FORLIMPOPOLI, a town of Italy, about five miles east of Forlì, with a station on the railway between Bologna and Rimini. It was once a bishop’s seat, and still possesses a cathedral and an ancient castle. The name and the situation identify it with one of the three places that bore the Latin designation of Forum Popilii. Its history is marked by great vicissitudes. Destroyed by the Lombards and restored by the people of Forlì, it was again laid utterly waste in 1370 by Cardinal Egidio, and though twenty years later it was refounded and refortified by Sinbaldo Ordelaffi, it never recovered its former prosperity. Population in 1872 about 5000.
FORMAN, Simon (1552–1611), a physician and astrologer, was born in 1552 at Quidham, a small village near Wilton, Wiltshire. At the age of fourteen he became apprentice to a druggist at Salisbury, but at the end of four years he exchanged this profession for that of a school-master. Shortly afterwards he entered Magdalen College, Oxford, where he studied chiefly medicine and astrology. After continuing the same studies in Holland he commenced practice as a physician in Philpot Lane, London, but as he possessed no diploma, he on this account underwent more than one term of imprisonment. Ultimately, however, he obtained a diploma from Cambridge university, and established himself as a physician and astrologer at Lambeth, where he was consulted, especially as a physician, by many persons of rank, among others by the notorious countess of Essex. He expired suddenly while crossing the Thames in a boat, September 12, 1611.
A list of Forman’s works on astrology is given in Bliss’s edition of the Athenæ Oxonienses; many of his MS. works are contained in the Bodleian Library, the British Museum, and the Plymouth Library. A Brief Description of the Forman MSS. in the Public Library, Plymouth, was published in 1853.
FORMEY, Johann Heinrich Samuel (1711–1797), a German author, was born of French parentage at Berlin, 31st May 1711. He was educated for the ministry, and at the age of twenty became pastor of the French church at Brandenburg. Having in 1736 accepted the invitation of a congregation in Berlin, he was in the following year chosen professor of rhetoric in the French college of that city, and in 1739 professor of philosophy. On the organization of the academy of Berlin in 1744, he was named a member, and in 1748 became its perpetual secretary. He died at Berlin on the 7th March 1797. His principal works are La Belle Wolfienne, 1741–1753, 6 vols. 8vo, a kind of novel written with the view of enforcing the precepts of the Wolfian philosophy; Bibliothèque Critique ou Mémoires pour servir à l’Histoire Littéraire Ancienne et Moderne, 1746; Le Philosophe Chrétien, 1750; L’Émile Chrétien, 1764, intended as an answer to the Émile of Rousseau; and Souvenirs d’un Citoyen, Berlin, 1789. He also published an immense number of contemporary memoirs in the transactions of the Berlin Academy, and besides founding and editing several periodical publications contributed largely to others. He enjoyed a considerable reputation for ability and learning during his lifetime, but his works, which display a varied but somewhat superficial erudition, are now almost forgotten.
FORMIA (formerly Mola Gaëta or Castelmola), a town of Italy, in the province of Caserta, beautifully situated near the ancient Via Appia, on the innermost recess of the Gulf of Gaëta. The surrounding country is occupied with vineyards, olive plantations, and fruit gardens. Formia occupies the site of the ancient Formiæ, said to have been founded by the Tyrrhenians. At an early period it received the Roman franchise and became a municipium. Villas were built near it by many of the noble Romans; and in the grounds of the Villa Caposele there are ruins which are thought by some to have been the baths of the villa of Cicero. The villa Caposele was at one time one of the residences of the kings of Naples. The vine of the Formian hills produced excellent wine in the time of Horace. Population in 1871, 9151.
