World Characters

Born: 23-Sep-63 BC

Birthplace: Rome, Italy

Died: 19-Aug-14 AD

Location of death: Nola, Italy

Cause of death: unspecified

Remains: Buried, Mausoleum of Augustus, Rome, Italy

Gender: Male

Race or Ethnicity: White

Sexual orientation: Straight

Occupation: Royalty

Nationality: Ancient Rome

Executive summary: Roman Emperor, 23 BC to 14 AD

Augustus (from augeo, increase, venerable, majestic), the title given by the Roman senate, on the 17th of January 27 BC, to Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, or as he was originally designated, Gaius Octavius, in recognition of his eminent services to the state, and borne by him as the first of the Roman emperors. The title was adopted by all the succeeding Caesars or emperors of Rome long after they had ceased to be connected by blood with the first Augustus.

Gaius Octavius was born in Rome on the 23rd of September 63 BC, the year of Cicero's consulship and of Catiline's conspiracy. He came of a family of good standing, long settled at Velitrae (Velletri), but his father was the first of the family to obtain a curule magistracy at Rome and senatorial dignity. His mother, however, was Atia, daughter of Julia, the wife of M. Atius Balbus, and sister of Julius Caesar, and it was this connection with the great dictator which determined his career. In his fifth year (58 BC) his father died; about a year later his mother remarried, and the young Octavius passed under her care to that of his stepfather, L. Marcius Philippus. At the age of twelve (51 BC) he delivered the customary funeral panegyric on his grandmother Julia, his first public appearance. On the 18th of October 48 (or 47) BC he assumed the "toga virilis" and was elected into the pontifical college, an exceptional honor which he no doubt owed to his great-uncle, now dictator and master of Rome. In 46 BC he shared in the glory of Caesar's African triumph, and in 45 he was made a patrician by the senate, and designated as one of Caesar's "masters of the horse" for the next year. In the autumn of 45, Caesar, who was planning his Parthian campaign, sent his nephew to study quietly at the Greek colony of Apollonia, in Illyria. Here the news of Caesar's murder reached him and he crossed to Italy. On landing he learned that Caesar had made him his heir and adopted him into the Julian gens, whereby he acquired the designation of Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus. The inheritance was a perilous one; his mother and others would have dissuaded him from accepting it, but he, confident in his abilities, declared at once that he would undertake its obligations, and discharge the sums bequeathed by the dictator to the Roman people. Mark Antony had possessed himself of Caesar's papers and effects, and made light of his young nephew's pretensions. Brutus and Cassius paid him little regard, and dispersed to their respective provinces. Cicero, much charmed at the attitude of Antonius, hoped to make use of him, and flattered him to the utmost, with the expectation, however, of getting rid of him as soon as he had served his purpose. Octavianus conducted himself with consummate adroitness, making use of all competitors for power, but assisting none. Considerable forces attached themselves to him. The senate, when it armed the consuls against Antonius, called upon him for assistance; and he took part in the campaign in which Antonius was defeated at Mutina (43 BC). The soldiers of Octavianus demanded the consulship for him, and the senate, though now much alarmed, could not prevent his election. He now effected a coalition with Antonius and Lepidus, and on the 27th of November 43 BC the three were formally appointed a triumvirate for the reconstitution of the commonwealth for five years. They divided the western provinces among them, the east being held for the republic by Brutus and Cassius. They drew up a list of proscribed citizens, and caused the assassination of three hundred senators and two thousand knights. They further confiscated the territories of many cities throughout Italy, and divided them among their soldiers. Cicero was murdered at the demand of Antonius. The remnant of the republican party took refuge either with Brutus and Cassius in the East, or with Sextus Pompeius, who had made himself master of the seas.

Octavianus and Antonius crossed the Adriatic in 42 BC to reduce the last defenders of the republic. Brutus and Cassius were defeated, and fell at the battle of Philippi. War soon broke out between the victors, the chief incident of which was the siege and capture by famine of Perusia, and the alleged sacrifice of three hundred of its defenders by the young Caesar at the altar of his uncle. But peace was again made between them (40 BC). Antonius married Octavia, his rival's sister, and took for himself the eastern half of the empire, leaving the west to Caesar. Lepidus was reduced to the single province of Africa. Meanwhile Sextus Pompeius made himself formidable by cutting off the supplies of grain from Rome. The triumvirs were obliged to concede to him the islands in the western Mediterranean. But Octavianus could not allow the capital to be kept in alarm for its daily sustenance. He picked a quarrel with Sextus, and when his colleagues failed to support him, undertook to attack him alone. Antonius, indeed, came at last to his aid, in return for military assistance in the campaign he meditated in the East. But Octavianus was well served by the commander of his fleet, M. Vipsanius Agrippa. Sextus was completely routed, and driven into Asia, where he perished soon afterwards (36 BC). Lepidus was an object of contempt to all parties, and Octavianus and Antonius remained to fight for supreme power.

The five years (36-31 BC) which preceded the decisive encounter between the two rivals were wasted by Antony in fruitless campaigns, and in a dalliance with Cleopatra which shocked Roman sentiment. By Octavian they were employed in strengthening his hold on the West, and his claim to be regarded as the one possible savior of Rome and Roman civilization. His marriage with Livia Drusilla (38 BC) placed by his side a sagacious counsellor and a loyal ally, whose services were probably as great as even those of his trusted friend Marcus Agrippa. With their help he set himself to win the confidence of a public still inclined to distrust the author of the proscriptions of 43 BC. Brigandage was suppressed in Italy, and the safety of the Italian frontiers secured against the raids of Alpine tribes on the northwest and of Illyrians on the east, while Rome was purified and beautified, largely with the help of Agrippa (aedile in 33 BC). Meanwhile, indignation at Antony's un-Roman excesses, and alarm at Cleopatra's rumored schemes of founding a Greco-Oriental empire, were rapidly increasing. In 32 BC Antony's repudiation of his wife Octavia, sister of Octavian, and the discovery of his will, with its clear proofs of Cleopatra's dangerous ascendancy, brought matters to a climax, and war was declared, not indeed against Antony, but against Cleopatra.

The decisive battle was fought on the 2nd of September 31 BC at Actium on the Epirot coast, and resulted in the almost total destruction of Antony's fleet and the surrender of his land forces. Not quite a year later (1st August 30 BC) followed the capture of Alexandria and the deaths by their own hands of Antony and Cleopatra. On the 11th of January 29 BC the restoration of peace was marked by the closing of the temple of Janus for the first time for 200 years. In the summer Octavian returned to Italy, and in August celebrated a three days' triumph. He was welcomed, not as a successful combatant in a civil war, but as the man who had vindicated the sovereignty of Rome against its assailants, as the savior of the republic and of his fellow citizens, above all as the restorer of peace.

