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THE ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA
A DICTIONARY OF ARTS, SCIENCES, LITERATURE AND GENERAL INFORMATION
ELEVENTH EDITION
VOLUME V SLICE III
Capefigue to Carneades
Articles in This Slice
CAPEFIGUE, JEAN-BAPTISTE HONORÉ RAYMOND CARBON BISULPHIDE CAPEL, ARTHUR CAPEL CARBONDALE CAPEL CURIG CARBONIC ACID CAPELL, EDWARD CARBONIFEROUS SYSTEM CAPELLA, MARTIANUS MINNEUS FELIX CARBORUNDUM CAPE MAY CARBOY CAPENA CARBUNCLE CAPER, FLAVIUS CARCAGÉNTE CAPERCALLY CÁRCAR CAPERN, EDWARD CARCASS CAPERNAUM CARCASSONNE CAPERS CARDAMOM CAPET CARDAN, GIROLAMO CAPE TOWN CÁRDENAS CAPE VERDE ISLANDS CARDIFF CAPGRAVE, JOHN CARDIGAN, JAMES THOMAS BRUDENELL CAP HAITIEN CARDIGAN CAPILLARY ACTION CARDIGANSHIRECAPEFIGUE, JEAN-BAPTISTE HONORÉ RAYMOND (1801-1872), French historian and biographer, was born at Marseilles in 1801. At the age of twenty he went to Paris to study law; but he soon deserted law for journalism. He became editor of the Quotidienne, and was afterwards connected, either as editor or leading contributor, with the Temps, the Messager des Chambres, the Révolution de 1848 and other papers. During the ascendancy of the Bourbons he held a post in the foreign office, to which is due the royalism of some of his newspaper articles. Indeed all Capefigue’s works receive their colour from his legitimist politics; he preaches divine right and non-resistance, and finds polite words even for the profligacy of Louis XV. and the worthlessness of his mistresses. He wrote biographies of Catherine and Marie de’ Medici, Anne and Maria Theresa of Austria, Catherine II. of Russia, Elizabeth of England, Diana of Poitiers and Agnes Sorel—for he delighted in passing from “queens of the right hand” to “queens of the left.” His historical works, besides histories of the Jews from the fall of the Maccabees to the author’s time, of the first four centuries of the Christian church, and of European diplomatists, extend over the whole range of French history. He died at Paris in December 1872.
The general catalogue of printed books for the Bibliothèque Nationale contains no fewer than seventy-seven works (145 volumes) published by Capefigue during forty years. Of these only the Histoire de Philippe-Auguste (4 vols., 1829) and the Histoire de la réforme, de la ligue et du règne de Henri IV (8 vols., 1834-1835) perhaps deserve still to be remembered. For Capefigue’s style bears evident marks of haste, and although he had access to an exceptionally large number of sources of information, including the state papers, neither his accuracy nor his judgment was to be trusted.
CAPEL (of Hadham), ARTHUR CAPEL, Baron (fl. 1640-1649), English royalist, son of Sir Henry Capel of Rayne Hall, Essex, and of Theodosia, daughter of Sir Edward Montagu of Broughton, Northamptonshire, was elected a member of the Short and Long Parliaments in 1640 for Hertfordshire. He at first supported the opposition to Charles’s arbitrary government, but soon allied himself with the king’s cause, on which side his sympathies were engaged, and was raised to the peerage by the title of Baron Capel of Hadham on the 6th of August 1641. On the outbreak of the war he was appointed lieutenant-general of Shropshire, Cheshire and North Wales, where he rendered useful military services, and later was made one of the prince of Wales’s councillors, and a commissioner at the negotiations at Uxbridge in 1645.
1 Gardiner’s Hist. of the Civil War, iv. 206; cf. article on Fairfax by C.H. Frith in the Dict. of Nat. Biog.
CAPEL CURIG, a tourist resort in Carnarvonshire, North Wales, 14½ m. from Bangor. It is a collection of a few houses, too scattered to form a village properly so called. At the Roberts hotel is shown on a window pane the supposed signature of Wellington. The road from Bettws y coed, past the Swallow Falls to Capel Curig, and thence to Llanberis and Carnarvon, is very interesting, grand and lonely. Excellent fishing is to be had here, chiefly for trout. In summer, coaching tours discharge numbers of visitors daily; the railway station is Bettws (London & North-Western railway). Capel Curig means “chapel of Curig,” a British saint mentioned in Welsh poetry. The place is a centre for artists, geologists and botanists, for the ascent of Snowdon, Moel Siabod, Glydyr Fawr, Glydyr Fach, Tryfan, &c., and for visiting Llyn Ogwen, Llyn Idwal, Twll du (Devil’s Kitchen), Nant Ffrancon and the Penrhyn quarries.
