ARCHES COURT ARCHIMEDES. 



233 



was restored about twenty years ago by George III. 

 This company, which includes a great proportion of 

 the Scottish nobility and gentry, as well as many 

 respectable citizens of Edinburgh, contains above 

 1000 members. A president and six counsellors, 

 chosen annually from the body of the members, 

 manage their concerns ; many of the members who 

 reside in Edinburgh meet weekly during the summer 

 in the Meadows, and shoot at butts or rovers. Their 

 uniform is tartan lined with white, and trimmed with 

 green and white fringes ; a white sash, with green 

 tassels, and a blue bonnet, with a St Andrew's cross 

 and feathers. The only prize shot for at butts, or 

 point-blank distance, is called the goose : originally 

 it was shot for thus : a living goose was inclosed in a 

 Jjutt made of turf, having nothing but the head left 

 "visible, and he who first pierced the head with his 

 arrow, received the goose as his reward. A practice 

 so barbarous has long been discontinued ; a mark, 

 an inch in diameter, is now placed on the butt, and 

 the archer who first hits it is captain of the butt 

 shooters for the succeeding year. The other prizes 

 annually given are shot for at rovers, the marks be- 

 ing 185 yards distant. The king's prize already 

 mentioned, becomes the property ot the winner ; all 

 the others are retained by the victors for a year, and 

 are restored, each with a medal affixed, having a 

 motto and device engraven on it. The first is a silver 

 arrow given by the town of Musselburgh, 1603, or 

 earlier. The second is a silver arrow given by the 

 royal borough of Peebles, 1626. The third, a silver 

 arrow given by the city of Edinburgh, 1709. The 

 fourth, a punch bowl, value 50, made of .Scottish 

 silver, at the expense of the company, 1720, which 

 is now surrounded with rows of gold medals, and 

 always used at the convivial meetings of the company 

 in the Archers' Hall, a neat building adjoining to 

 the Meadows, where all their business is transacted. 

 ARCHES COURT (curia de arcubus) ; the chief and 

 most ancient consistory court, belonging to the arch- 

 bishop of Canterbury, for the debating of spiritual 

 causes. It is so called from the church in London, 

 commonly called St Mary le Bow (de arcubus), where 

 it was formerly held, which church is named Pow 

 church, from the steeple, which, is supported by pil- 

 lars built archwise, like so many bent bows. The 

 jurisdiction of this court extends over the province of 

 Canterbury. An appeal, however, lies to the king. 

 ARCHIL, or ARCHILLA, called, also, rocclla and 

 orsielle ; a whitish moss, which grows upon rocks, in 

 the Canary and cape Verd islands, and yields a rich 

 purple tincture, fugitive, indeed, but extremely beau- 

 tiful. When it is prepared for dyeing, it is called 

 lacmus, or litmus (q. v.) 



ARCHILOCHUS ; a Greek poet, born on the island of 

 Paros. He flourished about 700 B. C. His ardent 

 spirit hurried him into the whirlpool of political 

 party, and he was obliged to leave his country. He 

 retired to Tarsus, where he fought against the Thra- 

 ciaijs, and lost his shield, more by accident than 

 cowardice. He afterwards visited Greece, but the 

 Spartans banished him from their state. He gained 

 the laurel crown, however, at the Olympic games, 

 for a hymn to Hercules. Some say he was kuled in 

 battle ; others, that he was assassinated. A. was no 

 less formidable with the pen than with the sword. 

 Lycambes, who had promised him his daughter, and 

 faithlessly violated his agreement, hanged himself 

 in despair on account of the satires in which the 

 offended poet wreaked on him his revenge. With 

 the same severity, he persecuted all his fellow 

 citizens, who were unfortunate enough to displease 

 him. His memory was honoured in all Greece so 

 highly, that he was placed beside Homer. His iam- 

 bic poems were renowned for the force of the style, 



the liveliness of the metaphors, a sententious concise- 

 ness, elevated feeling, and a powerful, but bitter 

 spirit of satire. In other lyric poems of a higher 

 character, he was also considered as a model. All 

 his works are lost but a few fragments, collected by 

 Liebel, Leipsic, 1812 17. He used the half-penta- 

 meter verse in his poems, whence this verse is called, 



from him, Archilochian verse : ' ^ ^ . 



ARCHIMANDRITE ; in the Greek church, abbots or 

 general-abbots, who have the superintendence oi 

 many abbots, and convents ; because in the ancient 

 Greek church, the abbots were called mandree, and 

 archi is the Greek prefix (see Arch). In Sicily, the ab- 

 bots are called thus because their convents were ori- 

 ginally of Greek institution, and conform to the rules 

 of St Basil. The general-abbots of the united Greeks 

 in Poland, Galicia, Transylvania, Hungary, Sclavonia, 

 and Venice bear this title. 



ARCHIMEDES, the most celebrated among the an- 

 cient geometricians, born at Syracuse, about 287 B. 

 C. a relation of king Hiero, appears to have borne no 

 public office, but to have devoted himself entirely to 

 science. We cannot fully estimate his services to 

 mathematics, for want of an acquaintance with the 

 previous state of science ; still we know that he en- 

 riched it with discoveries of the highest importance, 

 upon which the moderns have founded their admea- 

 surements of curvilinear surfaces and solids. Euclid, 

 in his elements, considers only the relation of some 

 of these magnitudes to each other, but does not com- 

 pare them with surfaces and solids bounded by 

 straight lines. A. has developed the propositions 

 necessary for effecting this comparison, in his trea- 

 tises on the sphere and cylinder, the spheroid and 

 conoid, and in his work on the measure of the circle. 

 He rose to still more abstruse considerations, in his 

 treatise on the spiral, 1 which, however, even those 

 acquainted with the subject can with difficulty com- 

 prehend. A. is the only one among the ancients, 

 who has left us any thing satisfactory on the theory 

 of mechanics, and on hydrostatics. He first taught 

 the principle, " that a body, immersed in a fluid, loses 

 as much in weight as the weight of an equal volume 

 of the fluid," and determined, by means of it, how 

 much alloy an artist had fraudulently added to a 

 crown, which king Hiero had ordered to be made 

 of pure gold. He discovered the solution of this 

 problem while bathing ; and it is said to have caused 

 him so much joy, that he hastened home from the 

 bath undressed, and crying out, " I have found it, 

 I have found it!" Practical mechanics, also, ap- 

 pears to have been a new science at the time of A. ; 

 for his exclamation that he could move the earth, it' 

 he had a point without it to stand upon, shows the en- 

 thusiasm with which the extraordinary performances 

 of his machines had inspired him. He is the in- 

 ventor of the compound pulley, probably of the end- 

 less screw, &c. During the siege of Syracuse, lie 

 devoted all his talents to the defence of his native 

 country. Polybius, Livy, and Plutarch speak in de- 

 tail, and with admiration, of the machines with which 

 he repelled the attacks of the Romans. They make 

 no mention of his having set on fire the enemy's fleet 

 by burning-glasses, a thing which is, in itself, very 

 improbable, and related only in the later writings of 

 Galen and Lucian. At the moment when the Ro- 

 mans, under Marcelius, gained possession of the city 

 by assault, tradition relates that A. was sitting in the 

 market-place, absorbed in thought, and contemplat- 

 ing some figures which he had drawn in the sand. 

 To a Roman soldier, who addressed him, he is related 

 to have cried out, " Disturb not my circle !" but the 

 rough warrior little heeded his request, and struck 

 him down. As the conquest of Syracuse is placed in 

 the year 212 B. C., Archimedes must have bctu 



