Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Dagupan" to "David" Volume 7, Slice 9
m. In the surrounding plain are one hundred and forty villages, occupied
in all by about 50,000 persons (1000 Christians, 2000 Druses).
The rough mud walls in the private houses give poor promise of splendour within. The entrance is usually by a low door, and through a narrow winding passage which leads to the outer court, where the master has his reception room. From this another winding passage leads to the harem, which is the principal part of the house. The plan of all is the same--an open court, with a tesselated pavement, and one or two marble fountains; orange and lemon trees, flowering shrubs, and climbing plants give freshness and fragrance. All the apartments open into the court; and on the south side is an open alcove, with a marble floor, and raised dais round three sides, covered with cushions; the front wall is supported by an ornamented Saracenic arch. The decoration of some of the rooms is gorgeous, the walls being covered in part with mosaics and in part with carved work, while the ceilings are rich in arabesque ornaments, elaborately gilt. A few of the modern Jewish houses have been embellished at an enormous cost, but they are wanting in taste.
_Antiquities._--Considering the great age of Damascus, its comparative poverty in antiquities is remarkable. The walls of the city seem to be Seleucid in origin; some of the Roman gateways being still in good order. The _Derb el-Mistakiim_, or "Straight Street," still runs through the city from the eastern to the western gate. At the north-west corner is a large castle built in A.D. 1219, by El-Malik el-Ashraf, on the site of an earlier palace. It is quadrangular, surrounded by a moat filled by the Barada. The outer walls are in good preservation, but the interior is ruined.
The church of St John the Baptist constructed by Arcadius on the site of the temple was turned by Caliph Walid I. (705-717) to a mosque which was the most important building of Damascus. It was a structure 431 ft. by 125 ft. interior dimensions, extending along the south side of a quadrangle 163 yds. by 108 yds. Except the famous inscription over the door--"Thy kingdom, O Christ, is an everlasting kingdom, and thy dominion endureth throughout all generations"--every trace of Christianity was effaced from the church at its conversion. It was destroyed by fire on the 14th of October 1893, and though it was subsequently rebuilt, much that was of archaeological and historical interest perished. It is estimated that there are over two hundred mosques in Damascus.
_Products, Manufactures, &c._--Damascus occupies an important commercial position, being the market for the whole of the desert; it also is of great importance religiously, as being the starting-point for the Hajj pilgrimage from Syria to Mecca, which leaves on the 15th of the lunar month of Shawwal each year. This of course brings much trade to the city. Its chief manufactures are silk work, cloths and cloaks, gold and silver ornaments, &c., brass and copper work, furniture and ornamental woodwork. The bazaars of Damascus are among the most famous of their kind. It is connected with Beirut and Mezerib by railway, and at the end of the past century the great undertaking of running a line to Mecca was commenced. In the surrounding gardens and fields walnuts, apricots, wheat, barley, maize, &c. are grown. Its commercial importance is referred to by Ezekiel (xxvii. 18), who mentions its trade in wines and wool. The climate is good; in winter there is often hard frost and much snow, and even in summer, with a day temperature of 100 deg. F., the nights are always cool. Fever, dysentery and ophthalmia, chiefly due to exposure to heavy dews and cold nights, are prevalent. Though still the market of the nomads, the surer and cheaper sea route has almost destroyed the transit trade to which it once owed its wealth, and has even diminished the importance of the annual pilgrim caravan to Mecca. The Damascene, however, still retains his skill as a craftsman and tiller of the soil. The chief imports are cloths, prints, muslins, raw silk, sugar, rice, &c.
The value of exports and imports in certain specified years is shown in the following table:--
+---------+----------+----------+----------+----------+ | | 1890. | 1894. | 1898. | 1905. | +---------+----------+----------+----------+----------+ | Exports | L325,660 | L400,830 | L302,050 | L386,000 | | Imports | 525,710 | 614,490 | 675,080 | 872,400 | +---------+----------+----------+----------+----------+
Most of the Christians belong to the Orthodox and Roman Catholic (United) Greek Churches; and there are also communities of Melchites, Jacobites, Maronites, Nestorians, Armenians and Protestants. There are Protestant missions, founded 1843, and a British hospital.
AUTHORITIES.--Lortet, _La Syrie d'aujourd'hui_, p. 567 f. (Paris, 1884); Von Oppenheim, _Vom Mittelmeer zum Persischen Golf_, i. 49 f. (Berlin, 1899); G. A. Smith, _Historical Geography of the Holy Land_; _Encyclopaedia Biblica_, art. "Damascus"; Consular Reports; Baedeker-Socin, _Handbook to Syria and Palestine_. For the Great Mosque see Dickie, Phene Spiers, and Sir C. W. Wilson in _Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement_, Oct. 1897. (R. A. S. M.)
DAMASK, the technical term applied to certain distinct types of fabric. The term owes its origin to the ornamental silk fabrics of Damascus, fabrics which were elaborately woven in colours, sometimes with the addition of gold and other metallic threads. At the present day it denotes a linen texture richly figured in the weaving with flowers, fruit, forms of animal life, and other types of ornament. "China, no doubt," says Dr Rock (_Catalogue of Textile Fabrics_, Victoria and Albert Museum), "was the first country to ornament its silken webs with a pattern. India, Persia, and Syria, then Byzantine Greece followed, but at long intervals between, in China's footsteps. Stuffs so figured brought with them to the West the name 'diaspron' or diaper, bestowed upon them at Constantinople. But about the 12th century the city of Damascus, even then long celebrated for its looms, so far outstripped all other places for beauty of design, that her silken textiles were in demand everywhere; and thus, as often happens, traders fastened the name of damascen or damask upon every silken fabric richly wrought and curiously designed, no matter whether it came or not from Damascus." The term is perhaps now best known in reference to damask table-cloths, a species of figured cloth usually of flax or tow yarns, but sometimes made partly of cotton. The finer qualities are made of the best linen yarn, and, although the latter is of a brownish colour during the weaving processes, the ultimate fabric is pure white. The high lights in these cloths are obtained by long floats of warp and weft, and, as these are set at right angles, they reflect the light differently according to the angle of the rays of light; the effect changes also with the position of the observer. Subdued effects are produced by shorter floats of yarn, and sometimes by special weaves. Any subject, however intricate, can be copied by this method of weaving, provided that expense is no object. The finest results are obtained when the so-called double damask weaves are used. These weaves are shown under DIE, and it will be seen that each weave gives a maximum float of seven threads. (In some special cases a weave is used which gives a float of nine.) The small figure here shown to illustrate a small section of a damask design is composed of the two single damask weaves; these give a maximum float of four threads or picks. No shading is shown in the design, and this for two reasons--(1) the single damask weaves do not permit of elaborate shading, although some very good effects are obtainable; (2) the available space is not sufficiently large to show the method to advantage. The different single damask weaves used in the shading of these cloths appear, however, at the bottom of the figure, while between these and the design proper there is an illustration of the thirty-first pick interweaving with all the forty-eight threads.
The principal British centres for fine damasks are Belfast and Dunfermline, while the medium qualities are made in several places in Ireland, in a few places in England, and in the counties of Fife, Forfar and Perth in Scotland. Cotton damasks, which are made in Paisley, Glasgow, and several places in Lancashire, are used for toilet covers, table-cloths, and similar purposes. They are often ornamented with colours and sent to the Indian and West Indian markets. Silk damasks for curtains and upholstery decoration are made in the silk-weaving centres.
DAMASK STEEL, or DAMASCUS STEEL, a steel with a peculiar watered or streaked appearance, as seen in the blades of fine swords and other weapons of Oriental manufacture. One way of producing this appearance is to twist together strips of iron and steel of different quality and then weld them into a solid mass. A similar but inferior result may be obtained by etching with acid the surface of a metal; parts of which are protected by some greasy substance in such a way as to give the watered pattern desired. The art of producing damask steel has been generally practised in Oriental countries from a remote period, the most famous blades having come from Isfahan, Khorasan, and Shiraz in Persia.
DAMASUS, the name of two popes.
DAMASUS I. was pope from 366 to 384. At the time of the banishment of Pope Liberius (355), the deacon Damasus, like all the Roman clergy, made energetic protest. When, however, the emperor Constantius sent to Rome an anti-pope in the person of Felix II., Damasus, with the other clergy, rallied to his cause. When Liberius returned from exile and Felix was expelled from Rome, Damasus again took his place among the adherents of Liberius. On the death of Liberius (366) a considerable party nominated Damasus successor; but the irreconcilables of the party of Liberius refused to pardon his trimming, and set up against him another deacon, Ursinus. A serious conflict ensued between the rival factions, which quickly led to rioting and hand-to-hand fighting. In one of these encounters the then new basilica, called the Liberian Basilica (S. Maria Maggiore), was partially destroyed, and 137 dead bodies were left in the building. On several occasions the secular arm had to intervene, although the government of the emperor Valentinian was averse from involving itself in ecclesiastical affairs. From the outset the prefect of Rome recognized the claims of Damasus, and exerted himself to support him. Ursinus and the leading men of his faction were expelled from Rome, and afterwards from central Italy, or even interned in Gaul. They, however, persisted obstinately in their opposition to Damasus, combating him at first by riots, and then by calumnious law-suits, such as that instituted by one Isaac, a converted and relapsed Jew.
To the official support, which never failed him, Damasus endeavoured to join the popular sympathy. From before his election he had been in high favour with the Roman aristocracy, and especially with the great ladies. At that period the urban masses, but recently converted to Christianity, sought in the worship of the martyrs a sort of substitute for polytheism. Damasus showed great zeal in discovering the tombs of martyrs, adorning them with precious marbles and monumental inscriptions. The inscriptions he composed himself, in mediocre verse, full of Virgilian reminiscences. Several have come down to us on the original marbles, entire or in fragments; others are known from old copies. In the interior of Rome he erected or embellished the church which still bears his name (S. Lorenzo in Damaso), near which his father's house appears to have stood.
The West was recovering gradually from the troubles caused by the Arian crisis. Damasus took part, more or less effectually, in the efforts to eliminate from Italy and Illyria the last champions of the council of Rimini. In spite of his declaration at the council convened by him in 372, he did not succeed in evicting Auxentius from Milan. But Auxentius died soon afterwards, and his successor, Ambrose, undertook to bring these hitherto abortive efforts to a successful conclusion, and to complete the return of Illyria to the confessions of Nicaea. The bishops of the East, however, under the direction of St Basil, were involved in a struggle with the emperor Valens, whose policy was favourable to the council of Rimini. Damasus, to whom they appealed for help, was unable to be of much service to them, the more so because that episcopal group, viewed askance by St Athanasius and his successor Peter, was incessantly combated at the papal court by the inveterate hatred of Alexandria. The Eastern bishops triumphed in the end under Theodosius, at the council of Constantinople (381), in which the pope and the Western church took no part. They were invited to a council of wider convocation, held at Rome in 382, but very few attended.
This council had brought to Rome the learned monk Jerome, for whom Damasus showed great esteem. To him Damasus entrusted the revision of the Latin text of the Bible and other works of religious erudition. A short time before, the pope had received a visit from the Priscillianists after their condemnation in Spain, and had dismissed them. Damasus died in 384, on the 11th of December, the day on which his memory is still celebrated.
DAMASUS II., pope from the 17th of July to the 9th of August 1048, was the ephemeral successor of Clement II. His original name was Poppo, and he was bishop of Brixen when the emperor Henry III. raised him to the papacy. (L. D.*)
DAMAUN or DAMAN, a town of Portuguese India, capital of the settlement of Damaun, situated on the east side of the entrance of the Gulf of Cambay within the Bombay Presidency. The area of the settlement is 82 sq. m. Pop. (1900) 41,671. The settlement is divided into two parts, Damaun proper, and the larger _pargana_ of Nagar Havili, the two being separated by a narrow strip of British territory. The soil is fertile, and rice, wheat and tobacco are the chief crops. The teak forests are valuable. Weaving is an industry less important than formerly; mats and baskets are manufactured, and deep-sea fishing is an important industry. The shipbuilding business at the town of Damaun is important. Early in the 19th century a large transit trade in opium between Karachi and China was carried on at Damaun, but it ceased in 1837, when the British prohibited it after their conquest of Sind. The settlement is administered as a unit, and has a municipal chamber.
Damaun town was sacked and burnt by the Portuguese in 1531. It was subsequently rebuilt, and in 1558 was again taken by the Portuguese, who made a permanent settlement and converted the mosque into a Christian church. From that time it has remained in their hands. The territory of Damaun proper was conquered by the Portuguese in 1559; that of Nagar Havili was ceded to them by the Mahrattas in 1780 in indemnification for piracy.
DAME (through the Fr. from Lat. _domina_, mistress, lady, the feminine of _dominus_, master, lord), properly a name of respect or a title equivalent to "lady," now surviving in English as the legal designation of the wife or widow of a baronet or knight and prefixed to the Christian name and surname. It has also been used in modern times by certain societies or orders, e.g. the Primrose League, as the name of a certain rank among the lady members, answering to the male rank of knight. The ordinary use of the word by itself is for an old woman. As meaning "mistress," i.e. teacher, "dame" was used of the female keepers of schools for young children, which have become obsolete since the advance of public elementary education. At Eton College boarding-houses kept by persons other than members of the teaching staff of the school were known as "Dames' Houses," though the head might not necessarily be a lady. As a term of address to ladies of all ranks, from the sovereign down, "madam," shortened to "ma'am," represents the French _madame_, my lady.
"Damsel," a young girl or maiden, now only used as a literary word, is taken from the Old French _dameisele_, formed from _dame_, and parallel with the popular _dansele_ or _doncele_ from the medieval Latin _domicella_ or _dominicella_, diminutive of _domina_. The French _damoiselle_ and _demoiselle_ are later formations. The English literary form "damosel" was another importation from France in the 15th century. In the early middle ages _damoiseau_, medieval Latin _domicellus_, _dameicele_, _damoiselle_, _domicella_, were used as titles of honour for the unmarried sons and daughters of royal persons and lords (_seigneurs_). Later the _damoiseau_ (in the south _donzel_, in Bearn _domengar_) was specifically a young man of gentle birth who aspired to knighthood, equivalent to _ecuyer_, esquire, or valet (q.v.). The _damoiseau_ performed certain functions and received training in knightly accomplishments in the domestic service of his lord. Later again the name was also used of nobles who had not been knighted. In certain _seigneuries_ in France, notably in that of Commercy, in Lorraine, _damoiseau_ became the permanent title of the holder. In England the title, when used by the French-speaking nobility and members of the court, was only applied to the son or grandson of the king; thus in the _Laws of Edward the Confessor_, quoted in Du Cange (_Glossarium, s.v. Domicellus_), we find "Rex vero Edgarum ... pro filio nutrivit et quia cogitavit ipsum heredem facere, nominavit _Ethelinge_, quod nos Domicellum, id, _Damisell_; sed nos indiscrete de pluribus dicimus, quia Baronum filios vocamus domicellos, Angli vero nullos nisi natos regum." Froissart calls Richard II. during the lifetime of his father the Black Prince, _le jeune Demoisel_. The use of _damoiselle_ followed much the same development; it was first applied to the unmarried daughters of royal persons and _seigneurs_, then to the wife of a _damoiseau_, and also to the young ladies of gentle birth who performed for the wives of the _seigneurs_ the same domestic services as the _damoiseaus_ for their husbands. Hence the later form _demoiselle_ became merely the title of address of a young unmarried lady, the _mademoiselle_ of modern usage, the English "miss." At the court of France, after the 17th century, _Mademoiselle_, without the name of the lady, was a courtesy title given to the eldest daughter of the eldest brother of the king, who was known as _Monsieur_. To distinguish the daughter of Gaston d'Orleans, brother of Louis XIII., from the daughter of Philippe d'Orleans, brother of Louis XIV., the former, Anne Marie Louise, duchesse de Montpensier, was called _La Grande Mademoiselle_, by which title she is known to history (see MONTPENSIER, A. M. L., DUCHESSE DE).
DAME'S VIOLET, the English name for _Hesperis matronalis_, a herbaceous plant belonging to the natural order Cruciferae, and closely allied to the wallflower and stock. It has an erect stout leafy stem 2 to 3 ft. high, with irregularly toothed short-stalked leaves and white or lilac flowers, 3/4 in. across, which are scented in the evening (hence the name of the genus, from the Gr. [Greek: hesperos], evening). The slender pods are constricted between the seeds. The plant is a native of Europe and temperate Asia, and is found in Britain as an escape from gardens, in meadows and plantations.
DAMGHAN, a town of Persia in the province of Semnan va Damghan, 216 m. from Teheran on the high-road thence to Khorasan, at an elevation of 3770 ft. and in 36 deg. 10' N., 54 deg. 20' E. Pop. about 10,000. There are post and telegraph offices, and a great export trade is done in pistachios and almonds, the latter being of the kind called _Kaghazi_ ("of paper") with very thin shells, famous throughout the country. Damghan was an important city in the middle ages, but only a ruined mosque with a number of massive columns and some fine wood carvings and two minarets of the 11th century remain of that period. Near the city, a few miles south and south-west, are the remains of Hecatompylos, extending from Frat, 16 m. south of Damghan, to near Gusheh, 20 m. west. Damghan was destroyed by the Afghans in 1723. On an eminence in the western part of the city are the ruins of a large square citadel with a small white-washed building, called _Molud Khaneh_ (the house of birth), in which Fath Ali Shah was born (1772).
DAMIANI, PIETRO (c. 1007-1072), one of the most celebrated ecclesiastics of the 11th century, was born at Ravenna, and after a youth spent in hardship and privation, gained some renown as a teacher. About 1035, however, he deserted his secular calling and entered the hermitage of Fonte Avellana, near Gubbio; and winning sound reputation through his piety and his preaching, he became the head of this establishment about 1043. A zealot for monastic and clerical reform, he introduced a more severe discipline, including the practice of flagellation, into the house, which, under his rule, quickly attained celebrity, and became a model for other foundations. Extending the area of his activities, he entered into communication with the emperor Henry III., addressed to Pope Leo IX. in 1049 a writing denouncing the vices of the clergy and entitled _Liber Gomorrhianus_; and soon became associated with Hildebrand in the work of reform. As a trusted counsellor of a succession of popes he was made cardinal bishop of Ostia, a position which he accepted with some reluctance; and presiding over a council at Milan in 1059, he courageously asserted the authority of Rome over this province, and won a signal victory for the principles which he advocated. He rendered valuable assistance to Pope Alexander II. in his struggle with the anti-pope, Honorius II.; and having served the papacy as legate to France and to Florence, he was allowed to resign his bishopric in 1067. After a period of retirement at Fonte Avellana, he proceeded in 1069 as papal legate to Germany, and persuaded the emperor Henry IV. to give up his intention of divorcing his wife Bertha. During his concluding years he was not altogether in accord with the political ideas of Hildebrand. He died at Faenza on the 22nd of February 1072. Damiani was a determined foe of simony, but his fiercest wrath was directed against the married clergy. He was an extremely vigorous controversialist, and his Latin abounds in denunciatory epithets. He was specially devoted to the Virgin Mary, and wrote an _Officium Beatae Virginis_, in addition to many letters, sermons, and other writings.
