Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/501

F R F S 469 sultan. Among the treasures which the sultan showed him was an old napless hat which had the curious power of transporting its wearer to any place where he desired to be. Of this he feloniously possessed himself, and returned home to Cyprus, where he lived in the free gratification of all his fancies and desires. On his death he left his purse and his hat to his sons Ampedo and Andelosia; but instead of harmoniously putting them to use, they were jealous of each other, and by their recklessness and folly soon landed themselves in the depths of misery. The motif of the story is very obvious : in the words of the preface, the reader should learn that all men should desire reason and wisdom before all the treasures of the world. In its full form the history of Fortunatus is a brisk narrative of con siderable length, occupying in Simrock s Die Deutsclien Volksliicher, vol. iii., upwards of 158 pages. The scene is being continually shifted from Cyprus to Flanders, from Flanders to London, from London to France; and a large number of secondary characters appear from time to tin:e on the stage. The general features of the style and the allusions seem to indicate a comparatively modern date for the authorship ; but the nucleus of the legend can be traced back to a much earlier period. The stories of Jonathas and the three jewels in the Gesta Romanorum, of the emperor Frederick and the three precious stones in the Cento Novelle Antiche, of the Mazin of Khorassan in the Thousand and One Nights, and the flying scaffold in the BaJiar Danush, have all a certain similarity. The earliest known edition of the German text of Fortunatus appeared at Augsburg in 1509, and the modern German investigators are disposed to regard this as the original form. Innumer able rifacimentos have been made in French, Italian, Dutch, English, &c., and cheap editions are still common enough on the bookstalls. The story was dramatized by Hans Sachs in 1553, and by Thomas Dekker in 1GOO; and the latter comedy appeared in a German translation in Englische Komodien und Tragodien, 1620. Tieck has utilized the legend in his Phantasus, and Chamisso in his Peter Schle- mihl; and Uhland has left an unfinished narrative poem entitled " Fortunatus and his Sons." See Dr Fr. W. V. Schmidt s Fortunatus und seine SiJhne, cine Zaxbcr-Tragodie, ran Thomas Decker, mit cincm Anhang, &c. Berlin, 1819; Giirres, Die dcutsche Volksbilclier, 1807. FORTUNATUS, VENANTIUS HONOIUUS CLEMENTIANUS, bishop of Poitiers, and the chief Latin poet of his time, was born near Coneda in Treviso, in 530. He studied at Milan and Ravenna, with the special object of excelling as a rhetorician and poet, and in 565 he journeyed to France, where he was received with much favour at the court of Sigbert, king of Austrasia, whose marriage with Brunhild he celebrated in anepithalamium. After remaining a year or two at the court of Sigbert, he travelled in various parts of France, visiting persons of distinction, and composing short pieces of poetry on any subject that occurred to him. At Poitiers he visited Queen Radegonda, who lived there in retirement, and she induced him to prolong his stay in the city indefinitely. Here he also enjoyed the friendship of th<j famous Gregory, bishop of Tours, and other eminent ecclesiastics. He was elected bishop of Poitiers in 599, and died about 609. The later poems of Fortunatus were collectel in 11 books, and consist of hymns, epitaphs, poetical epistles, and verses in honour of his patroness Radegonda and her sister Agnes, the abbess of a nunnery at Poitiers. He also wrote a large poem in 4 books in honour of St Martin, and several lives of the saints in prose. His prose is stiff and mechanical, but most of his poetry has an easy rhythmical flow. An edition of the works of Fortunatus was published by Oh. Brower at Fulda in 1603, 2d edition at Mayence in 1617. The best edition is that of M. A. Luschi, Kome, 1785, which was afterwards reprinted in Migne s Patrologicc curstts compldus, vol. 88. FORT WAYNE, or, as it is sometimes called, " Summit City," a city of the United States, at the head of Allen county, Indiana, situated 751 miles W. of New York and 102 N.E. of Indianopolis, at the junction of the St Joseph and the St Mary, which form what is known as the Maumee River. The Wabash and Erie canal passes through the town, and no fewer than eight railway lines branch out from it in various directions. Besides the ex tensive works maintained by several of the railway com panies for the building of carriages, &c., there are a num ber of engineering establishments, planing mills, flour mills, and tanneries, sash and door works, and a woollen factory. The churches are twenty-seven in all ; the educational institutions comprise a high school, a normal school, a Methodist college (founded in 1846), the Concordia Lutheran college (founded in 1850), and two public libraries ; and among the other public buildings may be mentioned the court-house, the county jail, the city hospital, and the orphans home. Interior communication is facili tated by six miles of tramway lines. In the early part of the 18th century the French established a trading port on the site of the present city, which took its name, however, from a British fort erected in 1794 by General Wayne. The town was laid out in 1825, but did not become of much importance till the opening of the Wabash and Erie canal in 1840. In that year it attained the rank of a city, though its inhabitants numbered only 2080. By 1850 they had increased to 4282, by 1860 to*10,38S, and by 1870 to 17,718. FORUM, the word employed by the Romans to denote any open place in which men congregated for the transac tion of mercantile or political business. It is connected with/orzs, and the same root also appears in the Greek Ovpa, the Sanskrit dvdra, and the English door. In the laws of the Twelve Tables it occurs as equivalent to the vestibule of a tomb (Cic., De Leg., ii. 24); in a Roman camp the foruin was an open place immediately beside the praetorium; and perhaps the word may at one time have been applied generally to the space in front of any public building or gateway. In the city itself, however, during the period of the early history, forum was almost a proper name, denoting the flat and formerly marshy space between the Palatine and Capitoline hills, which probably even at the regal period had afforded the accommodation necessary for such public meetings as could not be held within the area Capitolina (see ROME). During the days of the republic the city had only one forum, but under the empire a considerable num ber both of fora civilia and of fora venalia came into exist ence. To the former class belonged those of Julius and of Augustus, and also that of Nerva, which wassometimes called Transitorium or Pervium. Of the latter order the most important were the Olitorium, Piscatorium, and Boarium. Those called after Trajan, Sallust, Diocletian, and Aure- lian were probably intended merely as public lounges. The word forum frequently appears in the names of Roman market towns ; as, for example, in Appii Forum, Forum Julii (Frejus), Forum Livii (Forli), Forum Sempronii (Fossoinbrone). The fora were distinguished from mere vici by the possession of a municipal organization, which, however, was less complete than that of a prefecture. In legal phraseology, which distinguishes the forum commune from the forum privilegiatum, and the forum generale from the forum speciale, the word is practically equivalent to our "court" or "jurisdiction." FOSBROKE, THOMAS DUDLEY (1770-1842), an Eng lish antiquary, was born in London, and was called Dudley after a cousin of that name, esquire of Lebotwood Hall in Shropshire. Fosbroke has given accounts of himself and family in most of his works, accompanied with lists and statements of facts supporting possible alliances. He