The Nuttall Encyclopaedia eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 2,685 pages of information about The Nuttall Encyclopaedia.

The Nuttall Encyclopaedia eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 2,685 pages of information about The Nuttall Encyclopaedia.

XANTHUS, principal city in ancient Lycia, on a river of the same name, celebrated for its temples and works of art; sustained two sieges, the last of which terminated in the self-destruction of its inhabitants; ruins of it exist, and are Cyclopean; also the name of a river in the Troad, called also the Scamander.

XANTIPPE, the name of the wife of Socrates, a woman of a peevish and shrewish disposition, the subject of exaggerated gossip in Athens, to the exaltation of the temper of her husband, which it never ruffled.  She is quaintly described by an old English writer as “a passing shrewde, curste, and wayward woman, wife to the pacient and wise philosopher Socrates.”

XAVIER, ST. FRANCIS, a Jesuit missionary, styled usually the “Apostle of the Indies,” born, of a noble family, in the north of Spain; a student of Sainte Barbe in Paris, he took to philosophy, became acquainted with Ignatius Loyola, and was associated with him in the formation of the Jesuit Society; was sent in 1541, under sanction of the Pope, by John III. of Portugal to Christianise India, and arrived at Goa in 1542, from whence he extended his missionary labours to the Eastern Archipelago, Ceylon, and Japan, in which enterprises they were attended with signal success; on his return to Goa in 1552 he proceeded to organise a mission to China, in which he experienced such opposition and so many difficulties that on his way to carry on his work there he sickened and died; he was buried at Goa; beatified by Paul V. in 1619, and canonised by Gregory XV. in 1622 (1506-1552).

XEBEC, a small three-masted vessel with lateen and square sails, used formerly in the Mediterranean by the Algerine pirates, and mounted with guns.

XENIEN, the name, derived from Martial, of a series of stinging epigrams issued at one time by Goethe and Schiller, which created a great sensation and gave offence to many, causing “the solemn empire of dulness to quake from end to end.”

XENOCRATES, an ancient philosopher and a disciple of Plato, born in Chalcedon, and a successor of Plato’s in the Academy as head of it; d. 314 B.C.

XENOPHANES, the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy, born in Asia Minor; was the first to enunciate the doctrine “all is one,” but “without specifying,” says SCHWEGLER, “whether this unity was intellectual or moral....  Aristotle says he called God the one.”  See ELEATICS.

XENOPHON, historian, philosopher, and military commander, born at Athens, son of an Athenian of good position; was a pupil and friend of Socrates; joined the expedition of Cyrus against his brother Artaxerxes, and on the failure of it conducted the ten thousand Greeks—­“the Retreat of the Ten Thousand”—­who went up with him back to the Bosphorus, served afterwards in several military adventures, brought himself under the ban of his fellow-citizens in Athens, and retired to Elis, where he spent 20 years of his life in the pursuits of country life and in the prosecution of

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The Nuttall Encyclopaedia from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.