nautics, the best known are: Zeitschrift für Luftschifffahrt und Physik der Atmosphäre (Berlin); The Aëronautical Journal (London); L'Aëronaute (Paris); L'Aërophile (Paris); Revue de l'Aëronautique (Paris).
A′ËROPLANE. See Aëronautics.
A′ËROSTAT′IC PRESS. A machine used for extracting the coloring matter from dye-woods and other materials. A vessel is divided by a horizontal partition pierced with small holes. Upon this the substance containing the color is laid, and a cover, also perforated, is placed upon it. The extracting liquid is then poured on the top, and the air being drawn from the under part of the vessel by an air pump, the liquid is forced through the substance by the pressure of the atmosphere. This instrument was used in place of the modern hydraulic press.
A′ËROSTAT′ICS (Gk. ἀήρ, aēr, air + στατός, statos, standing). That branch of science which treats of the weight, pressure, and equilibrium of air and other gases, and of the equilibrium of solids immersed in them. It is, therefore, a branch of pneumatics.
A′ËROT′ROPISM (Gk. ἀήρ, aēr, air + τροπή, tropē, a turn, turning). The sensitiveness of certain plant organs, which enables them to orient themselves with reference to the movements of gases—usually oxygen—dissolved in the medium in which they are grown. Aërotropism is a special case of chemotropism (q.v.). The pollen tubes of many plants are negatively aërotropic: when grown in sugar solution they grow away from the surface of the medium which is in contact with air, and from which oxygen molecules are diffusing. Roots of maize are positively aërotropic in water. They curve so as to remain near the surface, often growing horizontally for long distances, in spite of the stimulus of gravity which tends to cause them to grow downward. (See Geotropism in Plants.) If thrust deeply into water they will often bend upward and seek the surface where oxygen is entering.
ÆSCHINES, ĕs′kī-nēz (Gk. Αἰσχίνης, Aischinēs) (389–314 B.C.). An Athenian orator, second only to his great rival, Demosthenes. He was born at Athens in humble station, served as a soldier, then became a clerk to some of the lower magistrates, and for a time was an actor in smaller parts. Finally, he became secretary to two distinguished statesmen, Aristophon and Eubulus, through whose influence he twice obtained election to a government secretary's office. Then, through his eloquence, grace, and legal knowledge, he rapidly became one of the leading men in the State. Sent as a member of the embassy to Philip of Macedon in 347 B.C., he was won over to favor the Peace of Philocrates (346), and then became the leader of the peace party at Athens as against Demosthenes, who headed the party which believed that Philip was to be opposed at every point and at any cost. In 345 he was charged with treason by Demosthenes and Timarchus, but, with the aid of powerful friends, defended himself successfully. Again, in 342, Demosthenes revived the charges in his famous speech On the False Embassy. Again Æschines answered successfully in a speech having the same title. He continued to favor Philip actively, and no doubt contributed to the spread of Macedonian supremacy. His fall was due, however, to his hatred of Demosthenes, whom Ctesiphon had proposed to reward with the public gift of a golden crown in recognition of his services to the State. Æschines thereupon charged Ctesiphon with making an illegal proposal, and in 330 attacked him in his brilliant oration, Against Ctesiphon, really directed against Demosthenes. He was completely defeated by Demosthenes' speech, On the Crown, and so failed in his suit against Ctesiphon, suffered atimia, and was condemned to pay 1000 drachmas fine. He went into exile at Rhodes, where, tradition says, he opened a school of oratory. He died at Samos. Æschines's posthumous fame is due to his three extant speeches, Against Timarchus, On the False Embassy, and Against Ctesiphon, which, according to Photius, were called in antiquity, "The Three Graces." An anecdote often repeated shows the esteem in which the third was held. On one occasion he read to his audience in Rhodes his oration against Ctesiphon, and some of his auditors expressing their astonishment that he should have been defeated in spite of such a powerful display, he replied: "You would cease to be astonished if you had heard Demosthenes." The speeches are edited by Schultz (1865); Weidner (1872); and in all collections of the Attic Orators. Consult especially, Jebb, Attic Orators (London, 1876–80), and Blass, Attische Beredsamkeit (Leipzig, 1887–98), The twelve letters which bear his name are spurious.
ÆS′CHYLUS (Gk. Αἴσχυλος, Aischylos) (525–?456-5 B.C.). The first of the three great Athenian tragic poets. He was born in Eleusis, and was of noble descent, being the son of Euphorion. He fought against the Persians at Marathon (490), Salamis (480), and Platæa (479); his epitaph celebrated his bravery on the field. He early turned to tragic composition, and, according to tradition, appeared first in 497 as a rival of the older tragedians, Pratinas and Chœrilus. His first victory, however, was not won until 485. We hear also that he wrote in unsuccessful competition with Simonides an elegy over those who fell at Marathon. He undertook, apparently, three journeys to Syracuse; one about 476–475, when he composed a play, The Ætneans, for King Hiero, in honor of the new city, Ætna, founded on the site of ancient Catana. He was back in Athens apparently in 472, but seems to have been again in Sicily between 471 and 469, when he had his play, The Persians, repeated there at Hiero's request. Soon after 458 he left his native city for Sicily for the last time, and died at Gela in 456–5. The story that he was killed by the fall of a tortoise from the talons of an eagle, which had mistaken the poet's bald head for a rock on which it could crack the shell of its prey, is probably only a popular tale applied to Æschylus, although it may owe its origin to a misinterpretation of a scene on his monument. The citizens of Gela erected a splendid tomb to him; by a decree of the Athenians a chorus was granted for his plays alone after his death, and in the fourth century, at the proposal of the orator Lycurgus, a bronze statue of him, as of Sophocles and Euripides, was erected in the theatre.
The productiveness of Æschylus lasted for more than forty years, during which he is said to have written ninety plays, of which twenty were satyr dramas. These tragedies were produced in groups of three, "trilogies," bound by a con-