CAPELL, EDWARD (1713-1781), English Shakespearian critic, was born at Troston Hall in Suffolk on the 11th of June 1713. Through the influence of the duke of Grafton he was appointed to the office of deputy-inspector of plays in 1737, with a salary of £200 per annum, and in 1745 he was made groom of the privy chamber through the same influence. In 1760 appeared his Prolusions, or Select Pieces of Ancient Poetry, a collection which included Edward III., placed by Capell among the doubtful plays of Shakespeare. Shocked at the inaccuracies which had crept into Sir Thomas Hanmer’s edition of Shakespeare, he projected an entirely new edition, to be carefully collated with the original copies. After spending three years in collecting, and comparing scarce folio and quarto editions, he published his own edition in 10 vols. 8vo (1768), with an introduction written in a style of extraordinary quaintness, which was afterwards appended to Johnson’s and Steevens’s editions. Capell published the first part of his commentary, which included notes on nine plays with a glossary, in 1774. This he afterwards recalled, and the publication of the complete work, Notes and Various Readings of Shakespeare (1779-1783), the third volume of which bears the title of The School of Shakespeare, was completed, under the superintendence of John Collins, in 1783, two years after the author’s death. It contains the results of his unremitting labour for thirty years, and throws considerable light on the history of the times of Shakespeare, as well as on the sources from which he derived his plots. Collins asserted that Steevens had stolen Capell’s notes for his own edition, the story being that the printers had been bribed to show Steevens the sheets of Capell’s edition while it was passing through the press. Besides the works already specified, he published an edition of Antony and Cleopatra, adapted for the stage with the help of David Garrick in 1758. His edition of Shakespeare passed through many editions (1768, 1771, 1793, 1799, 1803, 1813). Capell died in the Temple on the 24th of February 1781.
CAPELLA, MARTIANUS MINNEUS FELIX, Latin writer, according to Cassiodorus a native of Madaura in Africa, flourished during the 5th century, certainly before the year 439. He appears to have practised as a lawyer at Carthage and to have been in easy circumstances. His curious encyclopaedic work, entitled Satyricon, or De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii et de septem Artibus liberalibus libri novem, is an elaborate allegory in nine books, written in a mixture of prose and verse, after the manner of the Menippean satires of Varro. The style is heavy and involved, loaded with metaphor and bizarre expressions, and verbose to excess. The first two books contain the allegory proper—the marriage of Mercury to a nymph named Philologia. The remaining seven books contain expositions of the seven liberal arts, which then comprehended all human knowledge. Book iii. treats of grammar, iv. of dialectics, v. of rhetoric, vi. of geometry, vii. of arithmetic, viii. of astronomy, ix. of music. These abstract discussions are linked on to the original allegory by the device of personifying each science as a courtier of Mercury and Philologia. The work was a complete encyclopaedia of the liberal culture of the time, and was in high repute during the middle ages. The author’s chief sources were Varro, Pliny, Solinus, Aquila Romanus, and Aristides Quintilianus. His prose resembles that of Apuleius (also a native of Madaura), but is even more difficult. The verse portions, which are on the whole correct and classically constructed, are in imitation of Varro and are less tiresome.
A passage in book viii. contains a very clear statement of the heliocentric system of astronomy. It has been supposed that Copernicus, who quotes Capella, may have received from this work some hints towards his own new system.
Editio princeps, by F. Vitalis Bodianus, 1499; the best modern edition is that of F. Eyssenhardt (1866); for the relation of Martianus Capella to Aristides Quintilianus see H. Deiters, Studien zu den griechischen Musikern (1881). In the 11th century the German monk Notker Labeo translated the first two books into Old High German.
CAPE MAY, a city and watering-place of Cape May county, New Jersey, U.S.A., on the Atlantic coast, 2 m. E.N.E. of Cape May, the S. extremity of the state, and about 80 m. S. by E. of Philadelphia. Pop. (1890) 2136; (1900) 2257; (1905) 3006; (1910) 2471. Cape May is served by the Maryland, Delaware & Virginia (by ferry to Lewes, Delaware), the West Jersey & Seashore (Pennsylvania system), and the Atlantic City (Reading system) railways, and, during the summer season, by steamboat to Philadelphia. The principal part of the city is on a peninsula (formerly Cape Island) between the ocean and Cold Spring inlet, which has been dredged and is protected by jetties to make a suitable harbour. The further improvement of the inlet and the harbour was
CAPENA, an ancient city of southern Etruria, frequently mentioned with Veii and Falerii. Its exact site is, however, uncertain. According to Cato it was a colony of the former, and in the wars between Veii and Rome it appears as dependent upon Veii, after the fall of which town, however, it became subject to Rome. Out of its territory the tribus Stellatina was formed in 367 b.c. In later republican times the city itself is hardly mentioned, but under the empire a municipium Capenatium foederatum is frequently mentioned in inscriptions. Of these several were found upon the hill known as Civitucola, about 4 m. north-east of the post station of ad Vicesimum on the ancient Via Flaminia, a site which is well adapted for an ancient city. It lies on the north side of a dried-up lake, once no doubt a volcanic crater. Remains of buildings of the Roman period also exist there, while, in the sides of the hill of S. Martino which lies on the north-east,1 rock-cut tombs belonging to the 7th and 6th centuries b.c. but used in Roman times for fresh burials, were excavated in 1859-1864, and again in 1904. Inscriptions in early Latin and in local dialect were also found (W. Henzen, Bullettino dell’ Istituto, 1864, 143; R. Paribeni, Notizie degli Scavi, 1905, 301). Similar tombs have also been found on the hills south of Civitucola. G.B. de Rossi, however, supposed that the games of which records (fragments of the fasti ludorum) were also discovered at Civitucola, were those which were celebrated from time immemorial at the Lucus Feroniae, with which he therefore proposed to identify this site, placing Capena itself at S. Oreste, on the south-eastern side of Mount Soracte. But there are difficulties in the way of this assumption, and it is more probable that the Lucus Feroniae is to be sought at or near Nazzano, where, in the excavation of a circular building which some conjecture to have been the actual temple of Feronia, inscriptions relating to a municipality were found. Others, however, propose to place Lucus Feroniae at the church of S. Abbondio, 1 m. east of Rignano and 4 m. north-north-west of Civitucola, which is built out of ancient materials. On the Via Flaminia, 26 m. from Rome, near Rignano, is the Christian cemetery of Theodora.