209 



APRAXIN, THEDOR MATVAYEVICH. 



.APULEIUS, LUCIUS. 



270 



state their own numbers at 50,000, and the number of the Prussians 

 at 30,000. Success was at first with the Prussians, but they pur- 

 sued it so warmly as to entangle themselves : a skilful movement of 

 General Rumiantzov, who commanded the Russian reserve, decided 

 the contest, which ended in the complete defeat of the Prussians, 

 who lost twenty-nine pieces of cannon. There was now nothing to 

 hinder the Russians from advancing to Kb'nigsberg, and even taking 

 Berlin, but to the amazement of Europe, the army first remained 

 immoveable in its camp, then contented itself with a few insignificant 

 incursions, and finally, on the llth of September, withdrew to winter 

 quarters in Courland, leaving nothing behind but a garrison of 10,000 

 men in Memel. The explanation of these events soon followed. At 

 the time of the victory, the Empress Elizabeth was dangerously ill ; 

 her heir, the Grand Duke Peter, was well known to be an uncom- 

 promising admirer and supporter of Frederick the Great, and the 

 chancellor Bestuzhev, anxious to pay his court to the rising sun, had 

 gent secret orders to Apraxin to retire. The empress on her recovery, 

 was indignant to find her anticipations of revenge on Frederick so 

 unexpectedly disappointed. She banished Bestuzhev to a village, and 

 ordered Apraxin to resign his command to Count Fermor, and repair 

 to Xarva to give an account of his proceedings. A commission of 

 inquiry was nominated, and Apraxin, whose death occurred soon after, 

 on the 26th of August (o.s.), 1758, ia said to have died of apoplexy 

 occasioned by the shock of their first questions. (Abridged from the 

 Biographical Dictionary of the Society for the Diffusion of Use/id 



APRAXIN, THEDOR MATVAYEVICH, was one of the three 

 nons of Matvay Vasilivich Apraxin, stolnik or seneschal at the court of 

 the czar, whose daughter Maria Matvayevna was married to the Czar 

 Thedor Alexayevieh, the eldest brother and predecessor of Peter the 

 Great. TI.e family of the Apraxins was descended from a Tartar prince 

 of the Golden Horde, who in the year 1304 had been converted to 

 Christianity and married the sister of the Russian prince of Riazan. 



Thedor Matvayevich was born in the year 1671, and at the age of 

 ten was appointed stolnik to the Czar Thedor, his brother-in-law, 

 after whose death in 1682 he passed into the service of Peter the 

 whose inseparable companion and favourite he became. In 

 e was appointed governor of Archangel, the only port in Russia 

 which then carried on foreign commerce, and here he caused to be 

 built a merchant vessel to the great delight of Peter, whom he accom- 

 panied on some sailing excursions on the White Sea. When Peter in 

 1697 left Russia to study foreign countries, Apraxin was appointed 

 chief superintendent of ship-building at Voronezh, and on the return 

 of the czar, he took part in August, 1699, in the first manoeuvres of 

 the Russian fleet at Taganrog. In 1700 he was appointed governor of 

 Azof, at the same time that he held many other important offices; 

 and during the six years following, while the czar was carrying on his 

 wars against the Swedes in the north, Apraxin held almost unlimited 

 command of the south, and fully justified the confidence that his 

 master reposed in him. During that time he added many new vessels 

 to the Azof fleet, he rebuilt Azof, he built Taganrog with a haven for 

 the reception of vessels of war, and a fortress towards the laud-side, 

 he provided the ship-building wharfs at Voronezh with docks aud 

 sluice*, and he acted in every respect as a worthy lieutenant of Peter 

 the Great. In 1707, on the death of Count Alexayevieh, he was named 

 in hi* place admiral and president of the Admiralty. In 1708, by his 

 judicious measures, he saved tho infant city of St. Petersburg from 

 the sudden attack of the Swedish general Liibecker, a service for which 

 Peter caused a medal to be struck ia his honour. It was to him that 

 in the following year Peter directed the news of the battle of Poltava. 

