quit his country when the French were expelled, 

 he sought an asylum in France, and there he endeavoured to establish 

 an institution till that time wanting. After subduing numerous diffi- 

 culties by great perseverance, he at length, under the auspices of the 

 government, established a gymnasium for the development of the 

 physical forces, to which at the same time he gave the most useful 

 direction. In 1831 he was appointed director of the normal military 

 gymnasium at Paris. He wrote and published several works upon 

 administration and upon education, besides his ' Manual of Physical 

 Education, gymnastic and moral,' Paris, 1830. He died at Paris in 

 1843. 



AMORY, THOMAS. This eccentric individual was the son of Coun- 

 cillor Amory, who attended William III. in Ireland, and was appointed 

 secretary for the forfeited estates in that kingdom, where he possessed 

 extensive property in the county of Clare. Thomas was not born in 

 Ireland, as some accounts state ; but little is recorded of his early life. 

 He was born about 1691, and is said to have been educated for the 

 profession of physic, though it does not appear that he ever followed 

 that or any other profession. About 1757 he was living in a very 

 secluded way upon a small fortune in Westminster ; and he bad also 

 a country residence at Bedfont, near Hounslow. He was married, and 

 had a son named Robert, who practised for many years at Wakefield 

 in Yorkshire us a physician. He died at the age of ninety-seven, on 

 November 25, 1788. 



In 1755 Amory published, in 1 vol. 8vo, ' Memoirs of several Ladies 

 of Great Britain.' The ladies whose memoirs are given were all, like 

 Amory himself, zealous Unitarians, in addition to which they are 

 made beautiful, learned, and ingenious. 



In 1756 appeared, in 8vo, the first volume of 'The Life of John 

 Buncle, Esq. ; containing various Observations and Reflections made 

 in several parts of the World, and many extraordinary Relations;' 

 the second volume was published in 1766. This book, in which it 

 has been supposed Amory intended to sketch a picture of his own, 

 character and adveflturcs, may be considered in some measure as a 

 supplement to his ' Memoirs.' A writer in the ' Retrospective Review* 

 styles his ' Memoirs ' and ' Life of John Buucle ' two of the most 

 extraordinary productions of British intellect; and, without disputing 

 his enthusiastic promulgation of Unitarian principles, assigns to him a 

 deep veneration for the New Testament, an intense conviction of its 



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