was conducted. It was most frequented in the forenoon, and then only by men. Slaves did the greater part of the purchasing, though even the noblest citizens of Athens did not scruple to buy and sell there. Citizens were allowed a free market; foreigners and metics had to pay a toll. Public festivals also were celebrated in the open area of the agora. At Athens the agora of classical times was adorned with trees planted by Cimon; around it numerous public buildings were erected, such as the council chamber and the law courts (for its topography, see Athens.) Pausanias (especially vi. 24) is the great architectural authority on the agorae of various Greek cities, and details are also given by Vitruvius (v. 1).
AGORACRITUS, a Parian and Athenian sculptor of the age of Phidias, and said to have been his favourite pupil. His most noted work was the statue at Rhamnus of Nemesis, by some attributed to Phidias himself. Of this statue part of the head is in the British Museum; some fragments of the reliefs which adorned the pedestal are in the museum at Athens.
AGORANOMI, magistrates in the republics of Greece, whose position and duties were in many respects similar to those of the aediles of Rome. In Athens there were ten, chosen annually by lot, five of whom took charge of the city and five of the Peiraeus. They maintained order in the markets, settled disputes, examined the quality of the articles exposed for sale, tested weights and measures, collected the harbour dues and enforced the shipping regulations.
AGORDAT, a town of Eritrea, N.E. Africa on the route between Massawa and Kassala. At Agordat on the 21st of December 1893 the Italian troops under Colonel Arimondi inflicted a severe defeat on the {followers of the khalifa. Agordat is protected by a strong fort. (See Eritrea and Sudan, History.)
AGOSTINI, LEONARDO, Italian antiquary of the 17th century, was born at Siena. After being employed for some time to collect works of art for the Barberini palace, he was appointed by Pope Alexander VII. superintendent of antiquities in the Roman states. He issued a new edition of Paruta’s Sicilian Medals, with engravings of 400 additional specimens; and in conjunction with Giovanni Bellori (1615–1696) he also published a work on antique sculptured gems, which was translated into Latin by Jakob Gronovius (Amsterdam, 1685).
AGOSTINO, or Agostini [Augustinus], PAOLO (1593–1629), Italian musician, was born at Valerano, and studied under G. B. Nanini, as we learn from the dedication in the third and fourth books of his masses, subsequently becoming the son-in-law of his master. He succeeded Ugolini as conductor of the pope’s orchestra in St. Peter’s. His musical compositions are numerous and of great merit, an Agnus Dei for eight voices being specially admired.
AGOSTINO and AGNOLO (or Angelo) DA SIENA, Italian architects and sculptors in the first half of the 14th century. Della Valle and other commentators deny that they were brothers. They certainly studied together under Giovanni Pisano, and in 1317 were jointly appointed architects of their native town, for which they designed the Porto Romana, the church and convent of St Francis, and other buildings. On the recommendation of the celebrated Giotto, who styled them the best sculptors of the time, they executed in 1330 the tomb of Bishop Guido Tarlati in the cathedral of Arezzo, which Giotto had designed. It was esteemed one of the finest artistic works of the 14th century, but unfortunately was destroyed by the French under the duke of Anjou.