He was now, to quote his own words, "master of all things", and the Roman world looked to him for some permanent settlement of the distracted empire. His first task was the re-establishment of a regular and constitutional government, such as had not existed since Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon twenty years before. To this task he devoted the next eighteen months (August 29 to January 27, 27 BC). The "principate", to give the new form of government its most appropriate name, was a compromise thoroughly characteristic of the combination of tenacity of purpose with cautious respect for forms and conventions which distinguished its author. The republic was restored; senate, magistrates and assembly resumed their ancient functions; and the public life of Rome began to run once more in the familiar grooves. The triumvirate with its irregularities and excesses was at an end. The controlling authority, which, Octavian himself wielded, could not indeed be safely dispensed with. But henceforward he was to exercise it under constitutional forms and limitations, and with the express sanction of the senate and people. Octavian was legally invested for a period of ten years with the government of the important frontier provinces, with the sole command of the military and naval forces of the state, and the exclusive control of its foreign relations. At home it was understood that he would year by year be elected consul, and enjoy the powers and pre-eminence attached to the chief magistracy of the Roman state. Thus the republic was restored under the presidency and patronage of its "first citizen" (princeps civitatis).

In acknowledgment of this happy settlement and of his other services further honors were conferred upon Octavian. On the 13th of January 27 BC, the birthday of the restored republic, he was awarded the civic crown to be placed over the door of his house, in token that he had saved his fellow citizens and restored the Republic. Four days later (January 17) the senate conferred upon him the cognomen of Augustus.

But it was not only the machinery of government in Rome that needed repair. Twenty years of civil war and confusion had disorganized the empire, and the strong hand of Augustus, as he must now be called, could alone restore confidence and order. Towards the end of 27 BC he left Rome for Gaul, and from that date until October 19 BC he was mainly occupied with the reorganization of the provinces and of the provincial administration, first of all in the West and then in the East. It was during his stay in Asia (20 BC) that the Parthian king Phraates voluntarily restored the Roman prisoners and standards taken at Carrhae (53 BC), a welcome tribute to the respect inspired by Augustus, and a happy augury for the future. In October 19 BC he returned to Rome, and the senate ordered that the day of his return (October 12) should thenceforward be observed as a public holiday. The period of ten years for which his imperium had been granted him was nearly ended, and though much remained to be done, very much had been accomplished. The pacification of northern Spain by the subjugation of the Astures and Cantabri, the settlement of the wide territories added to the empire by Julius Caesar in Gaul -- the "New Gaul", or the "long-haired Gaul" (Gallia Comata) as it was called by way of distinction from the old province of Gallia Narbonensis -- and the re-establishment of Roman authority over the kings and princes of the Near East, were achievements which fully justified the acclamations of senate and people.

In 18 BC Augustus's imperium was renewed for five years, and his tried friend Marcus Agrippa, now his son-in-law, was associated with him as a colleague. From October of 19 BC until the middle of 16 BC Augustus's main attention was given to Rome and to domestic reform, and to this period belong such measures as the Julian law "as to the marriage of the orders." In June of 17 BC the opening of the new and better age, which he had worked to bring about, was marked by the celebration in Rome of the Secular games. The chief actors in the ceremony were Augustus himself and his colleague Agrippa -- while, as the extant record tells us, the processional hymn, chanted by youths and maidens first before the new temple of Apollo on the Palatine and then before the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol, was composed by Horace. The hymn, the well-known Carmen Saeculare, gives fervent expression to the prevalent emotions of joy and gratitude.

In the next year (16 BC), however, Augustus was suddenly called away from Rome to deal with a problem which engrossed much of his attention for the next twenty-five years. The defeat of Marcus Lollius, the legate commanding on the Rhine, by a horde of German invaders, seems to have determined Augustus to take in hand the whole question of the frontiers of the empire towards the north, and the effective protection of Gaul and Italy. The work was entrusted to Augustus's stepsons Tiberius and Drusus. The first step was the annexation of Noricum and Raetia (16-15 BC), which brought under Roman control the mountainous district through which the direct routes lay from North Italy to the upper waters of the Rhine and the Danube. East of Noricum Tiberius reduced to order for the time the restless tribes of Pannonia, and probably established a military post at Carnuntum on the Danube. To Drusus fell the more ambitious task of advancing the Roman frontier line from the Rhine to the Elbe, a work which occupied him until his death in Germany in 9 BC. In 13 BC Augustus had returned to Rome; his return, and the conclusion of his second period of rule, were commemorated by the erection of one of the most beautiful monuments of the Augustan age, the Ara Pacis Augustae. His imperium was renewed, again for five years, and in 12 BC, on the death of his former fellow triumvir Lepidus, he was elected Pontifex Maximus. But this third period of his imperium brought with it losses which Augustus must have keenly felt. Only a few months after his reappointment as Augustus's colleague, Marcus Agrippa, his trusted friend since boyhood, died. As was fully his due, his funeral oration was pronounced by Augustus, and he was buried in the mausoleum near the Tiber built by Augustus for himself and his family. Three years later his brilliant stepson Drusus died on his way back from a campaign in Germany, in which he had reached the Elbe. Finally in 8 BC he lost the comrade who next to Agrippa had been the most intimate friend and counsellor of his early manhood, Gaius Cilnius Maecenas, the patron of Virgil and Horace.

For the moment Augustus turned, almost of necessity, to his surviving stepson. Tiberius was associated with him as Agrippa had been in the tribunician power, was married against his will to Julia, and sent to complete his brother Drusus's work in Germany (7-6 BC). But Tiberius was only his stepson, and, with all his great qualities, was never a very lovable man. On the other hand, the two sons of Agrippa and Julia, Gaius and Lucius, were of his own blood and evidently dear to him. Both had been adopted by Augustus (17 BC). In 6 BC Tiberius, who had just received the tribunician power, was transferred from Germany to the East, where the situation in Armenia demanded attention. His sudden withdrawal to Rhodes has been variously explained, but, in part at least, it was probably due to the plain indications which Augustus now gave of his wish that the young Caesars should be regarded as his heirs. The elder, Gaius, now fifteen years old (5 BC), was formally introduced to the people as consul-designate by Augustus himself, who for this purpose resumed the consulship (12th) which he had dropped since 23 BC, and was authorized to take part in the deliberations of the senate. Three years later (2 BC) Augustus, now consul for the 13th and last time, paid a similar compliment to the younger brother Lucius. In 1 BC Gaius was given proconsular imperium, and sent to re-establish order in Armenia, and a few years afterwards (AD 2) Lucius was sent to Spain, apparently to take command of the legions there. But the fates were unkind; Lucius fell sick and died at Marseilles on his way out, and in the next year (AD 3) Gaius, wounded by an obscure hand in Armenia, started reluctantly for home, only to die in Lycia. Tiberius alone was left, and Augustus, at once accepting facts, formally and finally declared him to be his colleague and destined successor (AD 4) and adopted him as his son.

