ÆSCULAPIUS                                                   21                                                 AFGHANISTAN

was thirteen times victor. He was finally defeated by Sophocles and went to Sicily, where he lived with Hiero, the tyrant of Syracuse. Tradition says his death was caused by an eagle dropping a tortoise, to break its shell, on his bald head, which the bird had mistaken for a stone. Attic tragedy owes much to Æschylus. He first brought in a second actor, befitting costumes and scenery, and caused a regular stage to be built. He wrote 70 tragedies, of which only seven are now in existence : The Seven Against Thebes, The Suppliants, The Persians, Prometheus Bound, The Choephori, and The Eumenides. Mrs. Browning's poetical version of Prometheus Bound is one of the best of the many translations of his tragedies.

Æsculapius {ěs-ku-lā'pi-us), in Greek fable, the god of medicine and patron of physicians, called by Homer the Blameless Physician. He was the son of Apollo. He went about healing and raising from the dead until Pluto, god of the lower world, finding his kingdom was losing its people, appealed to Jupiter, who destroyed Æsculapius by a thunderbolt. Various temples were built in his honor. The most famous was at Epidaurus, where a peculiar breed of snakes was believed to have received healing power from Æsculapius. During a pestilence the Greeks used to send for one of these serpents. The Romans also sent a solemn embassy to bring one of these healing snakes to their city, and later introduced the worship of Æsculapius at Rome. The priests of the temples of this god, called Æsclepiades, or sons of Æsculapius, were the only regular physicians of antiquity.

Æsop (e'sop), a Greek writer of fables, bom about Ŏ20 B. C. He was sold as a slave at Athens, but was freed by his master. He gained great reputation as a writer, and was invited by Crcesus, king of Lydia, to live at his court. He was sent by Crcesus, about 564 B.C., to the temple of Apollo at Delphi, where he angered the Delphians by his sarcasm and was thrown from a precipice. His real works have probably been destroyed, the fables which bear his name having been written by later authors.

Æsthetics (ēs-thet'-îks), a term signifying perceptible to the senses, and denoting the science of the beautiful in nature and the fine arts (Greek, œsthetikos). The term æsthetics, though a modern German one, is one which, in its meaning, was familiar to the ancient Greek philosophers, especially to Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. What they meant by the term was the quality in the beautiful that produces to the mind as well as to the eye a certain pleasing effect and a refined pleasure. When we speak of aesthetic ideas, studies or emotions we mean those things that appeal to our sense of the beautiful, or that treat of the

expression and embodiment of beauty by art. See Schiller's Treatise on Æsthetics; Cousin on The True, the Beautiful and the Good, and Alison's essay on The Nature and Principle of Taste.

Ætna, Mount. See Etna.

Afghanistan (a}-gån'îs-tan'), mountainous country of south Central Asia, under a reigning amir, with a certain supervision by Great Britain, which power contributes to it an annual subsidy from the Indian Government. It is frequently spoken of as the "buffer state" between India, the great sphere of British control and influence, lying to the southeast of it, and Turkistan, a province of Russia, and the Muscovite Empire beyond, to the north of it. Its other boundaries are Persia on the west and Baluchistan on the south. Oxus River forms its north and northeast boundary; while the range of the Hindu Kush mountains extends across the northern section of Afghanistan, from the region of Herat to the Pamirs, Eastern Turkistan and the Chinese Empire. Its extreme breadth (west to east), from the Herat frontier to the Khyber Pass, is about 600 miles; its length (north to south) is about 500 miles, while its total area is in the neighborhood of 250,000 square miles. Besides the Oxus (or Amu-Daria) the other chief rivers are the Helmand, Kabul and Heri-Rud. The population is estimated at 4,500,000. Kabul is the capital, the other chief cities being Kandahar and Herat.

Commerce and Products. The trade of Afghanistan is mainly with British India, the exports into which, in 1906, were valued at close upon six and a half million rupees (the rupee being worth thirty-five cents), while the imports from India into Afghanistan amounted in the year named to about ten and a half million rupees. The exports consisted largely of horses, cattle, hides, tobacco, grain and pulse, provisions, fruits and vegetables, drugs, spices, wool and silk; the imports, besides sugar and tea, consisted of cotton goods, indigo, and other dyeing materials. In addition there was, in 1906 also, some small volume of exports to and imports from Bokhara.

There are two harvests in the year, in most sections of the country one, sown at the end of autumn and reaped m summer, consisting of wheat, barley, peas, and beans; the other, sown at the end of spring and reaped in the autumn, and consisting of rice, millet, and Indian corn. Fruit is raised in profuse abundance, and, besides the exports, it forms the chief food of the people. The crop embraces almonds, pomegranates, figs, grapes, peaches, quinces, cherries, apricots, and plums. The minerals of the country consist of copper, lead and iron, with small quantities of gold, in addition to precious stones, especially lapis lazuli. The manufactures em-