AGOULT, MARIE CATHERINE SOPHIE DE FLAVIGNY,
Comtesse d’ (1805–1876), French author, whose nom de plume was “Daniel Stern,” was born at Frankfort-on-Main on the 31st of December 1805. Her father was a French officer who had served in the army of the emigrant princes, and her mother was the daughter of a Frankfort banker. She was married in 1827 to the comte Charles d’Agoult. In Paris she gathered round her a brilliant society which included Alfred de Vigny, Sainte-Beuve, Ingres, Chopin, Meyerbeer, Heine and others. She was separated from her husband, and became the mistress of Franz Liszt. During her frequent travels in Switzerland, France and Italy she made the acquaintance of George Sand, and figures in the Lettres d’un voyageur as “Arabella.” By Liszt she had three children—a son who died young; Blandine, who married M. Émile Ollivier; and Cosima, who married first Hans von Bülow and later Richard Wagner. The story of her breach with Liszt is told under a very slight disguise in her novel Nélida (1845). On her return to Paris in 1841 she began to write art criticisms for the Presse, and in 1844 she contributed to the Revue des deux Mondes articles on Bettina von Arnim and on Heinrich Heine, but her views were not acceptable to the editor, and Daniel Stern withdrew to become a contributor to the Revue indépendante. Mme. d’Agoult was an ardent apostle of the ideas of ’48, and from this date her salon, which had been literary and artistic, took on a more political tone; revolutionists of various nationalities were welcomed by her, and she had an especial friendship and sympathy for Daniele Manin. In 1857 she produced a national drama, Jeanne Darc, which was translated into Italian and presented with brilliant success at Turin. The most important section of Daniel Stern’s work is her political and historical essays: Lettres républicaines (1848), Esquisses morales et politiques (1849), Histoire de la Révolution de 1848 (3 vols., 1850–1853), Histoire des commencements de la République aux Pays-Bas (1872). Mme. d’Agoult died in Paris on the 5th of March 1876. Her daughter Claire Christine (b. 1830), who married Guy de Charnacé, is known as a writer.
See Mme. d’Agoult, Mes Souvenirs (1806–1833), 1877; A. Cuvillier Fleury, Portraits révolutionnaires, vol. i. (1889); J. Mazzini, Lettres de Joseph Mazzini a Daniel Stern (1872): A. Pommier, Madame la comtesse d’Agoult (Daniel Stern), 1876; A. Ungherini, “Daniel Stern” in the Revista republicana (1880, No. 9); S. Rocheblave, Une Amitié romanesque, George Sand et Madame d’Agoult (1895).
AGOUTI, or Aguti, the West Indian name of Dasyprocta aguti, a terrestrial rodent of the size of a rabbit, common to Trinidad and Guiana, and classed in the family Caviidae. Under the same term may be included the other species of Dasyprocta, of which there are about half a score in tropical America. Agoutis are slender-limbed rodents, with five front and three hind toes (the first front toe very minute), and very short tails. The hair, especially on the hind-quarters, is coarse and somewhat rough; the colour being generally rufous brown. The molar teeth have cylindrical crowns, with several islands and a single lateral fold of enamel when worn. In habits agoutis are nocturnal, dwelling in forests, where they conceal themselves during the day in hollow tree-trunks, or in burrows among roots. Active and graceful in their movements, their pace is either a kind of trot or a series of springs following one another so rapidly as to look like a gallop. They take readily to water, in which they swim well. Their food comprises leaves, roots, nuts and other fruits. They do much harm to plantations of sugar-cane and bananas. In captivity the females produce only one or two young at a birth.
AGRA, an ancient city of India, which gives its name to a district and division in the United Provinces. It is famous for containing the most perfect specimens of Mogul architecture. Agra, like Delhi, owes much of its importance in both historical and modern times to the commercial and strategical advantages of its position. The river Jumna, which washes the walls of its fort, was the natural highway for the traffic of the rich delta of Bengal to the heart of India, and it formed, moreover, from very ancient times, the frontier defence of the Aryan stock settled in the plain between the Ganges and the Jumna against their western neighbours, hereditary freebooters who occupied the highlands of Central India. No place was better fitted for both an emporium and a frontier fortress. The river formed an unfordable barrier and also a useful means of communication. Jehangir tells us in his autobiography that before his father Akbar built the present fort, the town was defended by a citadel of great antiquity. For three hundred years the Afghans and other tribes came down from the north and founded kingdoms; and their power radiated from Delhi and Agra. It was Sikandar, of the house of Lodi (A.D. 1500), the last of the Afghan dynasties, who realized the strategic importance of Agra as a point for keeping in check his rebellious vassals to the south. He removed his court there, and Agra from being “a mere village of old standing,” says a Persian chronicler, became the capital of a kingdom. In 1526 the city was
