[1] According to H. Nissen, _Ital. Landeskunde_ (Berlin, 1902), ii.
665, a road ran from here to Minturnae; but no traces of it are to be
seen.
AQUITAINE, the name of an ancient province in France, the extent of
which has varied considerably from time to time. About the time of
Julius Caesar the name _Aquitania_ was given to that part of Gaul lying
between the Pyrenees and the Garonne, and its inhabitants were a race,
or races, distinct from the Celts. The name Aquitania is probably a form
of Auscetani, which in its turn is a lengthened form of Ausces, and is
thus cognate with the words Basque and Wasconia, i.e. Gascony. Although
many of the tribes of Aquitania submitted to Julius Caesar, it was not
until about 28 B.C. that the district was brought under the Roman yoke.
In keeping with the Roman policy of denationalization, the term
Aquitania was extended, and under Augustus it included the whole of Gaul
south and west of the Loire and the Allier, and thus ceased to possess
ethnographical importance. In the 3rd century A.D. this larger Aquitania
was divided into three parts: _Aquitania Prima_, the eastern part of the
district between the Loire and the Garonne; _Aquitania Secunda_, the
western part of the same district; and _Aquitania Tertia_, or
_Novempopulana_, the region between the Garonne and the Pyrenees, or the
original Aquitania. The seats of government were respectively Bourges,
Bordeaux and Eauze; the province contained twenty-six cities, and was in
the diocese of Vienne. Like the rest of Gaul, Aquitania absorbed a large
measure of Roman civilization, and this continued to distinguish the
district down to a late period. In the 5th century the Visigoths
established themselves in Aquitania Secunda, and also in parts of
Aquitania Prima and Novempopulana, but after the defeat of their king
Alaric II. by the Franks under Clovis in 507, they were supplanted by
their conquerors. Clovis and his successors extended their authority
nominally to the Pyrenees, but, as Guizot has remarked, "the conquest of
Aquitania by Clovis left it almost as alien to the people and king of
Franks as it had formerly been." Subsequently during the Merovingian
period it was contended for by the feeble rulers of the various Frankish
kingdoms, and was frequently partitioned among them; but the Aquitanians
had little difficulty in effectually resisting this authority, although
they did not establish themselves as a separate kingdom. About 628,
indeed, they gathered around Charibert, or Haribert, a brother of the
Frankish king, Dagobert I., in the hope of national independence; but
after his death in 630 they returned to their former condition. But this
effort, although a failure, brought about a certain measure of concord
between the two principal races inhabiting the district, and so prepared
the way for the stubborn resistance which, subsequently, the Aquitanians
were able to offer to the Franks.
The first line of dukes began about 660 with one Felix, who, like his
successor, Lupus, probably owned allegiance to the Frankish kings, and
whose seat of government was Toulouse. About the end of the 7th century
an adventurer named Odo, or Eudes, made himself master of this region.
Attacked by the Saracens he inflicted on them a crushing defeat, but
when they reappeared, he was obliged to invoke the aid of Charles
Martel, who, as the price of his support, claimed and received the
homage of his ally. Odo was succeeded by his son Hunald, who after
carrying on a war against the Franks under Pippin the Short, retired to
a convent, leaving both the kingdom and the conflict to Waifer, or
Guaifer. For some years Waifer strenuously carried on an unequal
struggle with the Franks, but he was assassinated in 768, and with him
perished the national independence, although not the national
individuality, of the Aquitanians. In 781 Charlemagne bestowed Aquitaine
upon his young son, Louis, and as Louis was generally described as a
king, Aquitaine is referred to during the Carolingian period as a
kingdom, and not as a duchy. When Louis succeeded Charlemagne as emperor
in 814, he granted Aquitaine to his son Pippin, on whose death in 838
the Aquitanians chose his son Pippin II. (d. 865) as their king. The
emperor Louis I., however, opposed this arrangement and gave the kingdom
to his youngest son Charles, afterwards the emperor Charles the Bald.
Now followed a time of confusion and conflict which resulted eventually
in the success of Charles, although from 845 to 852 Pippin was in
possession of the kingdom. In 852 Pippin was imprisoned by Charles the
Bald, who soon afterwards gave to the Aquitanians his own son Charles as
their king. On the death of the younger Charles in 866, his brother
Louis the Stammerer succeeded to the kingdom, and when, in 877, Louis
became king of the Franks, Aquitaine was united to the Frankish crown.