His works were collected by Cardinal Cajetan, and were published in four volumes at Rome (1606-1615), and then at Paris in 1642, at Venice in 1743, and there are other editions. See A. Vogel, _Peter Damiani_ (Jena, 1856); A. Capecelatro, _Storia di S. Pier Damiani e del suo tempo_ (Florence, 1862); F. Neukirch, _Das Leben des Peter Damiani_ (Gottingen, 1875); L. Guerrier, _De Petro Damiano_ (Orleans, 1881); W. von Giesebrecht, _Geschichte der deutschen Kaiserzeit_ (Leipzig, 1885-1890); and Herzog-Hauck, _Realencyklopadie_, Band iv. (Leipzig, 1898).
DAMIEN, FATHER, the name in religion of JOSEPH DE VEUSTER (1840-1889), Belgian missionary, was born at Tremeloo, near Louvain, on the 3rd of January 1840. He was educated for a business career, but in his eighteenth year entered the Church, joining the Society of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary (also known as the Picpus Congregation), and taking Damien as his name in religion. In October 1863, while he was still in minor orders, he went out as a missionary to the Pacific Islands, taking the place of his brother, who had been prevented by an illness. He reached Honolulu in March 1864, and was ordained priest in Whitsuntide of that year. Struck with the sad condition of the lepers, whom it was the practice of the Hawaian government to deport to the island of Molokai, he conceived an earnest desire to mitigate their lot, and in 1873 volunteered to take spiritual charge of the settlement at Molokai. Here he remained for the rest of his life, with occasional visits to Honolulu, until he became stricken with leprosy in 1885. Besides attending to the spiritual needs of the lepers, he managed, by the labour of his own hands and by appeals to the Hawaian government, to improve materially the water-supply, the dwellings, and the victualling of the settlement. For five years he worked alone; subsequently other resident priests from time to time assisted him. He succumbed to leprosy on the 15th of April 1889. Some ill-considered imputations upon Father Damien by a Presbyterian minister produced a memorable tract by Robert Louis Stevenson (_An Open Letter to the Rev. Dr Hyde_, 1890).
See also lives by E. Clifford (1889) and Fr. Pamphile (1889). (J. M'F.)
DAMIENS, ROBERT FRANCOIS (1715-1757), a Frenchman who attained notoriety by his attack on Louis XV. of France in 1757, was born in a village near Arras in 1715, and early enlisted in the army. After his discharge, he became a menial in the college of the Jesuits in Paris, and was dismissed from this as well as from other employments for misconduct, his conduct earning for him the name of Robert le Diable. During the disputes of Clement XI. with the parlement of Paris the mind of Damiens seems to have been excited by the ecclesiastical disorganization which followed the refusal of the clergy to grant the sacraments to the Jansenists and Convulsionnaires; and he appears to have thought that peace would be restored by the death of the king. He, however, asserted, perhaps with truth, that he only intended to frighten the king without wounding him severely. On the 5th of January 1757, as the king was entering his carriage, he rushed forward and stabbed him with a knife, inflicting only a slight wound. He made no attempt to escape, and was at once seized. He was condemned as a regicide, and sentenced to be torn in pieces by horses in the Place de Greve. Before being put to death he was barbarously tortured with red-hot pincers, and molten wax, lead, and boiling oil were poured into his wounds. After his death his house was razed to the ground, his brothers and sisters were ordered to change their names, and his father, wife, and daughter were banished from France.
See _Pieces originales et procedures du proces fait a Robert Francois Damiens_ (Paris, 1757).
DAMIETTA, a town of Lower Egypt, on the eastern (Damietta or Phatnitic) branch of the Nile, about 12 m. above its mouth, and 125 m. N.N.E. of Cairo by rail. Pop. (1907) 29,354. The town is built on the east bank of the river between it and Lake Menzala. Though in general ill-built and partly ruinous, the town possesses some fine mosques, with lofty minarets, public baths and busy bazaars. Along the river-front are many substantial houses furnished with terraces, and with steps leading to the water. Their wooden lattices of saw-work are very graceful. After Cairo and Alexandria, Damietta was for centuries the largest town in Egypt, but the silting up of the entrance to the harbour, the rise of Port Said, and the remarkable development of Alexandria have robbed Damietta of its value as a port. It has still, however, a coasting trade with Syria and the Levant. Ships over 6 ft. draught cannot enter the river, but must anchor in the offing. Lake Menzala yields large supplies of fish, which are dried and salted, and these, with rice, furnish the chief articles of trade.
Damietta is a Levantine corruption of the Coptic name _Tamiati_, Arabic _Dimyat_. The original town was 4 m. nearer the sea than the modern city, and first rose into importance on the decay of Pelusium. When it passed into the hands of the Saracens it became a place of great wealth and commerce, and, as the eastern bulwark of Egypt, was frequently attacked by the crusaders. The most remarkable of these sieges lasted eighteen months, from June 1218 to November 1219, and ended in the capture of the town, which was, however, held but for a brief period. In June 1249 Louis IX. of France occupied Damietta without opposition, but being defeated near Mansura in the February following, and compelled (6th April) to surrender himself prisoner, Damietta was restored to the Moslems as part of the ransom exacted. To prevent further attacks from the sea the Mameluke sultan Bibars blocked up the Phatnitic mouth of the Nile (about 1260), razed old Damietta to the ground, and transferred the inhabitants to the site of the modern town. It continued to be a place of commercial importance for a considerable period, until in fact Port Said gave the eastern part of the Delta a better port. Damietta gives its name to dimity, a kind of striped cloth, for which the place was at one time famous. Cotton and silk goods are still manufactured here.
DAMIRI, the common name of KAMAL UD-DIN MUHAMMAD IBN MUSA UD-DAMIRI (1344-1405), Arabian writer on canon law and natural history, belonged to one of the two towns called Damira near Damietta and spent his life in Egypt. Of the Shafi'ite school of law, he became professor of tradition in the _Rukniyya_ at Cairo, and also at the mosque el-Azhar; in connexion with this work he wrote a commentary on the _Minhaj ut-Talibin_ of Nawawi (q.v.). He is, however, better known in the history of literature for his _Life of Animals_ (_Hayat ul-Hayawan_), which treats in alphabetic order of 931 animals mentioned in the Koran, the traditions and the poetical and proverbial literature of the Arabs. The work is a compilation from over 500 prose writers and nearly 200 poets. The correct spelling of the names of the animals is given with an explanation of their meanings. The use of the animals in medicine, their lawfulness or unlawfulness as food, their position in folk-lore are the main subjects treated, while occasionally long irrelevant sections on political history are introduced.
The work exists in three forms. The fullest has been published several times in Egypt; a mediate and a short recension exist in manuscript. Several editions have been made at various times of extracts, among them the poetical one by Suyuti (q.v.), which was translated into Latin by A. Ecchelensis (Paris, 1667). Bochartus in his _Hierozoicon_ (1663) used Damiri's work. There is a translation of the whole into English by Lieutenant-Colonel Jayakar (Bombay, 1906-1908). (G. W. T.)
DAMIRON, JEAN PHILIBERT (1794-1862), French philosopher, was born at Belleville. At nineteen he entered the normal school, where he studied under Burnouf, Villemain, and Cousin. After teaching for several years in provincial towns, he came to Paris, where he lectured on philosophy in various institutions, and finally became professor in the normal school, and titular professor at the Sorbonne. In 1824 he took part with P. F. Dubois and Th. S. Jouffroy in the establishment of the _Globe_; and he was also a member of the committee of the society which took for its motto _Aide-toi, le ciel t'aidera_. In 1833 he was appointed chevalier of the Legion of Honour, and in 1836 member of the Academy of Moral Sciences. Damiron died at Paris on the 11th of January 1862.
The chief works of Damiron, of which the best are his accounts of French philosophers, are the following:--An edition of the _Nouveaux melanges philosophiques de Jouffroy_ (1842), with a notice of the author, in which Damiron softened and omitted several expressions used by Jouffroy, which were opposed to the system of education adopted by the Sorbonne, an article which gave rise to a bitter controversy, and to a book by Pierre Leroux, _De la mutilation des manuscrits de M. Jouffroy_ (1843); _Essai sur l'histoire de la philosophie en France au XIX^e siecle_ (1828, 3rd ed. 1834); _Essai sur l'histoire de la philosophie en France au XVII. siecle_ (1846); _Memoires a servir pour l'histoire de la philosophie en France au XVIII. siecle_ (1858-1864); _Cours de la philosophie_; _De la Providence_ (1849, 1850).
See A. Franck, _Moralistes et philosophes_ (1872).
DAMJANICH, JANOS (1804-1849), Hungarian soldier, was born at Stasa in the Banat. He entered the army as an officer in the 61st regiment of foot, and on the outbreak of the Hungarian war of independence was promoted to be a major in the third Honved regiment at Szeged. Although an orthodox Serb, he was from the first a devoted adherent of the Magyar liberals. He won his colonelcy by his ability and valour at the battles of Alibunar and Lagerdorf in 1848. At the beginning of 1849 he was appointed commander of the 3rd army corps in the middle Theiss, and quickly gained the reputation of being the bravest man in the Magyar army, winning engagement after engagement by sheer dash and daring. At the beginning of March 1849 he annihilated a brigade at Szolnok, perhaps his greatest exploit. He was elected deputy for Szolnok to the Hungarian diet, but declined the honour. Damjanich played a leading part in the general advance upon the Hungarian capital under Gorgei. He was present at the engagements of Hort and Hatvan, converted the doubtful fight of Tapio-Bicsk into a victory, and fought with irresistible _elan_ at the bloody battle of Isaszeg. At the ensuing review at Godollo, Kossuth expressed the sentiments of the whole nation when he doffed his hat as Damjanich's battalions passed by. Always a fiery democrat, Damjanich uncompromisingly supported the extremist views of Kossuth, and was appointed commander of one of the three divisions which, under Gorgei, entered Vacz in April 1849. His fame reached its culmination when, on the 19th of April, he won the battle of Nagysarlo, which led to the relief of the hardly-pressed fortress of Komarom. At this juncture Damjanich broke his leg, an accident which prevented him from taking part in field operations at the most critical period of the war, when the Magyars had to abandon the capital for the second time. He recovered sufficiently, however, to accept the post of commandant of the fortress of Arad. After the Vilagos catastrophe, Damjanich, on being summoned to surrender, declared he would give up the fortress to a single company of Cossacks, but would defend it to the last drop of his blood against the whole Austrian army. He accordingly surrendered to the Russian general Demitrius Buturlin (1790-1849), by whom he was handed over to the Austrians, who shot him in the market-place of Arad a few days later.
See Odon Hamvay, _Life of Janos Damjanich_ (Hung.), (Budapest, 1904). (R. N. B.)
DAMMAR, or DAMMER (Hind, _damar_ = resin, pitch), a resin, or rather series of resins, obtained from various coniferous trees of the genus _Dammara_ (_Agathis_). East Indian dammar or cat's eye resin is the produce of _Dammara orientalis_, which grows in Java, Sumatra, Borneo and other eastern islands and sometimes attains a height of 80-100 ft. It oozes in large quantities from the tree in a soft viscous state, with a highly aromatic odour, which, however, it loses as it hardens by exposure. The resin is much esteemed in oriental communities for incense-burning. Dammar is imported into England by way of Singapore; and as found in British markets it is a hard, transparent, brittle, straw-coloured resin, destitute of odour. It is readily soluble in ether, benzol and chloroform, and with oil of turpentine it forms a fine transparent varnish which dries clear, smooth and hard. The allied kauri gum, or dammar of New Zealand (Australian dammar), is produced by _Dammara australis_, or kauri-pine, the wood of which is used for wood paving. Much of the New Zealand resin is found fossil in circumstances analogous to the conditions under which the fossil copal of Zanzibar is obtained. Dammar is besides a generic Indian name for various other resins, which, however, are little known in western commerce. Of these the principal are black dammar (the Hindustani _kala-damar_), yielded by _Canarium strictum_, and white dammar, Indian copal, or piney varnish (_sufed-damar_), the produce of _Vateria indica_. Sal dammar (_damar_) is obtained from _Shorea robusta_; _Hopea micrantha_ is the source of rock dammar (the Malay _dammer-batu_); and other species yield resins which are similarly named and differ little in physical properties.
DAMMARTIN, a small town of France, in the department of Seine et Marne, 22 m. N.E. of Paris. It is well situated on a hill forming part of the plateau of la Goele, and is known as Dammartin-en-Goele to distinguish it from Dammartin-sous-Tigeaux, a small commune in the same department. Dammartin is historically important as the seat of a countship of which the holders played a considerable part in French history. The earliest recorded count of Dammartin was a certain Hugh, who made himself master of the town in the 10th century; but his dynasty was replaced by another family in the 11th century. Reynald I. (Renaud), count of Dammartin (d. 1227), who was one of the coalition crushed by King Philip Augustus at the battle of Bouvines (1214), left two co-heiresses, of whom the elder, Maud (Matilda or Mahaut), married Philip Hurepel, son of Philip Augustus, and the second, Alix, married Jean de Trie, in whose line the countship was reunited after the death of Philip Hurepel's son Alberic. The countship passed, through heiresses, to the houses of Fayel and Nanteuil, and in the 15th century was acquired by Antoine de Chabannes (d. 1488), one of the favourites of King Charles VII., by his marriage with Marguerite, heiress of Reynald V. of Nanteuil-Aci and Marie of Dammartin. This Antoine de Chabannes, count of Dammartin in right of his wife, fought under the standard of Joan of Arc, became a leader of the _Ecorcheurs_, took part in the war of the public weal against Louis XI., and then fought for him against the Burgundians. The collegiate church at Dammartin was founded by him in 1480, and his tomb and effigy are in the chancel. His son, Jean de Chabannes, left three heiresses, of whom the second left a daughter who brought the countship to Philippe de Boulainvilliers, by whose heirs it was sold in 1554 to the dukes of Montmorency. In 1632 the countship was confiscated by Louis XIII. and bestowed on the princes of Conde.
DAMME, a decayed city of Belgium, 5 m. N.E. of Bruges, once among the most important commercial ports of Europe. It is situated on the canal from Bruges to Sluys (Ecluse), but in the middle ages a navigable channel or river called the Zwyn gave ships access to it from the North Sea. The great naval battle of Sluys, in which Edward III. destroyed the French fleet and secured the command of the channel, was fought in the year 1340 at the mouth of the Zwyn. About 1395 this channel began to show signs of silting up, and during the next hundred years the process proved rapid. In 1490 a treaty was signed at Damme between the people of Bruges and the archduke Maximilian, and very soon after this event the channel became completely closed up, and the foreign merchant gilds or "nations" left the place for Antwerp. This signified the death of the port and was indirectly fatal to Bruges as well. The marriage of Charles the Bold and Margaret of York, sister of Edward IV., was celebrated at Damme on the 2nd of July 1468. It will give some idea of the importance of the town to mention that it had its own maritime law, known as _Droit maritime de Damme_. The new ship canal from Zeebrugge will not revive the ancient port, as it follows a different route, leaving Damme and Ecluse quite untouched. Damme, although long neglected, preserves some remains of its former prosperity, thanks to its remoteness from the area of international strife in the Low Countries. The tower of Notre Dame, dating from 1180, is a landmark across the dunes, and the church behind it, although a shell, merits inspection. Out of a portion of the ancient markets a hotel-de-ville of modest dimensions has been constructed, and in the hospital of St Jean are a few pictures. Camille Lemonnier has given in one of his _Causeries_ a striking picture of this faded scene of former greatness, now a solitude in which the few residents seem spectres rather than living figures.
DAMOCLES, one of the courtiers of the elder Dionysius of Syracuse. When he spoke in extravagant terms of the happiness of his sovereign, Dionysius is said to have invited him to a sumptuous banquet, at which he found himself seated under a naked sword suspended by a single hair (Cicero, _Tusc._ v. 21; Horace, _Odes_, iii. 1, 17; Persius iii. 40).
DAMOH, a town and district of British India, in the Jubbulpore division of the Central Provinces. The town has a railway station, 48 m. E. of Saugor. Pop. (1901) 13,355. It has a considerable cattle-market, and a number of small industries, such as weaving, dyeing and pottery-making.
The DISTRICT OF DAMOH has an area of 2816 sq. m. Except on the south and east, where the offshoots from the surrounding hills and patches of jungle break up the country, the district consists of open plains of varying degrees of fertility, interspersed with low ranges and isolated heights. The richest tracts lie in the centre. The gentle declivity of the surface and the porous character of the prevailing sandstone formation render the drainage excellent. All the streams flow from south to north. The Sunar and the Bairma, the two principal rivers, traverse the entire length of the district. Little use has been made of any of the rivers for irrigation, though in many places they offer great facilities for the purpose. Damoh was first formed into a separate district in 1861. In 1901 the population was 285,326, showing a decrease of 12% in one decade due to famine. Damoh suffered severely from the famine of 1896-1897. Fortunately the famine of 1900 was little felt. A branch of the Indian Midland railway was opened throughout from Saugor to Katni in January 1899.
DAMON, of Syracuse, a Pythagorean, celebrated for his disinterested affection for Phintias (not, as commonly given, Pythias), a member of the same sect. Condemned to death by Dionysius the Elder (or Younger) of Syracuse, Phintias begged to be set at liberty for a short time that he might arrange his affairs. Damon pledged his life for the return of his friend; and Phintias faithfully returned before the appointed day of execution. The tyrant, to express his admiration of their fidelity, released both the friends and begged to be admitted to their friendship (Diod. Sic. x. 4; Cicero, _De Off._ iii. 10). Hyginus (_Fab._ 257, who is followed by Schiller in his ballad, _Die Burgschaft_) tells a similar story, in which the two friends are named Moerus and Selinuntius.
DAMOPHON, a Greek sculptor of Messene, who executed many statues for the people of Messene, Megalopolis, Aegium and other cities of Peloponnesus. Considerable fragments, including three colossal heads from a group by him representing Demeter, Persephone, Artemis and the giant Anytus, have been discovered on the site of Lycosura in Arcadia, where was a temple of the goddess called "The Mistress." They are preserved in part in the museum at Athens and partly on the spot. Hence there has arisen a great controversy as to the date of the artist, who has been assigned to various periods, from the 4th century B.C. to the 2nd A.D. A good account of the whole matter will be found in Frazer's _Pausanias_, iv. 372-379. Frazer wisely inclines to an early date; it is in fact difficult to find any period, when the cities mentioned were in a position to found temples, later than the time of Alexander.
