AEOLIAN ACTION, action of the wind as causing geologic changes.

AEOLIAN ISLANDS, the LIPARI ISLANDS (q. v.).

AEO`LIANS, one of the Greek races who, originating in Thessaly, spread north and south, and emigrated into Asia Minor, giving rise to the AEolic dialect of the Greek language.

AEOLOTROPY, a change in the physical properties of bodies due to a change of position.

AE`OLUS, the Greek god of the winds.

AEON, among the Gnostics, one of a succession of powers conceived as emanating from God and presiding over successive creations and transformations of being.

AEPYOR`NIS, a gigantic fossil bird of Madagascar, of which the egg is six times larger than that of an ostrich.

AE`QUI, a tribe on NE. of Latium, troublesome to the Romans until subdued in 302 B.C.

AERATED BREAD, bread of flour dough charged with carbonic acid gas.

AERATED WATERS, waters aerated with carbonic acid gas.

AES`CHINES, a celebrated Athenian orator, rival of Demosthenes, who in the end prevailed over him by persuading the citizens to believe he was betraying them to Philip of Macedon, so that he left Athens and settled in Rhodes, where he founded a school as a rhetorician (389-314 B.C.).

AES`CHYLUS, the father of the Greek tragedy, who distinguished himself as a soldier both at Marathon and Salamis before he figured as a poet; wrote, it is said, some seventy dramas, of which only seven are extant—­the “Suppliants,” the “Persae,” the “Seven against Thebes,” the “Prometheus Bound,” the “Agamemnon,” the “Choephori,” and the “Eumenides,” his plays being trilogies; born at Eleusis and died in Sicily (525-456 B.C.).

AESCULA`PIUS, a son of Apollo and the nymph Coronis, whom, for restoring Hippolytus to life, Zeus, at the prayer of Pluto, destroyed with a thunderbolt, but afterwards admitted among the gods as god of medicine and the healing art; the cock, the emblem of vigilance, and the serpent, of prudence, were sacred to him.

AESON, the father of Jason, was restored to youth by Medea.

AE`SOP, a celebrated Greek fabulist of the 6th century B.C., of whose history little is known except that he was originally a slave, manumitted by Iadmon of Samos, and put to death by the Delphians, probably for some witticism at their expense.

AESO`PUS, a celebrated Roman actor, a friend of Pompey and Cicero.

AESTHETICS, the science of the beautiful in nature and the fine arts.

AE`TIUS, a Roman general, who withstood the aggressions of the Barbarians for twenty years, and defeated Attila at Chalons, 451; assassinated out of jealousy by the Emperor Valentinian III., 454.

AETO`LIA, a country of ancient Greece N. of the Gulf of Corinth.

AFFRE, archbishop of Paris, suffered death on the barricades, as, with a green bough in his hand, he bore a message of peace to the insurgents (1793-1848).