The interest of the last ten years of Augustus's life centers in the events occurring on the northern frontier. The difficult task of bringing the German tribes between the Rhine and the Elbe under Roman rule, commenced by Drusus in 13 BC, had on his death been continued by Tiberius (9-6 BC). During Tiberius's retirement in Rhodes no decisive progress was made, but in AD 4 operations on a large scale were resumed. From Velleius Paterculus, who himself served in the war, we learn that in the first campaign Roman authority was restored over the tribes between the Rhine and the Weser, and that the Roman forces, instead of returning as usual to their headquarters on the Rhine, went into winter-quarters near the source of the Lippe. In the next year (AD 5) the Elbe was reached by the troops, while the fleet, after a hazardous voyage, arrived at the mouth of the same river and sailed some way up it. Both feats are deservedly commemorated by Augustus himself in the Ancyran monument. To complete the conquest of Germany and to connect the frontier with the line of the Danube, it seemed that only one thing remained to be done, to break the power of the Marcomanni and their king Maroboduus. In the spring of AD 6 preparations were made for this final achievement; the territory of the Marcomanni (Bohemia) was to be invaded simultaneously by two columns. One, starting apparently from the headquarters of the army of Upper Germany at Mainz, was to advance by way of the Black Forest and attack Maroboduus on the west; the other, led by Tiberius himself, was to start from the new military base at Carnuntum on the Danube and operate from the southeast.

But the attack was never delivered, for at this moment, in the rear of Tiberius, the whole of Pannonia and Dalmatia burst into a blaze of insurrection. The crisis is pronounced by Suetonius to have been more serious than any which had confronted Rome since the war with Hannibal, for it was not merely the loss of a province but the invasion of Italy that was threatened, and Augustus openly declared in the senate that the insurgents might be before Rome in ten days. He himself moved to Ariminum to be nearer the seat of war, recruiting was vigorously carried on in Rome and Italy, and legions were summoned from Moesia and even from Asia. In the end, and not including the Thracian cavalry of King Rhoemetalces, a force of 15 legions with an equal number of auxiliaries was employed. Even so the task of putting down the insurrection was difficult enough, and it was not until late in the summer of AD 9, after three years of fighting, that Germanicus Caesar, who had been sent to assist Tiberius, ended the war by the capture of Andetrium in Dalmatia.

Five days later the news reached Rome of the disaster to Varus and his legions, in the heart of what was to have been the new province of Germany beyond the Rhine. The disaster was avowedly due entirely to Varus's incapacity and vanity, and might no doubt have been repaired by leaders of the calibre of Tiberius and Germanicus. Augustus, however, was now seventy-two, the Dalmatian outbreak had severely tried his nerve, and now for the second time in three years the fates seemed to pronounce clearly against a further prosecution of his long-cherished scheme of a Roman Germany reaching to the Elbe.

All that was immediately necessary was done. Recruiting was pressed forward in Rome, and first Tiberius and then Germanicus were despatched to the Rhine. But the German leaders were too prudent to risk defeat, and the Roman generals devoted their attention mainly to strengthening the line of the Rhine.

The defeat of Varus, and the tacit abandonment of the plans of expansion begun twenty-five years before, are almost the last events of importance in the long principate of Augustus. The last five years of his life (AD 10-14) were untroubled by war or disaster. Augustus was ageing fast, and was more and more disinclined to appear personally in the senate or in public. Yet in AD 13 he consented, reluctantly we are told, to yet one more renewal of his imperium for ten years, stipulating, however, that his stepson Tiberius, himself now over fifty, should be associated with himself on equal terms in the administration of the empire. Early in the same year (January 16, AD. 13) the last triumph of his principate was celebrated. Tiberius was now in Rome, the command on the Rhine having been given to Germanicus, who went out to it immediately after his consulship (AD. 12), and the time had come to celebrate the Dalmatian and Pannonian triumph, which the defeat of Varus had postponed. Augustus witnessed the triumphal procession, and Tiberius, as it turned from the Forum to ascend the Capitol, halted, descended from his triumphal car, and did reverence to his adopted father.

One last public appearance Augustus made in Rome. During AD 13 he and Tiberius conducted a census of Roman citizens, the third taken by his orders; the first having been in 28 BC at the very outset of his rule. The business of the census lasted over into the next year, but on the 11th of May, AD 14, before a great crowd in the Campus Martius, Augustus took part in the solemn concluding ceremony of burying away out of sight the old age and inaugurating the new. The ceremony had been full of significance in 28 BC, and now more than forty years later it was given a pathetic interest by Augustus himself. When the tablets containing the vows to be offered for the welfare of the state during the next lustrum were handed to him, he left the duty of reciting them to Tiberius, saying that he would not take vows which he was never destined to perform.

It was apparently at the end of June or early in July that Augustus left Rome on his last journey. Travelling by road to Astura (Torre Astura) at the southern point of the little bay of Antium, he sailed from there to Capri and to Naples. On his way at Puteoli, the passengers and crew of a ship just come from Alexandria cheered the old man by their spontaneous homage, declaring, as they poured libations, that to him they owed life, safe passage on the seas, freedom and fortune.

At Naples, in spite of increasing disease, he bravely sat out a gymnastic contest held in his honor, and then accompanied Tiberius as far as Beneventum on his way to Brundusium and Illyricum. On his return he was forced by illness to stop at Nola, his father's old home. Tiberius was hastily recalled and had a last confidential talk on affairs of state. From this point forward, says Suetonius, he gave no more thought to such great affairs. He bade farewell to his friends, inquired after the health of Drusus's daughter who was ill, and then quietly expired in the arms of the wife who for more than fifty years had been his most intimate and trusted guide and counsellor, and to whom his last words were an exhortation to "live mindful of our wedded life." He died on the 19th of August, AD 14, in the same room in which his father had died before him, and on the anniversary of his entrance upon his first consulship fifty-seven years before (43 BC). The corpse was carried to Rome in slow procession along the Appian Way. On the day of the funeral it was borne to the Campus Martius on the shoulders of senators and there burnt. The ashes were reverently collected by Livia, and placed in the mausoleum by the Tiber which her husband had built for himself and his family. The last act was the formal decree of the senate by which Augustus, like his father Julius before him, was added to the number of the gods recognized by the Roman state.

If we except writers like Voltaire who could see in Augustus only the man who had destroyed the old republic and extinguished political liberty, the verdict of posterity on Augustus has varied just in proportion as his critics have fixed their attention, mainly, on the means by which he rose to power, or the use which he made of the power when acquired. The lines of argument followed respectively by friendly and hostile contemporaries immediately after his death have been followed by later writers with little change. But of late years, our increasing mistrust of the current gossip about him, and our increased knowledge of the magnitude of what he actually accomplished, have conspicuously influenced the judgments passed upon him. We allow the faults and crimes of his early manhood, his cruelties and deceptions, his readiness to sacrifice everything that came between him and the end he had in view. On the other hand, a careful study of what he achieved between the years 38 BC, when he married Livia, and his death in AD 14, is now held to give him a claim to rank, not merely as an astute and successful intriguer, or an accomplished political actor, but as one of the world's great men, a statesman who conceived and carried through a scheme of political reconstruction which kept the empire together, secured peace and tranquillity, and preserved civilization for more than two centuries.

