289 



ARCADIUS. 



ARCESILAUS. 



280 



and ecclesiastics. Joan was brought out on the last day of May, 1431; 

 she wept piteously, but no mercy was shown. They placed on her 

 head the cap used to mark the victims of the Inquisition, and the fire 

 soon consumed her body. Her ashes were gathered and thrown into 

 the Seine. 



It is difficult to say to what party most disgrace attaches on account 

 of this barbarous murder : whether to the Burgundians, who sold the 

 Maid of Orleans ; the English, who permitted her execution ; the 

 French, of that party who brought it about and perpetrated it ; or the 

 French, of the opposite side, who made so few efforts to rescue her to 

 whom they owed their liberation and their national existence. An 

 essay however has recently appeared ('Doute Historique," by O. Dele- 

 pievre, 1855, privately printed), in which some curious, though certainly 

 not conclusive, facts are urged against the belief of Joan having been 

 actually burned. M. Delepievre's statement is that, in 1645, the Pere 

 Vignier, while examining some of the archives of Metz, chanced upon 

 a document which related how, in the year 1436, on the 20th of May 

 (five years after the Hate assigned for the burning), there came to Metz 

 " the maid Jeanne ;" and on the same day came her two brothers, 

 Pierre, a knight, and Petit Jehan, an esquire, "who thought she had 

 been burned." They were all well received, " and she was known by 

 many signs to be the maid Jeanne de France, who had conducted King 

 Charles to Rbeims to be crowned." The document at some length 

 details her movements to Cologne, to Erlon (Luxembourg), and other 

 places ; but at length, at Erlon, she was married to the Sieur Hermoise. 

 Not much importance was attached to this document, nor even to 

 another discovery of the Pere Vignier, made subsequently, in the 

 muniment chest of a certain M. des Armoises of Lorraine, of a marriage 

 contract between " Robert des Armoises, knight, with Jeanne d'Arcy, 

 imrnamed the Maid of Orleans." But in 1740, in the archives of the 

 H6tel-de-Ville at Orleans, were found two entries ; the first, under the 

 dates of 1435 and 1436, of two sums paid, one to a messenger, " who 

 had brought letters from Jeanne the Maid ;" the other to John de Lils 

 (or Lys, the name by which the family of Dare, or D'Arc, was ennobled), 

 '' to help him ou his way back to his sister :" the second entry is in 

 1439, of a gift of 2101ivres to Jeanne Darmoises, "for services rendered 

 by her at the siege of the said city." The authenticity of these docu- 

 ments is of course open to doubt, and M. Langlet du Fresnoy has 

 decided against them. M. Delepievre however has yet some collateral 

 evidence not open to the same objection. In 1444, Pierre, the brother 

 of the Maid, petitioned for the restitution of some property; and he 

 urges, in support of his claim, that " he had left his native place to 

 enter into the service of the king and the duke [of Orleans], in com- 

 pany with his sister, Jeanne the Maid, with whom, up to the time of 

 her altence, and from that time to the present, he had risked his life," 

 &c. The application succeeded, and the document was found by 

 Pasquier among the accounts of the domain of Orleans. As negative 

 evidence, M. Delepievre also mentions that a belief certainly existed at 

 the time that a criminal was substituted ; and there were several pre- 

 tenders to her name, some of whom were punished as impostors, while 

 Jeaimo des Armoises was certainly not meddled with ; and in 1455, 

 when the papal condemnation of the sentence was published, no refer- 

 ence whatever was made to the execution. Whether executed or not, 

 however, the discredit to all the parties concerned is lessened but 

 slightly ; and in spite of this circumstantial relation, which is given by 

 M. Delepievre with singular candour and absence of partisanship, it 

 will be difficult to establish a belief contrary to the popular one, which 

 is founded upon what appears the best historical evidence. 



It is asserted (' Biog. Univ.,' art ' Jeanne d'Arc'), and probably cor- 

 rectly, that there is no genuine likeness of Joan of Arc extant. Our 

 medal is taken from a French work, ' Les Families de la France illus- 

 trees par les monumens, Ac ; Tire"es des plus rares et curieux cabinetz 

 du Royaume,' &c. Par J. de Bie, Calcographe, Paris, 1634. There is 

 a monument of the Maid at Rouen, and the graceful statue by the 

 daughter of Louis Philippe, multiplied in many popular shapes, keeps 

 up the memory of the heroine. 



The works on the subject of Joan of Arc are very numerous ; M. 

 Chaussard enumerates upwards of four hundred, either expressly 

 devoted to her life or including her history. Voltaire's poem of ' La 

 Pucelle ' is an attempt to degrade by ribaldry and profaneness the 

 heroic enthusiasm which he could not understand ; Schiller's tragedy 

 more worthily goes to the other extreme ; and Southey's early poem is 

 a respectable mediocrity, which is neither history nor poetry. In 

 Shakspere's 'Henry VI.' we find the proper English view of her cha- 

 racter, mingled with a higher estimate than belongs to the chronicles 

 of the period. 



Of her numerous biographies, that of M. Lebrun des Charmettes is 

 the fullest, 1S15. The publication by M. Laverdy of extracts from 

 manuscripts in the Bibliotheque du Roi contains everything relating 

 to the trials of the Pucelle, and is a source at once ample and respect- 

 able. The story is told by Barant<5 (in his ' Histoire des Dues de 

 Bourgogne,' voL iv. pp. 328-344) with great spirit ; aud in that valuable 

 work will be found much documentary proof relating to the examin- 

 ations that preceded the abominable execution of the sentence of the 

 Church. 



AKCA'DIUS, emperor of Constantinople, son of Theodosius the 

 Great, whom he succeeded A.D. 396. The genius of Rome expired 

 with Theodosius; he was the last of the successors of Augustus and 



Bioo. nrv. VOL. I. 



