The composition of the history displays much ability; but Boece"s imagination was, however, stronger than his judgment: of the extent of the historian"s credulity, his narrative exhibits many unequivocal proofs; and of deliberate invention or distortion of facts not a few, though the latter are less flagrant and intentional than early 19th-century criticism has a.s.sumed. He professed to have obtained from the monastery of Icolmkill, through the good offices of the earl of Argyll, and his brother, John Campbell of Lundy, the treasurer, certain original historians of Scotland, and among the rest Veremundus, of whose writings not a single vestige is now to be found. In his dedication to the king he is pleased to state that Veremundus, a Spaniard by birth, was archdeacon of St Andrews, and that he wrote in Latin a history of Scotland from the origin of the nation to the reign of Malcolm III., to whom he inscribed his work. His propensity to the marvellous was at an early period exposed in the following verses by Leland:--
"Hectoris historici tot quot mendacia scripsit Si vis ut numerem, lector amice, tibi, Me jubeas etiam fluctus numerare marinos Et liquidi Stellas connumerare poli."
Boece"s _History of Scotland_ was translated into Scottish prose by John b.e.l.l.e.n.den, and into verse by William Stewart. _The Lives of the Bishops_ was reprinted for the Bannatyne Club, Edin., 1825, in a limited edition of sixty copies. A commonplace verse-rendering of the _Life of Bishop Elphinstone_, which was written by Alexander Gardyne in 1619, remains in MS. There is no modern edition of the history, though the versions of b.e.l.l.e.n.den and Stewart have been edited.
BOEHM, SIR JOSEPH EDGAR, Bart. (1834-1890), British sculptor, was born of Hungarian parentage on the 4th of July 1834 at Vienna, where his father was director of the imperial mint. After studying the plastic art in Italy and at Paris, he worked for a few years as a medallist in his native city. After a further period of study in England, he was so successful as an exhibitor at the Exhibition of 1862 that he determined to abandon the execution of coins and medals, and to give his mind to portrait busts and statuettes, chiefly equestrian. The colossal statue of Queen Victoria, executed in marble (1869) for Windsor Castle, and the monument of the duke of Kent in St George"s chapel, were his earliest great works, and so entirely to the taste of his royal patrons that he rose rapidly in favour with the court. He was made A.R.A. in 1878, and produced soon afterwards the statue of Carlyle on the Thames embankment at Chelsea. In 1881 he was appointed sculptor in ordinary to the queen, and in the ensuing year became full Academician. On the death of Dean Stanley, Boehm was commissioned to execute his sarcophagus in Westminster Abbey, and his achievement, a rec.u.mbent statue, has been p.r.o.nounced to be one of the best portraits in modern sculpture. Less successful was his monument to General Gordon in St Paul"s cathedral. He executed the equestrian statue of the duke of Wellington at Hyde Park Corner, and designed the coinage for the Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1887. Among his ideal subjects should be noted the "Herdsman and Bull."
He died suddenly in his studio at South Kensington on the 12th of December 1890.
BOEHM VON BAWERK, EUGEN (1851- ), Austrian economist and statesman, was born at Brunn on the 12th of February 1851. Entering the Austrian department of finance in 1872, he held various posts until 1880, when he became qualified as a teacher of political economy in the university of Vienna. The following year, however, he transferred his services to the university of Innsbruck, where he became professor in 1884. In 1889 he became councillor in the ministry of finance, and represented the government in the Lower House on all questions of taxation. In 1895 and again in 1897-1898 he was minister of finance. In 1899 he was made a member of the Upper House, and in 1900 again became minister of finance.
One of the leaders of the Austrian school of economists, he has made notable criticisms on the theory of value in relation to cost as laid down by the "cla.s.sical school." His more important works are _Kapital und Kapitalzins_ (Innsbruck, 1884-1889), in two parts, translated by W.
