AMPHI`ON, a son of Zeus and Antiope, who is said to have invented the lyre, and built the walls of Thebes by the sound of it, a feat often alluded to as an instance of the miraculous power of music.

AMPHISBAENA, a genus of limbless lizards; a serpent fabled to have two heads and to be able to move backward or forward.

AM`PHITRITE, a daughter of Oceanus or Nereus, the wife of Neptune, mother of Triton, and goddess of the sea.

AMPHIT`RYON, the king of Tiryns, and husband of Alcmene, who became by him the mother of Iphicles, and by Zeus the mother of Hercules.

AMPHITRYON THE TRUE, the real host, the man who provides the feast, as Zeus proved himself to the household to be when he visited Alcmene.

AM`RAN RANGE, pronounced the “scientific frontier” of India towards Afghanistan.

AMRIT`SAR (136), a sacred city of the Sikhs in the Punjab, and a great centre of trade, 32 m.  E. of Lahore; is second to Delhi in Northern India; manufactures cashmere shawls.

AM`RU, a Mohammedan general under the Caliph Omar, conquered Egypt among other military achievements; he is said to have executed the order of the Caliph Omar for burning the library of Alexandria; d. 663.

AMSTERDAM (456), the capital of Holland, a great trading city and port at the mouth of the Amsel, on the Zuyder Zee, resting on 90 islands connected by 300 bridges, the houses built on piles of wood driven into the marshy ground; is a largely manufacturing place, as well as an emporium of trade, one special industry being the cutting of diamonds and jewels; birthplace of Spinoza.

AMUR`, a large eastward-flowing river, partly in Siberia and partly in China, which, after a course of 3060 m., falls into the Sea of Okhotsk.

AMURNATH, a place of pilgrimage in Cashmere, on account of a cave believed to be the dwelling-place of Siva.

AMYOT, JACQUES, grand-almoner of France and bishop of Auxerre; was of humble birth; was tutor of Charles, who appointed him grand-almoner; he was the translator, among other works, of Plutarch into French, which remains to-day one of the finest monuments of the old literature of France, it was much esteemed by Montaigne (1513-1593).

AMYOT, JOSEPH, a French Jesuit missionary to China, and a learned Orientalist (1713-1794).

ANABAPTISTS, a fanatical sect which arose in Saxony at the time of the Reformation, and though it spread in various parts of Germany, came at length to grief by the excesses of its adherents in Muenster.  See BAPTISTS.

ANAB`ASIS, an account by Xenophon of the ill-fated expedition of Cyrus the Younger against his brother Artaxerxes, and of the retreat of the 10,000 Greeks under Xenophon who accompanied him, after the battle of Cunaxa in 401 B.C.

ANACHARSIS, a Scythian philosopher of the 6th century B.C., who, in his roamings in quest of wisdom, arrived at Athens, and became the friend and disciple of Solon, but was put to death on his return home by his brother; he stands for a Scythian savant living among a civilised people, as well as for a wise man living among fools.