BAS 



317 



BAS 



Easilan till after his death. He also took a share in the va- 



.11 rious controversies, which arose in that period of the 



Basilica. c j lurc | 1; an d died in the year 379. " In point of 



"~ v "~ genius, controversial skill, and a rich and flowing 



eloquence," says Mosheim, " he was surpassed by 



very few in that century." There have been several 



editions of his works in Greek and Latin. The last 



and best is that published at Paris in 3 vols, folio, in 



1721, by Julien Garnier, a learned bencdictine. See 



Mosheim, vol. i. p. 358. Ant. Univ. Hist. vol. xvi. 



p.2V2. Biog. Did. vol. ii. p. 75. (a. f.) 



13ASILAN, or Basseh.an, one of the Philippine 

 islands, situated about three leagues from the south- 

 west extremity of Mindanao. This rich and fertile 

 island, which is called the Garden, produces plan- 

 tain trees, sugar canes, and rice in great abundance : 

 and great quantities of fish of every kind are found 

 on its coasts. Fine tortoises are caught for the sake 

 of their shells, and two kinds of jet are found in 

 great plenty. There are numbers of wild boars and 

 stags in the forests. Pearls are fished on the coast, 

 and considerable quantities of ambergris are thrown 

 on shore. Basilan is the only one of the Philippine 

 isles where elephants are found. East Long. 121 

 50', North Lat. 6 J 2.5'. (i) 



BASILAR, in Anatomy, a term derived from 

 b'ise, and generally employed to distinguish those ves- 

 sels which supply the base of the brain, as the basilar 

 artery. It has, of late, been extended by Dr Barclay, 

 to indicate the aspect or position of parts of the head 

 with respect to the base of the skull. See Anatomy, 

 vol. i. p. 745. {/) 



BASILIC Vein, in Anatomy, that large superfi- 

 cial vein of the arm, which passes next the internal or 

 ulnar condyle of the humerus, and which gives off a 

 large branch across the arm called the median basi- 

 tic. (./) 



BASILICA, a particular kind of public edifice. 

 The word, according to its strict etymology, (from 

 fixriteuf and eixe?), means a royal house. The basi- 

 lica seems originally to have been a hall in which 

 justice was administered; and as this was, in the pri- 

 mitive ages, the exclusive prerogative of the sove- 

 reign, it might then, with great propriety, be called 

 the house of the king. All the fanciest basilicas have 

 been so completely destroyed, that scarcely any thing 

 is known with certainty of their form and internal ar- 

 rangement. The basilicas at Rome were spacious 

 halls built around the forum, where the different or- 

 ders of judges administered justice, and where public 

 business of every kind was transacted. The first of 

 these halls was built under the direction of M. Por- 

 cius Cato, the censor, in the year of the city 566. 

 Vitruvius, the only ancient architect of whose wri- 

 tings we have any remains, gives the following direc- 

 tions for the construction of these buildings : " That 

 merchants who resort thither on business may not be 

 incommoded by the weather, the basilica should be 

 built adjoining to the forum on the warmest side. 

 Its breadth should not be less than one-third, nor ex- 

 ceed one-half of the length, unless the nature of its 

 situation render it necessary to depart from these 

 rules of symmetry. The height of the columns must 

 be equal to the breadth of the portico, which occu- 

 pies a third part of the space in the centre ; the up- 



per columns should be one-fourth less than the lower. Basihcata, 

 The pluteum, between the upper columns, should Basilicus. 

 also be made one-fourth less than these columns, that 

 those who walk on the floor above may not be seen 

 by the merchants below." From this description it 

 appears that the basilica consisted of a great nave in 

 the middle, surrounded with one range of porticoes, 

 and a single row of columns. 



It has been erroneously supposed, that the ancient 

 basilicas were converted, on the overthrow of pa- 

 ganism, into Christian churches. Buildings of a si- 

 milar form, and of the same name, were indeed oc- 

 cupied by the early Christians for the purposes of 

 their worship ; but the details of their architecture 

 forbid us to refer these buildings to a remoter date 

 than the reign of Constantine, when Christianity first 

 became the established religion of the empire. Con- 

 stantine reared many of these edifices, as monuments 

 of the triumph of his religion. One built on- the 

 scitc of his own palace on the Coelian Mount, is ascer- 

 tained to be the most ancient of these Christian basi- 

 licas. He next demolished the circus of Nero, and 

 the temples of Apollo and Mars, to raise on their 

 scite the magnificent basilica of St Peter of the Va- 

 tican. It consisted of five aisles from east to west, 

 terminating at the end in another aisle from north to 

 south, in the centre of which was a large tribunal, 

 giving the whole the form of a cross. The aisles 

 were enclosed by numerous columns of the richest 

 marble ; superb paintings covered the walls ; mosaics 

 of exquisite beauty adorned the tribunal ; and the 

 whole temple was illuminated by an incredible num- 

 ber of lamps. This magnificent edifice, respected even 

 by the barbarous conquerors of Rome, stood unin- 

 jured for twelve centuries; till yielding at length to 

 the corrosive influence of time, it was pulled down 

 by Pope Julius II., and the famous church of St 

 Peter, the grandest specimen of the ecclesiastical ba- 

 silica, and the boast of modern Rome, rose out of its 

 ruins. As the simple grandeur of ancient architec- 

 ture was lost in the clumsy magnitude of the Gothic 

 structures, the airy elegance of these ecclesiastical 

 basilicas, consisting of quadrilateral halls, with a 

 single roof and flat ceiling, supported on ranges of 

 light pillars, degenerated into the awkward cross- 

 shape, the vaulted roof, and the massy columns of 

 the modern cathedral. See Encyclopedic Mcthodique, 

 Arch, de A. Palladio, and Vitruvius. (ft) 



BASILICATA, a province of the kingdom of 

 Naples, so called from the Emperor Basilicus II. and 

 situated between the two great arms off lie Appennines 

 which embrace the gulf of Taranto. It i3 about 66 

 miles long, and 50 broad, and contains 1,284,038 

 English acres. It is traversed by several branches 

 of the Appennines, and is watered by the rivers Ba- 

 siento, Brandano, Salandrella, Acri, Sina, and Cos- 

 cile. It is bounded on the east by the gulf of Ta- 

 ranto, and produces corn, wine, oil, cotton, saffron, 

 honey, and wax. Venosa aid Acerenza are the 

 principal places of the province. Population 325,682. 

 (w) 



BASILICUS, or Basiliscus, in Zoology, a sub- 

 division of the Lacerta, or lizard tribe, formed into 

 a separate genus by Laurenti and Daudin, and com- 

 prehending those lizards which hare a tail compress- 