Smart, viz. _Capital and Interest_ (part i., 1890), and _The Positive Theory of Capital_ (part ii., 1891); _Karl Marx and the Close of his System_ (trans. A.M. Macdonald, 1898); _Recent Literature on Interest_ (trans. W.A. Scott and S. Feilbogen, 1903).
BOEHME (or BEHMEN), JAKOB (1575-1624), German mystical writer, whose surname (of which Fechner gives eight German varieties) appears in English literature as Beem, Behmont, &c., and notably Behmen, was born at Altseidenberg, in Upper Lusatia, a straggling hamlet among the hills, some 10 m. S.E. of Gorlitz. His father was a well-to-do peasant, and his first employment was that of herd boy on the Landskrone, a hill in the neighbourhood of Gorlitz; the only education he received was at the town-school of Seidenberg, a mile from his home. Seidenberg, to this day, is filled with shoemakers, and to a shoemaker Jakob was apprenticed in his fourteenth year (1589), being judged not robust enough for husbandry. Ten years later (1599) we find him settled at Gorlitz as master-shoemaker, and married to Katharina, daughter of Hans Kuntzschmann, a thriving butcher in the town. After industriously pursuing his vocation for ten years, he bought (1610) the substantial house, which still preserves his name, close by the bridge, in the Neiss-Vorstadt. Two or three years later he gave up business, and did not resume it as a shoemaker; but for some years before his death he made and sold woollen gloves, regularly visiting Prague fair for this purpose.
Boehme"s authorship began in his 37th year (1612) with a treatise, _Aurora, oder die Morgenrote im Aufgang_, which though unfinished was surrept.i.tiously copied, and eagerly circulated in MS. by Karl von Ender.
This raised him at once out of his homely sphere, and made him the centre of a local circle of liberal thinkers, considerably above him in station and culture. The charge of heresy was, however, soon directed against him by Gregorius Richter, then pastor primarius of Gorlitz.
Feeling ran so high after Richter"s pulpit denunciations, that, in July 1613, the munic.i.p.al council, fearing a disturbance of the peace, made a show of examining Boehme, took possession of his fragmentary quarto, and dismissed the writer with an admonition to meddle no more with such matters. For five years he obeyed this injunction. But in 1618 began a second period of authorship; he poured forth, but did not publish, treatise after treatise, expository and polemical, in the next and the two following years. In 1622 he composed nothing but a few short pieces on true repentance, resignation, &c., which, however, devotionally speaking, are the most precious of all his writings. They were the only pieces offered to the public in his lifetime and with his permission, a fact which is evidence of the essentially religious and practical character of his mind. Their publication at Gorlitz, on New Year"s day 1624, under the t.i.tle of _Der Weg zu Christo_, was the signal for renewed clerical hostility. Boehme had by this time entered on the third and most prolific though the shortest period (1623-1624) of his speculation. His labours at the desk were interrupted in May 1624 by a summons to Dresden, where his famous "colloquy" with the Upper Consistorial court was made the occasion of a flattering but transient ovation on the part of a new circle of admirers. Richter died in August 1624, and Boehme did not long survive his pertinacious foe. Seized with a fever when away from home, he was with difficulty conveyed to Gorlitz.
His wife was at Dresden on business; and during the first week of his malady he was nursed by a literary friend. He died, after receiving the rites of the church, grudgingly administered by the authorities, on Sunday, the 17th of November.