Constantine who was acknowledged by the whole Roman empire, and 

 who appeared at the head of its armies. By his will he divided this 

 mighty empire between his two young sons, Arcadius and Honorius. 

 Arcadius became emperor of the East, reigning over the provinces of 

 Thrace, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, from the Lower Danube to the 

 confines of Persia ; Honorius became at least nominal emperor of the 

 West. The accession of Arcadius marked the final establishment of 

 the empire of the East, which subsisted, till the taking of Constanti- 

 nople by the Turks, during a period of 1058 years, in a state of con- 

 tinual decay. 



The history of the reign of Arcadius is nothing else than that of the 

 men to whom he entrusted the affairs of his empire. He was at first 

 the submissive tool of Rufinus, who had raised himself by his talents 

 to the notice of Theodosius, aud was employed by him to direct the 

 studies of the young prince Arcadius. Rufinus employed all his influ- 

 ence to inveigle Arcadius into a marriage with his daughter; but failing 

 in this object, he was accused of inviting the Huns and the Goths into 

 Asia and Greece, and was at last murdered in the presence of the 

 emperor by the soldiers of the celebrated Stilicho. His place was 

 supplied by an eunuch, Eutropius, who exceeded even Rufinus in 

 oppression and cruelty. Arcadius saw everything with equal indiffer- 

 ence, and cared neither for his own honour nor the security of his 

 subjects, provided he was allowed to enjoy the pompous luxury in 

 which he delighted, and which is forcibly described in the eloquent 

 sermons of St. Chrysostom, an eye-witness of the scenes which he 

 narrates. In the later years of his life Arcadius was entirely under 

 the control of his wife, Eudoxia, whose character is best shown by 

 the fact that she persecuted the virtuous St. Chrysostom. Arcadius 

 died May 1, 408, leaving his empire to his infant son, Theodosius. 

 The facts of his life are given by Claudius, Suidas, and Theodoretus. 



ARCA'NO, MAURO D', usually called IL MAURO, was one of the 

 most famous among the burlesque poets of Italy in the 16th century. 

 He is supposed to have been born about the year 1490. His first 

 Christian name is disputed, some calling him Giovanni, and others, 

 seemingly by mistake, Francesco. He was descended from a coble 

 family in Friuli, trom whose castle he derives his name of Arcano ; 

 but his life appears to have been spent in dependence. After having 

 been educated in his native province, he emigrated to Bologna, and 

 thence to Rome. There he lived almost constantly afterwards, being 

 successively in the service of the Duke of Amalfi, Cardinals Grimani 

 and Cesarina, and other powerful and wealthy persons of his time. 

 In the celebrated academy of the Vignaiuoli or Vinedressers, of which 

 Berni was the ruling spirit, Mauro was a distinguished member ; and 

 he lived in ultimate friendship with that witty poet, and with those 

 other men of letters who, in the first half of the century, formed the 

 characteristic style of burlesque poetry called Bernesque, from its 

 inventor and most successful cultivator. [I'.EU.NI. j 



II Mauro died at Rome, in 1536, in consequence of a fall from his 

 horse while hunting. His works, besides a burlesque letter printed in 

 two collections of the time, consist of twenty-one ' capitoli,' or bur- 

 lesque poems in Italian terza rima, which will be found in the common 

 editions of the poems of Bemi and the writers of hia school. 



ARCESILA'US was born at Pitana, a city of ^Eolis in Asia Minor. 

 Of his personal history we are able to collect a few facts from Suidas 

 and his life by Diogenes Laertius. He was born B.C. 316, and began, 

 according to Apollodorus, to attract the attention of the learned by 

 the acuteness of his remarks before he had reached the age of 1 7. He 

 died B.C. 241, at the age of 75. He was the pupil of the mathematician 

 Autolycus, and afterwards proceeded to Athens to study rhetoric, but 

 preferring philosophic studies, he became the pupil of Theophrastus 

 the peripatetic, and then of Grantor. He attached himself more par- 

 ticularly to the Academic sect, and became one of their leading 

 philosophers, though he introduced so many changes, that he was con- 

 sidered the founder of what has been called the Middle Academy. 

 The Academic sect was instituted by Plato, and continued through 

 Speusippus, Xenocrates, Crantor, Polemo, and Crates, to Arcesilaiis. 

 We think that Mr. Clinton (' Fasti Hellenic!,' vol i. p. 367) satisfactorily 

 proves that Arcesilaiis established his school at the death of Crantor, 

 who died before Polemo and Crates ; that from this period ho was 

 the rival of Zeno and Epicurus ; that Polemo and Crates, strictly 

 speaking, had no successors; that the old academy expired with them, 

 and was superseded by the school of Arcesilaiis, which had been 

 founded in their lifetime. 



Arcesilaiis revived the Socratic mode of teaching, which had fallen 

 into disuse ; he propounded no dogmatic principles of his own, but 

 discussed with much eloquence and art the points proposed to him by 

 his pupils. He brought forward all the arguments that could be 

 suggested on both sides of a question, and endeavoured to prove that 

 there was no certainty in philosophical knowledge, and that in all 

 purely speculative subjects we must refrain from coming to a decision, 

 because the mind of man cannot sufficiently distinguish truth from 

 falsehood. In the very-day affairs of life however he appears to have 

 admitted that we must act as others do. The saying of the philoso- 

 pher Cleanthes respecting him, clearly proves that his doctrines were 

 not carried beyond his closet, and that in the world he was strictly 

 attentive to all the duties of life. "Leave him to himself," says 

 Cleanthes to some who lamented the tendency of his doctrines, " for 

 if Arcosilaiis loosens the ties of morality by his words, ho knits them 



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