tended by the giant shepherd Eurytion and the two-headed dog Orthrus. To carry off these cattle to Greece was one of the twelve “labours” imposed by Eurystheus upon Heracles. In order to get possession of them, Heracles travelled through Europe and Libya, set up the two pillars in the Straits of Gibraltar to show the extent of his journey, and reached the great river Oceanus. Having crossed Oceanus and landed on the island, Heracles slew Orthrus together with Eurytion, who in vain strove to defend him, and drove off the cattle. Geryon started in pursuit, but fell a victim to the arrows of Heracles, who, after various adventures, succeeded in getting the cattle safe to Greece, where they were offered in sacrifice to Hera by Eurystheus. The geographical position of Erytheia is unknown, but all ancient authorities agree that it was in the far west. The name itself (= red) and the colour of the cattle suggest the fiery aspect of the disk of the setting sun; further, Heracles crosses Oceanus in the golden cup or boat of the sun-god Helios. Geryon (from γηρύω, the howler or roarer) is supposed to personify the storm, his father Chrysaor the lightning, his mother Callirrhoë the rain. The cattle are the rain-clouds, and the slaying of their keepers typifies the victory of the sun over the clouds, or of spring over winter. The euhemeristic explanation of the struggle with the triple monster was that Heracles fought three brothers in succession.
See Apollodorus ii. 5. 10; Hesiod, Theogony, 287; Diod. Sic. iv. 17; Herodotus iv. 8; F. Wieseler in Ersch and Gruber, Allgemeine Encyclopädie; F. A. Voigt in Roscher’s Lexikon der Mythologie; L. Preller, Griechische Mythologie; article “Hercules” in Daremberg and Saglio, Dictionnaire des antiquités.
GESENIUS, HEINRICH FRIEDRICH WILHELM (1786–1842), German orientalist and biblical critic, was born at Nordhausen, Hanover, on the 3rd of February 1786. In 1803 he became a student of philosophy and theology at the university of Helmstädt, where Heinrich Henke (1752–1809) was his most influential teacher; but the latter part of his university course was taken at Göttingen, where J. G. Eichhorn and T. C. Tychsen (1758–1834) were then at the height of their popularity. In 1806, shortly after graduation, he became Repetent and Privatdozent in that university; and, as he was fond of afterwards relating, had Neander for his first pupil in Hebrew. In 1810 he became professor extraordinarius in theology, and in 1811 ordinarius, at the university of Halle, where, in spite of many offers of high preferment elsewhere, he spent the rest of his life. He taught with great regularity for upward of thirty years, the only interruptions being that of 1813–1814 (occasioned by the War of Liberation, during which the university was closed) and those occasioned by two prolonged literary tours, first in 1820 to Paris, London and Oxford with his colleague Johann Karl Thilo (1794–1853) for the examination of rare oriental manuscripts, and in 1835 to England and Holland in connexion with his Phoenician studies. He soon became the most popular teacher of Hebrew and of Old Testament introduction and exegesis in Germany; during his later years his lectures were attended by nearly five hundred students. Among his pupils the most eminent were Peter von Bohlen (1796–1840), A. G. Hoffmann (1769–1864), Hermann Hupfeld, Emil Rödiger (1801–1874), J. F. Tuch (1806–1867), W. Vatke (1806–1882) and Theodor Benfey (1809–1881). In 1827, after declining an invitation to take Eichhorn’s place at Göttingen, Gesenius was made a Consistorialrath; but, apart from the violent attacks to which he, along with his friend and colleague Julius Wegscheider, was in 1830 subjected by E. W. Hengstenberg and his party in the Evangelische Kirchenzeitung, on account of his rationalism, his life was uneventful. He died at Halle on the 23rd of October 1842. To Gesenius belongs in a large measure the credit of having freed Semitic philology from the trammels of theological and religious prepossession, and of inaugurating the strictly scientific (and comparative) method which has since been so fruitful. As an exegete he exercised a powerful, and on the whole a beneficial, influence on theological investigation.