Aristotle of Stagirus - Biography

Aristotle of Stagirus (384 BCE – 322BCE) was born in 384 BCE in Stagirus, a Greek colony and seaport on the coast of Thrase. His father, Nichomachus, was court physician to King Amyntas of Macedonia. The Macedonian Court would have a considerable influence on his life. Aristotle's father died while he was a child, and it was his guardian, Proxenus, who sent him to Athens at age 17. At the time, Athens was considered the intellectual center of the world, and here he joined the Academy to study under Plato. Aristotle attended Plato's lectures for twenty years, eventually lecturing himself, particularly on the subject of rhetoric. When Plato died in 347, Aristotle's ability and position in the Academy might have seen him take on leadership there, but the differences in his teachings from Plato's made this impossible, and it was Plato's nephew Seusippus who was chosen to take on leadership of the academy. Aristotle moved to the court of his friend Hermeas, the ruler of Atarneus and Assos in Mysea. It was during his three-year stay here that he married Pythias, Hermeas' niece. In 345 Hermeas was taken over by the Persians, and Aristotle moved to the island of Lesbos, at Mytilene. It is here that he met Theophrastus, his collaborator in scientific endeavors, and later his successor as head of the Lyceum in Athens. The observations of flora and fauna made by Aristotle in his writings on biology were made during his time in Mysea and Lesbos.

In 343 Aristotle was invited back to Macedonia by the King to tutor the young Alexander. The differing ambitions of the two friends (teacher and student), made for an intense scholarly relationship. Aristotle was working on establishing a new philosophical world-view with Greece at its center, however Alexander was preparing to conquer an empire far exceeding the boundaries of the Greek world. Aristotle supported a nationalistic strategy, which would protect Greek culture from the "barbarians," whereas Alexander eventually supported the inclusion of non-Greek culture into his policies to ease his rule of the outer provinces.

When Alexander succeeded King Philip and launched his first series of campaigns, extending his rule to India and Egypt, Aristotle returned to Athens for the first time since Plato's death. Platonism had become the dominant philosophy of Athens, and the Platonic school was running successfully under the leadership of Xenocrates. Aristotle decided to establish his own school at the Lyceum. For the next thirteen years he concentrated on teaching and writing the philosophical treatises, which would become his published works. In the morning at the Lyceum Aristotle would facilitate detailed discussions for his more advanced students, and in the afternoon he would lecture on popular topics of discourse for a general body of philosophers and students. His followers became known as "peripatetics," meaning "to walk about," referring to Aristotle's habit of walking back and forth while relating his lectures.

In 323 Alexander the Great was killed while on campaign in the East, and anti-Macedonian sentiment reigned in Athens. In an attempt to free Greek city-states from Macedonian rule, the Athenian Assembly declared war against Antiipon, Alexander's successor. In a repetition of his experience in 347, Aristotle was considered pro-Macedonian and therefore anti-Athenian, and he was charged with "impiety." This is the same charge that had led to Socrates' execution in 399. To avoid Socrates' end, Aristotle went into voluntary exile to the city of Chalcis. Here he lived with his second wife, Herpyllis, who was also the mother of his son, Nichomachus. In 322 BCE, at age 63, Aristotle died of a digestive ailment.

Aristotle wrote treatises covering a vast range of philosophical thought, from biology, physics, logic, science, and metaphysics to ethics, morality, aesthetics, and politics. He developed a non-Platonic theory of form, produced a system of deductive reasoning for both universal and existential statements, and theorized on the cosmos, life, matter and mind, and the "good life." There are 150 philosophical treatises thought to have been written by Aristotle, 30 of which survive today. It is not certain how many of these treatises are actually unpolished lecture notes, and it is thought that some may be the work of students from the Lyceum instead of written by the hand of Aristotle.

Theophrastus, Aristotle's friend and collaborator from Lesbos who inherited leadership of the school at Lyceum, is reported to have taken care of Aristotle's texts. This collection was in turn passed on to Theophrastus' pupil Neleus, and from him to his heirs, who protected the writings in a vault where they suffered from dampness and pests. The vault was discovered in 100 BCE by a book lover named Apellicon, who brought the rotting texts to Athens. They were moved to Rome in 86 BCE when Athens was captured by Sulla, and in Rome they were published in a new edition due to growing interest of local scholars. Aristotle's work and philosophy in general enjoyed a renaissance at this time, and it is this collection of writings that forms the basis of our studies of Aristotle today.

Aristotle's work enjoyed another rediscovery in the later Middle Ages, when it was studied by medieval scholars. He was called "Ille Philosophus" (the philosopher) by his medieval followers, and his work was discussed as the eternal truth (barring any of his writings that may have contradicted the Bible). Known as Scholasticism, Aristotelian philosophy reconciled with Christian doctrine became the official philosophy of the Roman Catholic Church. Scientific discoveries of the Middle Ages and Renaissance paid heed to Scholasticism, or suffered harsh criticism.

Plato theorized that ultimate reality is only knowable through reason and reflection, and he located it in ideas or eternal forms. Aristotle differed from his teacher, theorizing that ultimate reality is knowable through experience, residing in physical objects, and his writings were often based on first-hand observation. Aristotle's objects (which include organisms) are comprised of form and matter, or their reality and their potential. For example, a block of wood (matter) has the potential to assume whatever form a carpenter chooses to give it, and a seed has the potential to grow into a living tree. Aristotle identifies the form in living creatures with the soul, and describes a hierarchy of souls where plants have the lowest kind, animals a higher kind because of their ability to feel, and humans the highest because of their ability to reason and rationalize.

Change was cyclical to Aristotle, like the cycle of water through evaporation, rain, rivers, oceans and deserts. He imagined an eternal universe without beginning or end, and this is the most basic difference between his work and that of both medieval and modern thinkers. He believed that the overall conditions of the world would never change.


Aristotle

Aristotle of Stagirus was an ancient Greek philosopher. (384 BCE – 322BCE)

Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) was the founder and leader of the Nazi Party and the most influential voice in the organization, implementation and execution of the Holocaust, the systematic extermination and ethnic cleansing of six million European Jews and millions of other non-aryans.

Hitler was the Head of State, Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces and guiding spirit, or fuhrer, of Germany's Third Reich from 1933 to 1945.

