105 



CASSAKDER. 



CASSINI. 



106 



has always been a decided advocate for the extension of territory ; and 

 consequently strongly supported both the annexation of Texas and 

 the war with Mexico ; is anxious to maintain a high protection tariff; 

 and has made himself especially notorious by the eagerness with which 

 he has on every possible occasion joined in and stimulated the cry for 

 war with England. 



CASSANDEK waa the son of Antipater, to whom Macedonia was 

 allotted on the division of the Macedonian empire after the death of 

 Alexander. Antipater dying, B.C. 318, appointed Polysperchon to 

 succeed him. [ANTIPATER.] Cassander bore this exclusion with indig- 

 nation ; but finding his party too weak for successful opposition, he 

 fled to Asia, and sought the assistance of Antigonus and Ptolemajus. 

 Antigonus gave him 4000 men, with whom he sailed to Athens, and 

 was received by Nicanor, the Macedonian governor of the port and 

 fortress of Munycbia, who had recently, by a sudden attack, obtained 

 possession of the chief part of Piraeus also. Polysperchon lost no time 

 in conducting an army to besiege him, but was soon obliged, by 

 scarcity of provisions, to draw off the greater part of his troops into 

 Peloponnesus, leaving only an army of observation in Attica. Almost 

 the whole of Peloponnesus favoured Polysperchon ; Megalopolis how- 

 ever remained firm to the party of Cassander, and defended itself with 

 such resolution that his rival was compelled to retreat from under its 

 walls with mortification and disgrace. Parties were so balanced in 

 Greece, that a slight tiling was enough to turn the scale in favour of 

 one or the other. "Polysperchon falling into disgrace through this 

 failure (eays Diodorus, xviii. 74), most of the Greek cities went over to 

 Cassander ;" and, among the rest, Athens, seeing no chance of recovering 

 possession of its porta by force of arms, B.C. 317. 



In the following year, Cassauder marched into Macedonia against 

 Polysperchon, who, with the view of strengthening his party among 

 the Macedonians, had associated with himself Olympias, the mother of 

 Alexander. Leaving Callas, his general, to oppose Polysperchon, 

 Cassander himself olockaded Olympias in Pydna during the winter. 

 That town yielded on capitulation early in the year B.C. 315, when 

 Olympias, in express contravention of the terms of surrender, was put 

 to death through his agency. Having now gained possession of Mace- 

 donia, with the power, though not the name, of a king, he took to 

 wife Thessalonice, the daughter of Philip and half-sister of Alexander, 

 in hope of confirming his own ascendancy by the powerful associa- 

 tions connected with the royal blood. In the same year he founded 

 the flourishing city of Cassandria, in Pallene, which was formerly 

 known by the name of Potiilica, and commenced the restoration of 

 Thebes, twenty years after its destruction by Alexander. Soon after 

 he joined the combination of Ptolemrcus, Lysimachus, and Seleucus, 

 t Antigonus. The war which ensued was concluded, B.C. 311, 

 on condition, so far as related to Cassander, that he should be military 

 governor ((Trpanrybs) of Europe, till the son of Koxana by Alexander 

 should attain his majority. This limitation Casaander made of no 

 avail by immediately putting to death both the young prince and his 

 mother, B.C. 309. Polysperchon set up another rival to him, in the 

 person of Hercules', the only surviving son of Alexander by Barsine; 

 but he agreed to put Hercules to death on condition of Peloponnesus 

 being given up to him. Hercules was accordingly murdered, but 

 Polysperchon was not able to take possession of Peloponnesus, which 

 was the stipulated price of his treachery. 



No part of history is more complicated, and less interesting, than 

 that which relates to the wars of Alexander's immediate successors. 

 We therefore pass over the constant employment given to Casaander 

 by the confirmed enmity of the ^Etolians, and by the disturbances 

 continually fomented in Greece by Antigonus. 



During the Rhodian war [ANTIGONUS], Cassander regained much 

 influence in Greece, which he had lost by the intrigues of Antigonus 

 and the military successes of his son Demetrius. But after the siege 

 of Rhodes was raised, Demetrius again repaired to Greece, and, in the 

 year B.C. 302, became master of the greater part of Peloponnesus. 

 The danger in which Antigonus was involved by the second con- 

 federacy of Ptolemreufl, Seleucus, &c., recalled Demetrius to Asia ; and 

 the death of Antigonus at the battle of Ipsus, B.C. 301, removed 

 Caasander's most formidable enemy. From that time forwards, he 

 held secure possession of Macedonia, though Demetrius retained 

 considerable influence" in Greece. He died B.C. 296 (Clinton), leaving 

 the character of an ambitious, able, unscrupulous man, of whom the 

 best that can be said is, that his rivals were no better than himself. 

 He was succeeded in Macedonia by Philip, his eldest son. 



CASSI'NI. We have now for the second time to sketch the lives 

 and labours of a family of distinguished men, who, though their con- 

 tributions to the stock of knowledge do not rival in extent or value 

 those of the Bt-rnoullis, present nevertheless a succession of talent and 

 industry wliich rarely occurs. From the date of its establishment in 

 1670, till the time when the revolution destroyed all hereditary privi- 

 leges, the Observatory of Paris passed from one Cassini to another 

 through four generations, as though it had been transmitted by the 

 law of property. 