Boehme always professed that a direct inward opening or illumination was the only source of his speculative power. He pretended to no other revelation. Ecstatic raptures we should not expect, for he was essentially a Protestant mystic. No "thus saith the Lord" was claimed as his warrant, after the manner of Antoinette Bourignon, or Ludowick Muggleton; no spirits or angels held converse with him as with Swedenborg. It is needless to dwell, in the way either of acceptance or rejection, on the very few occasions in which his outward life seemed to him to come into contact with the invisible world. The apparition of the pail of gold to the herd boy on the Landskrone, the visit of the mysterious stranger to the young apprentice, the fascination of the luminous sheen, reflected from a common pewter dish, which first, in 1600, gave an intuitive turn to his meditations, the heavenly music which filled his ears as he lay dying--none of these matters is connected organically with the secret of his special power. The mysteries of which he discoursed were not reported to him: he "beheld"
them. He saw the root of all mysteries, the _Ungrund_ or _Urgrund_, whence issue all contrasts and discordant principles, hardness and softness, severity and mildness, sweet and bitter, love and sorrow, heaven and h.e.l.l. These he "saw" in their origin; these he attempted to describe in their issue, and to reconcile in their eternal result. He saw into the being of G.o.d; whence the birth or going forth of the divine manifestation. Nature lay unveiled to him, he was at home in the heart of things. "His own book, which he himself was," the microcosm of man, with his threefold life, was patent to his vision. Such was his own account of his qualification. If he failed it was in expression; he confessed himself a poor mouthpiece, though he saw with a sure spiritual eye.
It must not be supposed that the form in which Boehme"s pneumatic realism worked itself out in detail was shaped entirely from within. In his writings we trace the influence of Theophr. Bombast von Hohenheim, known as Paracelsus (1493-1541), of Kaspar Schwenkfeld (1490-1561), the first Protestant mystic, and of Valentin Weigel (1533-1588). From the school of Paracelsus came much of his puzzling phraseology,--his _Turba_ and _Tinctur_ and so forth,--a phraseology embarra.s.sing to himself as well as to his readers. His friends plied him with foreign terms, which he was delighted to receive, interpreting them by an instinct, and using them often in a corrupted form and always in a sense of his own. Thus the word _Idea_ called up before him the image of "a very fair, heavenly, and chaste virgin." The t.i.tle _Aurora_, by which his earliest treatise is best known, was furnished by Dr Balthasar Walther. These, however, were false helps, which only serve to obscure a difficult study, like the _Flagrat_ and _Lubet_, with which his English translator veiled Boehme"s own honest _Schreck_ and _l.u.s.t_. There is danger lest his crude science and his crude philosophical vocabulary conceal the fertility of Boehme"s ideas and the transcendent greatness of his religious insight. Few will take the pains to follow him through the interminable account of his seven _Quellgeister_, which remind us of Gnosticism; or even of his three first properties of eternal nature, in which his disciples find Newton"s formulae antic.i.p.ated, and which certainly bear a marvellous resemblance to the three [Greek: archai] of Sch.e.l.ling"s _Theogonische Natur_. Boehme is always greatest when he breaks away from his fancies and his trammels, and allows speech to the voice of his heart. Then he is artless, clear and strong; and no man can help listening to him, whether he dive deep down with the conviction "ohne Gift und Grimm kein Leben," or rise with the belief that "the being of all beings is a wrestling power," or soar with the persuasion that Love "in its height is as high as G.o.d." The mystical poet of Silesia, Angelus Silesius, discerned where Boehme"s truest power lay when he sang--
"Im Wa.s.ser lebt der Fisch, die Pflanze in der Erden, Der Vogel in der Luft, die Sonn" am Firmament, Der Salamander muss im Feu"r erhalten werden, Und Gottes Herz ist Jakob Bohme"s Element."
The three periods of Boehme"s authorship const.i.tute three distinct stages in the development of his philosophy. He himself marks a threefold division of his subject-matter:--1. PHILOSOPHIA, i.e. the pursuit of the divine _Sophia_, a study of G.o.d in himself; this was attempted in the _Aurora_. 2. ASTROLOGIA, i.e., in the largest sense, cosmology, the manifestation of the divine in the structure of the world and of man; hereto belong, with others, _Die drei Principien gottlichen Wesens; Vom dreifachen Leben der Menschen; Von der Menschwerdung Christi;, Von der Geburt und Bezeichnung alter Wesen_ (known as _Signatura Rerum_). 3. THEOLOGIA, i.e., in Scougall"s phrase, "the life of G.o.d in the soul of man." Of the speculative writings under this head the most important are _Von der Gnadenwahl; Mysterium Magnum_ (a spiritual commentary on Genesis); _Von Christi Testamenten_ (the Sacraments).