        - Hitler's Early Years
        - World War I
        - Hitler Starts to Lead
        - Rise of the Nazi Party
        - Hitler As German Fuhrer
        - World War II
        - Allied Victory & Hitler's Death

Early Years

    Born in Braunau am Inn, Austria, on April 20, 1889, Hitler was the son of a fifty-two-year-old Austrian customs official, Alois Schickelgruber Hitler, and his third wife, a young peasant girl, Klara Poelzl, both from the backwoods of lower Austria. The young Hitler was a resentful, discontented child. Moody, lazy, of unstable temperament, he was deeply hostile towards his strict, authoritarian father and strongly attached to his indulgent, hard-working mother, whose death from cancer in December 1908 was a shattering blow to the adolescent Hitler.
    Hitler as a baby

    After spending four years in the Realschule in Linz, he left school at the age of sixteen with dreams of becoming a painter. In October 1907, the provincial, middle-class boy left home for Vienna, where he was to remain until 1913 leading a bohemian, vagabond existence. Embittered at his rejection by the Viennese Academy of Fine Arts, he was to spend "five years of misery and woe" in Vienna as he later recalled, adopting a view of life which changed very little in the ensuing years, shaped as it was by a pathological hatred of Jews and Marxists, liberalism and the cosmopolitan Habsburg monarchy.

    Existing from hand to mouth on occasional odd jobs and the hawking of sketches in low taverns, the young Hitler compensated for the frustrations of a lonely bachelor's life in miserable male hostels by political harangues in cheap cafes to anyone who would listen and indulging in grandiose dreams of a Greater Germany.

    In Vienna he acquired his first education in politics by studying the demagogic techniques of the popular Christian-social Mayor, Karl Lueger, and picked up the stereotyped, obsessive anti-Semitism with its brutal, violent sexual connotations and concern with the "purity of blood" that remained with him to the end of his career. From crackpot racial theorists like the defrocked monk, Lanz von Liebenfels, and the Austrian Pan-German leader, Georg von Schoenerer, the young Hitler learned to discern in the "Eternal Jew" the symbol and cause of all chaos, corruption and destruction in culture, politics and the economy. The press, prostitution, syphilis, capitalism, Marxism, democracy and pacifism--all were so many means which "the Jew" exploited in his conspiracy to undermine the German nation and the purity of the creative Aryan race.

World War I
Hitler as a soldier during World War 1 (circa 1915)

    In May 1913 Hitler left Vienna for Munich and, when war broke out in August 1914, he joined the Sixteenth Bavarian Infantry Regiment, serving as a despatch runner. Hitler proved an able, courageous soldier, receiving the Iron Cross (First Class) for bravery, but did not rise above the rank of Lance Corporal. Twice wounded, he was badly gassed four weeks before the end of the war and spent three months recuperating in a hospital in Pomerania. Temporarily blinded and driven to impotent rage by the abortive November 1918 revolution in Germany as well as the military defeat, Hitler, once restored, was convinced that fate had chosen him to rescue a humiliated nation from the shackles of the Versailles Treaty, from Bolsheviks and Jews.

    Assigned by the Reichswehr in the summer of 1919 to "educational" duties which consisted largely of spying on political parties in the overheated atmosphere of post-revolutionary Munich, Hitler was sent to investigate a small nationalistic group of idealists, the German Workers' Party. On 16 September 1919 he entered the Party (which had approximately forty members), soon changed its name to the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) and had imposed himself as its Chairman by July 1921.

Hitler Becomes a Leader

    Hitler discovered a powerful talent for oratory as well as giving the new Party its symbol — the swastika — and its greeting "Heil!." His hoarse, grating voice, for all the bombastic, humourless, histrionic content of his speeches, dominated audiences by dint of his tone of impassioned conviction and gift for self-dramatization. By November 1921 Hitler was recognized as Fuhrer of a movement which had 3,000 members, and boosted his personal power by organizing strong- arm squads to keep order at his meetings and break up those of his opponents. Out of these squads grew the storm troopers (SA) organized by Captain Ernst Röhm and Hitler's black-shirted personal bodyguard, the Schutzstaffel (SS).

    Hitler focused his propaganda against the Versailles Treaty, the "November criminals," the Marxists and the visible, internal enemy No. 1, the "Jew," who was responsible for all Germany's domestic problems. In the twenty-five-point programme of the NSDAP announced on 24 February 1920, the exclusion of the Jews from the Volk community, the myth of Aryan race supremacy and extreme nationalism were combined with "socialistic" ideas of profit-sharing and nationalization inspired by ideologues like Gottfried Feder. Hitler's first written utterance on political questions dating from this period emphasized that what he called "the anti-Semitism of reason" must lead "to the systematic combating and elimination of Jewish privileges. Its ultimate goal must implacably be the total removal of the Jews."

Cover of Hitler's treatise, Mein Kampf

    By November 1923 Hitler was convinced that the Weimar Republic was on the verge of collapse and, together with General Ludendorff and local nationalist groups, sought to overthrow the Bavarian government in Munich. Bursting into a beer-hall in Munich and firing his pistol into the ceiling, he shouted out that he was heading a new provisional government which would carry through a revolution against "Red Berlin." Hitler and Ludendorff then marched through Munich at the head of 3,000 men, only to be met by police fire which left sixteen dead and brought the attempted putsch to an ignominious end. Hitler was arrested and tried on 26 February 1924, succeeding in turning the tables on his accusers with a confident, propagandist speech which ended with the prophecy: "Pronounce us guilty a thousand times over: the goddess of the eternal court of history will smile and tear to pieces the State Prosecutor's submission and the court's verdict for she acquits us." Sentenced to five years' imprisonment in Landsberg fortress, Hitler was released after only nine months during which he dictated Mein Kampf (My Struggle) to his loyal follower, Rudolf Hess. Subsequently the "bible" of the Nazi Party, this crude, half-baked hotchpotch of primitive Social Darwinism, racial myth, anti-Semitism and lebensraum fantasy had sold over five million copies by 1939 and been translated into eleven languages.

    The failure of the Beer-Hall putsch and his period of imprisonment transformed Hitler from an incompetent adventurer into a shrewd political tactician, who henceforth decided that he would never again confront the gun barrels of army and police until they were under his command. He concluded that the road to power lay not through force alone but through legal subversion of the Weimar Constitution, the building of a mass movement and the combination of parliamentary strength with extra-parliamentary street terror and intimidation. Helped by Goering and Goebbels he began to reassemble his followers and rebuild the movement which had disintegrated in his absence.

Rise of the Nazi Party

    In January 1925 the ban on the Nazi Party was removed and Hitler regained permission to speak in public. Outmaneuvering the "socialist" North German wing of the Party under Gregor Strasser, Hitler re-established himself in 1926 as the ultimate arbiter to whom all factions appealed in an ideologically and socially heterogeneous movement. Avoiding rigid, programmatic definitions of National Socialism which would have undermined the charismatic nature of his legitimacy and his claim to absolute leadership, Hitler succeeded in extending his appeal beyond Bavaria and attracting both Right and Left to his movement.

    Though the Nazi Party won only twelve seats in the 1928 elections, the onset of the Great Depression with its devastating effects on the middle classes helped Hitler to win over all those strata in German society who felt their economic existence was threatened. In addition to peasants, artisans, craftsmen, traders, small businessmen, ex-officers, students and declasse intellectuals, the Nazis in 1929 began to win over the big industrialists, nationalist conservatives and army circles. With the backing of the press tycoon, Alfred Hugenberg, Hitler received a tremendous nationwide exposure just as the effects of the world economic crisis hit Germany, producing mass unemployment, social dissolution, fear and indignation. With demagogic virtuosity, Hitler played on national resentments, feelings of revolt and the desire for strong leadership using all the most modern techniques of mass persuasion to present himself as Germany's redeemer and messianic saviour.

