volume 5, book 7, chapter 1.

ARIANISM.--ARIANS.

From the second century of its existence, the Christian church was divided by bitter controversies touching the mystery of the Trinity. "The word Trinity is found neither in the Holy Scriptures nor in the writings of the first Christians; but it had been employed from the beginning of the second century, when a more metaphysical turn had been given to the minds of men, and theologians had begun to attempt to explain the divine nature. ... The Founder of the new religion, the Being who had brought upon earth a divine light, was he God, was he man, was he of an intermediate nature, and, though superior to all other created beings, yet himself created? This latter opinion was held by Arius, an Alexandrian priest, who maintained it in a series of learned controversial works between the years 318 and 325. As soon as the discussion had quitted the walls of the schools, and been taken up by the people, mutual accusations of the gravest kind took the place of metaphysical subtleties. The orthodox party reproached the Arians with blaspheming the deity himself, by refusing to acknowledge him in the person of Christ. The Arians accused the orthodox of violating the fundamental law of religion; by rendering to the creature the worship due only to the Creator. ... It was difficult to decide which numbered the largest body of followers; but the ardent enthusiastic spirits, the populace in all the great cities (and especially at Alexandria) the women, and the newly-founded order of the monks of the desert ... were almost without exception partisans of the faith which has since been declared orthodox. ... Constantine thought this question of dogma might be decided by an assembly of the whole church. In the year 325, he convoked the council of Nice [see NICÆA, COUNCIL OF], at which 300 bishops pronounced in favour of the equality of the Son with the Father, or the doctrine generally regarded as orthodox, and condemned the Arians to exile and their books to the flames."

_J. C. L. de Sismondi, Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 4._

"The victorious faction [at the Council of Nice] ... anxiously sought for some irreconcilable mark of distinction, the rejection of which might involve the Arians in the guilt and consequences of heresy. A letter was publicly read and ignominiously torn, in which their patron, Eusebius of Nicomedia, ingeniously confessed that the admission of the homoousion, or consubstantial, a word already familiar to the Platonists, was incompatible with the principles of their theological system. The fortunate opportunity was eagerly embraced. ... The consubstantiality of the Father and the Son was established by the Council of Nice, and has been unanimously received as a fundamental article of the Christian faith by the consent of the Greek, the Latin, the Oriental and the Protestant churches." Notwithstanding the decision of the Council of Nice against it, the heresy of Arius continued to gain ground in the East. Even the Emperor Constantine became friendly to it, and the sons of Constantine, with some of the later emperors who followed them on the eastern throne, were ardent Arians in belief. The Homoousians, or orthodox, were subjected to persecution, which was directed with special bitterness against their great leader, Athanasius, the famous bishop of Alexandria. But Arianism was weakened by hair-splitting distinctions, which resulted in many diverging creeds. "The sect which asserted the doctrine of a 'similar substance' was the most numerous, at least in the provinces of Asia. ... The Greek word which was chosen to express this mysterious resemblance bears so close an affinity to the orthodox symbol, that the profane of every age have derided the furious contests which the difference of a single diphthong excited between the Homoousians and the Homoiousians." {132} The Latin churches of the West, with Rome at their head, remained generally firm in the orthodoxy of the Homoousian creed. But the Goths, who had received their Christianity from the East, tinctured with Arianism, carried that heresy westward, and spread it among their barbarian neighbors-- Vandals, Burgundians and Sueves--through the influence of the Gothic Bible of Ulfilas, which he and his missionary successors bore to the Teutonic peoples. "The Vandals and Ostrogoths persevered in the profession of Arianism till the final ruin [A. D. 533 and 553] of the kingdoms which they had founded in Africa and Italy. The barbarians of Gaul submitted [A. D. 507] to the orthodox dominion of the Franks: and Spain was restored to the Catholic Church by the voluntary conversion of the Visigoths [A. D. 589]."

_E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapters 21 and 37. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25717_

Theodosius formally proclaimed his adhesion to Trinitarian orthodoxy by his celebrated edict of A. D. 380, and commanded its acceptance in the Eastern Empire.

See ROME: A. D. 379-395.

_A. Neander, General History of Christian. Religion and Church, translated by Torry, volume 2, section 4._

ALSO IN: _J. Alzog, Manual of Univ. Ch. History, section 110-114._

_W. G. T. Shedd, History of Christian Doctrine, book 3._

_J. H. Newman, Arians of the Fourth Century._

_A. P. Stanley, Lectures on the History of the Eastern Church, lectures 3-7._

_J. A. Dorner, History of the Development of the Doctrine of the Person of Christ, division 1 (volume 2)._

See, also, GOTHS: A. D. 341-381; FRANKS: A. D. 481-511; also, GOTHS (VISIGOTHS): A. D. 507-509.

ARICA, Battle of (1880).