DAMP, a common Teutonic word, meaning vapour or mist (cf. Ger. _Dampf_, steam), and hence moisture. In its primitive sense the word persists in the vocabulary of coal-miners. Their "firedamp" (formerly fulminating damp) is marsh gas, which, when mixed with air and exploded, produced "choke damp," "after damp," or "suffocating damp" (carbon dioxide). "Black damp" consists of accumulations of irrespirable gases, mostly nitrogen, which cause the lights to burn dimly, and the term "white damp" is sometimes applied to carbon monoxide. As a verb, the word means to stifle or check; hence damped vibrations or oscillations are those which have been reduced or stopped, instead of being allowed to die out naturally; the "dampers" of the piano are small pieces of felt-covered wood which fall upon the strings and stop their vibrations as the keys are allowed to rise; and the "damper" of a chimney or flue, by restricting the draught, lessens the rate of combustion.
DAMPIER, WILLIAM (1652-1715), English buccaneer, navigator and hydrographer, was born at East Coker, Somersetshire, in 1652 (baptized 8th of June). Having early become an orphan, he was placed with the master of a ship at Weymouth, in which he made a voyage to Newfoundland. On his return he sailed to Bantam in the East Indies. He served in 1673 in the Dutch War under Sir Edward Sprague, and was present at two engagements (28th of May; 4th of June); but then fell sick and was put ashore. In 1674 he became an under-manager of a Jamaica estate, but continued only a short time in this situation. He afterwards engaged in the coasting trade, and thus acquired an accurate knowledge of all the ports and bays of the island. He made two voyages to the Bay of Campeachy (1675-1676), and remained for some time with the logwood-cutters, varying this occupation with buccaneering. In 1678 he returned to England, again visiting Jamaica in 1679 and joining a party of buccaneers, with whom he crossed the Isthmus of Darien, spent the year 1680 on the Peruvian coast, and sacking, plundering and burning, made his way down to Juan Fernandez Island. After serving with another privateering expedition in the Spanish Main, he went to Virginia and engaged with a captain named Cook for a privateering voyage against the Spaniards in the South Seas. They sailed in August 1683, touched at the Guinea coast, and then proceeded round Cape Horn into the Pacific. Having touched at Juan Fernandez, they made the coast of South America, cruising along Chile and Peru. They took some prizes, and with these they proceeded to the Galapagos Islands and to Mexico, which last they fell in with near Cape Blanco. While they lay here Captain Cook died, and the command devolved on Captain Davis, who, with several other pirate vessels, English and French, raided the west American shores for the next year, attacking Guayaquil, Puebla Nova, &c. At last Dampier, leaving Davis, went on board Swan's ship, and proceeded with him along the northern parts of Mexico as far as southern California. Swan then proposed, as the expedition met with "bad success" on the Mexican coast, to run across the Pacific and return by the East Indies. They started from Cape Corrientes on the 31st of March 1686, and reached Guam in the Ladrones on the 20th of May; the men, having almost come to an end of their rations, had decided to kill and eat their leaders next, beginning with the "lusty and fleshy" Swan. After six months' drunkenness and debauchery in the Philippines, the majority of the crew, including Dampier, left Swan and thirty-six others behind in Mindanao, cruised (1687-1688) from Manila to Pulo Condore, from the latter to China, and from China to the Spice Islands and New Holland (the Australian mainland). In March 1688 they were off Sumatra, and in May off the Nicobars, where Dampier was marooned (at his own request, as he declares, for the purpose of establishing a trade in ambergris) with two other Englishmen, a Portuguese and some Malays. He and his companions contrived to navigate a canoe to Achin in Sumatra; but the fatigues and distress of the voyage proved fatal to several and nearly carried off Dampier himself. After making several voyages to different places of the East Indies (Tongking, Madras, &c.), he acted for some time, and apparently somewhat unwillingly, as gunner to the English fort of Benkulen. Thence he ultimately contrived to return to England in 1691.
In 1699 he was sent out by the English admiralty in command of the "Roebuck," especially designed for discovery in and around Australia. He sailed from the Downs, the 14th of January, with twenty months' provisions, touched at the Canaries, Cape Verdes and Bahia, and ran from Brazil round the Cape of Good Hope direct to Australia, whose west coast he reached on the 26th of July, in about 26 deg. S. lat. Anchoring in Shark's Bay, he began a careful exploration of the neighbouring shore-lands, but found no good harbour or estuary, no fresh water or provisions. In September, accordingly, he left Australia, recruited and refitted at Timor, and thence made for New Guinea, where he arrived on the 3rd of December. By sailing along to its easternmost extremity, he discovered that it was terminated by an island, which he named New Britain (now Neu Pommern), whose north, south and east coasts he surveyed. That St George's Bay was really St George's Channel, dividing the island into two, was not perceived by Dampier; it was the discovery of his successor, Philip Carteret. Nor did Dampier visit the west coast of New Britain or realize its small extent on that side. He was prevented from prosecuting his discoveries by the discontent of his men and the state of his ship. In May 1700 he was again at Timor, and thence he proceeded homeward by Batavia (4th July-17th October) and the Cape of Good Hope. In February 1701 he arrived off Ascension Island, when the vessel foundered (21st-24th February), the crew reaching land and staying in the island till the 3rd of April, when they were conveyed to England by some East Indiamen and warships bound for home. In 1703-1707 Dampier commanded two government privateers on an expedition to the South Seas with grievous unsuccess; better fortune attended him on his last voyage, as pilot to Woodes Rogers in the circumnavigation of 1708-1711. On the former venture Alexander Selkirk, the master of one of the vessels, was marooned at Juan Fernandez; on the latter Selkirk was rescued and a profit of nearly L200,000 was made. But four years before the prize-money was paid Dampier died (March 1715) in St Stephen's parish, Coleman Street, London. Dampier's accounts of his voyages are famous. He had a genius for observation, especially of the scientific phenomena affecting a seaman's life; his style is usually admirable--easy, clear and manly. His knowledge of natural history, though not scientific, appears surprisingly accurate and trustworthy.
See Dampier's _New Voyage Round the World_ (1697); his _Voyages and Descriptions_ (1699), a work supplementary to the _New Voyage_; his _Voyage to New Holland in ... 1699_ (1703, 1709); also Funnell's Narrative of the Voyage of 1703-1707; Dampier's _Vindication of his Voyage_ (1707); Welbe's _Answer to Captain Dampier's Vindication_; Woodes Rogers, _Cruising Voyage Round the World_ (1712). (C. R. B.)
DAN (from a Hebrew word meaning "judge"), a tribe of Israel, named after a son of Jacob and Bilhah, the maid of Rachel. The meaning of the name (referred to in Gen. xxx. 5 seq., xlix. 16) connects Dan with Dinah ("judgment"), the daughter of Leah, whose story in Gen. xxxiv. (cf. xlix. 5 seq.) seems to point to an Israelite occupation of Shechem, a treacherous massacre of its Canaanite inhabitants by Simeon and Levi, and the subsequent scattering of the latter. But, historically, the occupation of Shechem, whether by conquest (Gen. xlviii. 22) or purchase (xxxiii. 19), is as obscure as the conquest of central Palestine itself (see JOSHUA), and the true relation between Dan and Dinah is uncertain. The earliest seats of Dan lay at Zorah, Eshtaol and Kirjath-jearim, west of Jerusalem, whence they were forced to seek a new home, and a valuable narrative detailing some of the events of the move is preserved in the story of the sanctuary of the Ephraimite Micah (q.v.). Laish (Leshem) was taken with the sword and re-named Dan (see below). Here a sanctuary was founded under the guardianship of Jonathan, the grandson of Moses, which survived until the "captivity of the land" (by Tiglath-Pileser IV. in 733-732), or, according to another notice, until the fall of Shiloh (Judg. xviii. 30 seq.). Dan formed the northern limit of the land,[1] and with Abel (-beth-Maacah) was an old place renowned for Israelite lore (2 Sam. xx. 18; on the text see the commentaries). Little can be made of Dan's history. The reference to it as a seafaring folk (Judg. v. 17) is difficult, and it is uncertain whether its character as represented in Gen. xlix. 17, Deut. xxxiii. 22, refers to its earlier or later seat. The post-exilic accounts of its southern border would make it part of Judah, and both of them are in tradition the greatest of the tribes in the wanderings in the wilderness. Dan was subsequently either regarded as the embodiment of wickedness or entirely ignored; late speculation that the Antichrist should spring from it appears to be based upon an interpretation of Gen. xlix. 17 (see further R. H. Charles, _Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs_, pp. 128 seq.).
A brief record of the Danite migration is found in some old detached fragments which K. Budde (_Richter und Samuel_) ingeniously arranges thus:--Judg. i. 34 (Amorite pressure); Josh. xix. 47a (see the Septuagint), 47_b_; Judg. i. 35. The position of Judg. xvii. seq. (after the stories of Samson) may imply that the Philistines, not the Amorites, caused the migration (cf. 1 Sam. vii. 14, where the two ethnical terms interchange). The Mosaic priesthood and the reference to Shiloh suggest that the story of Eli may have belonged to this cycle of narratives; and the spoliation of the unknown sanctuary of the Ephraimite Micah and the character of the fierce Puritan tribesmen connect Dan with the problems of the tribes of Simeon and Levi. Dan's northern home lay near Beth-rehob, which appears to have been Aramean in David's time (2 Sam. x. 6), and it is possible that the migration has been antedated (cf. similarly the case of Jair, Num. xxxii. 41, Judg. x. 3-5). The Tyrian artificer sent to Solomon by Hiram was partly of Danite descent (2 Chron. ii. 13 seq.; but of Naphtali, so 1 Kings vii. 14); and of the two workers in brass who took part in the building of the tabernacle in the desert, one was Danite (Oholiab, Ex. xxxi. 6), while the other appears to have been Calebite (Bezalel, ib., v. 2; 1 Chron. ii. 20). The Kenites, too, have been regarded as a race of metal-workers (see CAIN, KENITES), and there is evidence which would show that Danites, Calebites and Kenites were once closely associated in tradition.
See S. A. Cook, _Critical Notes_, Index, _s.v._: E. Meyer, _Israeliten_, pp. 525 seq. (S. A. C.)
FOOTNOTE:
[1] On the late phrase "Dan to Beersheba" as the extreme points of religious life in Israel, see H. W. Hogg, _Expositor_, viii. 411-421 (1898); and for a complete discussion of the tribe, his art. "Dan" in _Encyc. Bib._
DAN, a town of ancient Israel, near the head-waters of the Jordan, inhabited before its conquest by the Danites by a peaceful commercial population who called their city Laish or Leshem (Josh. xix. 47, Judg. xviii.). It appears to have been even at this early period a sacred city, the shrine of Micah being removed hither, and it was chosen by Jeroboam as the site of one of his calf-shrines. It makes the north limit of Palestine in the proverbial expression "from Dan to Beersheba." The town was plundered by Benhadad of Damascus, and appears from that time to have gradually declined. Its site is sought in the mound called Tell-el-Kadi, "the hill of the judge" (Dan = "judge" in Hebrew), though weighty authorities incline to place it 4 m. east of this, at Banias, the old Caesarea Philippi. (See above.)
DANA, CHARLES ANDERSON (1819-1897), American journalist, was born in Hinsdale, New Hampshire, on the 8th of August 1819. At the age of twelve he became a clerk in his uncle's general store at Buffalo, which failed in 1837. In 1839 he entered Harvard, but the impairment of his eyesight in 1841 forced him to leave college, and caused him to abandon his intention of entering the ministry and of studying in Germany. From September 1841 until March 1846 he lived at Brook Farm, where he was made one of the trustees of the farm, was head waiter when the farm became a Fourierite phalanx, and was in charge of the phalanstery's finances when its buildings were burned in 1846. He had previously written for (and managed) the _Harbinger_, the Brook Farm organ, and had written as early as 1844 for the Boston _Chronotype_. In 1847 he joined the staff of the New York _Tribune_, and in 1848 he wrote from Europe letters to it and other papers on the revolutionary movements of that year. Returning to the _Tribune_ in 1849, he became its managing-editor, and in this capacity actively promoted the anti-slavery cause, seeming to shape the paper's policy at a time when Greeley was undecided and vacillating. In 1862 his resignation was asked for by the board of managers of the _Tribune_, apparently because of wide temperamental differences between him and Greeley. Secretary of War Stanton immediately made him a special investigating agent of the war department; in this capacity Dana discovered frauds of quartermasters and contractors, and as the "eyes of the administration," as Lincoln called him, he spent much time at the front, and sent to Stanton frequent reports concerning the capacity and methods of various generals in the field; he went through the Vicksburg campaign and was at Chickamauga and Chattanooga, and urged the placing of General Grant in supreme command of all the armies in the field. Dana was second assistant-secretary of war in 1864-1865, and in 1865-1866 conducted the newly-established and unsuccessful Chicago _Republican_. He became the editor and part-owner of the New York _Sun_ in 1868, and remained in control of it until his death at Glen Cove, Long Island, New York, on the 17th of October 1897. Under Dana's control the _Sun_ opposed the impeachment of President Johnson; it supported Grant for the presidency in 1868; it was a sharp critic of Grant as president; and in 1872 took part in the Liberal Republican revolt and urged Greeley's nomination. It favoured Tilden, the Democratic candidate for the presidency, in 1876, opposed the Electoral Commission and continually referred to Hayes as the "fraud president." In 1884 it supported Benjamin F. Butler, the candidate of Greenback-Labor and Anti-Monopolist parties, for the presidency, and opposed Blaine (Republican) and even more bitterly Cleveland (Democrat); it supported Cleveland and opposed Harrison in 1888, although it had bitterly criticized Cleveland's first administration, and was to criticize nearly every detail of his second, with the exception of Federal interference in the Pullman strike of 1894; and in 1896, on the free-silver issue, it opposed Bryan, the Democratic candidate for the presidency. Dana's literary style came to be the style of the _Sun_--simple, strong, clear, "boiled down." _The Art of Newspaper Making_, containing three lectures which he wrote on journalism, was published in 1900. With George Ripley he edited _The New American Cyclopaedia_ (15 vols., 1857-1863), reissued as the _American Cyclopaedia_ in 1873-1876. He had excellent taste in the fine arts and edited an anthology, _The Household Book of Poetry_ (1857). He was a very good linguist, published several versions from the German, and read the Romance and Scandinavian languages; he was an art connoisseur and left a remarkable collection of Chinese porcelain. Dana's _Reminiscences of the Civil War_ was published in 1898, as was his _Eastern Journeys, Notes of Travel_. He also edited a campaign _Life of U. S. Grant_, published over his name and that of General James H. Wilson in 1868.
See James Wilson, _The Life of Charles A. Dana_ (New York, 1907).
DANA, FRANCIS (1743-1811), American jurist, was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, on the 13th of June 1743. He was the son of Richard Dana (1699-1772), a leader of the Massachusetts provincial bar, and a vigorous advocate of colonial rights in the pre-revolutionary period. Francis Dana graduated at Harvard in 1762, was admitted to the bar in 1767, and, being an opponent of the British colonial policy, became a leader of the Sons of Liberty, and in 1774 was a member of the first provincial congress of Massachusetts. During a two years' visit to England he sought earnestly to gain friends to his colony's cause, but returned to Boston in April 1776 convinced that a friendly settlement of the dispute was impossible. He was a member of the Massachusetts executive council from 1776 to 1780, and a delegate to the Continental Congress from 1776 to 1778. As a member of the latter body he became chairman in January 1778 of the committee appointed to visit Washington at Valley Forge, and confer with him concerning the reorganization of the army. This committee spent about three months in camp, and assisted Washington in preparing the plan of reorganization which Congress in the main adopted. In this year he was also a member of a committee to consider Lord North's offer of conciliation, which he vigorously opposed. In the autumn of 1779 he was appointed secretary to John Adams, who had been selected as minister plenipotentiary to negotiate treaties of peace and commerce with Great Britain, and in December 1780 he was appointed diplomatic representative to the Russian government. He remained at St Petersburg from 1781 to 1783, but was never formally received by the empress Catherine. In February 1784 he was again chosen a delegate to Congress, and in January 1785 he became a justice of the Massachusetts supreme court. He was chief justice of this court from 1791 to 1806, and presided with ability and rare distinction. He was an earnest advocate of the adoption of the Federal constitution, was a member of the Massachusetts convention which ratified that instrument, and was one of the most influential advisers of the leaders of the Federalist party. His tastes were scholarly, and he was one of the founders of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He died at Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the 25th of April 1811.
His son, RICHARD HENRY DANA (1787-1879), was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the 15th of November 1787. He was educated at Harvard in the class of 1808. Subsequently he studied law and in 1811 was admitted to practice. But all other interests were early subordinated to his love of literature, to which the greater part of his long life was devoted. He became in 1814 a member of a literary society in Cambridge, known as the Anthology Club. This club began the publication of a monthly magazine, _The Monthly Anthology_, which gave way in 1815 to _The North American Review_. In the editorial control of this periodical he was associated with Jared Sparks and Edward T. Channing (1790-1856) until 1821, contributing essays and criticisms which attracted wide attention. In 1821-1822 he edited in New York a short-lived literary magazine, _The Idle Man_. He published his first volume of _Poems_ in 1827, and in 1833 appeared his _Poems and Prose Writings_, republished in 1850 in two volumes, in which were included practically all of his poems and of his prose contributions to periodical literature. Although the bulk of his published writings was not large, his influence on American literature during the first half of the 19th century was surpassed by that of few of his contemporaries.