Hitler and President von Hindenburg (1933)

    In the 1930 elections the Nazi vote jumped dramatically from 810,000 to 6,409,000 (18.3 percent of the total vote) and they received 107 seats in the Reichstag. Prompted by Hjalmar Schacht and Fritz Thyssen, the great industrial magnates began to contribute liberally to the coffers of the NSDAP, reassured by Hitler's performance before the Industrial Club in Dusseldorf on 27 January 1932 that they had nothing to fear from the radicals in the Party. The following month Hitler officially acquired German citizenship and decided to run for the Presidency, receiving 13,418,011 votes in the run-off elections of 10 April 1931 as against 19,359,650 votes for the victorious von Hindenburg , but four times the vote for the communist candidate, Ernst Thaelmann. In the Reichstag elections of July 1932 the Nazis emerged as the largest political party in Germany, obtaining nearly fourteen million votes (37.3 per cent) and 230 seats. Although the NSDAP fell back in November 1932 to eleven million votes (196 seats), Hitler was helped to power by a camarilla of conservative politicians led by Franz von Papen, who persuaded the reluctant von Hindenburg to nominate "the Bohemian corporal" as Reich Chancellor on 30 January 1933.

    Once in the saddle, Hitler moved with great speed to outmanoeuvre his rivals, virtually ousting the conservatives from any real participation in government by July 1933, abolishing the free trade unions, eliminating the communists, Social Democrats and Jews from any role in political life and sweeping opponents into concentration camps. The Reichstag fire of 27 February 1933 had provided him with the perfect pretext to begin consolidating the foundations of a totalitarian one-party State, and special "enabling laws" were ramrodded through the Reichstag to legalize the regime's intimidatory tactics.

    With support from the nationalists, Hitler gained a majority at the last "democratic" elections held in Germany on 5 March 1933 and with cynical skill he used the whole gamut of persuasion, propaganda, terror and intimidation to secure his hold on power. The seductive notions of "National Awakening" and a "Legal Revolution" helped paralyse potential opposition and disguise the reality of autocratic power behind a facade of traditional institutions.

Hitler As Fuhrer
Hitler after an SS rally in Berlin
    The destruction of the radical SA leadership under Ernst Rohm in the Blood Purge of June 1934 confirmed Hitler as undisputed dictator of the Third Reich and by the beginning of August, when he united the positions of Fuhrer and Chancellor on the death of von Hindenburg, he had all the powers of State in his hands. Avoiding any institutionalization of authority and status which could challenge his own undisputed position as supreme arbiter, Hitler allowed subordinates like Himmler, Goering and Goebbels to mark out their own domains of arbitrary power while multiplying and duplicating offices to a bewildering degree.

    During the next four years Hitler enjoyed a dazzling string of domestic and international successes, outwitting rival political leaders abroad just as he had defeated his opposition at home. In 1935 he abandoned the Versailles Treaty and began to build up the army by conscripting five times its permitted number. He persuaded Great Britain to allow an increase in the naval building programme and in March 1936 he occupied the demilitarized Rhineland without meeting opposition. He began building up the Luftwaffe and supplied military aid to Francoist forces in Spain, which brought about the Spanish fascist victory in 1939.

    The German rearmament programme led to full employment and an unrestrained expansion of production, which reinforced by his foreign policy successes--the Rome-Berlin pact of 1936, the Anschluss with Austria and the "liberation" of the Sudeten Germans in 1938 — brought Hitler to the zenith of his popularity. In February 1938 he dismissed sixteen senior generals and took personal command of the armed forces, thus ensuring that he would be able to implement his aggressive designs.

    Hitler's saber-rattling tactics bludgeoned the British and French into the humiliating Munich agreement of 1938 and the eventual dismantlement of the Czechoslovakian State in March 1939. The concentration camps, the Nuremberg racial laws against the Jews, the persecution of the churches and political dissidents were forgotten by many Germans in the euphoria of Hitler's territorial expansion and bloodless victories. The next designated target for Hitler's ambitions was Poland (her independence guaranteed by Britain and France) and, to avoid a two-front war, the Nazi dictator signed a pact of friendship and non-aggression with Soviet Russia.

World War II

    On September 1, 1939, German armed forces invaded Poland and henceforth Hitler's main energies were devoted to the conduct of a war he had unleashed to dominate Europe and secure Germany's "living space."

    The first phase of World War II was dominated by German Blitzkrieg tactics: sudden shock attacks against airfields, communications, military installations, using fast mobile armor and infantry to follow up on the first wave of bomber and fighter aircraft. Poland was overrun in less than one month, Denmark and Norway in two months, Holland, Belgium, Luxemburg and France in six weeks. After the fall of France in June 1940 only Great Britain stood firm.

Hitler showing the Nazi salute
    The Battle of Britain, in which the Royal Air Force prevented the Luftwaffe from securing aerial control over the English Channel, was Hitler's first setback, causing the planned invasion of the British Isles to be postponed. Hitler turned to the Balkans and North Africa where his Italian allies had suffered defeats, his armies rapidly overrunning Greece, Yugoslavia, the island of Crete and driving the British from Cyrenaica.

    The crucial decision of his career, the invasion of Soviet Russia on June 22, 1941, was rationalized by the idea that its destruction would prevent Great Britain from continuing the war with any prospect of success. He was convinced that once he kicked the door in, as he told Jodl (q.v.), "the whole rotten edifice [of communist rule] will come tumbling down" and the campaign would be over in six weeks. The war against Russia was to be an anti-Bolshivek crusade, a war of annihilation in which the fate of European Jewry would finally be sealed. At the end of January 1939 Hitler had prophesied that "if the international financial Jewry within and outside Europe should succeed once more in dragging the nations into a war, the result will be, not the Bolshevization of the world and thereby the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe."

    As the war widened — the United States by the end of 1941 had entered the struggle against the Axis powers — Hitler identified the totality of Germany's enemies with "international Jewry," who supposedly stood behind the British-American-Soviet alliance. The policy of forced emigration had manifestly failed to remove the Jews from Germany's expanded lebensraum, increasing their numbers under German rule as the Wehrmacht moved East.

    The widening of the conflict into a world war by the end of 1941, the refusal of the British to accept Germany's right to continental European hegemony (which Hitler attributed to "Jewish" influence) and to agree to his "peace" terms, the racial-ideological nature of the assault on Soviet Russia, finally drove Hitler to implement the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question" which had been under consideration since 1939. The measures already taken in those regions of Poland annexed to the Reich against Jews (and Poles) indicated the genocidal implications of Nazi-style "Germanization" policies. The invasion of Soviet Russia was to set the seal on Hitler's notion of territorial conquest in the East, which was inextricably linked with annihilating the 'biological roots of Bolshevism' and hence with the liquidation of all Jews under German rule.