Of his many works, the earliest, published in 1810, entitled Versuch über die maltesische Sprache, was a successful refutation of the widely current opinion that the modern Maltese was of Punic origin. In the same year appeared the first volume of the Hebräisches u. Chaldäisches Handwörterbuch, completed in 1812. Revised editions of this appear periodically in Germany, e.g. that of H. Zimmern and F. Buhl (1905). The publication of a new English edition was started in 1892 under the editorship of Professors C. A. Briggs, S. R. Driver and F. Brown. The Hebräische Grammatik, published in 1813 (27th edition by E. Kautzsch; English translation from 25th and 26th German editions by G. W. Collins and A. E. Cowley, 1898), was followed in 1815 by the Geschichte der hebräischen Sprache (now very rare), and in 1817 by the Ausführliches Lehrgebäude der hebräischen Sprache. The first volume of his well-known commentary on Isaiah (Der Prophet Jesaja), with a translation, appeared in 1821; but the work was not completed until 1829. The Thesaurus philologico-criticus linguae Hebraicae et Chaldaicae V. T., begun in 1829, he did not live to complete; the latter part of the third volume is edited by E. Rödiger (1858). Other works: De Pentateuchi Samaritani origine, indole, et auctoritate (1815), supplemented in 1822 and 1824 by the treatise De Samaritanorum theologia, and by an edition of Carmina Samaritana; Paläographische Studien über phönizische u. punische Schrift (1835), a pioneering work which he followed up in 1837 by his collection of Phoenician monuments (Scripturae linguaeque Phoeniciae monumenta quotquot supersunt); an Aramaic lexicon (1834–1839); and a treatise on the Himyaritic language written in conjunction with E. Rödiger in 1841. Gesenius also contributed extensively to Ersch and Gruber’s Encyclopädie, and enriched the German translation of J. L. Burckhardt’s Travels in Syria and the Holy Land with valuable geographical notes. For many years he also edited the Halle Allgemeine Litteraturzeitung. A sketch of his life was published anonymously in 1843 (Gesenius: eine Erinnerung für seine Freunde), and another by H. Gesenius, Wilhelm Gesenius, ein Erinnerungsblatt an den hundertjährigen Geburtstag, in 1886. See also the article in the Allgemeine deutsche Biographie.
GESNER, ABRAHAM (1797–1864), Canadian geologist, was born in Nova Scotia in 1797. He qualified as a doctor of medicine in London in 1827. Returning to the Dominion, he published in 1836 Remarks on the Geology and Mineralogy of Nova Scotia, and continuing his researches he was enabled in 1843 to bring before the Geological Society of London “A Geological Map of Nova Scotia, with an accompanying Memoir” (Proc. Geol. Soc. iv. 186). In 1849 he issued a volume on the industrial resources of the country. He dealt also with the geology and mineralogy of New Brunswick and Prince Edward’s Island. Devoting himself to the economic side of geology in various parts of North America, he was enabled to bring out in 1861 A Practical Treatise on Coal, Petroleum and other Distilled Oils. He died at Halifax, N.S., on the 29th of April 1864.
GESNER, JOHANN MATTHIAS (1691–1761), German classical scholar and schoolmaster, was born at Roth near Ansbach on the 9th of April 1691. He studied at the university of Jena, and in 1714 published a work on the Philopatris ascribed to Lucian. In 1715 he became librarian and conrector (vice-principal) at Weimar, in 1729 rector of the gymnasium at Ansbach, and in 1730 rector of the Thomas school at Leipzig. On the foundation of the university of Göttingen he became professor of rhetoric (1734) and subsequently librarian. He died at Göttingen on the 3rd of August 1761. His special merit lies in the attention he devoted to the explanation and illustration of the subject matter of the classical authors.
His principal works are: editions of the Scriptores rei rusticae, of Quintilian, Claudian, Pliny the Younger, Horace and the Orphic poems (published after his death); Primae lineae isagoges in eruditionem universalem (1756); an edition of B. Faber’s Thesaurus eruditionis scholasticae (1726), afterwards continued under the title Novus linguae et eruditionis Romanae thesaurus (1749); Opuscula minora varii argumenti (1743–1745); Thesaurus epistolicus Gesnerianus (ed. Klotz, 1768–1770); Index etymologicus latinitatis (1749). See J. A. Ernesti, Opuscula oratoria (1762), p. 305; H. Sauppe, Göttinger Professoren (1872); C. H. Pöhnert, J. M. Gesner und sein Verhältnis zum Philanthropinismus und Neuhumanismus (1898), a contribution to the history of pedagogy in the 18th century; articles by F. A. Eckstein in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie ix.; and Sandys, Hist. of Class. Schol. iii. (1908), 5-9.
GESNER [improperly Gessner; in Latin, Gesnerus], KONRAD VON (1516–1565), German-Swiss writer and naturalist, called “the German Pliny” by Cuvier, was born at Zürich on the 26th of March 1516. The son of a poor furrier, he was educated in that town, but fell into great need after the death of his father at the battle of Kappel (1531). He had good friends, however, in his old master, Myconius, and subsequently in Heinrich Bullinger, and he was enabled to continue his studies at the
