A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology. By various writers. Ed. by William Smith. Illustrated by numerous engravings on wood.

680 CHALCOCONDYLES.

CHALCOCONDYLES.

person whom we are now discussing, and calls him
" Levitarum Sanctissimus;" but in reality it is
impossible to discover from internal evidence whether the author of the translation from Plato was
Christian, Jew, or Heathen, or, as Mosheim has
very plausibly conjectured, a sort of nondescript
combination of all three. He certainly gives no
hint that the individual to whom the book is addressed was a dignified ecclesiastic or even a
member of the church. This translation was first
printed under the inspection of Augustinus Justinianus, bishop of Nebio in Corsica, by Badius
Ascensius, Paris, fol. 1520, illustrated by numerous
mathematical diagrams very unskilfully executed;
a second edition, containing also the fragments of
Cicero's version of the same dialogue, appeared at
Paris, 4to. 1563; a third at Leyden, 4to. 1617,
with the notes and corrections of Jo. Meursius;
the most recent and best is that of J. A. Fabricius,
Hamburg. fol. 1718, placed at the end of the
second volume of the works of Saint Hippolytus.
The text was improved by the collation of a
Bodleian MS., and the notes of Meursius are given
entire. (Cave, Histor. Liter. Eccles. Script. vol. i.
p. 199, ed. Basil.; Barthius, Adv. xxii. 16, xlviii.
8; Funccius, De inerti ac decrepita Linguae Latinae Senectute, c. ix. ~ 5; Brucker, Histor. Grit.
Philos. vol. iii. p. 546, iv. p. 1322.) [W. R.]
CHALCIOECUS (Xaiatoeos), " the goddess
of the brazen house," a surname of Athena at
Sparta, derived from the brazen temple which the
goddess had in that city, and which also contained
her statue in brass. This temple, which continued
to exist in the time of Pausanias, was believed to
have been commenced by Tyndareus, but was not
completed till many years later by the Spartan
artist Gitiadas. (Paus. iii. 17. ~ 3, x. 5. ~ 5; C.
Nep. Paus. 5; Polyb. iv. 22.) Respecting the
festival of the Chalcioecia celebrated at Sparta,
see Diet. of Ant. s. v. XaXKmonica. [L. S.]
CHALCI'OPE (XaAntT'7r?). 1. A daughter of
Rhexenor, or according to others of Chalcodon,
was the second wife of Aegeus. (Apollod. iii. 15.
~6; Athen. xiii. p. 556.)
2. A daughter of king Eurypylus in the island
of Cos, and mother of Thessalus. (Homr. 11. ii.
679; Apollod. ii. 7. ~ 8.) There is a third mythical
personage of this name. (Apollod. i. 9. ~ 1.) [L. S.]
CHALCIS (XaAcis), one of the daughters of
Asopus and Metope, from whom the town of
Chalcis in Euboea was said to have derived its
name. (Eustath. ad Horn. p. 279.) According to
others, Chalcis was the mother of the Curetes and
Corybantes, the former of whom were among the
earliest inhabitants of Chalcis. (Schol. Vict. ad
Horn. II. xiv. 291; Strab. x. p. 447.) [L. S.]
CHALCOCO'NDYLES, or, by contraction,
CHALCO'NDYLES, LAO'NICUS or NICOLA'US (Aaovitcos or NitcoAdos XaAKcotcov3ovAs or
XaAmcov6'Am7hs), a Byzantine historian of the fifteenth century of the Christian aera, of whose life
little is known, except that he was sent by the
emperor John VII. Palaeologus, as ambassador to
the camp of Sultan MUrad II. during the siege of
Constantinople in A. D. 1446. Hamberger (Gelehrte
Nachrichten von beruihmten Miinnern, dc. vol. iv.
p. 764) shews, that he was still living in 1462,
but it is scarcely credible that he should have been
alive in 1490, and even later, as Vossius thinks
(De Historicis Graecis, ii. 30). Chalcocondyles,
who was a native of Athens, has written a history

of the Turks and of the later period of the Byzantine empire, which begins with the year 1298,
and goes down to the conquest of Corinth and the
invasion of the Peloponnesus by the Turks in 1463,
thus including the capture of Constantinople by
the Turks in 1453. Chalcocondyles, a statesman
of great experience and of extensive learning, is a
trustworthy historian, whose style is interesting
and attractive, and whose work is one of the most
important sources for the history of the decline and
fall of the Greek empire. His work, however,
which is divided into ten books, is not very
well arranged, presenting in several instances the
aspect of a book composed of different essays,
notes, and other materials, written occasionally,
and afterwards put together with too little care for
their logical and chronological order. Another
defect of the author is his display of matters which
very often have nothing to do with the chief subject, and which he apparently inserted in order to
shew the variety of his knowledge. But if they
are extraneous to his historical object, they are
valuable to us, as they give us an idea of the
knowledge of the Greeks of his time, especially with regard to history, geography, and
ethnography. Among these episodes there is a
most interesting description of the greater part of
Europe, which had been disclosed to the eyes of
the Greeks by the political travels of several of
their emperors in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. (ii. pp, 36-50, ed. Paris.) He says that
Germany stretches from Vienna to the ocean, and
from Prague to the river Tartessus (!) in the Pyrenees (!!); but he observes with great justness,
that if the Germans were united under one head,
they would be the most powerful nation; that
there are more than two hundred free towns
flourishing by trade and industry; that the
mechanical arts are cultivated by them with great
success; that they have invented gun-powder, and
that they are fond of duelling. The passage treating of Germany is given with a Latin translation
and notes in Freherus "Corpus Script. Rer. Germ."
As to England, he says that it lies opposite to
Flanders-a country but too well known to the
Greeks-and is composed of three islands united
under one government; he mentions the fertility
of the soil, the mildness of the climate, the manufacture of woollen cloth, and the flourishing trade
of the great metropolis, London (Aovi,5m). His
description of her bold and active inhabitants is
correct, and he was informed of their being the
first bowmen in the world; but when he says
that their language has no affinity with that of any
other nation, he perhaps confounded the English
language with the Irish. He states that their
manners and habits were exactly like those of the
French, which was an error as to the nation at
large, but tolerably correct if applied to the nobles;
the great power and turbulence of the aristocracy
were well known to him. At that time strangers
and visitors were welcomed by the ladies in England
with a kiss, a custom which one hundred years later
moved the sympathizing heart of the learned Erasmus Roterodamus, and caused him to express his
delight in his charming epistle to Faustus Andrelinus: the Greek, brought up among depraved
men, and accustomed to witness but probably to
abhor disgraceful usages, draws scandalous and
revolting conclusions from that token of kindness.
The principal MSS. of Chalcocondyles are those