RICHARD HENRY DANA (1815-1882), son of the last-mentioned, was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the 1st of August 1815. He entered Harvard in the class of 1835, but at the beginning of his junior year an illness affecting his sight necessitated a suspension of his college work, and in August 1834 he shipped before the mast for California, returning in September 1836. The rough experience of this voyage did more than endow him with renewed health; it changed him from a dreamy, sensitive boy, hereditarily disinclined to any sort of active career, into a self-reliant, energetic man, with broad interests and keen sympathies. He re-entered Harvard in December 1836 and graduated in June 1837. He was a student at the Harvard law school from 1837 to 1840, and from January 1839 to February 1840 he was also an instructor in elocution in the college. In 1840 the notes of his sea-trip were published under the title _Two Years Before the Mast_. The book attained an almost unprecedented popularity both in America and in Europe, where it was translated into several languages; and it came to be considered a classic. Immediately after the appearance of this book Dana began the practice of law, which brought him a large number of maritime cases. In 1841 he published _The Seaman's Friend_, republished in England as _The Seaman's Manual_, which was long the highest authority on the legal rights and duties of seamen. After gaining recognition as one of the most prominent members of the Suffolk bar, he became associated in 1848 with the Free Soil movement, and took a prominent part in the Buffalo convention of that year. This step, which caused him to be ostracized for a time from the Boston circles in which he had been reared, brought him the cases of the fugitive slaves, Shadrach, Sims and Burns, and of the rescuers of Shadrach. On the night following the surrender of Burns (May 1854) Dana was brutally assaulted on the Boston streets. In 1853 he took a prominent part in the state constitutional convention. He allied himself with the Republican party on its organization, but his inborn dislike for political manoeuvring prevented his ever becoming prominent in its councils. In 1857 he became a regular attendant at the meetings of the famous Boston Saturday Club, to the members of which he dedicated his account of a vacation trip, _To Cuba and Back_ (1857). He returned to America from a trip round the world in time to participate in the presidential campaign of 1860, and after Lincoln's inauguration he was appointed United States district attorney for Massachusetts. In this office in 1863 he won before the Supreme Court of the United States the famous prize case of the "Amy Warwick," on the decision in which depended the right of the government to blockade the Confederate ports, without giving the Confederate States an international status as belligerents. He brought out in 1865 an edition of _Wheaton's International Law_, his notes constituting a most learned and valuable authority on international law and its bearings on American history and diplomacy; but immediately after its publication Dana was charged by the editor of two earlier editions, William Beach Lawrence, with infringing his copyright, and was involved in litigation which was continued for thirteen years. In such minor matters as arrangement of notes and verification of citations the court found against Dana, but in the main Dana's notes were vastly different from Lawrence's. In 1865 Dana declined an appointment as a United States district judge. During the Reconstruction period he favoured the congressional plan rather than that of President Johnson, and on this account resigned the district-attorneyship. In 1867-1868 he was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, and in 1867 was retained with William M. Evarts to prosecute Jefferson Davis, whose admission to bail he counselled. In 1877 he was one of the counsel for the United States before the commission which in accordance with the treaty of Washington met at Halifax, N.S., to arbitrate the fisheries question between the United States and Great Britain. In 1878 he gave up his law practice and devoted the rest of his life to study and travel. He died in Rome, Italy, on the 9th of January 1882.
See Charles Francis Adams, _Richard Henry Dana: a Biography_ (2 vols., Boston, Mass., 1891).
DANA, JAMES DWIGHT (1813-1895), American geologist, mineralogist and zoologist, was born in Utica, New York, on the 12th of February 1813. He early displayed a taste for science, which had been fostered by Fay Edgerton, a teacher in the Utica high school, and in 1830 he entered Yale College, in order to study under Benjamin Silliman the elder. Graduating in 1833, for the next two years he was teacher of mathematics to midshipmen in the navy, and sailed to the Mediterranean while engaged in his duties. In 1836-1837 he was assistant to Professor Silliman in the chemical laboratory at Yale, and then, for four years, acted as mineralogist and geologist of a United States exploring expedition, commanded by Captain Charles Wilkes, in the Pacific ocean (see WILKES, CHARLES). His labours in preparing the reports of his explorations occupied parts of thirteen years after his return to America in 1842. In 1844 he again became a resident of New Haven, married the daughter of Professor Silliman, and in 1850, on the resignation of the latter, was appointed Silliman Professor of Natural History and Geology in Yale College, a position which he held till 1892. In 1846 he became joint editor and during the later years of his life he was chief editor of the _American Journal of Science and Arts_ (founded in 1818 by Benjamin Silliman), to which he was a constant contributor, principally of articles on geology and mineralogy. A bibliographical list of his writings shows 214 titles of books and papers, beginning in 1835 with a paper on the conditions of Vesuvius in 1834, and ending with the fourth revised edition (finished in February 1895) of his _Manual of Geology_. His reports on _Zoophytes_, on the _Geology of the Pacific Area_, and on _Crustacea_, summarizing his work on the Wilkes expedition, appeared in 1846, 1849 and 1852-1854, in quarto volumes, with copiously illustrated atlases; but as these were issued in small numbers, his reputation more largely rests upon his _System of Mineralogy_ (1837 and many later editions in 1892); _Manual of Geology_ (1862; ed. 4, 1895); _Manual of Mineralogy_ (1848), afterwards entitled _Manual of Mineralogy and Lithology_ (ed. 4, 1887); and Corals and Coral Islands (1872; ed. 2, 1890). In 1887 Dana revisited the Hawaiian Islands, and the results of his further investigations were published in a quarto volume in 1890, entitled _Characteristics of Volcanoes_. By the Royal Society of London he was awarded the Copley medal in 1877; and by the Geological Society the Wollaston medal in 1874. His powers of work were extraordinary, and in his 82nd year he was occupied in preparing a new edition of his _Manual of Geology_, the 4th edition being issued in 1895. He died on the 14th of April 1895.
His son EDWARD SALISBURY DANA, born at New Haven on the 16th of November 1849, is author of _A Textbook of Mineralogy_ (1877; new ed. 1898) and a _Text Book of Elementary Mechanics_ (1881). In 1879-80 he was professor of natural philosophy and then became professor of physics at Yale.
See _Life of J. D. Dana_, by Daniel C. Gilman (1899).
DANAE, in Greek legend, daughter of Acrisius, king of Argos. Her father, having been warned by an oracle that she would bear a son by whom he would be slain, confined Danae in a brazen tower. But Zeus descended to her in a shower of gold, and she gave birth to Perseus, whereupon Acrisius placed her and her infant in a wooden box and threw them into the sea. They were finally driven ashore on the island of Seriphus, where they were picked up by a fisherman named Dictys. His brother Polydectes, who was king of the island, fell in love with Danae and married her. According to another story, her son Perseus, on his return with the head of Medusa, finding his mother persecuted by Polydectes, turned him into stone, and took Danae back with him to Argos. Latin legend represented her as landing on the coast of Latium and marrying Pilumnus or Picumnus, from whom Turnus, king of the Rutulians, was descended. Danae formed the subject of tragedies by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Livius Andronicus and Naevius. She is the personification of the earth suffering from drought, on which the fertilizing rain descends from heaven.
Apollodorus ii. 4; Sophocles, _Antigone_, 944; Horace, _Odes_, iii. 16; Virgil, _Aeneid_, vii. 410. See also P. Schwarz, _De Fabula Danaeia_ (1881).
DANAO, a town of the province of Cebu, island of Cebu, Philippine Islands, on the E. coast, at the mouth of the Danao river, 17 m. N.N.E. of Cebu, the capital. Pop. (1903) 16,173. Danao has a comparatively cool and healthy climate, is the centre of a rich agricultural region producing rice, Indian corn, sugar, copra and cacao, and coal is mined in the vicinity. The language is Cebu-Visayan.
DANAUS, in Greek legend, son of Belus, king of Egypt, and twin-brother of Aegyptus. He was born at Chemmis (Panopolis) in Egypt, but having been driven out by his brother he fled with his fifty daughters to Argos, the home of his ancestress Io. Here he became king and taught the inhabitants of the country to dig wells. In the meantime the fifty sons of Aegyptus arrived in Argos, and Danaus was obliged to consent to their marriage with his daughters. But to each of these he gave a knife with injunctions to slay her husband on the marriage night. They all obeyed except Hyperm(n)estra, who spared Lynceus. She was brought to trial by her father, acquitted and afterwards married to her lover. Being unable to find suitors for the other daughters, Danaus offered them in marriage to the youths of the district who proved themselves victorious in racing contests (Pindar, _Pythia_, ix. 117). According to another story, Lynceus slew Danaus and his daughters and seized the throne of Argos (schol. on Euripides, _Hecuba_, 886). By way of expiation for their crime the Danaides were condemned to the endless task of filling with water a vessel which had no bottom. This punishment, originally inflicted on those who neglected certain mystic rites, was transferred to those who, like the Danaides, despised the mystic rite of marriage; cf. the water-bearing figure ([Greek: loutrophoros]) on the grave of unmarried persons. The murder of the sons of Aegyptus by their wives is supposed to represent the drying up of the rivers and springs of Argolis in summer by the agency of the nymphs.
Apollodorus ii. 1; Horace, _Odes_, iii. 11; O. Waser, in _Archiv fur Religionswissenschaft_, ii. Heft 1, 1899; articles in Pauly-Wissowa's _Realencyclopadie_ and W. H. Roscher's _Lexikon der Mythologie_; Campbell Bonner, in _Harvard Studies_, xiii. (1902).
DANBURITE, a rare mineral species consisting of calcium and boron orthosilicate, CaB2(SiO4)2, crystallizing in the orthorhombic system. It was discovered by C.U. Shepard in 1839 at Danbury, Connecticut, U.S.A., and named by him after this locality. The crystals are prismatic in habit, and closely resemble topaz in form and interfacial angles. There is an imperfect cleavage parallel to the basal plane. Crystals are transparent to translucent, and colourless to pale yellow; hardness 7; specific gravity 3.0. At Danbury the mineral occurs with microcline and oligoclase embedded in dolomite. Large crystals, reaching 4 in. in length, have been found with calcite in veins traversing granite at Russell in St Lawrence county, New York. Smaller but well-developed crystals have been found on gneiss at Mt. Scopi and Petersthal (the valley of the Vals Rhine) in Switzerland. Splendid crystals have recently been obtained from Japan.
DANBURY, a city and one of the county-seats of Fairfield county, Connecticut, U.S.A., in Danbury township, in the south-west part of the state, on the Still river, a tributary of the Housatonic. Pop. (1890) 16,552; (1900) 16,537 (3702 foreign-born); (1910) 20,234. In 1900 the population of the township, including that of the city, was 19,474, and in 1910, 23,502. Danbury is served by three divisions of the New York, New Haven & Hartford railway; by the Danbury & Harlem electric railway, which connects at Goldens Bridge, New York, with the Harlem division of the New York Central; and by an electric line to Bethel, Connecticut. Lake Kenosia, about 2(1/2) m. from the centre of the city, is a pleasure resort. A state normal school was opened in Danbury in 1904, and there is a home for destitute and homeless children under private (unsectarian) control. The city has good water-power, and the municipality owns the water works. The principal industry is the manufacture of felt hats, begun in 1780, and in 1905 engaging about thirty factories, with a product for the year valued at $5,798,107 (71.9% of the value of all the factory products of the city, and 15.8% of the value of all the felt hats produced in the United States). The city ranked first among the cities of the country in this industry in 1900 and second in 1905, and in 1905 no other city showed so high a degree of specialization in it. Silver-plated ware (mostly manufactured by Rogers Bros.) is another important product. At Danbury is held annually the well-known agricultural Danbury Fair. The township was settled in 1684 by emigrants from Norwalk, and received its present name in 1687. When the War of Independence opened, Enoch Crosby, believed to be the original of Harvey Birch, the hero of J. F. Cooper's _The Spy_, was a resident of Danbury. A depot of military supplies was established in the village of Danbury in 1776; in April 1777 Governor William Tryon, of New York, raided the place, destroying the military stores and considerable private property. During his retreat he was attacked (April 26th) at Ridgefield (about 9 m. south by east of Danbury) by the Americans under General David Wooster (1710-1777), who was fatally wounded in the conflict (being succeeded by General Benedict Arnold), and to whose memory a monument was erected in Danbury in 1854. Danbury was chartered as a borough in 1832 and as a city in 1880. In 1870 the _Danbury News_ was established by the consolidation of the _Jeffersonian_ and the _Times_, by James Montgomery Bailey (1841-1894), from 1865 to 1870 proprietor of the _Times_. He wrote for the _News_ humorous sketches, which made him and the paper famous, Bailey being known as the "Danbury News Man"; among his books are _Life in Danbury_ (1873), _The Danbury News Man's Almanac_ (1873), _They All Do It_ (1877), _England from a Back Window_ (1878), _Mr Philip's Goneness_ (1879), _The Danbury Boom_ (1880), and _History of Danbury_ (1896).
DANBY, FRANCIS (1793-1861), English painter, was born in the south of Ireland on the 16th of November 1793. His father farmed a small property he owned near Wexford, but his death caused the family to remove to Dublin, while Francis was still a schoolboy. He began to practice drawing at the Royal Dublin Society's schools; and under an erratic young artist named O'Connor he began painting landscape. Danby also made acquaintance with George Petrie, and all three left for London together in 1813. This expedition, undertaken with very inadequate funds, quickly came to an end, and they had to get home again by walking. At Bristol they made a pause, and Danby, finding he could get trifling sums for water-colour drawings, remained there working diligently and sending to the London exhibitions pictures of importance. There his large pictures in oil quickly attracted attention. "The Upas Tree" (1820) and "The Delivery of the Israelites" (1825) brought him his election as an associate of the Royal Academy. He left Bristol for London, and in 1828 exhibited his "Opening of the Sixth Seal" at the British Institution, receiving from that body a prize of 200 guineas; and this picture was followed by two others from the Apocalypse. He suddenly left London, declaring that he would never live there again, and that the Academy, instead of aiding him, had, somehow or other, used him badly. Some insurmountable domestic difficulty overtook him also, and for eleven or twelve years he lived on the Lake of Geneva, a Bohemian with boat-building fancies, painting only now and then. He returned to England in 1841, when his sons, James and Thomas, both artists, were growing up. Other pictures by him were "The Golden Age" and "The Evening Gun," the first begun before he left England, the second painted after his return; he had taken up his abode at Exmouth, where he died on the 9th of February 1861.
DANCE, the name of an English family distinguished in architecture, art and the drama. GEORGE DANCE, the elder (1700-1768), obtained the appointment of architect to the city of London, and designed the Mansion House (1739); the churches of St Botolph, Aldgate (1741), St Luke's, Old Street; St Leonard, Shoreditch; the old excise office; Broad Street; and other public works of importance. He died on the 8th of February 1768. His eldest son, JAMES DANCE (1722-1744), was born on the 17th of March 1722, and educated at the Merchant Taylors' School and St John's College, Oxford, which he left before graduating. He took the name of Love, and became an actor and playwright of no great merit. In the former capacity he was for twelve years connected with Drury Lane theatre. He wrote "an heroic poem" on _Cricket_, about 1740, and a volume of _Poems on Several Occasions_ (1754), and a number of comedies--the earliest _Pamela_ (1742).
George Dance's third son, Sir NATHANIEL DANCE-HOLLAND, Bart. (1735-1811), was born on the 18th of May 1735, and studied art under Francis Hayman, and in Italy, where he met Angelica Kauffmann, to whom he was devotedly and hopelessly attached. From Rome he sent home "Dido and Aeneas" (1763), and he continued to paint occasional historical pictures of the same quasi-classic kind throughout his career. On his return to England he took up portrait-painting with great success, and contributed to the first exhibition of the Royal Academy, of which he was a foundation member, full-length portraits of George III. and his queen. These, and his portraits of Captain Cook and of Garrick as Richard III., engraved by Dixon, are his best-known works. Himself a rich man, in 1790 he married a widow with L15,000 a year, dropped his profession, and became M.P. for East Grinstead, taking the additional name of Holland. He was made a baronet in 1800. He died on the 15th of October 1811, leaving a fortune of L200,000.
George Dance's fifth and youngest son, GEORGE DANCE, the younger (1741-1825), succeeded his father as city surveyor and architect in 1768. He was then only twenty-seven, had spent several years abroad, chiefly in Italy with his brother Nathaniel, and had already distinguished himself by designs for Blackfriars Bridge sent to the 1761 exhibition of the Incorporated Society of Artists. His first important public work was the rebuilding of Newgate prison in 1770. The front of the Guildhall was also his. He, too, was a foundation member of the Royal Academy, and for a number of years the last survivor of the forty original academicians. His last years were devoted to art rather than to architecture, and after 1798 his Academy contributions consisted solely of chalk portraits of his friends, seventy-two of which were engraved and published (1808-1814). He resigned his office in 1815, and after many years of illness died on the 14th of January 1825, and was buried in St Paul's. His son, CHARLES DANCE (1794-1863), was for thirty years registrar, taxing officer and chief clerk of the insolvent debtors' court, retiring, when it was abolished, on an allowance. In collaboration with J. R. Planche and others, or alone, he wrote a great number of extravaganzas, farces and comediettas. He was one of the first, if not the first, of the burlesque writers, and was the author of those produced so successfully by Madame Vestris for years at the Olympic. Of his farces, _Delicate Ground, Who Speaks First?_, _A Morning Call_ and others are still occasionally revived. He died on the 6th of January 1863.
DANCE (Fr. _danse_; of obscure origin, connected with Old High Ger. _danson_, to stretch). The term "dancing" in its widest sense includes three things:--(1) the spontaneous activity of the muscles under the influence of some strong emotion, such as social joy or religious exultation; (2) definite combinations of graceful movements performed for the sake of the pleasure which the exercise affords to the dancer or to the spectator; (3) carefully trained movements which are meant by the dancer vividly to represent the actions and passions of other people. In the highest sense it seems to be for prose-gesture what song is for the instinctive exclamations of feeling. Regarded as the outlet or expression of strong feeling, dancing does not require much discussion, for the general rule applies that such demonstrations for a time at least sustain and do not exhaust the flow of feeling. The voice and the facial muscles and many of the organs are affected at the same time, and the result is a high state of vitality which among the spinning Dervishes or in the ecstatic worship of Bacchus and Cybele amounted to something like madness. Even here there is traceable an undulatory movement which, as Herbert Spencer says, is "habitually generated by feeling in its bodily discharge." But it is only in the advanced or volitional stage of dancing that we find developed the essential feature of _measure_, which has been said to consist in "the alternation of stronger muscular contractions with weaker ones," an alternation which, except in the cases of savages and children, "is compounded with longer rises and falls in the degree of muscular excitement." In analysing the state of mind which this measured dancing produces, we must first of all allow for the pleasant glow of excitement caused by the excess of blood sent to the brain. But apart from this, there is an agreeable sense of uniformity in the succession of muscular efforts, and in the spaces described, and also in the period of their recurrence. If the steps of dancing and the intervals of time be not precisely equal, there is still a pleasure depending on the gradually increasing intensity of motion, on the undulation which uniformly rises in order to fall. As Florizel says to Perdita, "When you do dance, I wish you a wave of the sea" (_Winter's Tale_, iv. 3). The mind feels the beauty of emphasis and cadence in muscular motion, just as much as in musical notes. Then, the figure of the dance is frequently a circle or some more graceful curve or series of curves,--a fact which satisfies the dancer as well as the eye of the spectator. But all such effects are intensified by the use of music, which not only brings a perfectly distinct set of pleasurable sensations to dancer and spectator, but by the control of dancing produces an inexpressibly sweet harmony of sound and motion. This harmony is further enriched if there be two dancing together on one plan, or a large company of dancers executing certain evolutions, the success of which depends on the separate harmonies of all the couples. The fundamental condition is that throughout the dance all the dancers keep within their bases of gravity. This is not only required for the dancers' own enjoyment, but, as in the famous Mercury on tiptoe, it is essential to the beautiful effect for the spectator. The idea of much being safely supported by little is what proves attractive in the posturing ballet. But this is merely one condition of graceful dancing, and if it be made the chief object the dancer sinks into the acrobat.
