Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Barrow, Isaac, 1630–77, English mathematician and theologian. His method of finding tangents prefigured the differential calculus developed by Isaac Newton. He was professor of mathematics at Cambri...

(Encyclopedia) apostrophe, figure of speech in which an absent person, a personified inanimate being, or an abstraction is addressed as though present. The term is derived from a Greek word meaning “a turning away...

(Encyclopedia) Barnes, Barnabe, 1569?–1609, English poet. His major work is Parthenophil and Parthenophe (1593), a collection of sonnets, madrigals, elegies, and odes. He also wrote A Divine Century of Spiritual S...

(Encyclopedia) Epirus ĕpīˈrəs [key], ancient country of Greece, on the Ionian Sea and W of Macedon and Thessaly, a region now occupied by NW Greece and S Albania. At the time of Homer, Epirus was known as the ho...

(Encyclopedia) Metuchen mətŭchˈən [key], borough (1990 pop. 12,804), Middlesex co., NE N.J.; settled before 1700, inc. 1900. Although chiefly residential, it manufactures metal products, packaging equipment, mac...

(Encyclopedia) Celaenae sĭlēˈnē [key], ancient city of Asia Minor, in Phrygia, near the source of the Maeander River, in present-day W central Turkey. In the days of the Persian Empire, Cyrus the Great had a pal...

(Encyclopedia) Antiphilus ăntĭfˈĭləs [key], fl. 4th cent. b.c., Greek painter, of Alexandrian origin. Pliny and Quintilian wrote about his paintings of gryllos, a creature part man, part animal or bird. Pliny f...

(Encyclopedia) Heliogabalus ĕləgăbˈələs [key], c.205–222, Roman emperor (218–22). He was a priest of the local sun god, Elagabalus, at Emesa and was named Varius Avitus Bassianus. He was a cousin of Caraca...

(Encyclopedia) Lee, Nathaniel, 1653–92, English dramatist. After failing as an actor, he turned to writing plays. Lee confined himself entirely to tragedy, turning often to the classical historians for the backgro...

(Encyclopedia) Wheeler, Benjamin Ide, 1854–1927, American educator and classical scholar, b. Randolph, Mass. Wheeler was a professor of Greek and comparative philology at Cornell before serving as president of the...