See CHILE: A. D. 1833-1884.

ARICIA, Battle of.

A victory won by the Romans over the Auruncians, B. C. 497, which summarily ended a war that the latter had declared against the former.

_Livy, History of Rome, book 2, chapter 26._

ARICIAN GROVE, The.

The sacred grove at Aricia (one of the towns of old Latium, near Alba Longa) was the center and meeting-place of an early league among the Latin peoples, about which little is known.

_W. Ihne, History of Rome, book 2, chapter 3._

_Sir. W. Gell, Topography of Rome, volume 1._

"On the northern shore of the lake [of Nemi] right under the precipitous cliffs on which the modern village of Nemi is perched, stood the sacred grove and sanctuary of Diana Nemorensis, or Diana of the Wood. ... The site was excavated in 1885 by Sir John Saville Lumley, English ambassador at Rome. For a general description of the site and excavations, see the _Athenæum_, 10th October, 1885. For details of the finds see _'Bulletino dell' Instituto di Corrispondenza Archeologica,' 1885_.--The lake and the grove were sometimes known as the lake and grove of Aricia. But the town of Aricia (the modern La Riccia) was situated about three miles off, at the foot of the Alban Mount. ... According to one story, the worship of Diana at Nemi was instituted by Orestes, who, after killing Thoas, King of the Tauric Chersonese (the Crimea), fled with his sister to Italy, bringing with him the image of the Tauric Diana. ... Within the sanctuary at Nemi grew a certain tree, of which no branch might be broken. Only a runaway slave was allowed to break off, if he could, one of its boughs. Success in the attempt entitled him to fight the priest in single combat, and if he slew him he reigned in his stead with the title of King of the Wood (Rex Nemorensis). Tradition averred that the fateful branch was that Golden Bough which, at the Sibyl's bidding, Æneas plucked before he essayed the perilous journey to the world of the dead. ... This rule of succession by the sword was observed down to imperial times; for amongst his other freaks Caligula, thinking that the priest of Nemi had held office too long, hired a more stalwart ruffian to slay him."

_J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, chapter 1, section 1._

ARICONIUM. A town of Roman Britain which appears to have been the principal mart of the iron manufacturing industry in the Forest of Dean.

_T. Wright, The Celt, the Roman and the Saxon, page 161._

ARII, The.

See LYGIANS.

ARIKARAS, The.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: PAWNEE (CADDOAN) FAMILY.

ARIMINUM.

The Roman colony, planted in the third century B. C., which grew into the modern city of Rimini. See ROME: B. C. 295-191.--When Cæsar entered Italy as an invader, crossing the frontier of Cisalpine Gaul--the Rubicon--his first movement was to occupy Ariminum. He halted there for two or three weeks, making his preparations for the civil war which he had now entered upon and waiting for the two legions that he had ordered from Gaul.

_C. Merivale, History of the Romans, chapter 14._

ARIOVALDUS, King of the Lombards, A. D. 626-638.

ARISTEIDES, Ascendancy of.

See ATHENS: B. C. 477-462.

ARISTOCRACY.--OLIGARCHY.

"Aristocracy signifies the rule of the best men. If, however, this epithet is referred to an absolute ideal standard of excellence, it is manifest that an aristocratical government is a mere abstract notion, which has nothing in history, or in nature, to correspond to it. But if we content ourselves with taking the same terms in a relative sense, ... aristocracy ... will be that form of government in which the ruling few are distinguished from the multitude by illustrious birth, hereditary wealth, and personal merit. ... Whenever such a change took place in the character or the relative position of the ruling body, that it no longer commanded the respect of its subjects, but found itself opposed to them, and compelled to direct its measures chiefly to the preservation of its power, it ceased to be, in the Greek sense an aristocracy; it became a faction, an oligarchy."

_C. Thirlwall, History of Greece, chapter 10._

ARISTOMNEAN WAR.

See MESSENIAN WARS, FIRST AND SECOND.

ARIZONA: The Name.

"Arizona, probably Arizonac in its original form, was the native and probably Pima name of the place of a hill, valley, stream, or some other local feature--just south of the modern boundary, in the mountains still so called, on the head waters of the stream flowing past Saric, where the famous Planchas de Plata mine was discovered in the middle of the 18th century, the name being first known to Spaniards in that connection and being applied to the mining camp or real de minas. The aboriginal meaning of the term is not known, though from the common occurrence in this region of the prefix 'ari,' the root 'son,' and the termination 'ac,' the derivation ought not to escape the research of a competent student. Such guesses as are extant, founded on the native tongues, offer only the barest possibility of a partial and accidental accuracy; while similar derivations from the Spanish are extremely absurd. ... The name should properly be written and pronounced Arisona, as our English sound of the z does not occur in Spanish."

_H. H. Bancroft, History of the Pacific States,