See Isis; A. Bouché-Leclercq, Histoire des Lagides, i. (1903), ch. iv.; J. G. Milne, History of Egypt under Roman Rule (1898), p. 140; G. Lafaye, Histoire du culte des divinités d’Alexandrie hors de l’Égypte (Paris, 1884). (F. Ll. G.)
SERENA, or La Serena, a city of Chile, capital of the province
of Coquimbo, on the S. bank of the Coquimbo river about 5 m.
from the sea. Pop. (1895) 15,712; (1902, estimate) 19,536.
As the see of a bishop and the most important town politically
of the semi-arid region, it contains a number of important public
edifices, including a cathedral (1844–1860; 216 ft. long, 66 ft.
wide) built of a light porous stone, an episcopal residence,
several convents, a large hospital, an orphans’ asylum, a beggars
asylum and a lazaretto. It is the seat of a court of appeal for
Atacama and Coquimbo, and has an excellent lyceum and other
schools, including a school of mines. It has a good water supply,
well-paved streets, gas illumination, tramway service and
several small industries, including brewing and the making of
fruit conserves. The annual rainfall is only 1·6 in. and its mean
annual temperature is 59·2°. Its railway connexions include
a line to Coquimbo (9 m.), its port, one to the Tamaya copper
mines, and a narrow-gauge line up the valley of the Elqui to
Guanta, through a region celebrated for its fruit. It is also in
direct railway communication with the national capital.
Serena was founded by Juan Bohon in 1544, on the opposite side of the river, and was named after Pedro Valdivia’s birthplace in Estremadura, Spain. It was destroyed by the Indians soon after, and was rebuilt on its present site in 1549 by Francisco de Aguirre.
SERENADE (from Ital. serenata, Lat. serenus, bright; the
Italian term being applied, partly by confusion with serus, late,
and partly through the use of Serena—cf. Gr. σελήνη—as an
epithet for the moon, to a form of courting music played at night
in the open air; whence also the synonym Notturno), in music;
a term classically applied to a light kind of symphony, more
rarely a piece of chamber music, in a light sonata style with
several extra movements, and in a few cases (as in the two
serenades of Beethoven) not containing any fully developed
examples of first-movement form. The divertimento is a similar
composition, more often for chamber music, and frequently on a
scale altogether too small for the sonata style to show itself,
though some examples by Mozart (e.g. those for strings and two
horns) are very large. The cassation is a smaller composition,
beginning (like Beethoven’s serenade op. 8) with a march. The
classics of the serenade forms are among the works of Mozart
and Haydn. Mozart’s larger and later serenades, from the
“Haffner” serenade onwards, are among his most delightful
and voluminous lighter instrumental works. His two serenades
for eight wind instruments are more serious, and that in C
minor (which he afterwards arranged as a string quintet) is a
majestic workin four normal movements, which Mozart probably
called a serenade only because he did not find the term octet
then in common use.
The typical scheme of a large serenade or divertimento differs from that of a symphony only in having six movements instead of four, the additions being another slow movement and minuet or scherzo. Beethoven’s septet and Schubert’s octet are on this plan, and are just as much serenades as Mozart’s “Haffner” serenade, which is (not counting introductions) in eight movements with a kind of violin concerto in the middle. The six-movement scheme (though without the serenade style) was adopted by Beethoven in one of the profoundest and most serious works in all music, the string quartet in B flat, Op. 130.
Brahms’s first essays in symphonic form took the shape of two orchestral serenades, of which the first was originally sketched for a large 'group of solo instruments. If it had finally taken that form Brahms would have called it a divertimento.
Other applications of the term in music are merely literary. Even its use, from the 17th century onwards, for a kind of operetta was clearly no more than a natural allusion to the notion of serenades as addressed at night by minstrels to ladies and by clients to patrons. (D. F. T.)
SERENUS, SAMMONICUS, Roman Savant, author of a didactic
medical poem, De medicina praecepta (probably incomplete).