    At first the German armies carried all before them, overrunning vast territories, overwhelming the Red Army, encircling Leningrad and reaching within striking distance of Moscow. Within a few months of the invasion Hitler's armies had extended the Third Reich from the Atlantic to the Caucasus, from the Baltic to the Black Sea. But the Soviet Union did not collapse as expected and Hitler, instead of concentrating his attack on Moscow, ordered a pincer movement around Kiev to seize the Ukraine, increasingly procrastinating and changing his mind about objectives. Underestimating the depth of military reserves on which the Russians could call, the caliber of their generals and the resilient, fighting spirit of the Russian people (whom he dismissed as inferior peasants), Hitler prematurely proclaimed in October 1941 that the Soviet Union had been "struck down and would never rise again." In reality he had overlooked the pitiless Russian winter to which his own troops were now condemned and which forced the Wehrmacht to abandon the highly mobile warfare which had previously brought such spectacular successes.

    The disaster before Moscow in December 1941 led him to dismiss his Commander-in-Chief von Brauchitsch, and many other key commanders who sought permission for tactical withdrawals, including Guderian, Bock, Hoepner, von Rundstedt and Leeb, found themselves cashiered. Hitler now assumed personal control of all military operations, refusing to listen to advice, disregarding unpalatable facts and rejecting everything that did not fit into his preconceived picture of reality. His neglect of the Mediterranean theatre and the Middle East, the failure of the Italians, the entry of the United States into the war, and above all the stubborn determination of the Russians, pushed Hitler on to the defensive. From the winter of 1941 the writing was on the wall but Hitler refused to countenance military defeat, believing that implacable will and the rigid refusal to abandon positions could make up for inferior resources and the lack of a sound overall strategy.

    Convinced that his own General Staff was weak and indecisive, if not openly treacherous, Hitler became more prone to outbursts of blind, hysterical fury towards his generals, when he did not retreat into bouts of misanthropic brooding. His health, too, deteriorated under the impact of the drugs prescribed by his quack physician, Dr. Theodor Morell. Hitler's personal decline, symbolized by his increasingly rare public appearances and his self-enforced isolation in the "Wolf's Lair," his headquarters buried deep in the East Prussian forests, coincided with the visible signs of the coming German defeat which became apparent in mid-1942.

Allied Victory and Hitler's Death

    Rommel's defeat at El Alamein and the subsequent loss of North Africa to the Anglo-American forces were overshadowed by the disaster at Stalingrad where General von Paulus's Sixth Army was cut off and surrendered to the Russians in January 1943. In July 1943 the Allies captured Sicily and Mussolini's regime collapsed in Italy. In September the Italians signed an armistice and the Allies landed at Salerno, reaching Naples on 1 October and taking Rome on June 4, 1944. The Allied invasion of Normandy followed on June 6, 1944 and soon a million Allied troops were driving the German armies eastwards, while from the opposite direction the Soviet forces advanced relentlessly on the Reich. The total mobilization of the German war economy under Albert Speer and the energetic propaganda efforts of Joseph Goebbels to rouse the fighting spirit of the German people were impotent to change the fact that the Third Reich lacked the resources equal to a struggle against the world alliance which Hitler himself had provoked.

Front Page of US Army newspaper announcing Hitlers death (1945)

    Allied bombing began to have a telling effect on German industrial production and to undermine the morale of the population. The generals, frustrated by Hitler's total refusal to trust them in the field and recognizing the inevitability of defeat, planned, together with the small anti-Nazi Resistance inside the Reich, to assassinate the Fuhrer on 20 July 1944, hoping to pave the way for a negotiated peace with the Allies that would save Germany from destruction. The plot failed and Hitler took implacable vengeance on the conspirators, watching with satisfaction a film of the grisly executions carried out on his orders.

    As disaster came closer, Hitler buried himself in the unreal world of the Fuhrerbunker in Berlin, clutching at fantastic hopes that his "secret weapons," the V-1 and V-2 rockets, would yet turn the tide of war. He gestured wildly over maps, planned and directed attacks with non-existent armies and indulged in endless, night-long monologues which reflected his growing senility, misanthropy and contempt for the "cowardly failure" of the German people.

    As the Red Army approached Berlin and the Anglo-Americans reached the Elbe, on 19 March 1945 Hitler ordered the destruction of what remained of German industry, communications and transport systems. He was resolved that, if he did not survive, Germany too should be destroyed. The same ruthless nihilism and passion for destruction which had led to the extermination of six million Jews in death camps, to the biological "cleansing" of the sub-human Slavs and other subject peoples in the New Order, was finally turned on his own people.

    On April 29, 1945, he married his mistress Eva Braun and dictated his final political testament, concluding with the same monotonous, obsessive fixation that had guided his career from the beginning: "Above all I charge the leaders of the nation and those under them to scrupulous observance of the laws of race and to merciless opposition to the universal poisoner of all peoples, international Jewry."

    The following day Hitler committed suicide, shooting himself through the mouth with a pistol. His body was carried into the garden of the Reich Chancellery by aides, covered with petrol and burned along with that of Eva Braun. This final, macabre act of self-destruction appropriately symbolized the career of a political leader whose main legacy to Europe was the ruin of its civilization and the senseless sacrifice of human life for the sake of power and his own commitment to the bestial nonsense of National Socialist race mythology. With his death nothing was left of the "Greater Germanic Reich," of the tyrannical power structure and ideological system which had devastated Europe during the twelve years of his totalitarian rule.

Born: 8-Sep-1157

Birthplace: Oxford, England

Died: 6-Apr-1199

Location of death: Chalus, France

Cause of death: War

Remains: Buried, Fontevraud Abbey, Fontevraud, France

Gender: Male

Religion: Roman Catholic

Race or Ethnicity: White

Sexual orientation: Bisexual

Occupation: Head of State

Nationality: England

Executive summary: King of England, 1189-99

Richard I, King of England, nicknamed "Coeur de Lion" or "Richard the Lionheart", was the third son of King Henry II by Eleanor of Aquitaine. Born in September 1157, he received at the age of eleven the Duchy of Aquitaine, and was formally installed in 1172. In his new position he was allowed, probably from regard to Aquitanian susceptibilities, to govern with an independence which was studiously denied to his brothers in their shares of the Angevin inheritance. Yet in 1173 Richard joined with the young Henry and Geoffrey of Brittany in their rebellion; Aquitaine was twice invaded by the old king before the unruly youth would make submission. Richard was soon pardoned and reinstated in his duchy, where he distinguished himself by crushing a formidable revolt (1175) and exacting homage from the count of Toulouse. In a short time he was so powerful that his elder brother Henry became alarmed and demanded, as heir-apparent, that Richard should do him homage for Aquitaine. Richard having scornfully rejected the demand, a fratricidal war ensued; the young Henry invaded Aquitaine and attracted to his standard many of Richard's vassals, who were exasperated by the iron rule of the duke. Henry II marched to Richard's aid; but the war terminated abruptly with the death of the elder prince (1183).

