tyrant of Syracuse, in Sicily, from 317 to c. 304 and self-styled king of Sicily after c. 304. A champion of Hellenism, he waged war unsuccessfully against Carthage.
an Athenian tragic poet whose first victory at the festival of the Great Dionysia, in which plays were presented and judged, was gained in 416 BC. The event is made, by Plato, the occasion for his dialogue Symposium, and the ...
an ancient people that settled in the northern and central Ethiopian Plateau; they are associated with the development of agriculture and animal husbandry in the area. The term Agau also refers to any of several contemporaneous groups that are either ...
the agave family of the flowering plant order Liliales, consisting of about 22 genera and at least 720 species of short-stemmed, often woody plants distributed throughout tropical, subtropical, and temperate areas of the world. Members of the family have narrow, ...
Italian composer famous for his treatise, Del sonare sopra 'l basso con tutti li stromenti e dell'uso loro nel conserto (1607; "On Playing Upon the Thoroughbass with All the Instruments and Their Use in an Ensemble"), one of the earliest ...
town, southeastern Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast). It lies along the Abidjan-Ouagadougou railway and the Agneby River. The chief trading centre for an agricultural region inhabited mainly by the Abe (Abbe) people, it ships coffee, bananas, cocoa, and timber (mahogany, sipo) ...
in population studies, the proportionate numbers of persons in successive age categories in a given population. Age distributions differ among countries mainly because of differences in the levels and trends of fertility. A population with persistently high fertility, for instance, ...
a formally organized group consisting of every male (or female) of comparable age. In those societies chiefly identified with the practice, a person belonged, either from birth or from a determined age, to a named age set that passed through ...
Australian daily newspaper published in Melbourne and widely considered to provide some of the finest news coverage in the country. It has been highly regarded for its dedication to accuracy.
in anthropology, theory holding that the age of culture traits (elements of a culture) may be determined by examining their distribution over a large geographic area. The hypothesis states that widely distributed traits are older than those more narrowly distributed. ...
American poet, novelist, and writer for and about motion pictures. One of the most influential American film critics in the 1930s and '40s, he applied rigorous intellectual and aesthetic standards to his reviews, which appeared anonymously in
town, capital of Lot-et-Garonne departement, Aquitaine region, southwestern France. It lies along the Garonne River at the foot of Ermitage Hill (530 feet [162 metres]), northwest of Toulouse. Mentioned by Julius Caesar as Aginnum, ...
French cooperative news agency, one of the world's great wire news services. It is based in Paris, where it was founded under its current name in 1944, but its roots go to the Bureau Havas, which was created in 1832 ...
in law, the relationship that exists when one person or party (the principal) engages another (the agent) to act for him-e.g., to do his work, to sell his goods, to manage his business. The law of agency ...
in human physiology, failure of all or part of an organ to develop during embryonic growth. Many forms of agenesis are consistently lethal, as when the entire brain is absent (anencephaly), but agenesis of one of a paired organ may ...
a computer program that performs various actions continuously and autonomously on behalf of an individual or an organization. For example, an agent may archive various computer files or retrieve electronic messages on a regular schedule. Such simple tasks barely begin ...
mixture of herbicides that U.S. military forces sprayed in Vietnam from 1962 to 1971 during the Vietnam War for the dual purpose of defoliating forest areas that might conceal Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces and destroying crops that might ...
city, Saitama ken (prefecture), Honshu, Japan. Ageo lies on the terrace between the Ara River (west) and the Ayase River (east). A former post town between Tokyo and Maebashi, it was connected to Tokyo (25 miles [40 km] southeast) in ...
any of about 45 species of annual herbs making up the genus Ageratum (family Asteraceae), and native to tropical South America. They have toothed, oval leaves that are opposite each other on the stem; compact clusters of blue, pink, lilac, ...
