(1) In Homeric times all strangers without exception were regarded as being under the protection of Zeus Xenios, the god of strangers and suppliants. It is doubtful whether, as is commonly assumed, they were considered as _ipso facto_ enemies; they were rather guests. Immediately on his arrival, the stranger was clothed and entertained, and no inquiry was made as to his name or antecedents until the duties of hospitality had been fulfilled. When the guest parted from his host he was often presented with gifts ([Greek: xenia]), and sometimes a die ([Greek: astragalos]) was broken between them. Each then took a part, a family connexion was established, and the broken die served as a symbol of recognition; thus the members of each family found in the other hosts and protectors in case of need. Violation of the duties of hospitality was likely to provoke the wrath of the gods; but it does not appear that anything beyond this religious sanction existed to guard the rights of a traveller. Similar customs seem to have existed among the Italian races. Amongst the Romans, private hospitality, which had existed from the earliest times, was more accurately and legally defined than amongst the Greeks, the tie between host and guest being almost as strong as that between patron and client. It was of the nature of a contract, entered into by mutual promise, the clasping of hands, and exchange of an agreement in writing (_tabula hospitalis_) or of a token (_tessera_ or _symbolum_), and was rendered hereditary by the division of the tessera. The advantages thus obtained by the guest were, the right of hospitality when travelling and, above all, the protection of his host (representing him as his patron) in a court of law. The contract was sacred and inviolable, undertaken in the name of Jupiter Hospitalis, and could only be dissolved by a formal act. Entry: 1
At the period of fertilization the embryo-sac lies in close proximity to the opening of the micropyle, into which the pollen-tube has penetrated, the separating cell-wall becomes absorbed, and the male or sperm-cells are ejected into the embryo-sac. Guided by the synergidae one male-cell passes into the oosphere with which it fuses, the two nuclei uniting, while the other fuses with the definitive nucleus, or, as it is also called, the endosperm nucleus. This remarkable double fertilization as it has been called, although only recently discovered, has been proved to take place in widely-separated families, and both in Monocotyledons and Dicotyledons, and there is every probability that, perhaps with variations, it is the normal process in Angiosperms. After impregnation the fertilized oosphere immediately surrounds itself with a cell-wall and becomes the oospore which by a process of growth forms the embryo of the new plant. The endosperm-nucleus divides rapidly to produce a cellular tissue which fills up the interior of the rapidly-growing embryo-sac, and forms a tissue, known as endosperm, in which is stored a supply of nourishment for the use later on of the embryo. It has long been known that after fertilization of the egg has taken place, the formation of endosperm begins from the endosperm nucleus, and this had come to be regarded as the recommencement of the development of a prothallium after a pause following the reinvigorating union of the polar nuclei. This view is still maintained by those who differentiate two acts of fertilization within the embryo-sac, and regard that of the egg by the first male-cell, as the true or generative fertilization, and that of the polar nuclei by the second male gamete as a vegetative fertilization which gives a stimulus to development in correlation with the other. If, on the other hand, the endosperm is the product of an act of fertilization as definite as that giving rise to the embryo itself, we have to recognize that twin-plants are produced within the embryo-sac--one, the embryo, which becomes the angiospermous plant, the other, the endosperm, a short-lived, undifferentiated nurse to assist in the nutrition of the former, even as the subsidiary embryos in a pluri-embryonic Gymnosperm may facilitate the nutrition of the dominant one. If this is so, and the endosperm like the embryo is normally the product of a sexual act, hybridization will give a hybrid endosperm as it does a hybrid embryo, and herein (it is suggested) we may have the explanation of the phenomenon of xenia observed in the mixed endosperms of hybrid races of maize and other plants, regarding which it has only been possible hitherto to assert that they were indications of the extension of the influence of the pollen beyond the egg and its product. This would not, however, explain the formation of fruits intermediate in size and colour between those of crossed parents. The signification of the coalescence of the polar nuclei is not explained by these new facts, but it is noteworthy that the second male-cell is said to unite sometimes with the apical polar nucleus, the sister of the egg, before the union of this with the basal polar one. The idea of the endosperm as a second subsidiary plant is no new one; it was suggested long ago in explanation of the coalescence of the polar nuclei, but it was then based on the assumption that these represented male and female cells, an assumption for which there was no evidence and which was inherently improbable. The proof of a coalescence of the second male nucleus with the definitive nucleus gives the conception a more stable basis. The antipodal cells aid more or less in the process of nutrition of the developing embryo, and may undergo multiplication, though they ultimately disintegrate, as do also the synergidae. As in Gymnosperms and other groups an interesting qualitative change is associated with the process of fertilization. The number of chromosomes (see PLANTS: _Cytology_) in the nucleus of the two spores, pollen-grain and embryo-sac, is only half the number found in an ordinary vegetative nucleus; and this reduced number persists in the cells derived from them. The full number is restored in the fusion of the male and female nuclei in the process of fertilization, and remains until the formation of the cells from which the spores are derived in the new generation. Entry: ANGIOSPERMS
The year 1894 was a busy one for the prince of Wales, who became a member of the royal commission on the housing of the poor, opened the Tower Bridge, attended the Welsh Eisteddfod and was duly initiated, and paid two visits to Russia--one for the marriage of the grand-duchess Xenia, the other for the funeral of the tsar, his brother-in-law. In 1896 he became first chancellor of the university of Wales, and his first act after his installation at Aberystwyth was to confer an honorary degree upon the princess. He had already been for some years a trustee of the British Museum. On the 22nd of July 1896 his daughter. Princess Maud, was married to Prince Charles of Denmark, who in 1905 was offered and accepted the crown of the new kingdom of Norway. The arrangements for the queen's Jubilee of 1897 depended upon the prince even more than those of the corresponding celebration in 1887: he rode on the queen's right at the great procession to St Paul's, and as an admiral of the fleet presided at the naval review at Spithead. In July 1898 the prince had the misfortune to fracture his knee-cap while on a visit to Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild, but completely recovered from the effects of the accident. In December 1899, while passing through Brussels on his way to St Petersburg, he was fired at by a miserable lad named Sipido, crazed by reading anarchist literature. Fortunately no injury was done. Entry: EDWARD
ARISTOPHANES (c. 448-385 B.C.[1]), the great comic dramatist and poet of Athens. His birth-year is uncertain. He is known to have been about the same age as Eupolis, and is said to have been "almost a boy" when his first comedy (_The Banqueters_) was brought out in 427 B.C. His father Philippus was a landowner in Aegina. Aristophanes was an Athenian citizen of the tribe Pandionis, and the deme Cydathene. The stories which made him a native of Camirus in Rhodes, or of the Egyptian Naucratis, had probably no other foundation than an indictment for usurpation of civic rights ([Greek: xenias graphae]) which appears to have been more than once laid against him by Cleon. His three sons--Philippus, Araros and Nicostratus--were all comic poets. Philippus, the eldest, was a rival of Eubulus, who began to exhibit in 376 B.C. Araros brought out two of his father's latest comedies--the _Cocalus_ and the _Aeolosicon_, and in 375 began to exhibit works of his own. Nicostratus, the youngest, is assigned by Athenaeus to the Middle Comedy, but belongs, as is shown by some of the names and characters of his pieces, to the New Comedy also. Entry: ARISTOPHANES