A new period now begins in the history of Aquitaine. By a treaty made in
845 between Charles the Bald and Pippin II. the kingdom had been
diminished by the loss of Poitou, Saintonge and Angoumois, which had
been given to Rainulf I., count of Poitiers. Somewhat earlier than this
date the title of duke of the Aquitanians had been revived, and this was
now borne by Rainulf, although it was also claimed by the counts of
Toulouse. The new duchy of Aquitaine, comprising the three districts
already mentioned, remained in the hands of Rainulf's successors, in
spite of some trouble with their Frankish overlords, until 893 when
Count Rainulf II. was poisoned by order of King Charles III. the Simple.
Charles then bestowed the duchy upon William the Pious, count of
Auvergne, the founder of the abbey of Cluny, who was succeeded in 918 by
his nephew, Count William II., who died in 926. A succession of dukes
followed, one of whom, William IV., fought against Hugh Capet, king of
France, and another of whom, William V., called the Great, was able
considerably to strengthen and extend his authority, although he failed
in his attempt to secure the Lombard crown. William's duchy almost
reached the limits of the Roman Aquitania Prima and Secunda, but did not
stretch south of the Garonne, a district which was in the possession of
the Gascons. William died in 1030, and the names of William VI. (d.
1038), Odo or Eudes (d. 1039), who joined Gascony to his duchy, William
VII. and William VIII. bring us down to William IX. (d. 1127), who
succeeded in 1087, and made himself famous as a crusader and a
troubadour. William X. (d. 1137) married his daughter Eleanor to Louis
VII., king of France, and Aquitaine went as her dowry. When Eleanor was
divorced from Louis and was married in 1152 to Henry II. of England the
duchy passed to her new husband, who, having suppressed a revolt there,
gave it to his son Richard. When Richard died in 1199, it reverted to
Eleanor, and on her death five years later, was united to the English
crown and henceforward followed the fortunes of the English possessions
in France. Aquitaine as it came to the English kings stretched as of old
from the Loire to the Pyrenees, but its extent was curtailed on the
south-east by the wide lands of the counts of Toulouse. The name
Guienne, a corruption of Aquitaine, seems to have come into use about
the 10th century, and the subsequent history of Aquitaine is merged in
that of Gascony (q.v.) and Guienne (q.v.).
See E. Desjardins, _Geographie historique el administrative de la
Gaule romaine_ (Paris, 1876, 93); A. Luchaire, _Les Origines
linguistiques de l'Aquitaine_ (Paris, 1877); A. Longnon, _Geographie
de la Gaule au VI^e siecle_ (Paris, 1876); A. Perroud, _Les Origines
du premier duche d'Aquitaine_ (Paris, 1881); and E. Mabille, _Le
Royaume d'Aquitaine et ses marches sous les Carlovingiens_ (Paris,
1870).
ARABESQUE, a word meaning simply "Arabian," but technically used for a
certain form of decorative design in flowing lines intertwined; hence
comes the more metaphorical use of this word, whether in nature or in
morals, indicating a fantastic or complicated interweaving of lines
against a background. In decorative design the term is historically a
misnomer. It is applied to the grotesque decoration derived from Roman
remains of the early time of the empire, not to any style derived from
Arabian or Moorish work. Arabesque and Moresque are really distinct; the
latter is from the Arabian style of ornament, developed by the Byzantine
Greeks for their new masters, after the conquests of the followers of
Mahomet; and the former is a term pretty well restricted to varieties of
cinquecento decoration, which have nothing in common with any Arabian
examples in their details, but are a development derived from Greek and
Roman grotesque designs, such as we find them in the remains of ancient
palaces at Rome, and in ancient houses at Pompeii. These were reproduced
by Raphael and his pupils in the decoration of some of the corridors of
the Loggie of the Vatican at Rome: grotesque is thus a better name for
these decorations than Arabesque. This technical Arabesque, therefore,
is much more ancient than any Arabian or Moorish decoration, and has
really nothing in common with it except the mere symmetrical principles
of its arrangement. Pliny and Vitruvius give us no name for the
extravagant decorative wall-painting in vogue in their time, to which
the early Italian revivers of it seem to have given the designation of
grotesque, because it, was first discovered in the arched or underground
chambers (_grotte_) of Roman ruins--as in the golden house of Nero, or
the baths of Titus. What really took place in the Italian revival was in
some measure a supplanting of the Arabesque for the classical grotesque,
still retaining the original Arabian designation, while the genuine
Arabian art, the Saracenic, was distinguished as Moresque or Moorish. So
it is now the original Arabesque that is called by its specific names of
Saracenic, Moorish and Alhambresque, while the term Arabesque is applied
exclusively to the style developed from the debased classical grotesque
of the Roman empire.