The work (1115 hexameters) contains a number of popular
remedies, borrowed from Pliny and Dioscorides, and various
magic formulae, amongst others the famous Abracadabra (q.v.),
as a cure for fever and ague. It concludes with a description
of the famous antidote of Mithradates VI. of Pontus. It was
much used in the middle ages, but is of little value except for the
ancient history of popular medicine. The syntax and metre are
remarkably correct. It is uncertain whether the author was the
famous physician and polymath, who was put to death in
A.D. 212 at a banquet to which he had been invited by Caracalla,
or his son, the tutor of the younger Gordian. The father, who
was one of the most learned men of his age, wrote upon a variety
of subjects, and possessed a library of 60,000 volumes, bequeathed
to his son and handed on by the latter to Gordian.
The editio princeps (ed. Sulpitius Verulanus, before 1484) is Very rare; later ed. by J. G. Ackermann (Leipzig, 1786) and E. Bährens, Poetae Latini minores, iii.; see also A. Baur, Quaestiones Sammoniceae (Giessen, 1886); M. Schanz, Geschichte der römischen Literatur, iii. (1896); Teuffel, Hist. of Roman Literature (Eng. trans., 1900), 374, 4. and 383.
SERENUS “of Antissa,” Greek geometer, probably not of
Antissa but of Antinoeia or Antinoupolis, a city in Egypt founded
by Hadrian, lived, as may be safely inferred from the character
and contents of his writings, long after the golden age of Greek
geometry, most probably in the 4th century, between Pappus
and Theon of Alexandria. Two treatises of his have survived
viz. On the Section of the Cylinder and On the Section of the Cone,
the Greek text of which was first edited by Edmund Halley
along with his Apollonius (Oxford, 1710), and has now appeared
in a definitive critical edition by J. L. Heiberg (Sereni Antissensis
opuscula, Leipzig, 1896). A Latin translation by Commandinus
appeared at Bologna in 1566, and a German translation
by E. Nizze in 1860–1861 (Stralsund). Besides these works
Serenus wrote commentaries on Apollonius, and in certain MSS.
of Theon of Smyrna there appears a proposition “of Serenus
the philosopher, from the Lemmas” to the effect that, if a
number of rectilinear angles be subtended, at a point on a
diameter of a circle which is not the centre, by equal arcs of that
circle, the angle nearer to the centre is always less than the
angle more remote (Heiberg, preface, p. xviii.).
The book On the Section of the Cylinder had for its primary object the correction of an error on the part of many geometers of the time who supposed that the transverse sections of a cylinder were different from the elliptic sections of a cone. When this has been done, Serenus, in a series of theorems ending with Prop. 19 (ed. Heiberg), shows in Prop. 20 that “it is possible to exhibit a cone and a cylinder cutting one another in one and the same ellipse.” He then solves problems such as—“given a cone (cylinder) and an ellipse on it, to find the cylinder (cone) which is cut in the same ellipse as the cone (cylinder)” (Props. 21, 22); “given a cone (cylinder) to find a cylinder (cone), and to cut both by one and the same plane so that the sections thus formed shall be similar ellipses” (Props. 23, 24). In Props. 27, 28 he deals with sub contrary and other similar sections of a scalene cylinder or cone. He then gives the theorems: “All the straight lines drawn from the same point to touch a cylindrical (or conical) surface, on both sides, have their points of contact on the sides of a single parallelogram (or triangle)” (Props. 29, 32). Prop. 31 states indirectly the property of a harmonic pencil.
The treatise On the Section of the Cone, though Serenus claims originality for it, is unimportant. It deals with the areas of triangular sections of right or scalene cones by planes through the vertex, finding. e.g. the maximum triangular section of a right cone and the maximum triangle through the axis of a scalene cone, and solving, in some easy cases, the problem of finding triangular sections of given area. (T. L. H.)
SERERS, a Negroid people, living in Senegambia. They are of the same stock as the Wolof, and in some parts form communities with them. Elsewhere they have mixed with the Mandingo, to which race belong most of their ruling families. The country of the pure Serers lies between the Gambia and Salum rivers to the south of Cape Verde. In this domain of nearly 5000 sq. m. the tribe has two main divisions, the None Serers and the Sine Serers. The Serers are an extraordinarily tall race, even excelling in height their kinsfolk, the Wolof. Men of 6 ft. 6 in., with muscular development in proportion, are by no means rare. Theyare less black than the Wolof and