JOHN DOMINIC CASSINI was born at Perinaldo, in the district of 

 Nice, June 8, 1625, of a respectable family which came from Siena, of 

 which place a Cardinal Cassini was archbishop in 1426. He was 

 educated by the Jesuit* at Genoa, and there are some Latin poems of 

 i :\ collection of 1016. He attached himself to mathematics and 



.. Vol.. II. 



astronomy, and also it is said to astrology, of which he was cured by 

 discovering that a prediction which succeeded had been calculated 

 wrongly. He also read the work of Pico di Mirandolrt against 

 astrologers. In 1644, at the invitation of the Marquis Malvasia, who 

 was building an observatory, he removed to Bologna, and in the 

 university of that place, after the death of Cavalieri, in 1650, he suc- 

 ceeded to the chair of astronomy. He here observed the comet of 

 1652, on which he published his first work. He mado various obser- 

 vations with a gnomon and meridian line constructed in a church at 

 Bologna. In 1657 ho was deputed, with another, ambassador to the 

 pope, on a quarrel between Bologna and Ferrara relative to the river 

 Po, and on his return was appointed to the superintendence of the 

 river for the former place. In 1663 he was appointed to repair the 

 works of Fort Urban. He was at this time patronised by Pope Alex- 

 ander VII., and afterwards by Clement IX. In 1664-5 he made the 

 first of his more brilliant and useful discoveries, namely, the time of 

 the rotation of Jupiter, which he fixed at 9 hours 56 minutes. Professor 

 Airy, by recent observations, makes it 9 h. 55 m. 21'3 s. He also saw, 

 for the first time, the shadows of the satellites on the disc. [CAMPANI.] 

 By comparison of his own observations with those of Galileo, he con- 

 structed (1665) his first tables of the satellites. In 1666-7 he found 

 the rotation of Mars to be 24 h. 4 m. (it is 24 h. 39 m. 21-3 s.), and in 

 this same year he ascertained that the rotation of Venus, which is 

 difficult to observe on account of her phases, does not differ much 

 from that of Mars (it is 23 h. 21 m. 7 a) He made the apparent rota- 

 tion of the suu to be about 27 days, which is very near the truth. 

 These results show considerable skill and assiduity, and made the 

 name of Cassini very well known throughout Europe. 



When Colbert founded the Academy of Sciences, in 166G, and at 

 the same time projected an observatory at Paris, he proposed to 

 Cassini to remove into France, and offered him a pension equivalent 

 to his Italian emoluments. Cassini expressed his willingness to comply 

 if the consent of the pope (Clement IX.) could be obtained ; which 

 was done on condition that Cassiui's absence should not last more 

 than two or three years. Ho arrived at Paris April 4, 1669, and began 

 his duties at the observatory September 14, 1671, where his observa- 

 tions extend from 1671 to 1683, In 1673 the Bolognese government, 

 which had kept all his appointments open, required him to return; 

 but Colbert succeeded in negociating his continued stay in France, 

 and accordingly in the same year he was naturalised in his new 

 country, and married a French lady. He never returned to Italy, 

 except for a short time in 1695, but remained at the head of the Paris 

 Observatory. In the latter years of his life he was totally blind. 

 He died September 14, 1712, without disease, and only, as Fouteuelle 

 remarks, " par la seule necessity de mourir." His eldest son was killed 

 at the battle of La Hogue ; of his second we shall have to speak as 

 soon as we have completed the present part of our subject. In 1671-2 

 he discovered the third and fifth satellites of Saturn, and in 1684 the 

 first and second. His gnomon at Bologna led him to more correct 

 solar tables than had been in use, and to more exact values of the 

 refraction. He gave a more complete explanation of the lunar libration 

 than either Kepler or Hevelius, particularly in the determination of 

 the quantities concerned ; and though he did not leave the actual 

 observations, Delambre, who, as we shall see, judges him severely, 

 appears to think that he did establish by observation the coincidence 

 of the nodes of the lunar equator and orbit. He was the first who 

 carefully observed the zodiacal light, which he imagines he discovered. 

 His later tables of the satellites of Jupiter (1668 and 1693) were con- 

 siderable improvements ; but though in possession of facts analogous 

 to those which led to the discovery of the motion of light, he not 

 only did not make that discovery, but rejected it when announced by 

 Roemer. For his arc of the meridian, his observations relative to 

 refraction, with a multitude of other points too long to notice here, 

 we must refer to Delambre, ' Hist. d'Astron. Mod.,' vol. ii. 



We have seen that Cassini, as an observer, was no ordinary man. 

 Even if we leave out of view discoveries such as those of the satellites 

 of Saturn, which though brilliant involve no extraordinary sagacity, 

 we have still the continued, systematic, and successful observations of 

 the satellites of Jupiter. But as a philosopher, and as a reasoner 

 upon the results of his observations, Cassini does not excel. An 

 obstinate follower of Descartes, we have no evidence that he ever 

 looked into Newton ; probably his mathematical knowledge was not 

 sufficient to enable him to understand the ' Principia.' A devoted, if 

 not a bigoted adherent of the Church of Rome, he was a Ptolemaist 

 long after the time when Galileo had made the speculation of Coper- 

 nicus sound astronomical doctrine ; and we cannot give much admi- 

 ration to the power of a mind which enslaves itself to a church in a 

 matter of science. His unskilful handling of Kepler's laws, his crude 

 an.1 unsatisfactory notions upon comets, and indeed his method of 

 dealing with almost any subject which involved investigation, are so 

 many points which render the extravagant praises of Fontenelle and 

 Lalande altogether inadmissible. His reputation in fact was alto- 

 gether of a different species from that which it ought to have been. 

 So far as that sort of notoriety is concerned with which the public iu 

 general is most struck, Cassini and William Herschel appear to 

 resemble each other. Nevertheless, take from the latter Uranus and 

 six satellites, with two of Saturn, and there is left a first-rate repu- 

 tation among astronomers ; withdraw the similar discoveries of CaeMU 