Dancing is, in fact, the universal human expression, by movements of the limbs and body, of a sense of rhythm which is implanted among the primitive instincts of the animal world. The rhythmic principle of motion extends throughout the universe, governing the lapse of waves, the flow of tides, the reverberations of light and sound, and the movements of celestial bodies; and in the human organism it manifests itself in the automatic pulses and flexions of the blood and tissues. Dancing is merely the voluntary application of the rhythmic principle, when excitement has induced an abnormally rapid oxidization of brain tissue, to the physical exertion by which the overcharged brain is relieved. This is primitive dancing; and it embraces all movements of the limbs and body expressive of joy or grief, all pantomimic representations of incidents in the lives of the dancers, all performances in which movements of the body are employed to excite the passions of hatred or love, pity or revenge, or to arouse the warlike instincts, and all ceremonies in which such movements express homage or worship, or are used as religious exercises. Although music is not an essential part of dancing, it almost invariably accompanies it, even in the crudest form of a rhythm beaten out on a drum.
_Primitive and Ancient Dancing._--In Tigre the Abyssinians dance the _chassee_ step in a circle, and keep time by shrugging their shoulders and working their elbows backwards and forwards. At intervals the dancers squat on the ground, still moving the arms and shoulders in the same way. The Bushmen dance in their low-roofed rooms supporting themselves by sticks; one foot remains motionless, the other dances in a wild irregular manner, while the hands are occupied with the sticks. The Gonds, a hill-tribe of Hindustan, dance generally in pairs, with a shuffling step, the eyes on the ground, the arms close to the body, and the elbows at an angle with the closed hand. Advancing to a point, the dancer suddenly erects his head, and wheels round to the starting point. The women of the Pultooah tribe dance in a circle, moving backwards and forwards in a bent posture. The Santal women, again, are slow and graceful in dance; joining hands, they form themselves into the arc of a circle, towards the centre of which they advance and then retire, moving at the same time slightly towards the right, so as to complete the circle in an hour. The Kukis of Assam have only the rudest possible step, an awkward hop with the knees very much bent. The national dance of the Kamchadale is one of the most violent known, every muscle apparently quivering at every movement. But there, and in some other cases where men and women dance together, there is a trace of deliberate obscenity; the dance is, in fact, a rude representation of sexual passion. It has been said that some of the Tasmanian _corrobories_ have a phallic design. The Yucatan dance of _naual_ may also be mentioned. The Andamans hop on one foot and swing the arms violently backwards and forwards. The Veddahs jump with both feet together, patting their bodies, or clapping their hands, and make a point of bringing their long hair down in front of the face. In New Caledonia the dance consists of a series of twistings of the body, the feet being lifted alternately, but without change of place. The Fijians jump half round from side to side with their arms akimbo. The only modulation of the Samoan dance is one of time--a _crescendo_ movement, which is well-known in the modern ball-room. The Javans are perhaps unique in their distinct and graceful gestures of the hands and fingers. At a Mexican feast called Huitzilopochtli, the noblemen and women danced tied together at the hands, and embracing one another, the arms being thrown over the neck. This resembles the dance variously known as the Greek Bracelet or Brawl, [Greek: Hormos], or Bearsfeet; but all of them[1] probably are to a certain extent symbolical of the relations between the sexes. Actual contact of the partners, however, is quite intelligible as matter of pure dancing; for, apart altogether from the pleasure of the embrace, the harmony of the double rotation adds very much to the enjoyment. In a very old Peruvian dance of ceremony before the Inca, several hundreds of men formed a chain, each taking hold of the hand of the man beyond his immediate neighbour, and the whole body moving forwards and backwards three steps at a time as they approached the throne. In this, as in the national dance of the Coles of Lower Bengal, there was perhaps a suggestion of "l'union fait la force." In Yucatan stilts were occasionally used for dancing.
It seldom happens that dancing takes place without accompaniment, either by the dancers or by others. This is not merely because the feelings which find relief in dancing express themselves at the same time in other forms; in some cases, indeed, the vocal and instrumental elements largely predominate, and form the ground-work of the whole emotional demonstration. Whether they do so or not will of course depend on the intellectual advancement of the nation or tribe and upon the particular development of their aesthetical sensibility. A striking instance occurs among the Zulus, whose grand dances are merely the accompaniment to the colloquial war and hunting songs, in which the women put questions which are answered by the men. So also in Tahiti there is a set of national ballads and songs, referring to many events in the past and present lives of the people. The fisherman, the woodsman, the canoe-builder, has each his trade song, which on public occasions at least is illustrated by dancing. But the accompaniment is often consciously intended, by an appeal to the ear, to regulate and sustain the excitement of the muscles. And a close relation will be found always to exist between the excellence of a nation's dancing and the excellence or complexity of its music and poetry. In some cases the performer himself sings or marks time by the clanking of ornaments on his person. In others the accompaniment consists sometimes of a rude chant improvised by those standing round, or of music from instruments, or of mere clapping of the hands, or of striking one stick against another or on the ground, or of "marking time," in the technical sense. The Tasmanians beat on a rolled-up kangaroo-skin. The Kamchadales make a noise like a continuous hiccough all through the dance. The Andamans use a large hollow dancing-board, on which one man is set apart to stamp. Sometimes it is the privilege of the tribal chief to sing the accompaniment while his people dance. The savages of New Caledonia whistle and strike upon the hip.
The rude imitative dances of early civilization are of extreme interest. In the same way the dances of the Ostyak tribes (Northern Asiatic) imitate the habitual sports of the chase and the gambols of the wolf and the bear and other wild beasts, the dancing consisting mainly of sudden leaps and violent turns which exhaust the muscular powers of the whole body. The Kamchadales, too, in dancing, imitate bears, dogs and birds. The _Kru_ dances of the Coast Negroes represent hunting scenes; and on the Congo, before the hunters start, they go through a dance imitating the habits of the gorilla and its movements when attacked. The Damara dance is a mimic representation of the movements of oxen and sheep, four men stooping with their heads in contact and uttering harsh cries. The canter of the baboon is the humorous part of the ceremony. The Bushmen dance in long irregular jumps, which they compare to the leaping of a herd of calves, and the Hottentots not only go on all-fours to counterfeit the baboon, but they have a dance in which the buzzing of a swarm of bees is represented. The Kennowits in Borneo introduce the mias and the deer for the same purpose. The Australians and Tasmanians in their dances called _corrobories_ imitate the frog and the kangaroo (both leaping animals). The hunt of the emu is also performed, a number of men passing slowly round the fire and throwing their arrows about so as to imitate the movements of the animal's head while feeding. The Gonds are fond of dancing the bison hunt, one man with skin and horns taking the part of the animal. Closely allied to these are the mimic fights, almost universal among tribes to which war is one of the great interests of life. The Bravery dance of the Dahomans and the Hoolee of the Bhil tribe in the Vindhya Hills are illustrations. The latter seems to have been reduced to an amusement conducted by professionals who go from village to village,--the battle being engaged in by women with long poles on the one side, and men with short cudgels on the other. There is here an element of comedy, which also appears in the Fiji club-dance. This, although no doubt originally suggested by war, is enlivened by the presence of a clown covered with leaves and wearing a mask. The monotonous song accompanying the club-dance is by way of commentary or explanation. So, also, in Guatemala there is a public _baile_ or dance, in which all the performers, wearing the skins and heads of beasts, go through a mock battle, which always ends in the victory of those wearing the deer's head. At the end the victors trace in the sand with a pole the figure of some animal; and this exhibition is supposed to have some historical reference. But nearly all savage tribes have a regular war-dance, in which they appear in fighting costume, handle their weapons, and go through the movements of challenge, conflict, pursuit or defeat. The women generally supply the stimulus of music. There is one very picturesque dance of the Natal Kaffirs, which probably refers to the departure of the warriors for the battle. The women appeal plaintively to the men, who slowly withdraw, stamping on the ground and darting their short spears or _assegais_ towards the sky. In Madagascar, when the men are absent on war, the women dance for a great part of the day, believing that this inspires their husbands with courage. In this, however, there may be some religious significance. These war-dances are totally distinct from the institution of military drill, which belongs to a later period, when social life has become less impulsive and more reflective.[2] There can be little doubt that some of the characteristic movements of these primitive hunting and war-dances survive in the smooth and ceremonious dances of the present day. But the early mimetic dance was not confined to these two subjects; it embraced the other great events of savage life--the drama of courtship and marriage, the funeral dance, the consecration of labour, the celebration of harvest or vintage;[3] sometimes, too, purely fictitious scenes of dramatic interest, while other dances degenerated into games. For instance, in Yucatan one man danced in a cowering attitude round a circle, while another followed, hurling at him _bohordos_ or canes, which were adroitly caught on a small stick. Again, in Tasmania, the dances of the women describe their "clamber for the opossum, diving for shell-fish, digging for roots, nursing children and quarrelling with husbands." Another dance, in which a woman by gesture taunts a chieftain with cowardice, gives him an opportunity of coming forward and recounting his courageous deeds in dance. The funeral dance of the Todas (another Indian hill-tribe) consists in walking backwards and forwards, without variation, to a howling tune of "ha! hoo!" The meaning of this is obscure, but it can scarcely be solely an outburst of grief. In Dahomey the blacksmiths, carpenters, hunters, braves and bards, with their various tools and instruments, join in a dramatic dance. We may add here a form of dance which is almost precisely equivalent to the spoken incantation. It is used by the professional devil-dancer of the wild Veddahs for the cure of diseases. An offering of eatables is put on a tripod of sticks, and the dancer, decorated with green leaves, goes into a paroxysm of dancing, in the midst of which he receives the required information. This, however, rather belongs to the subject of religious dances.
It is impossible here to enumerate either the names or the forms of the sacred dances which formed so prominent a part of the worship of antiquity. A mystic philosophy found in them a resemblance to the courses of the stars. This Pythagorean idea was expanded by Sir John Davies, in his epic poem _Orchestra_, published in 1596. They were probably adapted to many purposes,--to thanksgiving, praise, supplication and humiliation. It is only one striking illustration of this widespread practice, that there was at Rome a very ancient order of priests especially named Salii, who struck their shields and sang _assamenta_ as they danced. The practice reappeared in the early church, special provision being made for dancing in the choir. Scaliger, who astonished Charles V. by his dancing powers, says the bishops were called _Praesules_, because they led the dance on feast days. According to some of the fathers, the angels are always dancing, and the glorious company of the apostles is really a _chorus_ of dancers. Dancing, however, fell into discredit with the feast of the _Agapae_. St Augustine says, "Melius est fodere quam saltare"; and the practice was generally prohibited for some time. No church or sect has raged so fiercely against the cardinal sin of dancing as the Albigenses of Languedoc and the Waldenses, who agreed in calling it the devil's procession. After the middle of the 18th century there were still traces of religious dancing in the cathedrals of Spain, Portugal and Roussillon--especially in the Mozarabic Mass of Toledo. An account of the numerous secular dances, public and private, of Greece and Rome will be found in the classical histories, and in J. Weaver's _Essay towards a History of Dancing_, (London, 1712), which, however, must be revised by more recent authorities. The Pyrrhic (derived from the Memphitic) in all its local varieties, the Bacchanalia and the Hymenaea were among the more important. The name of Lycurgus is also associated with the Trichoria. Among the stage dances of the Athenians, which formed interludes to the regular drama, one of the oldest was the Delian dance of the Labyrinth, ascribed to Theseus, and called [Greek: Geranos], from its resemblance to the flight of cranes, and one of the most powerful was the dance of the Eumenides. A further development of the art took place at Rome, under Augustus, when Pylades and Bathyllus brought serious and comic pantomime to great perfection. The subjects chosen were such as the labours of Hercules, and the surprise of Venus and Mars by Vulcan. The state of public feeling on the subject is well shown in Lucian's amusing dialogue _De Saltatione_. Before this Rome had only very inferior buffoons, who attended dinner parties, and whose art traditions belonged not to Greece, but to Etruria.[4] Apparently, however, the Romans, though fond of ceremony and of the theatre, were by temperament not great dancers in private. Cicero says: "Nemo fere saltat sobrius, nisi forte insanit." But the Italic dance of the imperial theatre, supported by music and splendid dresses, supplanted for a time the older dramas. It was the policy of Augustus to cultivate other than political interests for the people; and he passed laws for the protection and privilege of the pantomimists. They were freed from the _jus virgarum_, and they used their freedom against the peace of the city. Tiberius and Domitian oppressed and banished them; Trajan and Aurelius gave them such titles as decurions and priests of Apollo; but the pantomime stage soon yielded to the general corruption of the empire.
_Modern Dancing._--In modern civilized countries dancing has developed as an art and pastime, as an entertainment. Its direct application to arouse emotion or religious feeling tends to be obscured and finally dropped out.
Italy, in the 15th century, saw the renaissance of dancing, and France may be said to have been the nursery of the modern art, though comparatively few modern dances are really French in origin. The national dances of other countries were brought to France, studied systematically, and made perfect there. An English or a Bohemian dance, practised only amongst peasants, would be taken to France, polished and perfected, and would at last find its way back to its own country, no more recognizable than a piece of elegant cloth when it returns from the printer to the place from which as "grey" material it was sent. The fact that the terminology of dancing is almost entirely French is a sufficient indication of the origin of the rules that govern it. The earliest dances that bear any relation to the modern art are probably the _danses basses_ and _danses hautes_ of the 16th century. The _danse basse_ was the dance of the court of Charles IX. and of good society, the steps being very grave and dignified, not to say solemn, and the accompaniment a psalm tune. The _danses hautes_ or _baladines_ had a skipping step, and were practised only by clowns and country people. More lively dances, such as the _Gaillarde_ and _Volta_, were introduced into France from Italy by Catherine de' Medici, but even in these the interest was chiefly spectacular. Other dances of the same period were the _Branle_ (afterwards corrupted to _Braule_, and known in England as the Brawle)--a kind of generic dance which was capable of an almost infinite amount of variety. Thus there were imitative dances--_Branles mimes_, such as the _Branles des Ermites_, _Branles des flambeaux_ and the _Branles des lavandieres_. The _Branle_ in its original form had steps like the _Allemande_. Perhaps the most famous and stately dance of this period was the _Pavane_ (of Spanish origin), which is very fully described in Tabouret's _Orchesographie_, the earliest work in which a dance is found minutely described. The _Pavane_, which was really more a procession than a dance, must have been a very gorgeous and noble sight, and it was perfectly suited to the dress of the period, the stiff brocades of the ladies and the swords and heavily-plumed hats of the gentlemen being displayed in its simple and dignified measures to great advantage. The dancers in the time of Henry III. of France usually sang, while performing the _Pavane_, a _chanson_, of which this is one of the verses:
"Approche donc, ma belle, Approche-toi, mon bien; Ne me sois plus rebelle, Puisque mon coeur est tien; Pour mon ame apaiser, Donne-moi un baiser."
In the _Pavane_ and _Branle_, and in nearly all the dances of the 17th and 18th centuries, the practice of kissing formed a not unimportant part, and seems to have added greatly to the popularity of the pastime. Another extremely popular dance was the _Saraband_, which, however, died out after the 17th century. It was originally a Spanish dance, but enjoyed an enormous success for a time in France. Every dance at that time had its own tune or tunes, which were called by its own name, and of the _Saraband_ the chevalier de Grammont wrote that "it either charmed or annoyed everyone, for all the guitarists of the court began to learn it, and God only knows the universal twanging that followed." Vauquelin des Yveteaux, in his eightieth year, desired to die to the tune of the _Saraband_, "so that his soul might pass away sweetly." After the _Pavane_ came the _Courante_, a court dance performed on tiptoe with slightly jumping steps and many bows and curtseys. The _Courante_ is one of the most important of the strictly modern dances. The minuet and the waltz were both in some degree derived from it, and it had much in common with the famous _Seguidilla_ of Spain. It was a favourite dance of Louis XIV., who was an adept in the art, and it was regarded in his time as of such importance that a nobleman's education could hardly have been said to be begun until he had mastered the _Courante_.
The dance which the French brought to the greatest perfection--which many, indeed, regard as the fine flower of the art--was the _Minuet_. Its origin, as a rustic dance, is not less antique than that of the other dances from which the modern art has been evolved. It was originally a _branle_ of Poitou, derived from the _Courante_. It came to Paris in 1650, and was first set to music by Lully. It was at first a gay and lively dance, but on being brought to court it soon lost its sportive character and became grave and dignified. It is mentioned by Beauchamps, the father of dancing-masters, who flourished in Louis XIV.'s reign, and also by Blondy, his pupil; but it was Pecour who really gave the minuet its popularity, and although it was improved and made perfect by Dauberval, Gardel, Marcel and Vestris, it was in Louis XV.'s reign that it saw its golden age. It was then a dance for two in moderate triple time, and was generally followed by the gavotte. Afterwards the minuet was considerably developed, and with the gavotte became chiefly a stage dance and a means of display; but it should be remembered that the minuets which are now danced on the stage are generally highly elaborated with a view to their spectacular effect, and have imported into them steps and figures which do not belong to the minuet at all, but are borrowed from all kinds of other dances. The original court minuet was a grave and simple dance, although it did not retain its simplicity for long. But when it became elaborated it was glorified and moulded into a perfect expression of an age in which deportment was most sedulously cultivated and most brilliantly polished. The "languishing eye and smiling mouth" had their due effect in the minuet; it was a school for chivalry, courtesy and ceremony; the hundred slow graceful movements and curtseys, the pauses which had to be filled by neatly-turned compliments, the beauty and bravery of attire--all were eloquent of graces and outward refinements which we cannot boast now. The fact that the measure of the minuet has become incorporated in the structure of the symphony shows how important was its place in the polite world. The _Gavotte_, which was often danced as a pendant to the minuet, was also originally a peasant's dance, a _danse des Gavots_, and consisted chiefly of kissing and capering. It also became stiff and artificial, and in the later and more prudish half of the 18th century the ladies received bouquets instead of kisses in dancing the gavotte. It rapidly became a stage dance, and it has never been restored to the ballroom. Gretry attempted to revive it, but his arrangement never became popular. Other dances which were naturalized in France were the _Ecossaise_, popular in 1760; the _Cotillon_, fashionable under Charles X., derived from the peasant _branles_ and danced by ladies in short skirts; the _Galop_, imported from Germany; the _Lancers_, invented by Laborde in 1836; the _Polka_, brought by a dancing-master from Prague in 1840; the _Schottische_, also Bohemian, first introduced in 1844; the _Bourree_, or French clog-dance; the _Quadrille_, known in the 18th century as the _Contre-danse_; and the _Waltz_, which was danced as a _volte_ by Henry III. of France, but only became popular in the beginning of the 19th century. We shall return to the history of some of these later dances in discussing the dances at present in use.
