Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/212

192 V E S V E S the character of the senate, removing unfit and unworthy members, and promoting good and able men, among them the excellent Julius Agricola. In 70 a formidable rising in Gaul, headed by Claudius Civilis, was suppressed ; the Jewish War was brought to a close by Titus s capture of Jerusalem, and in the following year, after the joint triumph of Vespasian and Titus, memorable as the first occasion on which a father and his son were thus associ ated together, the temple of Janus Avas closed, and the Roman world had rest for the remaining nine years of Vespasian s reign. The peace of Vespasian passed into a proverbial phrase. In 78 Agricola went to Britain, and both extended and consolidated the Roman dominion in that province, pushing his arms into North Wales and the Isle of Anglesey. In the following year Vespasian died, in his 70th year. The avarice with which both Tacitus (Hist., ii. 5) and Suetonius (Vesj)., 16) stigmatize Vespasian seems really to have been an en lightened economy, which, in the disordered state of the Roman finances, was an absolute necessity. Vespasian could be liberal to impoverished senators and knights, to cities and towns desolated by natural calamity, and especially to men of letters and of the pro fessor class, several of whom he pensioned with salaries of as much as 800 a year. Quintilian is said to have been the first public teacher who enjoyed this imperial favour. Vespasian may be fairly credited with doing his best to improve and elevate the tone of the age by spreading those intellectual tastes with which personally he was not much in sympathy. Pliny s great work, the Natural His tory, was written during Vespasian s reign, and dedicated to his son Titus, who almost shared the emperor s throne (see TITTTS). Some of the philosophers, pedants in reality, who talked idly of the good old times of the republic, and thus indirectly encouraged conspiracy, provoked him into reviving the obsolete penal laws against this class, but only one, Helvidius Prisons, was put to death, and he had affronted the emperor by studied insults. " I will not kill a dog that barks at me " were words honestly expressing the temper of Vespasian. Much was spent on public works and the restoring and beautifying of Rome during his reign, a new forum, the splendid temple of Peace (symbolizing the sentiment of the age), the public baths, and the vast Colosseum being begun under Vaspasian. To the last Vespasian was a plain, blunt soldier, with decided strength of character and ability, and with a steady purpose to establish good order and secure the prosperity and welfare of his subjects. In his habits he was punctual and regular, transacting his business early in the morning, and enjoying his siesta after a drive. He had not quite the distinguished bearing looked for in an emperor. He was free in his conversation, and his humour, of which he had a good deal, was apt to take the form of rather coarse jokes. He could jest, it was said, even in his last moments. Methinks I am becoming a god," he whispered to those around him. There is something very characteristic in the exclamation he is said to have uttered in his last illness, "An emperor ought to die standing." The Histories of Tacitus and the biography of Suetonius are our chief original sources about Vespasian. Dean Merivale, in his History of the Romans wider the Empire, gives a very complete account of him (chaps. 57, 59, 60). VESPERS (qfficium vespertinum) in the Roman Catholic liturgy is that part of the daily office which follows none (tionci) and precedes compline (completorium). In it the Pater Noster, Ave Maria, Deus in Adjutorium, &c., are followed by five psalms and five antiphons, after vhich come the "little chapter," the hymn and the verse, which vary according to the season, the Magnificat and its antiphon, and the appropriate collect. In its general features the use of this office can be traced back to a very early date both in the Eastern and in the Western Church. Vespers may be said or sung at any time after midday, and in some circumstances even before it. VESPUCCI, AMERIGO (1451-1512), navigator, was born at Florence on 9th March 1451. His father, Nastugio Ves pucci, was a notary, and his uncle, to whom he owed his education, was a scholarly Dominican and a friend of Savo narola. As a student Amerigo showed a preference for natural philosophy, astronomy, and geography. He was placed as a clerk in the great commercial house