 In 1710, after a hard siege, he captured in command of an army of 

 11/HJU men, the important city of Wyborg, the capital of Carelia. 

 In his subsequent operations on the coast of Finland, Apraxin had the 

 honour of seeing Peter serve under him as vice-admiral. On the 

 breaking out of the war between Russia and the Porte in 1711, he was 

 recalled to the south. After the disastrous campaign which ended in 

 the treaty of the Pruth, Apraxin was employed to destroy Taganrog 

 aii' I to give back Azof to the Turks, in pursuance of the conditions of 

 that treaty. He had however secret instructions not to carry the 

 latter provision into effect till the Turks had ejected Charles the 

 Twelfth from their dominions, and he had thus the embarrassing task 

 of contriving delays for a whole year in the face of the pressing 

 remonstrances of the Turkish officers. On his return to the north in 

 1712, he win intrusted with the command of all the forces in the 

 conquered Swedish provinces by land and sea, and in 1713, with a 

 fleet of 200 vessels, he spread terror along the shores of Finland, taking 

 Helsiugfors and Borgo, and on the 6th of October (o.s.), defeating the 

 Swedish fleet at the mouth of the river Pelkin. In the next year he 

 gained another naval victory over the Swedes, at which the Czar Peter 

 WHS present. Apraxin on hU return to the capital, after a dreadful 

 tempest in which many of his ships and men were lost, had the morti- 

 fication, and unfortunately a deserved one, of being subjected to an 

 examination on a charge of embezzlement. He was found guilty, and 

 condemned to a fine, which was only a nominal punishment, as Peter 

 withdrew none of hi* favour, and in 1716 presented him with the 

 estates which had belonged to his sister, the Czaritza Maria, on the 

 occasion of the czaritza's death. 



In 1717, Apraxin rose to the dignity of president of the college of 



the Admiralty, with the title of general, admiral, and senator, and in 

 1718 he was the second member of the commission of inquiry into the 

 affair of the Czarevich Alexis, which condemned Alexis to death. His 

 elder brother Peter, who had served in several wars against the Tartars 

 and was governor of Kazan, was implicated in the affairs of Alexis, but 

 after a strict investigation was pronounced innocent, released from 

 prison, and restored to his employments. The trial of Alexis was 

 succeeded by another demonstration against the "oppressors of the 

 people," as Peter called the embezzlers, and Menshrikov and Apraxin, 

 the two most conspicuous, were again condemned to fines, which they 

 were well able to pay, while others were sent to Siberia, and some were 

 put to death. Notwithstanding this second condemnation, Apraxin 

 was appointed in 1719 governor-general of Esthonia. By his active 

 measures as admiral, in 1720 and 1721, he greatly contributed to the 

 triumph which Russia obtained at the conclusion of the peace of 

 Nystad. In 1722 he accompanied Peter in his Persian war, and nearly 

 lost his life by the dagger of a captive Lesgian at the siege of Derbend. 

 In 1723 he returned to St. Petersburg, aud took the command of the 

 fleet, then consisting of 5 frigates and 24 ships of the Hue, in which 

 Peter, who had raised the whole of this great force from nothing, now 

 took his last excursion by sea. 



After the death of Peter, Apraxin was present at the marriage of 

 Anna Petrovua with the Duke of Holstein to give away the bride. 

 His last marine expedition was in 1726, when he WHS ordered with the 

 fleet to Revel, to protect that port from an apprehended attack by the 

 English. In the February of the following year, Apraxin retired to 

 Moscow, where on the 10th of November (o.s.), 1728, he died, in the 

 fifty-seventh year of his age. He left his house at St. Petersburg to the 

 reigning Emperor Peter the Second, the son of the prince whom he 

 had condemned to death, and the rest of his property to his younger 

 brother Audrey Matviiyevich Apraxin. Thedor was never married 

 aud left uo issue, his elder brother Peter left none but in the female 

 line, and the present family of the Apraxins is descended from the 

 youngest brother Audrey, the least known of the three. Though so great 

 a favourite with Peter, Thedor Apraxiii enjoyed, what is so rare in the 

 case of favourites, B.U unbounded popularity among his contemporaries. 



