HERNE 



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HEROD 



the father of homes for the monks, where each 

 member had a solitary dwelling, but all came 

 together for worship. These communities fin- 

 ally grew into monasteries, or convents, and 

 the number of hermits became gradually fewer. 

 The solitary penitent, or devotee, is a feature 

 of many religions, both ancient and modern. 



Considered apart from religion, there are 

 few people in civilized countries who can be 

 called hermits. Occasionally there is known to 

 be a person who withdraws from association 

 with other men and lives alone, but he has 

 no object other than seclusion. 



HERNE, JAMES A. (1840-1901), whose real 

 name was JAMES AHERNE, was an American 

 actor and dramatist. The character of his 

 plays indicates the sterling worth of their au- 

 thor. He was born in Troy, N. Y., and after 

 a brief experience as an actor w r hile yet a 

 young man, he appeared in his native city in 

 Uncle Tom's Cabin. The most successful plays 

 in which he starred were Hearts of Oak and 

 Shore Acres, and these were written by him- 

 self; they were quaint, rural comedies skilfully 

 portraying types of everyday life. His other 

 writings include Drifting Apart, The Minute 

 Men and Sag Harbor, a New England coast 

 comedy. 



HERNIA, hur'nia. When the wall of the 

 abdomen becomes weakened or, through a sud- 

 den strain, becomes ruptured, the condition is 

 called hernia. This consists of a protrusion of 

 the intestines through a false opening in the 

 abdominal walls. The term properly means 

 a tumor, and signifies the protrusion of any 

 organ of the body through an accidental open- 

 ing. 



The danger of hernia, using the common 

 meaning of the word, is in the shutting off or 

 choking of the knuckle of the protruding in- 

 testine. This is called strangulation, and calls 

 for immediate operation or the patient will 

 die. A person who develops abdominal hernia 

 should wear a truss or other support to keep 

 the intestine inside the abdominal cavity; or, 

 better, there should be an operation to close 

 the false opening, which constantly tends to 

 become larger the longer it is neglected. 



HE'RO, in mythology, the beautiful priestess 

 who placed a bright light at the top of her 

 lonely tower each night, to guide her lover, 

 Leander, as he swam across the Hellespont to 

 see her (see HELLESPONT). No one suspected 

 their meetings,- and all went well until the 

 first severe storms of winter swept over the 

 sea. Then one morning, after watching all 



night in the storm, Hero found the body of 

 her lover tossing on the waves at the foot of 

 her tower. In despair she threw herself into 

 the sea and perished at his side. Lord Byron, 

 the English poet, attempted Leander's feat of 

 swimming across the Hellespont, and upon his 

 return from the adventure wrote: 



His eye but saw that light of love, 

 The only star it hail'd above ; 

 His ear but rang with Hero's song, 

 "Ye waves, divide not lovers long." 



HEROD, her'ud, the family name of a group 

 of remarkable rulers whose members occupied 

 prominent governmental positions in various 

 provinces of Palestine about the time of Christ. 

 The first and most famous was Herod the 

 Great, the son of an Idumaean father and 

 mother; the family was not Jewish, although 

 the Herods had been compelled to adopt the 

 Jewish religion by their conquerors in 125 B. c. 



Herod the Great (74-4 B.C.), the wicked king 

 of Judea, was often called the "murderer of 

 the innocents," because at the birth of Christ, 

 in the latter part of his reign, he caused all 

 male children under two years of age to be 

 slain (Matthew II, 16). This was done for 

 the reason that Christ had been proclaimed 

 the future king of the Jews; Herod, upon 

 being unable to find him, caused all to be killed 

 that he might not miss putting this one out 

 of the way so he could not later appear and 

 seize the throne. 



Herod was the second son of Antipater, 

 whom Caesar made governor of Judea, and in 

 46 B. c. he became ruler of Galilee. Seven 

 years later, after the assassination of his 

 father, he was appointed king by the Roman 

 Senate, but .it was not until 37 B.C. that he 

 succeeded in putting down the forces oppos- 

 ing him by capturing Jerusalem. After putting 

 to death many of the opposite party, he set 

 up a magnificent empire. He had ten wives, 

 and much of his life was spent in putting 

 down plots of his various sons to obtain pos- 

 session of the throne. All Judea rejoiced at 

 his death. 



Herod Antipas ( ? -A. D. 39), the crafty 

 tetrarch of Galilee who beheaded John the 

 Baptist, although his wife, Herodias, was the 

 prime mover in the act. He was the son of 

 Herod the Great by his Samaritan wife Mal- 

 thace, but at his father's death in 4 B.C. the 

 kingdom was given to his brother Archelaus, 

 so in Galilee he made Sepphoris his capital, 

 rebuilding most of the city. After marrying 

 a daughter of Aretas, king of the Arabs, he 



