397 



TROPICS. 



TROVER. 



Greets, who used to erect trophies even after slight advantages ; and 

 it sometimes happened that both the belligerent parties, owing to some 

 advantages they had gained, considered themselves entitled to erect 

 trophies (Thucyd. t, 54 ; ii., 92). It was further a practice among the 

 Greeks seldom to erect trophies in any other place than the field of 

 battle, and that immediately after the victory was gained : when an 

 enemy had been conquered at sea, the trophy was erected on the point 

 of the coast nearest to the place where the victory was gained. A 

 trophy in Greece after a victory on land appears to have consisted of a 

 trunk of a tree fixed on some eminence and adorned with the spoils 

 and armour of the vanquished. An inscription usually recorded the 

 names of the conqueror and the conquered, and the whole trophy was 

 dedicated to some divinity. It was customary not to make trophies of 

 very durable materials, in order not to peq>etuate the disgrace of a 

 defeated enemy or to keep up any ill-feeling for too long a period. 

 But this was not always observed. After a naval victory the trophy 

 was usually adorned with the beaks of the captured ships of the enemy, 

 and this custom was adopted by the Romans at an early period. The 

 Romans down to the latter period of the republic never erected any 

 trophies on the field of battle : the spoils of a vanquished enemy were 

 partly distributed among the soldiers, partly dedicated to the temples 

 of the gods, and partly applied as ornaments for other public buildings 

 and places. When however the Romans adopted the custom of raising 

 trophies on the field of battle, they usually consisted of more solid 

 structures than the Greek, such as towers, columns, &c. 



TROPICS (rpoTrfi, a turning), the circles of the earth parallel to the 

 equator which pass through those places to which the sun is vertical at 

 the solstices, being the extreme boundaries of the torrid zone. The 

 latitude of any spot upon either tropic is therefore the same as the 

 obliquity of the ecliptic, and the interval between the northern and 

 southern tropics comprehends every part of the earth at which the sun 

 is ever vertical. The northern tropic is called the tropic of Cancer, 

 and the southern that of Capricorn, since the sun, when vertical at 

 places to the first, is at the commencement of the astronomical sign of 

 Cancer ; and when vertical at places to the second, is at the commence- 

 ment of Capricornus. 



TROUBADOURS, the name given to those poets in the Romance 

 language, or Langue d'Oc, who lived in southern France, eastern 

 Spain, and northern Italy, during the 12th and I3th centuries. 

 [RUMAXIT. LASGUACK.] The name is a French form, from the Pro- 

 vencal " trobador," a derivative of the verb " trobare," " to find," and 

 means an " inventor." The word " Trouvere," to northern French, 

 had the same meaning, and served to designate the poets of northern 

 France, or of the Laugue d'Oil. The troubadours were distinct from 

 the jongleurs : the former were the real poets, and many of them were 

 knights and men of noble birth, who occasionally occupied themselves 

 with poetical composition ; whilst the jongleurs were strolling min- 

 strels, who did not compose poetry, but sang the lays of the trouba- 

 bours, and accompanied them with their musical instruments, and 

 thence derived their subsistence. Many of the troubadours however 

 were skilled both in music and singing ; but those who were not, re- 

 tained a jongleur to their service. According to the spirit^f chivalry, 

 the nobles kept open house for all the wandering followers of war and 

 minstrelsy, and often requited munificently both poeU and musicians 

 for their exertions to amuse them. 



It was in the south of France that the poetry of the troubadours 

 originated. That fertile region, blessed with a genial climate, had 

 Buffered less from the irruptions of the barbarians than the northern 

 provinces of the kingdom, and had retained more of its old Roman 

 civilisation : it hardly felt the civil wars of the Merovingian dynasty, 

 and escaped the devastations of the Normans ; and during the decline 

 of the Carlovtogiana it became independent of the French crown by 

 the revival of the kingdom of Bourgogne, or of Aries, and by the 

 power of the great vassals, the counts of Toulouse and of Poitou and 

 the dukes of Aquitaine. At the beginning of the 12th century the 

 counts of Barcelona acquired by marriage the possession of Provence ; 

 and the whole region bordering on the Mediterranean on both sides of 

 the Pyrenees, from the Ebro to the Var, became subject to one dynasty, 

 whilst the people spoke the same, or nearly the same, Romance dialect. 

 It was in the 12th century that the poetry of the troubadours attained 

 it* perfection : that poetry was essentially lyrical and mostly amorous, 

 and was characterised by simplicity, or rather paucity, of ideas, and by 

 a strained refinement of expression, and peculiarity of form, which 

 made it quite distinct from the classical models. In that age and 

 country of chivalry, every noble beauty had in her train some admiring 

 poet ; and every poet selected some fair lady sometimes the daughter, 

 but oftcner the wife, of the nobleman to whose retinue he was attached 

 for the object of hie poetical passion and the subject of his song. 

 It was a poetical attachment, although it sometimes ended in a real 

 one : its expression was artificial. These remarks apply generally to 

 -troubadour amatory poetry, to which however there are exceptions. 

 (8ismondi, ' Literature <lu Midi de 1'Kurope.') 



The troubadours wrote also at times of loftier themes. Some of 

 them, who had followed the Crusades and shared the dangers of 

 Eastern campaigns, sang after tin ir return the valiant deeds of the 

 soldiers of the Cross. Others wrote to animate the Christian princes 

 tn deliver Palestine from the yoke of the Moslems. Others, especially 

 about the time of the persecution of the Albigenges, wrote bitter 



satires against the persecutors, the Inquisitors, -against the priesthood, 

 the hierarchy, and against Rome itself. That persecution was one of 

 the causes of the decay of troubadour poetry in the 13th century. 