If France has been the nursery and school of the art of dancing, Spain is its true home. There it is part of the national life, the inevitable expression of the gay, contented, irresponsible, sunburnt nature of the people. The form of Spanish dances has hardly changed; some of them are of great antiquity, and may be traced back with hardly a break to the performances in ancient Rome of the famous dancing-girls of Cadiz. The connexion is lost during the period of the Arab invasion, but the art was not neglected, and Jovellanos suggests that it took refuge in the Asturias. At any rate, dances of the 10th and 12th centuries have been preserved uncorrupted. The earliest dances known were the _Turdion_, the _Gibidana_, the _Pie-de-gibao_, and (later) the _Madama Orleans_, the _Alemana_ and the _Pavana_. Under Philip IV. theatrical dancing was in high popularity, and ballets were organized with extraordinary magnificence of decoration and costume. They supplanted the national dances, and the _Zarabanda_ and _Chacona_ were practically extinct in the 18th century. It is at this period that the famous modern Spanish dances, the _Bolero_, _Seguidilla_ and the _Fandango_, first appear. Of these the _Fandango_ is the most important. It is danced by two people in 6-8 time, beginning slowly and tenderly, the rhythm marked by the click of castanets, the snapping of the fingers and the stamping of feet, and the speed gradually increasing until a whirl of exaltation is reached. A feature of the _Fandango_ and also of the _Seguidilla_ is a sudden pause of the music towards the end of each measure, upon which the dancers stand rigid in the attitudes in which the stopping of the music found them, and only move again when the music is resumed. M. Vuillier, in his _History of Dancing_, gives the following description of the _Fandango_:--"Like an electric shock, the notes of the Fandango animate all hearts. Men and women, young and old, acknowledge the power of this air over the ears and soul of every Spaniard. The young men spring to their places, rattling castanets or imitating their sound by snapping their fingers. The girls are remarkable for the willowy languor and lightness of their movements, the voluptuousness of their attitudes--beating the exactest time with tapping heels. Partners tease and entreat and pursue each other by turns. Suddenly the music stops, and each dancer shows his skill by remaining absolutely motionless, bounding again into the full life of the Fandango as the orchestra strikes up. The sound of the guitar, the violin, the rapid tic-tac of heels (_taconeos_), the crack of fingers and castanets, the supple swaying of the dancers, fill the spectator with ecstasy. The measure whirls along in a rapid triple time. Spangles glitter; the sharp clank of ivory and ebony castanets beats out the cadence of strange, throbbing, deepening notes--assonances unknown to music, but curiously characteristic, effective and intoxicating. Amidst the rustle of silks, smiles gleam over white teeth, dark eyes sparkle and droop and flash up again in flame. All is flutter and glitter, grace and animation--quivering, sonorous, passionate, seductive."
The _Bolero_ is a comparatively modern dance, having been invented by Sebastian Cerezo, a celebrated dancer of the time of King Charles III. It is remarkable for the free use made in it of the arms, and is said to be derived from the ancient _Zarabanda_, a violent and licentious dance, which has entirely disappeared, and with which the later Saraband has practically nothing in common. The step of the _Bolero_ is low and gliding but well marked. It is danced by one or more couples. The _Seguidilla_ is hardly less ancient than the _Fandango_, which it resembles. Every province in Spain has its own _Seguidilla_, and the dance is accompanied by _coplas_, or verses, which are sung either to traditional melodies or to the tunes of local composers; indeed, the national music of Spain consists largely of these coplas. Baron Davillier, among several specimens of _Seguidillas_, gives this one
"Mi corazon volando Se fue a tu pecho; Le cortaste las alas, Y quedo dentro. Por atrevido Se quedara por siempre En el metido."[5]
M. Vuillier quotes a _copla_ which he heard at Polenza, in the Balearic Islands. This verse is formed on the rhythm of the _Malaguena_:
"Una estrella se ha pardida En el ciel y no parece; En tu cara se ha metido; Y en tu frente resplandece."[6]
The _Jota_ is the national dance of Aragon, a lively and splendid, but withal dignified and reticent, dance derived from the 16th-century _Passacaille_. It is still used as a religious dance. The _Cachuca_ is a light and graceful dance in triple time. It is performed by a single dancer of either sex. The head and shoulders play an important part in the movements of this dance. Other provincial dances now in existence are the _Jaleo de Jerez_, a whirling measure performed by gipsies, the _Palotea_, the _Polo_, the _Gallegada_, the _Muyneria_, the _Habas Verdes_, the _Zapateado_, the _Zorongo_, the _Vito_, the _Tirano_ and the _Tripola Trapola_. Most of these dances are named either after the places where they are danced or after the composers who have invented tunes for them. Many of them are but slight variations from the _Fandango_ and _Seguidilla_.
The history of court dancing in Great Britain is practically the same as that of France, and need not occupy much of our attention here. But there are strictly national dances still in existence which are quite peculiar to the country, and may be traced back to the dances and games of the Saxon gleemen. The Egg dance and the Carole were both Saxon dances, the Carole being a Yule-tide festivity, of which the present-day Christmas carol is a remnant. The oldest dances which remain unchanged in England are the Morris dances, which were introduced in the time of Edward III. The name Morris or Moorish refers to the origin of these dances, which are said to have been brought back by John of Gaunt from his travels in Spain. The Morris dances are associated with May-day, and are danced round a maypole to a lively and capering step, some of the performers having bells fastened to their knees in the Moorish manner. They are dressed as characters of old English tradition, such as Robin Hood, Maid Marian, Friar Tuck, Little John and Tom the Piper. All the true country dances of Great Britain are of an active and lively measure; they may all, indeed, be said to be founded on the jig; and the hornpipe, which is a kind of jig, is the national dance of England. Captain Cook, on his voyages, made his sailors dance hornpipes in calm weather to keep them in good health. A characteristic of English dances was that they partook to a great extent of the nature of games; there was little variety in the steps, which were nearly all those of the jig or hornpipe, but these were incorporated into various games or plays, of which the Morris dances were the most elaborate. Richard Baxter wrote that "sometimes the Morris dancers would come into the church in all their linen and scarves and antic dresses, with Morris bells jingling at their legs; and as soon as Common Prayer was read, did haste and presently to their play again." May-day has always been celebrated in England with rustic dances and festivities. Before the Reformation there were no really national dances in use at court; but in the reign of Elizabeth the homely, domestic style of dancing reached the height of its popularity. Remnants of many of these dances remain to-day in the games played by children and country people; "Hunt the Slipper," "Kiss in the Ring," "Here we go round the Mulberry Bush," are examples. All the Tudor dances were kissing dances, and must have been the occasion of a great deal of merriment. Mrs Groves gives the following description of the Cushion dance:--"The dance is begun by a single person, man or woman, who, taking a cushion in hand, dances about the room, and at the end of a short time stops and sings: 'This dance it will no farther go,' to which the musician answers: 'I pray you, good sir, why say so?' 'Because Joan Sanderson will not come to.' 'She must come to whether she will or no,' returns the musician, and then the dancer lays the cushion before a woman; she kneels and he kisses her, singing 'Welcome, Joan Sanderson.' Then she rises, takes up the cushion, and both dance and sing 'Prinkum prankum is a fine dance, and shall we go dance it over again?' Afterwards the woman takes the cushion and does as the man did." Other popular dances--generally adapted to the tunes of popular songs, the nature of some of which may be guessed from their titles--were the Trenchmore, Omnium-gatherum, Tolly-polly, Hoite cum toite, Dull Sir John, Faine I would, Sillinger, All in a Garden Green, An Old Man's a Bed Full of Bones, If All the World were Paper, John, Come Kiss Me Now, Cuckholds All Awry, Green Sleeves and Pudding Pies, Lumps of Pudding, Under and Over, Up Tails All, The Slaughter House, Rub her Down with Straw, Have at thy Coat Old Woman, The Happy Marriage, Dissembling Love, Sweet Kate, Once I Loved a Maiden Fair. Dancing practically disappeared during the Puritan _regime_, but with the Restoration it again became popular. It underwent no considerable developments, however, until the reign of Queen Anne, when the glories of Bath were revived in the beginning of the 18th century, and Beau Nash drew up his famous codes of rules for the regulation of dress and manners, and founded the balls in which the polite French dances completely eclipsed the simpler English ones. An account of a dancing lesson witnessed by a fond parent at this time is worth quoting, as it shows how far the writer (but not his daughter) had departed from the jolly, romping traditions of the old English dances:--"As the best institutions are liable to corruption, so, sir, I must acquaint you that very great abuses are crept into this entertainment. I was amazed to see my girl handed by and handing young fellows with so much familiarity, and I could not have thought it had been my child. They very often made use of a most impudent and lascivious step called _setting_ to partners, which I know not how to describe to you but by telling you that it is the very reverse of _back_ to _back_. At last an impudent young dog bid the fiddlers play a dance called _Moll Patley_, and, after having made two or three capers, ran to his partner, locked his arms in hers, and whisked her round cleverly above ground in such a manner that I, who sat upon one of the lowest benches, saw farther above her shoe than I can think fit to acquaint you with. I could no longer endure these enormities, wherefore, just as my girl was going to be made a whirligig, I ran in, seized my child and carried her home." What we may call polite dancing, when it became fashionable, soon invaded London, its first home being Madame Cornely's famous Carlisle House in Soho Square. Ranelagh and Vauxhall and Almack's were all extensively patronized, and the rage for magnificent entertainment and dancing culminated in the erection of the palatial Pantheon in Oxford Street--a place so universally patronized that even Dr Johnson was to be found there. White's and Boodle's were also famous assembly rooms, but the most exclusive of all these establishments was Almack's, the original of Brooks's Club.
The only true national dances of Scotland are reels, strathspeys and flings, while in Ireland there is but one dance--the jig, which is there, however, found in many varieties and expressive of many shades of emotion, from the maddest gaiety to the wildest lament. Curiously enough, although the Welsh dance often, they have no strictly national dances.
Dancing in present-day society is a comparatively simple affair, as five-sixths of almost all ball programmes consists of waltzes. The origin of the waltz is a much-debated subject, the French, Italians and Bavarians each claiming for their respective countries the honour of having given birth to it. As a matter of fact the waltz, as it is now danced, comes from Germany; but it is equally true that its real origin is French, since it is a development of the _Volte_, which in its turn came from the _Lavolta_ of Provence, one of the most ancient of French dances. The _Lavolta_ was fashionable in the 16th century and was the delight of the Valois court. The _Volte_ danced by Henry III. was really a _Valse a deux pas_; and Castil-Blaze says that "the waltz which we took again from the Germans in 1795 had been a French dance for four hundred years." The change, it is true, came upon it during its visit to Germany, hence the theory of its German origin. The first German waltz tune is dated 1770--"Ach! du lieber Augustin." It was first danced at the Paris opera in 1793, in Gardel's ballet _La Dansomanie_. It was introduced to English ballrooms in 1812, when it roused a storm of ridicule and opposition, but it became popular when danced at Almack's by the emperor Alexander in 1816. The waltz _a trois temps_ has a sliding step in which the movements of the knees play an important part. The _tempo_ is moderate, so as to allow three distinct movements on the three beats of each bar; and the waltz is written in 3-4 time and in eight-bar sentences. Walking up and down the room and occasionally breaking into the step of the dance is not true waltzing, and the habit of pushing one's partner backwards along the room is an entirely English one. But the dancer must be able to waltz equally well in all directions, pivoting and crossing the feet when necessary in the reverse turn. It need hardly be said that the feet should never leave the floor in the true waltz. Gungl, Waldteufel and the Strauss family may be said to have moulded the modern waltz to its present form by their rhythmical and agreeable compositions. There are variations which include hopping and lurching steps; these are degradations, and foreign to the spirit of the true waltz.
The _Quadrille_ is of some antiquity, and a dance of this kind was first brought to England from Normandy by William the Conqueror, and was common all over Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. The term quadrille means a kind of card game, and the dance is supposed to be in some way connected with the game. A species of quadrille appeared in a French ballet in 1745, and since that time the dance has gone by that name. Like many other dances, it came from Paris to Almack's in 1815, and in its modern form was danced in England for the first time by Lady Jersey, Lady Harriet Butler, Lady Susan Ryder and Miss Montgomery, with Count Aldegarde, Mr Montgomery, Mr Harley and Mr Montague. It immediately became popular. It then consisted of very elaborate steps, which in England have been simplified until the degenerate practice has become common of walking through the dance. The quadrille, properly danced, has many of the graces of the minuet. It is often stated that the square dance is of modern French origin. This is incorrect, and probably arises from a mistaken identification of the terms quadrille and square dance. "Dull Sir John" and "Faine I would" were square dances popular in England three hundred years ago.
An account of the country-dance, with the names of some of the old dance-tunes, has been given above. The word is not, as has been supposed, an adaptation of the French _contre-danse_, neither is the dance itself French in origin. According to the _New English Dictionary_, _contre-danse_ is a corruption of "country-dance," possibly due to a peculiar feature of many of such dances, like Sir Roger de Coverley, where the partners are drawn up in lines opposite to each other. The earliest appearance of the French word is in its application to English dances, which are contrasted with the French; thus in the _Memoirs of Grammont_, Hamilton says: "On quitta les danses francaises pour se mettre aux contre-danses." The English "country-dances" were introduced into France in the early part of the 18th century and became popular; later French modifications were brought back to England under the French form of the name, and this, no doubt, caused the long-accepted but confused derivation.
The _Lancers_ were invented by Laborde in Paris in 1836. They were brought over to England in 1850, and were made fashionable by Madame Sacre at her classes in Hanover Square Rooms. The first four ladies to dance the lancers in England were Lady Georgina Lygon, Lady Jane Fielding, Mdlle. Olga de Lechner and Miss Berkeley.
The _Polka_, the chief of the Bohemian national dances, was adopted by Society in 1835 at Prague. Josef Neruda had seen a peasant girl dancing and singing the polka, and had noted down the tune and the steps. From Prague it readily spread to Vienna, and was introduced to Paris by Cellarius, a dancing-master, who gave it at the Odeon in 1840. It took the public by storm, and spread like an infection through England and America. Everything was named after the polka, from public-houses to articles of dress. Mr Punch exerted his wit on the subject weekly, and even _The Times_ complained that its French correspondence was interrupted, since the polka had taken the place of politics in Paris. The true polka has three slightly jumping steps, danced on the first three beats of a four-quaver bar, the last beat of which is employed as a rest while the toe of the unemployed foot is drawn up against the heel of the other.
The _Galop_ is strictly speaking a Hungarian dance, which became popular in Paris in 1830. But some kind of a dance corresponding to the galop was always indulged in after _Voltes_ and _Contre-danses_, as a relief from their grave and constrained measures.
The _Washington Post_ and several varieties of _Barn-dance_ are of American origin, and became fashionable towards the end of the 19th century.
The _Polka-Mazurka_ is extremely popular in Vienna and Budapest, and is a favourite theme with Hungarian composers. The six movements of this dance occupy two bars of 3-4 time, and consist of a mazurka step joined to the polka. It is of Polish origin.
The _Polonaise_ and _Mazurka_ are both Polish dances, and are still fashionable in Russia and Poland. Every State ball in Russia is opened with the ceremonious Polonaise.
The _Schottische_, a kind of modified polka, was "created" by Markowski, who was the proprietor of a famous dancing academy in 1850. The _Highland Schottische_ is a fling. The Fling and Reel are Celtic dances, and form the national dances of Scotland and Denmark. They are complicated measures of a studied and classical order, in which free use is made of the arms and of cries and stampings. The _Strathspey_ is a slow and grandiose modification of the Reel.
_Sir Roger de Coverley_ is the only one of the old English social dances which has survived to the present day, and it is frequently danced at the conclusion of the less formal sort of balls. It is a merry and lively game in which all the company take part, men and women facing each other in two long rows. The dancers are constantly changing places in such a way that if the dance is carried to its conclusion everyone will have danced with everyone else. The music was first printed in 1685, and is sometimes written in 2-4 time, sometimes in 6-8 time, and sometimes in 3-9 time.
The _Cotillon_ is a modern development of the French dance of the same name referred to above. It is an extremely elaborate dance, in which a great many toys and accessories are employed; hundreds of figures may be contrived for it, in which presents, toys, lighted tapers, biscuits, air-balloons and hurdles are used.
_Ballet, &c._--The modern ballet (q.v.) seems to have been first produced on a considerable scale in 1489 at Tortona, before Duke Galeazzo of Milan. It soon became a common amusement on great occasions at the European courts. The ordinary length was five acts, each containing several _entrees_, and each _entree_ containing several quadrilles. The accessories of painting, sculpture and movable scenery were employed, and the representation often took place at night. The allegorical, moral and ludicrous ballets were introduced to France by Baif in the time of Catherine de' Medici. The complex nature of these exhibitions may be gathered from the title of one played at Turin in 1634--_La verita nemica della apparenza, sollevata dal tempo._ Of the ludicrous, one of the best known was the Venetian ballet of _I a verita raminga_. Now and then, however, a high political aim may be discovered, as in the "Prosperity of the Arms of France," danced before Richelieu in 1641, or "Religion uniting Great Britain to the rest of the World," danced at London on the marriage of Princess Elizabeth to the elector Frederick. Outside the theatre, the Portuguese revived an ambulatory ballet which was played on the canonization of Carlo Borromeo, and to which they gave the name of the Tyrrhenic Pomp. During this time also the ceremonial ball (with all its elaborate detail of _courante_, minuet and saraband) was cultivated. The fathers of the church assembled at Trent gave a ball in which they took a part. Masked balls, too, resembling in some respects the Roman Saturnalia, became common towards the end of the 17th century. In France a ball was sometimes diversified by a masquerade, carried on by a limited number of persons in character-costume. Two of the most famous were named "au Sauvage" and "des Sorciers." In 1715 the regent of France started a system of public balls in the opera-house, which did not succeed. Dancing, also, formed a leading element in the Opera Francais introduced by Quinault. His subjects were chiefly marvellous, drawn from the classical mythologies; and the choral dancing was not merely _divertissement_, but was intended to assist and enrich the dramatic action of the whole piece.
