ALBYN, ancient Celtic name of Scotland.

ALCAE`US OF MITYLENE, a Greek lyric poet, an aristocrat by birth, a contemporary and an alleged lover of Sappho, and much admired by Horace; flourished about 600 B.C.

ALCA`LA DE HENA`RES (14), a town in Spain, the birthplace of Cervantes, 21 m.  E. of Madrid, long the seat of a famous university founded by Cardinal Ximenes.

ALCAN`TARA, a town of Spain, on the Tagus, near Portugal, with a bridge of six arches, 670 ft. long and 210 ft. high, built in honour of Trajan in 104.  The Order of Alcantara, a religious and military order, was established in 1176 here, for defence against the Moors, and was suppressed in 1835.

ALCESTE, the chief character in Moliere’s Misanthrope.

ALCES`TIS, the wife of Admetus, who gave herself up to death to save her husband.  Hercules descended to the lower world and brought her back.  She is the subject of one of the tragedies of Euripides.

ALCHEMY, the early analysis of substances which has in modern times developed into chemistry, and which aimed chiefly at the discovery of the philosopher’s stone, of a universal solvent, and of the elixir of life; it has been defined to be “an art without art, which has its beginning in falsehood, its middle in toil, and its end in poverty.”

ALCIBI`ADES, an Athenian of high birth, and related to Pericles, possessed of a handsome person, brilliant abilities, and great wealth, but was of a wayward temper and depraved, whom Socrates tried hard to win over to virtue, but failed.  He involved his country in a rash expedition against Sicily, served and betrayed it by turns in the Peloponnesian war, and died by assassination in exile (450-404 B.C.).

ALCI`DES, the grandson of Alcaeus, a patronymic of Hercules.

ALCIN`OUS, a king of the Phaeacians, the father of Nausicaa, who figures in the Odyssey as the host of Ulysses, who had been shipwrecked on his shore.

ALCI`RA (18), a walled town in Spain, on an island 22 m.  SW. of Valencia.

ALCMAN, an early Greek lyric poet, born at Sardis.

ALCME`NE, the wife of Amphitryon and the mother of Hercules.

ALCMEONIDAE, a powerful Athenian family, of which Pericles and Alcibiades were members, who professed to be descended from Alcmaeon, the grandson of Nestor.

ALCOCK, JOHN, an eminent ecclesiastic of the reign of Edward IV., distinguished for his love of learning and learned men; d. 1500.

ALCOHOL, pure or highly rectified spirit obtained from fermented saccharine solutions by distillation, and the intoxicating principle of all spirituous liquors.

ALCOHOLISM, the results, acute or chronic, of the deleterious action of alcohol on the human system.

ALCORAN`.  See KORAN.

ALCOTT, LOUISA MARY, a popular American authoress, who acted as a nurse to the wounded during the Civil War; her works mostly addressed to the young (1832-1888).