Greek sculptor who is credited by the 1st-century-AD Roman writer Pliny as the creator, with Polydorus and Athenodorus, of the group "Laocoon." Nothing further is known of him except that inscriptions found at Lindus in Rhodes indicate that he was ...
king of Sparta from 399 to 360 who commanded the Spartan army throughout most of the period of Spartan supremacy (404-371) in Greece. An excellent military tactician, he is usually cited as the embodiment of the aggressive Spartan spirit that ...
Belgian corporate group established in 1964 in the merger of Agfa AG of Leverkusen, West Germany, and Gevaert Photo-Producten NV of Mortsel, Belgium. The merger established twin operating companies, one German (Agfa-Gevaert AG) and one Belgian (Gevaert-Agfa NV, which in ...
large, coarse, rock fragments associated with lava flow that are ejected during explosive volcanic eruptions. Although they closely resemble sedimentary conglomerates, agglomerates are pyroclastic igneous rocks that consist almost wholly of angular or rounded lava fragments of varying size and ...
a grammatical process in which words are composed of a sequence of morphemes (word elements), each of which represents not more than a single grammatical category. This term is traditionally employed in the typological classification of languages. Turkish, Finnish, and ...
substance that causes particles to congeal in a group or mass, particularly a typical antibody that occurs in the blood serums of immunized and normal human beings and animals. When an agglutinin is added to a uniform suspension of particles ...
in building and construction, material used for mixing with cement, bitumen, lime, gypsum, or other adhesive to form concrete or mortar. The aggregate gives volume, stability, resistance to wear or erosion, and other desired physical properties to the finished product. ...
in international relations, an act or policy of expansion carried out by one state at the expense of another by means of an unprovoked military attack. For purposes of reparation or punishment after hostilities, aggression has been defined in international ...
any action of an animal that serves to injure an opponent or prey animal or to cause an opponent to retreat. The term is used in many different ways, however, and no single definition can possibly cover all of its ...
a form of similarity in which a predator or parasite gains an advantage by its resemblance to a third party. This model may be the prey (or host) species itself, or it may be a species that the prey does ...
founder and first ruler of the Qajar dynasty of Iran. Following the disintegration of the Safavid empire in 1722, Qajar tribal chieftains became prominent in Iranian affairs.
Arab Muslim dynasty that ruled Ifriqiyah (Tunisia and eastern Algeria) from AD 800 to 909. The Aghlabids were nominally subject to the 'Abbasid caliphs of Baghdad but were in fact independent. Their capital city was Kairouan (al-Qayrawan), in Tunisia. The ...
progressive physiological changes in an organism that lead to senescence, or a decline of biological functions and of the organism's ability to adapt to metabolic stress.
administrative centre of Aga-Buryat autonomous okrug (district), Chita oblast (province), Russia, in the Aga River valley. The village was founded in 1811. It has small food-processing industries. Pop. (1994 est.) 9,300.
early Spartan king, traditionally held to be the son of Eurysthenes (in legend, one of the twins who founded Sparta). Because the Agiad line of kings was named after him, Agis was perhaps a historical figure. The 4th-century-BC Greek historian ...
political strategy in which the techniques of agitation and propaganda are used to influence and mobilize public opinion. Although the strategy is common, both the label and an obsession with it were specific to the Marxism practiced by communists in ...
in Greek mythology, eldest daughter of the Athenian king Cecrops. Aglauros died with her sisters by leaping in fear from the Acropolis after seeing the infant Erechthonius, a human with a serpent's tail. The Roman poet Ovid, however, related that ...
volcanic crater, Napoli provincia, Campania regione, southern Italy. It is situated in the Campi Flegrei volcanic region just west of Naples. The crater, about 4 miles (6 km) in circumference, was known to the Greeks and Romans for its hot ...
founder of the Fiat (Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino) automobile company and the leading Italian industrialist of the first half of the 20th century.
private institution of higher education for women in Decatur, Georgia, U.S. A liberal arts college allied with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Agnes Scott College offers Bachelor of Arts degrees in some 30 disciplines; several interdisciplinary majors are offered as well, ...
