399 B.C., after the Sibylline books had been consulted by their keepers and interpreters (duumviri sacris faciendis), on the occasion of a pestilence. Three couches were prepared for three pairs of gods—Apollo and Latona, Hercules and Diana, Mercury and Neptune. The feast, which on that occasion lasted for eight (or seven) days, was also celebrated by private individuals; the citizens kept open house, quarrels were forgotten, debtors and prisoners were released, and everything done to banish sorrow. Similar honours were paid to other divinities in subsequent times—Fortuna, Saturnus, Juno Regina of the Aventine, the three Capitoline deities (Jupiter, Juno, Minerva), and in 217, after the defeat of lake Trasimenus, a lectisternium was held for three days to six pairs of gods, corresponding to the twelve great gods of Olympus—Jupiter, Juno, Neptune, Minerva, Mars, Venus, Apollo, Diana, Vulcan, Vesta, Mercury, Ceres. In 205, alarmed by unfavourable prodigies, the Romans were ordered to fetch the Great Mother of the gods from Pessinus in Phrygia; in the following year the image was brought to Rome, and a lectisternium held. In later times, the lectisternium became of constant (even daily) occurrence, and was celebrated in the different temples. Such celebrations must be distinguished from those which were ordered, like the earlier lectisternia, by the Sibylline books in special emergencies. Although undoubtedly offerings of food were made to the gods in very early Roman times on such occasions as the ceremony of confarreatio, and the epulum Jovis (often confounded with the lectisternium), it is generally agreed that the lectisternia were of Greek origin. In favour of this may be mentioned: the similarity of the Greek Θεοξένια, in which, however, the gods played the part of hosts; the gods associated with it were either previously unknown to Roman religion, though often concealed under Roman names, or were provided with a new cult (thus Hercules was not worshipped as at the Ara Maxima, where, according to Servius on Aeneid, viii. 176 and Cornelius Balbus, ap. Macrobius, Sat. iii. 6, a lectisternium was forbidden); the Sibylline books, which decided whether a lectisternium was to be held or not, were of Greek origin; the custom of reclining at meals was Greek. Some, however, assign an Etruscan origin to the ceremony, the Sibylline books themselves being looked upon as old Italian “black books.” A probable explanation of the confusion between the lectisternia and genuine old Italian ceremonies is that, as the lectisternia became an almost everyday occurrence in Rome, people forgot their foreign origin and the circumstances in which they were first introduced, and then the word pulvinar with its associations was transferred to times in which it had no existence. In imperial times, according to Tacitus (Annals, xv. 44), chairs were substituted for couches in the case of goddesses, and the lectisternium in their case became a sellisternium (the reading, however, is not certain). This was in accordance with Roman custom, since in the earliest times all the members of a family sat at meals, and in later times at least the women and children. This is a point of distinction between the original practice at the lectisternium and the epulum Jovis, the goddesses at the latter being provided with chairs, whereas in the lectisternium they reclined. In Christian times the word was used for a feast in memory of the dead (Sidonius Apollinaris, Epistulae, iv. 15).
See article by A. Bouché-Leclercq in Daremberg and Saglio, Dictionnaire des antiquités; Marquardt, Römische Staatsverwaltung, iii. 45, 187 (1885); G. Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der Römer, p. 355 seq.; monograph by Wackermann (Hanau, 1888); C. Pascal, Studii di antichità e mitologia (1896).
LECTOR, or Reader, a minor office-bearer in the Christian Church. From an early period men have been set apart, under the title of anagnostae, lectores, or readers, for the purpose of reading Holy Scripture in church. We do not know what the custom of the Church was in the first two centuries, the earliest
reference to readers, as an order, occurring in the writings of
Tertullian (De praescript. haeret. cap. 41); there are frequent
allusions to them in the writings of St Cyprian and afterwards.