 Many of the troubadours perished, or fled and died in foreign lands. 

 Afterwards Charles of Anjou, who had become count of Provence by 

 marriage with the heiress of the house of Barcelona, having removed 

 to Naples, took with him many Provencal knights and ladies to grace 

 his new court. There they found a new language, the Sicilian or 

 Italian, which was rising into maturity and was well calculated for 

 poetry, and it became the favourite language of the Anjou court. 

 When, in the following century, Queen Joanna I., being obliged to fly 

 from Naples, returned to Provence, she endeavoured but in vain to 

 revive the study of Provencal poetry ; and when, many years later, she 

 adopted Louis, son of King John, and the head of the third house of 

 Anjou, that prince, who thus became possessed of Provence, spoke the 

 Langue d'Oil, or northern French, and had no taste for the Provencal, 

 His grandson Rene 1 , duke of Anjou, count of Provence, and nominal 

 king of Naples, made to the following century some attempts at re- 

 viving the poetry of the Langue d'Oc, but the race of the troubadours 

 was now extinct, and the only result of his exertions was the collecting 

 and compiling the lives of the old troubadours by the monks of the 

 isles of Hyeres, and after them by Hugues de St. Cesaire. 



At Toulouse however efforts were made to revive troubadour poetry. 

 The " Capitouls," or municipal magistrates of that city, established an 

 academy called " Del Gai Saber," or " of the gay science ; " and seven 

 of the best rhymers of the place, styled " the Seven Troubadours of 

 Toulouse," were placed at the head of it. They fixed upon the 1st of 

 May for holding an annual public festival, to which they gave the 

 name of " Floral Games." The first meeting was held in 1324, and 

 was attended by many poets from various parts of Languedoc. Maistre 

 Arnaud Vidal de Chateauneuf d'Arri obtained the prize, and graduated 

 as doctor of the gay science in consequence of a song in honour of the 

 Virgin. The morality of troubadour poetry, however, underwent a 

 reform under this new institution. It was forbidden by the statutes 

 of the Academy to recite any composition on the subject of unlawful 

 or adulterous love, a frequent theme of the old troubadours. The old 

 language of the troubadours has long since fallen into disuse, and has 

 given way to various patois, the Languedocian, Proven9al, Poitevin, 

 and others. 



See for a thorough examination of troubadour poetry, with examples, 

 Raynouard, ' Choix des Poesies Originates des Troubadours,' vols. 

 8vo., Paris, 1818-21 ; ' Lexique Roman, avec un nouveau Choix des 

 Poesies Originates des Troubadours,' 1'aris, 1836; also the work of 

 Professor Diez, ' Die Poesie der Troubadours.' 



TROUS DE LOUP, to the military art, are pits dug in the ground 

 in the form of inverted cones or pyramids, in order to serve as ob- 

 stacles to the advance of an enemy : edch is made about six feet in 

 diameter, or in breadth, and as many in depth, and a pointed stake is 

 planted upright to the bottom. The pits should be disposed checquer- 

 wise in two or three rows, their centres being at distances of about ten 

 feet from one another ; and their sides should have such a slope that 

 the enemy's riflemen, should they attempt to occupy them, may not 

 be concealed in them from the view of the troops whom the pits 

 protect. 



The earth obtained from the excavations should be formed into a sort 

 of glacis within the line of pita, in order that the enemy may not use it 

 to fill them up. Trous de loup are generally formed before the salient 

 points of field-works or in the intervals between them ; and they are 

 sometimes executed in rear of such works to order to protect the 

 gorges when these are without parapets. 



TROVER (from the French word trouvtr, " to find "), the name of 

 an action invented for the purpose of ascertaining the right, as between 

 the plaintiff and defendant, to the personal chattels which are the 

 subject of it. This action is maintainable by one who has either an 

 absolute or special property in the chattels and also a right to posses- 

 sion. Thus it may be brought either by the actual owner or an occa- 

 sional bailee, a carrier, &c., or a mere finder as against all except the 

 rightful owner. The declaration formerly stated that the plaintiff was 

 lawfully possessed as of his own property of certain personal chattels, 

 naming them distinctly, their amount and value ; that he afterwards 

 casually lost them, and that they came into the possession of the de- 

 fendant by finding, who, afterwards converted them to his own use ; 

 for which the plaintiff claimed damages. This form and the fiction 

 respecting the loss and finding of the goods were contrived for the 

 purpose, by assuming a right of possession in the defendant, of enabling 

 the parties to try the bare question of rir/ht. These fictions are not 

 now used; and the fact of conversion, which is the gist of the action, 

 is proved by showing that the defendant upon request refused to 

 deliver up the goods, or has destroyed them, or has assumed the right 

 to dispose of them. When an act of conversion has once been com- 

 pleted, no subsequent act by the defendant can, as is said, " purge the 

 conversion;" that is, the right of action, having once vested in the 

 plaintiff by the act of conversion, will not be divested by any subse- 

 quent act of the defendant. But such a subsequent act, as for instance 

 the return of the goods, may reduce the damages to a merely nominal 

 character. The actiun is not maintainable by one joint tenant, or 

 tenant in common, or partner against another, unless in the case where 

 the chattel has been destroyed by the other. This rule is founded on 



