Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) publican [Lat.,=state employee], in ancient Rome, man who was employed by the state government under contract. As early as c.200 b.c. there was a class of men in Rome accustomed to undertaking contrac...

(Encyclopedia) Quellinus or Quellin, Artus ärˈtəs kvĕlēˈnəs, kvĕlˈĭn [key], 1609–68, Flemish sculptor. His allegorical figures decorating the royal palace of Amsterdam are famous. Quellinus was the outst...

(Encyclopedia) Quiller-Couch, Sir Arthur Thomas kwĭlˈər-ko͞ochˌ [key], pseud. Q, 1863–1944, English author. Among the novels of his native Cornwall are Dead Man's Rock (1887) and Hetty Wesley (1903), which ar...

(Encyclopedia) Thóroddsen, Jón yōn tōˈrôtsĕn [key], 1818–68, Icelandic novelist and poet. He studied law in Copenhagen intermittently from 1841 to 1850, fought in the Danish army, and after his return to Ic...

(Encyclopedia) Tzara, Tristan trēstäNˈ tsäˈrä [key], 1896–1963, French writer, b. Romania. He studied at the Univ. of Zürich, where he and his friends formulated the dadaist movement initially as a pacifist...

(Encyclopedia) Bandelier, Adolph Francis Alphonse băndəlērˈ [key], 1840–1914, American anthropologist and historian, b. Bern, Switzerland. He was a disciple of Lewis Henry Morgan. An expert on Spanish colonial...

(Encyclopedia) Roberts, Elizabeth Madox, 1886–1941, American poet and novelist, b. Perryville, Ky., grad. Univ. of Chicago, 1921. She is best known for her novels and stories of the Kentucky mountain people, whose...

(Encyclopedia) Etherege, Sir George ĕthˈərĭj [key], 1636–1692, English dramatist. His witty, licentious comedies—The Comical Revenge; or, Love in a Tub (1664) and She Wou'd If She Cou'd (1668)—set the tone...

(Encyclopedia) Gagarin, Yuri Alekseyevich yo͞oˈrē əlyĭksyāˈyəvĭch gägäˈrĭn [key], 1934–68, Russian astronaut (cosmonaut), b. near Gzhatsk, RSFSR. He was the first in history to be rocketed into orbita...

(Encyclopedia) marriage, socially sanctioned union that reproduces the family. In all societies the choice of partners is generally guided by rules of exogamy (the obligation to marry outside a group); some societie...