(Abridged from the Biographical Dictionary of the Society for the 

 Diffusion of Ifiefal Knowledge; Halein, Leben Peters da Grosser, ii. 13, 

 136, 257, &c.) 



A'PRIES, an Egyptian king, the son of Psammis (HeroJ., ii. 161), 

 otherwise called Psarninuthis : he was the eighth king of the tweuty- 

 sixth dynasty (Eusebius), or the seventh according to Africanus. His 

 name is also written Ouaphres by the Greeks, aud he appears in the 

 Hebrew history under the name of Pharaoh Hophra (Jeremiah, xliv. 30). 

 Apries succeeded his father B.C. 593, and reigned twenty-five years. 

 Early in his reign (B.C. 586) Jerusalem was plundered by Nebuchad- 

 nezzar ; after which a great number of the people of Judah took refuge 

 in Egypt under the conduct of Johauan, who carried the prophet Jere- 

 miah with him to Tahpanhes (Daphnae), then the residence of the 

 Egyptian king. Near the close of his reign he sent an army against 

 the Greeks of Gyrene, which was defeated with great loss. This caused 

 a revolt among the Egyptians, which ended in the dethronement and 

 execution of Apries about n.c. 569 or 568. [AjtiSis.] He was buried 

 in the tombs near the great temple of Atheuuia at Sais. (Herod, 

 ii. lt>9.) . 



APULEIUS, LUCIUS, a Platonic philosopher. He lived in the 

 2nd century, and was born at Madaurus in Africa. He studied first at 

 Carthage, then at Athens, and afterwards at Rome, where he acquired 

 the Latin language without the aid of a master. Hi travelled exten- 

 sively, and sought to obtain initiation in the various mysteries, as they 

 were called, by which the peculiar tenets of many religious and philo- 

 sophical sects were veiled. Having spent nearly Ms whole fortune on 

 these journeys, he returned to Rome, and was admitted as a priest 

 into the service of Osiris. He practised at Rome for some time as an 

 advocate, and then returned to seek his fortune in his native country, 

 Africa. Here he met with distinguished success ; but he set himself 

 more at ?ase by a prudent marriage than even by hia professional gains. 

 A widow, by name Pudeutilla, neither young nor handsome, had 

 wealth, and wanted a husband. She took a fancy to him ; but th 

 marriage involved him in a vexatious law-suit. The lady's relations 

 set up a plea that he had attacked her heart aud money with the 

 weapons of sorcery ; and thy accused him of being a magician before 

 Claudius Maximus, pro-consul of Africa. Apuleius made a spirited 

 defence ; and his ' Apology,' or ' Oratio de Magia,' still extant, is a 

 curioiu and valuable specimen of the literature of the age. The 

 ' Golden Ass," otherwise called the ' Metamorphosis," the best kuowu 

 work of Apuleius, is a ruuuiug satire on the absurdities of magic, the 

 crimes of the priesthood, tho amorous intrigues of debauchees, and t"ue 

 systematic outrages of thieves and robbers. The episodes are the most 

 valuable portions of the piece, especially that of Psyche. Many per- 

 sous have taken all that is related iu it for true history ; St. Augustiu 

 himself had hia doubts on this head, and did not feel satisfied that 

 Apuleius had designed this book only as a romance. Apuleius was un 

 unwearied student, and has touched many passages with a masterly 

 hand. His works are enumerated in the dissertation ' De Vita et 

 Sei-iptis Apuleii,' prefixed by Wower to his edition, and adopted into 

 the Delphiu. Besides his 'Golden Ass* and his 'Apology,' his work 

 ' Ue Dogmate Platonis,' containing three treatises ; his books, ' De Deo 