_Musical Gymnastics._--Dancing is an important branch of physical education. Long ago Locke pointed out (_Education_, SS 67, 196) that the effects of dancing are not confined to the body; it gives to children, he says, not mere outward gracefulness of motion, but manly thoughts and a becoming confidence. Only lately, however, has the advantage been recognized of making gymnastics attractive by connecting it with what Homer calls "the sweetest and most perfect of human enjoyments." The practical principle against heavy weights and intense monotonous exertion of particular muscles was thus stated by Samuel Smiles (_Physical Education_, p. 148):--"The greatest benefit is derived from that exercise which calls into action the greatest number of muscles, and in which the action of these is intermitted at the shortest intervals." It required only one further step to see how, if light and changing movements were desirable, music would prove a powerful stimulus to gymnastics. It touches the play-impulse, and substitutes a spontaneous flow of energy for the mechanical effort of the will. The force of imitation or contagion, one of the most valuable forces in education, is also much increased by the state of exhilaration into which dancing puts the system. This idea was embodied by Froebel in his _Kindergarten_ plan, and was developed by Jahn and Schreber in Germany, by Dio Lewis in the United States, and by Ling (the author of the _Swedish Cure Movement_) in Sweden.
AUTHORITIES.--For the old division of the _Ars Gymnastica_ into _palaestrica_ and _saltatoria_, and of the latter into _cubistica_, _sphaeristica_ and _orchestica_, see the learned work of Hieronymus Mercurialis, _De arte Gymnastica_ (Amsterdam, 1572). Cubistic was the art of throwing somersaults, and is described minutely by Tuccaro in his _Trois Dialogues_ (Paris, 1599). Sphaeristic included several complex games at ball and tilting--the Greek [Greek: korukos], and the Roman _trigonalis_ and _paganica_. Orchestic, divided by Plutarch into _latio_, _figura_ and _indicatio_, was really imitative dancing, the "silent poetry" of Simonides. The importance of the [Greek: cheironomia] or hand-movement is indicated by Ovid:--"Si vox est, canta; si mollia brachia, salta." For further information as to modern dancing, see Rameau's _Le maitre a danser_ (1726); Querlon's _Le triomphe des graces_ (1774); Cahousac, _La danse ancienne et moderne_ (1754); Vuillier, _History of Dancing_ (Eng. trans., 1897); Giraudet, _Traite de la danse_ (1900). (W. C. S.; A. B. F. Y.)
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Compare the Chica of South America, the Fandango of Spain, and the Angrismene or la Fachee of modern Greece. See also _Romaunt de la rose_, v. 776.
[2] The Greek [Greek: karpaia] represented the surprise by robbers of a warrior ploughing a field. The gymnopaedic dances imitated the sterner sports of the palaestra.
[3] The Greek Lenaea and Dionysia had a distinct reference to the seasons.
[4] The Pantomimus was an outgrowth from the _canticum_ or choral singing of the older comedies and _fabulae Atellanae_.
[5] "My heart flew to thy breast. Thou didst cut its wings, so that it remained there. And now it has waxed daring, and will stay with thee for evermore."
[6] "A star is lost and appears not in the sky; in thy face it has set itself; on thy brow it shines."
DANCOURT, FLORENT CARTON (1661-1725), French dramatist and actor, was born at Fontainebleau on the 1st of November 1661. He belonged to a family of rank, and his parents entrusted his education to Pere de la Rue, a Jesuit, who made earnest efforts to induce him to join the order. But he had no religious vocation and proceeded to study law. He practised at the bar for some time, but his marriage to the daughter of the comedian Francois Lenoir de la Thorilliere led him to become an actor, and in 1685, in spite of the strong opposition of his family, he appeared at the Theatre Francais. His gifts as a comedian gave him immediate and marked success, both with the public and with his fellow actors. He was the spokesman of his company on occasions of state, and in this capacity he frequently appeared before Louis XIV., who treated him with great favour. One of his most famous impersonations was Alceste in the _Misanthrope_ of Moliere. His first play, _Le Notaire obligeant_, produced in 1685, was well received. _La Desolation des joueuses_ (1687) was still more successful. _Le Chevalier a la mode_ (1687) is generally regarded as his best work, though his claim to original authorship in this and some other cases has been disputed. In _Le Chevalier a la mode_ appears the _bourgeoise_ infatuated with the desire to be an aristocrat. The type is developed in _Les Bourgeoises a la mode_ (1692) and _Les Bourgeoises de qualite_ (1700). Dancourt was a prolific author, and produced some sixty plays in all. Some years before his death he terminated his career both as an actor and as an author by retiring to his chateau at Courcelles le Roi, in Berry, where he employed himself in making a poetical translation of the Psalms and in writing a sacred tragedy. He died on the 7th of December 1725. The plays of Dancourt are faithful descriptions of the manners of the time, and as such have real historical value. The characters are drawn with a realistic touch that led to his being styled by Charles Palissot the Teniers of comedy. He is very successful in his delineation of low life, and especially of the peasantry. The dialogue is sparkling, witty and natural. Many of the incidents of his plots were derived from actual occurrences in the "fast" and scandalous life of the period, and several of his characters were drawn from well-known personages of the day. Most of the plays incline to the type of farce rather than of pure comedy. Voltaire defined his talent in the words: "Ce que Regnard etait a l'egard de Moliere dans la haute comedie, le comedien Dancourt l'etait dans la farce."
His two daughters, Manon and Marie Anne (Mimi), both obtained success on the stage of the Theatre Francais.
The complete works of Dancourt were published in 1760 (12 vols. 12mo). An edition of his _Theatre choisi_, with a preface by F. Sarcey, appeared in 1884.
DANDELION (_Taraxacum officinale_), a perennial herb belonging to the natural order Compositae. The plant has a wide range, being found in Europe, Central Asia, North America, and the Arctic regions, and also in the south temperate zone. The leaves form a spreading rosette on the very short stem; they are smooth, of a bright shining green, sessile, and tapering downwards. The name dandelion is derived from the French _dent-de-lion_, an appellation given on account of the tooth-like lobes of the leaves. The long tap-root has a simple or many-headed rhizome; it is black externally, and is very difficult of extirpation. The flower-stalks are smooth, brittle, leafless, hollow, and very numerous. The flowers bloom from April till August, and remain open from five or six in the morning to eight or nine at night. The flower-heads are of a golden yellow, and reach 1(1/2) to 2 in. in width; the florets are all strap-shaped. The fruits are olive or dull yellow in colour, and are each surmounted by a long beak, on which rests a pappus of delicate white hairs, which occasions the ready dispersal of the fruit by the wind; each fruit contains one seed. The globes formed by the plumed fruits are nearly two inches in diameter. The involucre consists of an outer spreading (or reflexed) and an inner and erect row of bracts. In all parts of the plant a milky juice is contained, which has a somewhat complex composition. The chief constituent is taraxacin, a neutral principle. In addition the juice contains taraxacerin (derived from the former), asparagin, inulin, resins and salts. An extract (dose 5-15 grains), a liquid extract (dose (1/2)-1 drachm) and a succus (dose 1-2 drachms) of the root are all used medicinally. For the purposes formerly recognized taraxacum is now never used, but it has been shown to possess definite cholagogue properties, and may therefore be prescribed along with ammonium chloride in cases of hepatic constipation, which it very constantly relieves. The root--which is the medicinal product--is most bitter from March to July, but the milky juice it contains is less abundant in the summer than in the autumn. For this reason, the extract and succus are usually prepared during the months of September and October. After a frost a change takes place in the root, which loses its bitterness to a large extent. In the dried state the root will not keep well, being quickly attacked by insects. Externally it is brown and wrinkled, internally white, with a yellow centre and concentric paler rings. It is two inches to a foot long, and about a quarter to half an inch in diameter. The leaves are bitter, but are sometimes eaten as a salad; they serve as food for silkworms when mulberry leaves are not to be had. The root is roasted as a substitute for coffee. Several varieties of the dandelion are recognized by botanists; they differ in the degree and mode of cutting of the leaf-margin and the erect or spreading character of the outer series of bracts. The variety _palustre_, which affects boggy situations, and flowers in late summer and autumn, has nearly entire leaves, and the outer bracts of its involucre are erect.
DANDOLO, the name of one of the most illustrious patrician families of Venice, of which the earliest recorded member was one of the electors of the first doge (A.D. 697). The Dandolo gave to Venice four doges; of these the first and most famous was Enrico Dandolo (c. 1120-1205), elected on the 1st of January 1193 (_more Veneto_, 1192). He had distinguished himself in various military enterprises and diplomatic negotiations in the course of an active career, and although over seventy years old and of very weak sight (the story that he had been made blind by the emperor Manuel Comnenus while he was at Constantinople is a legend), he proved a most energetic and capable ruler. His first care was to re-establish Venetian authority over the Dalmatians who had rebelled with the king of Hungary's protection, but he failed to capture Zara, owing to the arrival of the Pisan fleet, and although the latter was defeated by the Venetians, the undertaking was suspended. In the meanwhile the situation in the East was becoming critical. The Eastern emperor Isaac II. Angelus had been deposed, imprisoned, and blinded by his brother Alexius, who usurped the throne. The new emperor proved unfriendly to the Venetians and made difficulties about renewing their privileges. In the West a new crusade to the Holy Land was in preparation, and the crusaders sent ambassadors, one of whom was Villehardouin, the historian of the expedition, to ask the Venetians to give them passage and means of transport (1201). After much deliberation the republic agreed to transport 4500 horse and 29,000 foot to Palestine with provisions for one year, for a sum of 85,000 marks; in addition 50 Venetian galleys would be provided free of charge, while Venice was to receive half the conquests made by the crusaders. But as the time agreed upon for the departure approached, it appeared that the crusaders had not the money to pay the stipulated advance. Dandolo then proposed that if they helped him to reduce Zara payment might be deferred. Some of the crusaders disapproved of this attack on a Christian city, but the majority, only too glad of an opportunity for plunder, willingly agreed. The expedition sailed on the 8th of October 1202, three hundred sail in all, with the aged Dandolo himself in command. Zara was taken and pillaged, for which the Venetians were severely reprimanded by the pope. But new possibilities of conquest were now opened up at the suggestion of Alexius, the son of the deposed emperor Isaac. He promised the crusaders that if they went first to Constantinople and re-instated Isaac, the latter would maintain them for a year, contribute 10,000 men and 200,000 marks for the expedition to Egypt, and subject the Eastern to the Western Church. The proposal was accepted, largely owing to the influence of Dandolo, who saw in it a means for further extending the dominions and commerce of the Venetians. After wintering at Zara the fleet set sail on the 7th of April 1203, and on the 23rd of June anchored in the Bosporus. After long parleys the city was attacked by land and sea on the 17th of July (the fleet being commanded by Dandolo) and taken by storm. The emperor Alexius fled, and Isaac reoccupied the throne, but, although grateful to the crusaders, he was not disposed to fulfil the promises made by his son. Tumults between crusaders and Greeks arose, and the people of the city, excited by a certain Alexis Murzuphlus, murmured at the new taxes which were imposed on them. A revolt broke out, and an officer named Nicholas Canabus was placed on the throne; Prince Alexius was strangled by order of Murzuphlus, Isaac died of the shock, Murzuphlus imprisoned Canabus and made himself emperor (Alexius V.). The crusaders thereupon attacked Constantinople a second time (12th of April 1204), and after a desperate struggle captured the city, which they subjected to hideous carnage. Immense booty was secured, the Venetians obtaining among other treasures the four bronze horses which adorn the facade of St Mark's. The Eastern empire was abolished, and a feudal Latin empire erected in its stead. The leaders of the crusaders then met to elect an emperor. Dandolo was one of the candidates, but Count Baldwin of Flanders was elected and crowned on the 23rd of May. The Venetians were given Crete and several other islands and ports in the Levant, which formed an uninterrupted chain from Venice to the Black Sea, a large part of Constantinople (whence the doge assumed the title of "lord of a quarter and a half of Romania"), and many valuable privileges. But hardly had the new state been established when various provinces rose in rebellion and the Bulgarians invaded Thrace. A Latin army was defeated by them at Adrianople (April 1205), and the emperor himself was captured and killed, the fragments of the force being saved only by Dandolo's prowess. But he was now old and ill, and on the 23rd of June 1205 he died. He certainly consolidated Venice's dominion in the East and increased its commercial prosperity to a very high degree. But the policy he pursued in turning the crusaders against Constantinople, in order to promote the interests of the republic, while serving to break up the Greek empire, created in its place a Latin state that was far too feeble to withstand the onslaught of Greek national feeling and Orthodox fanaticism; at the same time the Greeks were greatly weakened and their power of resisting the Turks consequently lessened. This paved the way for the Turkish invasion of Europe, which proved an unmixed calamity for all Christendom, Venice included.
Enrico Dandolo's sons distinguished themselves in the public service, and his grandson Giovanni was doge from 1280 to 1289. The latter's son Andrea commanded the Venetian fleet in the war against Genoa in 1294, and, having been defeated and taken prisoner, he was so overwhelmed with shame that he committed suicide by beating his head against the mast (according to Andrea Navagero). Francesco Dandolo, also known as Dandolo Cane, was doge from 1329 to 1339. During his reign the Venetians went to war with Martino della Scala, lord of Verona, with the result that they occupied Treviso and otherwise extended their possessions on the _terra firma_. Andrea Dandolo (1307/10-1354), the last doge of the family, reigned from 1343 to 1354. He had been the first Venetian noble to take a degree at the university of Padua, where he had also been professor of jurisprudence. The terrible plague of 1348, wars with Genoa, against whom the great naval victory of Lojera was won in 1353, many treaties, and the subjugation of the seventh revolt of Zara, are the chief events of his reign. The poet Petrarch, who was the doge's intimate friend, was sent to Venice on a peace mission by Giovanni Visconti, lord of Milan. "Just, incorruptible, full of zeal and of love for his country, and at the same time learned, of rare eloquence, wise, affable, and humane," is the poet's verdict on Andrea Dandolo (_Varior. epist._ xix.). Dandolo died on the 7th of September 1354. He is chiefly famous as a historian, and his _Annals_ to the year 1280 are one of the chief sources of Venetian history for that period; they have been published by Muratori (_Rer. Ital. Script._ tom. xxi.). He also had a new code of laws compiled (issued in 1346) in addition to the statute of Jacopo Tiepolo.
Another well-known member of this family was Silvestro Dandolo (1796-1866), son of Girolamo Dandolo, who was the last admiral of the Venetian republic and died an Austrian admiral in 1847. Silvestro was an Italian patriot and took part in the revolution of 1848.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--S. Romanin, _Storia documentata di Venezia_ (Venice, 1853); among more recent books H. Kretschmayr's excellent _Geschichte von Venedig_ (Gotha, 1905) should be consulted: it contains a bibliography of the authorities and all the latest researches and discoveries; C. Cipolla and G. Monticolo have published many essays and editions of chronicles in the _Archivio Veneto_, and the "Fonti per la Storia d'Italia," in the _Istituto storico italiano_; H. Simonsfeld has written a life of _Andrea Dandolo_ in German (Munich, 1876). (L. V.*)
DANDOLO, VINCENZO, COUNT (1758-1819), Italian chemist and agriculturist, was born at Venice, of good family, though not of the same house as the famous doges, and began his career as a physician. He was a prominent opponent of the oligarchical party in the revolution which took place on the approach of Napoleon; and he was one of the envoys sent to seek the protection of the French. When the request was refused, and Venice was placed under Austria, he removed to Milan, where he was made member of the great council. In 1799, on the invasion of the Russians and the overthrow of the Cisalpine republic, Dandolo retired to Paris, where, in the same year, he published his treatise _Les Hommes nouveaux, ou moyen d'operer une regeneration nouvelle_. But he soon after returned to the neighbourhood of Milan, to devote himself to scientific agriculture. In 1805 Napoleon made him governor of Dalmatia, with the title of _provediteur general_, in which position Dandolo distinguished himself by his efforts to remove the wretchedness and idleness of the people, and to improve the country by draining the pestilential marshes and introducing better methods of agriculture. When, in 1809, Dalmatia was re-annexed to the Illyrian provinces, Dandolo returned to Venice, having received as his reward from the French emperor the title of count and several other distinctions. He died in his native city on the 13th of December 1819.
Dandolo published in Italian several treatises on agriculture, vine-cultivation, and the rearing of cattle and sheep; a work on silk-worms, which was translated into French by Fontanelle; a work on the discoveries in chemistry which were made in the last quarter of the 18th century (published 1796); and translations of several of the best French works on chemistry.
DANDY, a word of uncertain origin which about 1813-1816 became a London colloquialism for the exquisite or fop of the period. It seems to have been in use on the Scottish border at the end of the 18th century, its full form, it is suggested, being "Jack-a-Dandy," which from 1659 had a sense much like its later one. It is probably ultimately derived from the French _dandin_, "a ninny or booby," but a more direct derivation was suggested at the time of the uprise of the Regency dandies. In _The Northampton Mercury_, under date of the 17th of April 1819, occurs the following: "Origin of the word 'dandy.' This term, which has been recently applied to a species of reptile very common in the metropolis, appears to have arisen from a small silver coin struck by King Henry VII., of little value, called a _dandiprat_; and hence Bishop Fleetwood observes the term is applied to worthless and contemptible persons."
It was Beau Brummel, the high-priest of fashion, who gave dandyism its great vogue. But before his day foppery in dress had become something more than the personal eccentricity which it had been in the Stuart days and earlier. About the middle of the 18th century was founded the Macaroni Club. This was a band of young men of rank who had visited Italy and sought to introduce the southern elegances of manner and dress into England. The Macaronis gained their name from their introduction of the Italian dish to English tables, and were at their zenith about 1772, when their costume is described as "white silk breeches, very tight coat and vest with enormous white neckcloths, white silk stockings and diamond-buckled red-heeled shoes." For some time the moving spirit of the club was Charles James Fox. It was with the advent of Brummel, however, that the cult of dandyism became a social force. Beau Brummel was supreme dictator in matters of dress, and the prince regent is said to have wept when he disapproved of the cut of the royal coat. Around the Beau collected a band of young men whose insolent and affected manners made them universally unpopular. Their chief glory was their clothes. They wore coats of blue or brown cloth with brass buttons, the coat-tails almost touching the heels. Their trousers were buckskin, so tight that it is said they "could only be taken off as an eel would be divested of his skin." A pair of highly-polished Hessian boots, a waistcoat buttoned incredibly tight so as to produce a small waist, and opening at the breast to exhibit the frilled shirt and cravat, completed the costume of the true dandy. Upon the Beau's disgrace and ruin, Lord Alvanley was regarded as leader of the dandies and "first gentleman in England." Though in many ways a worthier man than Brummel, his vanity exposed him to much derision, and he fought a duel on Wimbledon Common with Morgan O'Connell, who, in the House of Commons, had called him a "bloated buffoon." After 1825 "dandy" lost its invidious meaning, and came to be applied generally to those who were neat in dress rather than to those guilty of effeminacy.