Richard, being now the heir to England and Normandy, was invited to renounce Aquitaine in favor of Prince John. The proposal led to a new civil war; and, although a temporary compromise was arranged, Richard soon sought the help of Philip Augustus, to whom he did homage for all the continental possessions in the actual presence of his father (Conference of Bonmoulins, 18th of November 1188) In the struggle which ensued the old king was overpowered, chased ignominiously from Le Mans to Angers, and forced to buy peace by conceding all that was demanded of him; in particular the immediate recognition of Richard as his successor.

But the death of Henry II (1189) at once dissolved the friendship between Richard and Philip. Not only did Richard continue the continental policy of his father, but he also refused to fulfil his contract with Philip's sister, Alais, to whom he had been betrothed at the age of three. An open breach was only delayed by the desire of both kings to fulfil the crusading vows which they had recently taken. Richard, in particular, sacrificed all other interests to this scheme, and raised the necessary funds by the most reckless methods. He put up for auction the highest offices and honors; even remitting to William the Lion of Scotland, for a sum of 15,000 marks, the humiliating obligations which Henry II had imposed at the treaty of Falaise. It is true that Richard indemnified himself on his return by resuming some of his most important grants and refusing to return the purchase money; but it is improbable that he had originally planned this repudiation of his ill-considered bargains. By such expedients he raised and equipped a force which may be estimated at 4000 men-at-arms and as many foot-soldiers, with a fleet of 100 transports (1191).

Richard did not return to his dominions until 1194. But his stay in Palestine was limited to sixteen months. On the outward journey he wintered in Sicily, where he employed himself in quarrelling with Philip and in exacting satisfaction from the usurper Tancred for the dower of his widowed sister, Queen Joanna, and for his own share in the inheritance of William the Good. Leaving Messina in March 1191, he interrupted his voyage to conquer Cyprus, and only joined the Christian besiegers of Acre in June. The reduction of that stronghold was largely due to his energy and skill. But his arrogance gave much offense. After the fall of Acre he inflicted a gross insult upon Leopold of Austria; and his relations with Philip were so strained that the latter seized the first pretext for returning to France, and entered into negotiations with Prince John for the partition of Richard's realm. Richard also threw himself into the disputes respecting the crown of Jerusalem, and supported Guy of Lusignan against Conrad of Montferrat with so much heat that he incurred grave, though unfounded, suspicions of complicity when Conrad was assassinated by emissaries of the Old Man of the Mountain. Nonetheless Richard, whom even the French crusaders accepted as their leader, upheld the failing cause of the Frankish Christians with valor and tenacity. He won a brilliant victory over the forces of Saladin at Arsuf (1191), and twice led the Christian host within a few miles of Jerusalem. But the dissensions of the native Franks and the crusaders made it hopeless to continue the struggle; and Richard was alarmed by the news which reached him of John's intrigues in England and Normandy. Hastily patching up a truce with Saladin, under which the Christians kept the coast-towns and received free access to the Holy Sepulchre, Richard started on his return (9th October 1192).

His voyage was delayed by storms, and he appears to have been perplexed as to the safest route. The natural route overland through Marseilles and Toulouse was held by his enemies; that through the empire from the head of the Adriatic was little safer, since Leopold of Austria was on the watch for him. Having adopted the second of these alternatives, he was captured at Vienna in a mean disguise (December 20th, 1192) and strictly confined in the duke's castle of Dürenstein on the Danube. His mishap was soon known to England, but the regents were for some weeks uncertain of his whereabouts. This is the foundation for the tale of his discovery by the faithful minstrel Blondel, which first occurs in a French romantic chronicle of :the next century. Early in 1193 Leopold surrendered his prize, under compulsion, to the emperor Henry VI, who was aggrieved both by the support which the Plantagenets had given to the family of Henry the Lion and also by Richard's recognition of Tancred in Sicily. Although the detention of a crusader was contrary to public law, Richard was compelled to purchase his release by the payment of a heavy ransom and by doing homage to the emperor for England. The ransom demanded was 150,000 marks; though it was never discharged in full, the resources of England were taxed to the utmost for the first instalments; and to this occasion we may trace the beginning of secular taxation levied on movable property.

Richard reappeared in England in March 1194; but his stay lasted only a few weeks, and the remainder of his reign was entirely devoted to his continental interests. He left England to be governed by Hubert Walter, and his personal authority was seldom asserted except by demands for new subsidies. The rule of the Plantagenets was still popular in Normandy and Aquitaine; but these provinces were unable or unwilling to pay for their own defense. Though Richard proved himself consistently the superior of Philip in the field, the difficulty of raising and paying forces to resist the French increased year by year. Richard could only stand on the defensive; the keynote of his later policy is given by the building of the famous Château Gaillard at Les Andelys (1196) to protect the lower courses of the Seine against invasion from the side of France. He did not live to see the futility of such bulwarks. In 1199 a claim to treasure-trove embroiled him with the viscount of Limoges. He harried the Limousin and laid siege to the castle of Châlus; while directing an assault he was wounded in the shoulder by a crossbow bolt, and, the wound mortifying from unskilful treatment or his own want of care, he died on the 6th of April 1199. He was buried by his own desire at his father's feet in the church of Fontevrault. Here his effigy may still be seen. Though contemporary, it does not altogether agree with the portraits on his Great Seal, which give the impression of greater strength and even of cruelty. The Fontevrault bust is no doubt idealized.

The most accomplished and versatile representative of his gifted family, Richard was, in his lifetime and long afterwards, a favorite hero with troubadours and romancers. This was natural, as he belonged to their brotherhood and himself wrote lyrics of no mean quality. But his history shows that he by no means embodied the current ideal of chivalrous excellence. His memory is stained by one act of needless cruelty, the massacre of over two thousand Saracen prisoners at Acre; and his fury, when thwarted or humbled, was ungovernable. A brave soldier, an experienced and astute general, he was never happier than when engaged in war. As a ruler he was equally profuse and rapacious. Not one useful measure can be placed to his credit; and it was by a fortunate accident that he found, in Hubert Walter, an administrator who had the skill to mitigate the consequences of a reckless fiscal policy. Richard's wife was Berengaria, daughter of Sancho VI, king of Navarre, whom he married in Cyprus in May 1191. She was with the king at Acre later in the same year, and during his imprisonment passed her time in Sicily, in Rome and in France. Husband and wife met again in 1195, and the queen long survived the king, residing chiefly at Le Mans. She died soon after 1230. Berengaria founded a Cistercian monastery at Espau.

Father: King Henry II

Mother: Eleanor of Aquitaine

Brother: King John Lackland

Wife: Berengaria of Navarre (b. 1165, m. 12-May-1191, d. 1230)

Son: Philip Fitzroy (illegitimate)