of the Medici, then the ruling family in Florence. About 1490 he was sent by Lorenzo de Medici to Spain, and in January 1492 he was at Cadiz, along with an associate, Donate Nicolini, probably as an agent of the Medici. Shortly after this he seems to have entered the service of a Florentine merchant, Juonato Berardi, established at Seville, who had fitted out the second expedition of Columbus in 1493. Berardi had also undertaken to fit out twelve ships for the king of Spain, and on his death in December 1495 Vespucci was commissioned to complete the contract. There is no proof that Vespucci accompanied Columbus on either his first or his second voyage, though there can be no doubt that the two Italians were known to each other. As Ferdinand had recalled the monopoly conceded to Columbus, the new passion for exploring became widespread and adventurers of all kinds were constantly leaving Spain for the West. On the authority of Vespucci himself, he sailed, possibly as astronomer, with one of these adventurous expeditions from Cadiz, on 10th May 1497. After touching at the Canaries, the four vessels are stated to have reached after twenty-seven days "a coast which we thought to be that of a continent"; from Vespucci s account this may have been Campeachy Bay. Thence they doubled Cape Sable and may even have reached Cape Hatteras. Finally, after sailing about a hundred leagues to an archipelago, the chief island of which was called Iti, they made for Spain and reached Cadiz on 15th October 1498. Still following Vespucci s own statement, he on 16th May 1499 started on a second voyage in a fleet of three ships under Alonzo de Ojeda. They reached the coast of Brazil about Cape St Roque, sailed north to the mouth of the Amazons, round to the Gulf of Maracaibo, and on to San Domingo. The expedi tion returned to Cadiz on 8th September 1 500. Entering the service of Dom Manuel of Portugal, Vespucci took part in a new expedition to the " Land of Parrots " (Brazil), which left Lisbon on 10th May 1501. Cape St Roque was reached on 16th August ; Rio Janeiro Bay was dis covered and named on New Year s Day 1502 ; and in April the expedition appears to have got as far as South Georgia. It reached Lisbon again on 7th September 1502. Next year, on 10th June, Vespucci started from Lisbon on his fourth expedition, with six ships under Coelho, the object being to reach Malacca by sailing west. At the island of Fernando Noronha Vespucci s ship sepa rated from the others and sailed to Bahia and then to Cape Frio, where he built a fort. He returned to Lisbon on 18th June 1504. In 1505 he went back to Spain and re-entered the service of Ferdinand, settling in Seville. According to one account, Vespucci made two other voyages to the isthmus of Panama. In 1508 he was appointed piloto mayor. He died at Seville on 22d February 1512. If his own account is trustworthy, Vespucci reached the main land of America eighteen days before Cabot. Yet he was attached to the expedition only in a subordinate capacity, and, had it not been that his name has become attached to the New World, it is probable he would scarcely have been heard of. It seems to be credible, however, that in a letter written soon after his return from his third voyage he referred to the newly discovered lands as the "New World." Vespncci s claim to have touched the American mainland before Cabot has been hotly disputed, and the controversial literature on the subject is voluminous. The facts, as accepted by those who admit his claims, or at least his good faith, are these. After his fourth voyage, that is after 1504, he wrote a diary called Le Quattre Giornale. No fragment of the original exists, and it is only known by allusion. He also wrote several letters to his former schoolfellow Soderini, the gonfalier or chief magistrate of Florence. One of these only remains, and that not in the original, but in a Latin translation printed at the monastery of St Die in the Vosges on 25th April 1507. The statement is that a French translation of Vespucci s original had been given to King Rene, who was patron izing the college at St Die. Waldseemiiller (Hylacomylus) made use of this letter in his Cosmographiaz Introductio, published at St Die in 1507. Here it is that we have the first suggestion of a name for the New World in the words A fourth part of the world, which, since Amerigo found it, we may call Amerige or America"; and again, " now a fourth part has been found by Amerigo Vespucci,

and I do not see why we should be prevented from calling it