There is still much of the genuine Saracenic element in Renaissance
Arabesques, especially in that selected for book-borders and for
silver-work, the details of which consist largely of the conventional
Saracenic foliations. But the Arabesque developed in the Italian
cinquecento work repudiated all the original Arabian elements and
devices, and limited itself to the manipulating of the classical
elements, of which the most prominent feature is ever the floriated or
foliated scroll; and it is in this cinquecento decoration, whether in
sculpture or in painting, that _Arabesque_ has been perfected.
In the Saracenic, as the elder sister of the two styles, which was
ingeniously developed by the Byzantine Greek artists for their Arabian
masters in the early times of Mahommedan conquest, every natural object
was proscribed; the artists were, therefore, reduced to making
symmetrical designs from forms which should have no positive meaning;
yet the Byzantine Greeks, who were Christians, managed to work even
their own ecclesiastical symbols, in a disguised manner, into their
tracery and diapers; as the lily, for instance. The cross was not so
introduced; this, of course, was inadmissible; but neither was the
crescent ever introduced into any of this early work in Damascus or
Cairo. The crescent was itself not a Mahommedan device till after the
conquest of Constantinople in 1453 A.D. The crescent, as the new moon,
was the symbol of Byzantium; and it was only after that capital of the
Eastern empire fell into the hands of the Turks that this symbol was
adopted by them. The crescent and the cross became antagonist standards,
therefore, first in the 15th century. And the crescent is not an element
of original Moorish decoration.
The Alhambra diapers and original Majolica (Majorca) ware afford
admirable specimens of genuine Saracenic or Moorish decoration. A
conventional floriage is common in these diapers; tracery also is a
great feature in this work, in geometrical combinations, whether
rectilinear or curvilinear; and the designs are rich in colour; idolatry
was in the reproduction of natural forms, not in the fanciful
combination of natural colours. These curves and angles, therefore, or
interlacings, chiefly in stucco, constitute the prominent elements of an
Arabian ornamental design, combining also Arabic inscriptions; composed
of a mass of foliation or floral forms conventionally disguised, as the
exclusion of all natural images was the fundamental principle of the
style in its purity. The Alhambra displays almost endless specimens of
this peculiar work, all in relief, highly coloured, and profusely
enriched with gold. The mosque of Tulun, in Cairo, A.D. 876, the known
work of a Greek, affords the completest example of this art in its early
time; and Sicily contains many remains of this same exquisite Saracenic
decoration.
Such is the genuine Arabesque of the Arabs, but a very different style
of design is implied by the Arabesque of the cinquecento, a purely
classical ornamentation. This owes its origin to the excavation and
recovery of ancient monuments, and was developed chiefly by the
sculptors of the north, and the painters of central Italy; by the
Lombardi of Venice, by Agostino Busti of Milan, by Bramante of Urbino,
by Raphael, by Giulio Romano, and others of nearly equal merit. Very
beautiful examples in sculpture of this cinquecento Arabesque are found
in the churches of Venice, Verona and Brescia; in painting, the most
complete specimens are those of the Vatican Loggie, and the Villa Madama
at Rome and the ducal palaces at Mantua. The Vatican Arabesques, chiefly
executed for Raphael by Giulio Romano, Gian Francesco Penni, and
Giovanni da Udine, though beautiful as works of painting, are often very
extravagant in their composition, ludicrous and sometimes aesthetically
offensive; as are also many of the decorations of Pompeii. The main
features of these designs are balanced scrolls in panels; or standards
variously composed, but symmetrically scrolled on either side, and on
the tendrils of these scrolls are suspended or placed birds and animals,
human figures and chimeras, of any or all kinds, or indeed any objects
that may take the fancy of the artist. The most perfect specimens of
cinquecento Arabesque are certainly found in sculpture. As specimens of
exquisite work may be mentioned the Martinengo tomb, in the church of
the Padri Riformati at Brescia, and the facade of the church of Santa
Maria del Miracoli there, by the Lombardi; and many of the carvings of
the Chateau de Gaillon, France--all of which fairly illustrate the
beauties and capabilities of the style.