See Barbey D'Aurevilly, _Du dandysme et de G. Brummel_ (Paris, 1887).
DANEGELD, an English national tax originally levied by Aethelred II. (the Unready) as a means of raising the tribute which was the price of the temporary cessation of the Danish ravages. This expedient of buying off the invader was first adopted in 991 ou the advice of certain great men of the kingdom. It was repeated in 994, 1002, 1007 and 1012. With the accession of the Danish king Canute, the original _raison d'etre_ of the tax ceased to exist, but it continued to be levied, though for a different purpose, assuming now the character of an occasional war-tax. It was exceedingly burdensome, and its abolition by Edward the Confessor in 1051 was welcomed as a great relief. William the Conqueror revived it immediately after his accession, as a convenient method of national taxation, and it was with the object of facilitating its collection that he ordered the compilation of Domesday Book. It continued to be levied until 1163, in which year the name Danegeld appears for the last time in the Rolls. Its place was taken by other imposts of similar character but different name.
DANELAGH, the name given to those districts in the north and north-east of England which were settled by Danes and other Scandinavian invaders during the period of the Viking invasions. The real settlement of England by Danes began in the year 866 with the appearance of a large army in East Anglia, which turned north in the following year. The Danes captured York and overthrew the Northumbrian kingdom, setting up a puppet king of their own. They encamped in Nottingham in 868, and Northern Mercia was soon in their hands; in 870 Edmund, king of the East Anglians, fell before them. During the next few years they maintained their hold on Mercia, and we have at this time coins minted in London with the inscription "Alfdene rex," the name of the Danish leader. In the winter of 874-875 they advanced as far north as the Tyne, and at the same time Cambridge was occupied. In the meantime the great struggle with Alfred the Great was being carried on. This was terminated by the peace of Wedmore in 878, when the Danes withdrew from Wessex and settled finally in East Anglia under their king Guthrum. This peace was finally and definitely ratified in the document known as the peace of Alfred and Guthrum, which is probably to be referred to the year 880. The peace determined the boundary of Guthrum's East Anglian kingdom. According to the terms of the agreement the boundary was to run along the Thames estuary to the mouth of the Lea (a few miles east of London), then up the Lea to its source near Leighton Buzzard, then due north to Bedford, then eastwards up the Ouse to Watling Street somewhere near Fenny or Stony Stratford. From this point the boundary is left undefined, perhaps because the kingdoms of Alfred and Guthrum ceased to be conterminous here, though if Northamptonshire was included in the kingdom of Guthrum, as seems likely, the boundary must be carried a few miles along Watling Street. Thus Northern Mercia, East Anglia, the greater part of Essex and Northumbria were handed over to the Danes and henceforth constitute the district known as the Danelagh.
The three chief divisions of the Danelagh were (1) the kingdom of Northumbria, (2) the kingdom of East Anglia, (3) the district of the Five (Danish) Boroughs--lands grouped round Leicester, Nottingham, Derby, Stamford and Lincoln, and forming a loose confederacy. Of the history of the two Danish kingdoms we know very little. Guthrum of East Anglia died in 890, and later we hear of a king Eric or Eohric who died in 902. Another Guthrum was ruling there in the days of Edward the Elder. The history of the Northumbrian kingdom is yet more obscure. After an interregnum consequent on the death of Healfdene the kingdom passed in 883 to one Guthred, son of Hardicanute, who ruled till 894, when his realm was taken over by King Alfred, though probably only under a very loose sovereignty. It may be noted here that Northumbria north of the Tyne, the old Bernicia, seems never to have passed under Danish authority and rule, but to have remained in independence until the general submission to Edward in 924.
More is known of the history of the five boroughs. From 907 onwards Edward the Elder, working together with Aethelred of Mercia and his wife, worked for the recovery of the Danelagh. In that year Chester was fortified. In 911-912 an advance on Essex and Hertfordshire was begun. In 914 Buckingham was fortified and the Danes of Bedfordshire submitted. In 917 Derby was the first of the five boroughs to fall, followed by Leicester a few months later. In the same year after a keen struggle all the Danes belonging to the "borough" of Northampton, as far north as the Welland (i.e. the border of modern Northamptonshire), submitted to Edward and at the same time Colchester was fortified; a large portion of Essex submitted and the whole of the East Anglian Danes came in. Stamford was the next to yield, soon followed by Nottingham, and in 920 there was a general submission on the part of the Danes and the reconquest of the Danelagh was now complete.
Though the independent occupation of the Danelagh by Viking invaders did not last for more than fifty years at the outside, the Danes left lasting marks of their presence in these territories.
The divisions of the land are foreign not native. The grouping of shires round a county town as distinct from the old national shires is probably of Scandinavian origin, and so certainly is the division of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire into "ridings." In Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, part of Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, Rutlandshire (of later formation) and Yorkshire we have the counties divided into "wapentakes" instead of "hundreds," again a mark of Danish influence.
When we turn to the social divisions we find in Domesday and other documents classes of society in these districts bearing purely Norse names, _dreng_, _karl_, _karlman_, _bonde_, _thrall_, _lysing_, _hold_; in the system of taxation we have an assessment by _carucates_ and not by hides and _virgates_, and the duodecimal rather than the decimal system of reckoning.
The highly developed Scandinavian legal system has also left abundant traces in this district. We may mention specially the institution of the "lawmen," whom we find as a judicial body in several of the towns in or near the Danelagh. They are found at Cambridge, Stamford, Lincoln, York and Chester. There can be no doubt that these "lawmen," who can be shown to form a close parallel to and indeed the ultimate source of our jury, were of Scandinavian origin. Many other legal terms can be definitely traced to Scandinavian sources, and they are first found in use in the district of the Danelagh.
The whole of the place nomenclature of Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire and Northern Northamptonshire is Scandinavian rather than native English, and in the remaining districts of the Danelagh a goodly proportion of Danish place-names may be found. Their influence is also evident in the dialects spoken in these districts to the present day. It is probable that until the end of the 10th century Scandinavian dialects were almost the sole language spoken in the district of the Danelagh, and when English triumphed, after an intermediate bilingual state, large numbers of words were adopted from the earlier Scandinavian speech.
See _The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_, edited by Earle and Plummer (Oxford, 1892-1899); J. C. H. R. Steenstrup, _Normannerne_ (4 vols., 1876-1882); and A. Bugge, _Vikingerne_ (2 vols.). (A. Mw.)
DANGERFIELD, THOMAS (c. 1650-1685), English conspirator, was born about 1650 at Waltham, Essex, the son of a farmer. He began his career by robbing his father, and, after a rambling life, took to coining false money, for which offence and others he was many times imprisoned. False to everyone, he first tried to involve the duke of Monmouth and others by concocting information about a Presbyterian plot against the throne, and this having been proved a lie, he pretended to have discovered a Catholic plot against Charles II. This was known as the "Meal-tub Plot," from the place where the incriminating documents were hidden at his suggestion, and found by the king's officers by his information. Mrs Elizabeth Cellier,--in whose house the tub was,--almoner to the countess of Powis, who had befriended Dangerfield when he posed as a Catholic, was, with her patroness, actually tried for high treason and acquitted (1680). Dangerfield, when examined at the bar of the House of Commons, made other charges against prominent Papists, and attempted to defend his character by publishing, among other pamphlets, _Dangerfield's Narrative_. This led to his trial for libel, and on the 29th of June 1685 he received sentence to stand in the pillory on two consecutive days, be whipped from Aldgate to Newgate, and two days later from Newgate to Tyburn. On his way back he was struck in the eye with a cane by a barrister, Robert Francis, and died shortly afterwards from the blow. The barrister was, tried and executed for the murder.
DANIEL, the name given to the central figure[1] of the biblical Book of Daniel (see below), which is now generally regarded as a production dating from the time of Antiochus Epiphanes (175-164 B.C.). There are no means of ascertaining anything definite concerning the origin of the hero Daniel. The account of him in Dan. i. has been generally misunderstood. According to i. 3, the Babylonian chief eunuch was commanded to bring "certain of the children of Israel, and of the king's seed, and of the nobles" to serve in the court. Many commentators have considered this to mean that some of the children were of the royal Judaean line of Jewish noble families, an interpretation which is not justified by the wording of the passage, which contains nothing to indicate that the author meant to convey the idea that Daniel was either royal or noble. Josephus,[2] never doubting the historicity of Daniel, made the prophet a relative of Zedekiah and consequently of Jehoiakim, a conclusion which he apparently drew from the same passage, i. 3. Pseudo-Epiphanius,[3] again, probably having the same source in mind, thought that Daniel was a Jewish noble. The true Epiphanius[4] even gives the name of his father as Sabaan, and states that the prophet was born at Upper Beth-Horon, a village near Jerusalem. The after life and death of the seer are as obscure as his origin. The biblical account throws no light on the subject. According to the rabbis,[5] Daniel went back to Jerusalem with the return of the captivity, and is supposed to have been one of the founders of the mythical Great Synagogue. Other traditions affirm that he died and was buried in Babylonia in the royal vault, while the Jewish traveller Benjamin of Tudela (12th cent. A.D.) was shown his tomb in Susa, which is also mentioned by the Arab, Abulfaragius (Bar-hebraeus). The author of _Daniel_ did not pretend to give any sketch of the prophet's career, but was content merely with making him the central figure, around which to group more or less disconnected narratives and accounts of visions. In view of these facts, and also of the generally inaccurate character of all the historical statements in the work, there is really no evidence to prove even the existence of the Daniel described in the book bearing his name.
The question at once arises as to where the Maccabaean author of _Daniel_ could have got the name and personality of his Daniel. It is not probable that he could have invented both name and character. There is an allusion in the prophet Ezekiel (xiv. 14, 20, xxviii. 3) to a Daniel whom he places as a great personality between Noah and Job. But this could not be our Daniel, whom Ezekiel, probably a man of ripe age at the time of the Babylonian deportation of the Jews, would hardly have mentioned in the same breath with two such characters, much less have put him _between_ them, because, had the Daniel of the biblical book existed at this time, he would have been a mere boy, lacking any such distinction as to make him worthy of so high a mention. It is evident that Ezekiel considered his Daniel to be a celebrated ancient prophet, concerning whose date and origin, however, there is not a single trace to guide research. Hitzig's[6] conjecture that the Daniel of Ezekiel was Melchizedek is quite without foundation. The most that can be said in this connexion is that there may really have been a spiritual leader of the captive Jews who resided at Babylon and who was either named Daniel, perhaps after the unknown patriarch mentioned by Ezekiel, or to whom the same name had been given in the course of tradition by some historical confusion of persons. Following this hypothesis, it must be assumed that the fame of this Judaeo-Babylonian leader had been handed down through the unclear medium of oral tradition until the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, when some gifted Jewish author, feeling the need of producing a work which should console his people in their affliction under the persecutions of that monarch, seized upon the personality of the seer who lived during a time of persecution bearing many points of resemblance to that of Antiochus IV., and moulded some of the legends than extant about the life and activity of this misty prophet into such a form as should be best suited to a didactic purpose.[7]
DANIEL, BOOK OF.--The Book of Daniel stands between Ezra and Esther in the third great division of the Hebrew Bible known as the _Hagiographa_, in which are classed all works which were not regarded as being part of the Law or the Prophets. The book presents the unusual peculiarity of being written in two languages, i.-ii. 4 and viii.-xii. being in Hebrew, while the text of ii. 4-vii. is the Palestinian dialect of Aramaic.[8] The subject matter, however, falls naturally into two divisions which are not co-terminous with the linguistic sections; viz. i.-vi. and vii.-xii. The first of these sense-divisions deals only with narratives regarding the reign of Nebuchadrezzar and his supposed son Belshazzar, while the second section consists exclusively of apocalyptic prophecies. There can be no doubt that a definite plan was followed in the arrangement of the work. The author's object was clearly to demonstrate to his readers the necessity of faith in Israel's God, who shall not for ever allow his chosen ones to be ground under the heel of a ruthless heathen oppressor. To illustrate this, he makes use on the one hand (i.-vi.) of carefully chosen narratives, somewhat loosely connected it is true, but all treating substantially the same subject,--the physical triumph of God's servant over his unbelieving enemies; and on the other hand (vii.-xii.), he introduces certain prophetic visions illustrative of God's favour towards the same servant, Daniel. So carefully is this record of the visions arranged that the first two chapters of the second part of the book (vii.-viii.) were no doubt purposely made to appear in a symbolic form, in order that in the last two revelations (xi.-xii.), which were couched in such direct language as to be intelligible even to the modern student of history, the author might obtain the effect of a climax. The book is probably not therefore a number of parts of different origin thrown loosely together by a careless editor, who does not deserve the title of author.[9] The more or less disconnected sections of the first part of the work were probably so arranged purposely, in order to facilitate its diffusion at a time when books were known to the people at large chiefly by being read aloud in public.
Various attempts have been made to explain the sudden change from Hebrew to Aramaic in ii. 4. It was long thought, for example, that Aramaic was the vernacular of Babylonia and was consequently employed as the language of the parts relating to that country. But this was not the case, because the Babylonian language survived until a later date than that of the events portrayed in Daniel.[10] Nor is it possible to follow the theory of Merx, that Aramaic, which was the popular tongue of the day when the Book of Daniel was written, was therefore used for the simpler narrative style, while the more learned Hebrew was made the idiom of the philosophical portions.[11] The first chapter, which is just as much in the narrative style as are the following Aramaic sections, is in Hebrew, while the distinctly apocalyptic chapter vii. is in Aramaic. A third view, that the bilingual character of the work points to a time when both languages were used indifferently, is equally unsatisfactory,[12] because it is highly questionable whether two idioms can ever be used quite indifferently. In fact, a hybrid work in two languages would be a literary monstrosity. In view of the apparent unity of the entire work, the only possible explanation seems to be that the book was written at first all in Hebrew, but for the convenience of the general reader whose vernacular was Aramaic, a translation, possibly from the same pen as the original, was made into Aramaic. It must be supposed then that, certain parts of the original Hebrew manuscript being lost, the missing places were supplied from the current Aramaic translation.[13]
It cannot be denied in the light of modern historical research that if the Book of Daniel be regarded as pretending to full historical authority, the biblical record is open to all manner of attack. It is now the general opinion of most modern scholars who study the Old Testament from a critical point of view that this work cannot possibly have originated, according to the traditional theory, at any time during the Babylonian monarchy, when the events recorded are supposed to have taken place.
The chief reasons for such a conclusion are as follows.[14]
1. The position of the book among the _Hagiographa_, instead of among the Prophetical works, seems to show that it was introduced after the closing of the Prophetical Canon. Some commentators have believed that Daniel was not an actual prophet in the proper sense, but only a seer, or else that he had no official standing as a prophet and that therefore the book was not entitled to a place among official prophetical books. But if the work had really been in existence at the time of the completion of the second part of the canon, the collectors of the prophetical writings, who in their care did not neglect even the parable of Jonah, would hardly have ignored the record of so great a prophet as Daniel is represented to have been.
2. Jesus ben Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), who wrote about 200-180 B.C., in his otherwise complete list of Israel's leading spirits (xlix.), makes no mention of Daniel. Hengstenberg's plea that Ezra and Mordecai were also left unmentioned has little force, because Ezra appears in the book bearing his name as nothing more than a prominent priest and scholar, while Daniel is represented as a great prophet.
3. Had the Book of Daniel been extant and generally known after the time of Cyrus (537-529 B.C.), it would be natural to look for some traces of its power among the writings of Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi, whose works, however, show no evidence that either the name or the history of Daniel was known to these authors. Furthermore, the manner in which the prophets are looked back upon in ix. 6-10 cannot fail to suggest an extremely late origin for the book. Besides this, a careful study of ix. 2 seems to indicate that the Prophetical Canon was definitely completed at the time when the author of Daniel wrote. It is also highly probable that much of the material in the second part of the book was suggested by the works of the later prophets, especially by Ezekiel and Zechariah.
4. Some of the beliefs set forth in the second part of the book also practically preclude the possibility of the author having lived at the courts of Nebuchadrezzar and his successors. Most noticeable among these doctrines is the complete system of angelology consistently followed out in the Book of Daniel, according to which the management of human affairs is entrusted to a regular hierarchy of commanding angels, two of whom, Gabriel and Michael, are even mentioned by name. Such an idea was distinctly foreign to the primitive Israelitish conception of the indivisibility of Yahweh's power, and must consequently have been a borrowed one. It could certainly not have come from the Babylonians, however, whose system of attendant spirits was far from being so complete as that which is set forth in the Book of Daniel, but rather from Persian sources where a more complicated angelology had been developed. As many commentators have brought out, there can be little doubt that the doctrine of angels in Daniel is an indication of prolonged Persian influence. Furthermore, it is now very generally admitted that the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, which is advanced for the first time in the Old Testament in Daniel, also originated among the Persians,[15] and could only have been engrafted on the Jewish mind after a long period of intercourse with the Zoroastrian religion, which came into contact with the Jewish thinkers considerably after the time of Nebuchadrezzar.
5. All the above evidences are merely internal, but we are now able to draw upon the Babylonian historical sources to prove that Daniel could not have originated at the time of Nebuchadrezzar. There can be no doubt that the author of Daniel thought that Belshazzar (q.v.), who has now been identified beyond all question with _Bel-sar-uzur_, the son of Nabonidus, the last Semitic king of Babylon, was the son of Nebuchadrezzar, and that Belshazzar attained the rank of king.[16] This prince did not even come from the family of Nebuchadrezzar. Nabonidus, the father of Belshazzar, was the son of a nobleman _Nabu-baladsu-iqbi_, who was in all probability not related to any of the preceding kings of Babylon. Had Nabonidus been descended from Nebuchadrezzar he could hardly have failed in his records, which we possess, to have boasted of such a connexion with the greatest Babylonian monarch; yet in none of his inscriptions does he trace his descent beyond his father. Certain expositors have tried to obviate the difficulty, first by supposing that the expression "son of Nebuchadrezzar" in Daniel means "descendant" or "son," a view which is rendered untenable by the facts just cited. This school has also endeavoured to prove that the author of Daniel did not mean to imply Belshazzar's kingship of Babylon at all by his use of the word "king," but they suggest that the writer of Daniel believed Belshazzar to have been co-regent. If Belshazzar had ever held such a position, which is extremely unlikely in the absence of any evidence from the cuneiform documents, he would hardly have been given the unqualified title "king of Babylon" as occurs in Daniel.[17] For example, Cambyses, son of Cyrus, was undoubtedly co-regent and bore the title "king of Babylon" during his father's lifetime, but, in a contract which dates from the first year of Cambyses, it is expressly stated that Cyrus was still "king of the lands." This should be contrasted with Dan.