AOS`TA (5), a town of Italy, N. of Turin, in a fertile Alpine level valley, but where goitre and cretinism prevail to a great extent; the birthplace of Anselm.

APA`CHES, a fierce tribe of American Indians on the S. and W. of the United States; long a source of trouble to the republic.

APEL`LES, the most celebrated painter of antiquity; bred, if not born, at Ephesus; lived at the court of Alexander the Great; his great work “APHRODITE ANADYOMENE” (q. v.); a man conscious, like Duerer, of mastery in his art, as comes out in his advice to the criticising shoemaker to “stick to his last.”

AP`ENNINES, a branch of the Alps extending, with spurs at right angles, nearly through the whole length of Italy, forming about the middle of the peninsula a double chain which supports the tableland of Abruzzi.

APES, DEAD SEA, dwellers by the Dead Sea who, according to the Moslem tradition, were transformed into apes because they turned a deaf ear to God’s message to them by the lips of Moses, fit symbol, thinks Carlyle, of many in modern time to whom the universe, with all its serious voices, seems to have become a weariness and a humbug See “PAST AND PRESENT,” BK.  III.  CHAP.  III.

APH`IDES, a family of insects very destructive to plants by feeding on them in countless numbers.

APHRODI`TE, the Greek goddess of love and beauty, wife of Hephaestos and mother of Cupid; sprung from sea-foam; as queen of beauty had the golden apple awarded her by Paris, and possessed the power of conferring beauty, by means of her magic girdle, the cestus, on others.

API`CIUS, the name of three famous Roman epicures, the first of whom was contemporary with Sulla, the second with Augustus, and the third with Trajan.

A`PION, an Alexandrian grammarian of the 1st century, and an enemy of the Jews, and hostile to the privileges conceded them in Alexandria.

A`PIS, the sacred live bull of the Egyptians, the incarnation of Osiris; must be black all over the body, have a white triangular spot on the forehead, the figure of an eagle on the back, and under the tongue the image of a scarabaeus; was at the end of 25 years drowned in a sacred fountain, had his body embalmed, and his mummy regarded as an object of worship.

APOCALYPTIC WRITINGS, writings composed among the Jews in the 2nd century B.C., and ascribed to one and another of the early prophets of Israel, forecasting the judgments ordained of God to overtake the nation, and predicting its final deliverance at the hands of the Messiah.

APOCRYPHA, THE, a literature of sixteen books composed by Jews, after the close of the Hebrew canon, which though without the unction of the prophetic books of the canon, are instinct, for most part, with the wisdom which rests on the fear of God and loyalty to His law.  The word Apocrypha means hidden writing, and it was given to it by the Jews to distinguish it from the books which they accepted as canonical.