Cornelius, bishop of Rome in A.D. 251–252, in a well-known letter
mentions readers among the various church orders then existing
at Rome. In the Apostolic Church Order (canon 19), mention
is made of the qualifications and duties of a reader, but no
reference is made to their method of ordination. In the Apostolic
Didascalia there is recognition of three minor orders of men,
subdeacons, readers and singers, in addition to two orders of
women, deaconesses and widows. A century later, in the Apostolic
Constitutions, we find not only a recognition of readers, but
also a form of admission provided for them, consisting of the
imposition of hands and prayer (lib. viii. cap. 22). In Africa the
imposition of hands was not in use, but a Bible was handed to
the newly appointed reader with words of commission to read it,
followed by a prayer and a benediction (Fourth Council of
Carthage, can. 8). This is the ritual of the Roman Church of
to-day. With regard to age, the novels of Justinian (No. 123)
forbade any one to be admitted to the office of reader under the age of eighteen.
(F. E. W.)
LECTOURE, a town of south-western France, capital of an
arrondissement in the department of Gers, 21 m. N. of Auch on
the Southern railway between that city and Agen. Pop. (1906),
town, 2426; commune, 4310. It stands on the right bank of the
Gers, overlooking the river from the summit of a steep plateau.
The church of St Gervais and St Protais was once a cathedral.
The massive tower which flanks it on the north belongs to the
15th century; the rest of the church dates from the 13th, 15th,
16th and 17th centuries. The hôtel de ville, the sous-préfecture
and the museum occupy the palace of the former bishops,
which was once the property of Marshal Jean Lannes, a native
of the town. A recess in the wall of an old house contains the
Fontaine de Houndélie, a spring sheltered by a double archway
of the 13th century. At the bottom of the hill a church of the
16th century marks the site of the monastery of St Gény.
Lectoure has a tribunal of first instance and a communal college.
Its industries include distilling, the manufacture of wooden shoes
and biscuits, and market gardening; it has trade in grain, cattle,
wine and brandy.
Lectoure, capital of the Iberian tribe of the Lactorates and for a short time of Novempopulania, became the seat of a bishopric in the 4th century. In the 11th century the counts of Lomagne made it their capital, and on the union of Lomagne with Armagnac, in 1325, it became the capital of the counts of Armagnac. In 1473 Cardinal Jean de Jouffroy besieged the town on behalf of Louis XI. and after its fall put the whole population to the sword. In 1562 it again suffered severely at the hands of the Catholics under Blaise de Montluc.
LEDA, in Greek mythology, daughter of Thestius, king of Aetolia, and Eurythemis (her parentage is variously given).
She was the wife of Tyndareus and mother of Castor and Pollux,
Clytaemnestra and Helen (see Castor and Pollux). In another
account Nemesis was the mother of Helen (q.v.) whom Leda
adopted as her daughter. This led to the identification of Leda
and Nemesis. In the usual later form of the story, Leda herself,
having been visited by Zeus in the form of a swan, produced
two eggs, from one of which came Helen, from the other Castor
and Pollux.
See Apollodorus iii. 10; Hyginus, Fab. 77; Homer, Iliad, iii. 426, Od. xi. 298; Euripides, Helena, 17; Isocrates, Helena, 59; Ovid, Heroides, xvii. 55; Horace, Ars poetica, 147; Stasinus in Athenaeus viii. 334 c.; for the representations of Leda and the swan in art, J. A. Overbeck, Kunstmythologie, i., and Atlas to the same; also article in Roscher’s Lexikon der Mythologie.
LE DAIM (or Le Dain), OLIVIER (d. 1484), favourite of Louis XI. of France, was born of humble parentage at Thielt near Courtrai in Flanders. Seeking his fortune at Paris, he became court barber and valet to Louis XI., and so ingratiated himself with the king that in 1474 he was ennobled under the title
Le Daim and in 1477 made comte de Meulant. In the latter year he was sent to Burgundy to influence the young heiress of Charles the Bold, but he was ridiculed and compelled to leave Ghent. He thereupon seized and held Tournai for the French. Le Daim had considerable talent for intrigue, and, according to his enemies, could always be depended upon to execute the baser designs of the king. He amassed a large fortune, largely by oppression and violence, and was named gentleman-in-waiting, captain of Loches, and governor of Saint-Quentin. He remained in favour until the death of Louis XI., when the rebellious lords were able to avenge the slights and insults they had suffered at