Although Boehme"s philosophy is essentially theological, and his theology essentially philosophical, one would hardly describe him as a philosophical theologian; and, indeed, his position is not one in which either the philosopher or the theologian finds it easy to make himself completely at home. The philosopher finds no trace in Boehme of a conception of G.o.d which rests its own validity on an accord with the highest canons of reason or of morals; it is in the actual not in the ideal that Boehme seeks G.o.d, whom he discovers as the spring of natural powers and forces, rather than as the goal of advancing thought. The theologian is staggered by a language which breaks the fixed a.s.sociation of theological phrases, and strangely reversing the usual point of view, characteristically pictures G.o.d as underneath rather than above. Nature rises out of Him; we sink into Him. The _Ungrund_ of the unmanifested G.o.dhead is boldly represented in the English translations of Boehme by the word _Abyss_, in a sense altogether unexplained by its Biblical use.
In the _Theologia Germanica_ this tendency to regard G.o.d as the _substantia_, the underlying ground of all things, is accepted as a foundation for piety; the same view, when offered in the colder logic of Spinoza, is sometimes set aside as atheistical. The procession of spiritual forces and natural phenomena out of the _Ungrund_ is described by Boehme in terms of a threefold manifestation, commended no doubt by the const.i.tution of the Christian Trinity, but exhibited in a form derived from the school of Paracelsus. From Weigel he learned a purely idealistic explanation of the universe, according to which it is not the resultant of material forces, but the expression of spiritual principles. These two explanations were fused in his mind till they issued forth as equivalent forms of one and the same thought. Further, Schwenkfeld supplied him with the germs of a transcendental exegesis, whereby the Christian Scriptures and the dogmata of Lutheran orthodoxy were opened up in harmony with his new-found views. Thus equipped, Boehme"s own genius did the rest. A primary effort of Boehme"s philosophy is to show how material powers are substantially one with moral forces. This is the object with which he draws out the dogmatic scheme which dictates the arrangement of his seven _Quellgeister_.
Translating Boehme"s thought out of the uncouth dialect of material symbols (as to which one doubts sometimes whether he means them as concrete instances, or as pictorial ill.u.s.trations, or as a mere _memoria technica_), we find that Boehme conceives of the correlation of two triads of forces. Each triad consists of a thesis, an ant.i.thesis and a synthesis; and the two are connected by an important link. In the hidden life of the G.o.dhead, which is at once _Nichts_ and _Alles_, exists the original triad, viz. Attraction, Diffusion, and their resultant, the Agony of the unmanifested G.o.dhead. The transition is made; by an act of will the divine Spirit comes to Light; and immediately the manifested life appears in the triad of Love, Expression, and their resultant, Visible Variety. As the action of contraries and their resultant are explained the relations of soul, body and spirit; of good, evil and free will; of the spheres of the angels, of Lucifer, and of this world. It is a more difficult problem to account on this philosophy for the introduction of evil. Boehme does not resort to dualism, nor has he the smallest sympathy with a pantheistic repudiation of the fact of sin.
That the difficulty presses him is clear from the progressive changes in his attempted solution of the problem. In the _Aurora_ nothing save good proceeds from the _Ungrund_, though there is good that abides and good that fall;--Christ and Lucifer. In the second stage of his writing the ant.i.thesis is directly generated as such; good and its contrary are coincidently given from the one creative source, as factors of life and movement; while in the third period evil is a direct outcome of the primary principle of divine manifestation--it is the wrath side of G.o.d.
Corresponding to this change we trace a significant variation in the moral end contemplated by Boehme as the object of this world"s life and history. In the first stage the world is created in remedy of a decline; in the second, for the adjustment of a balance of forces; in the third, to exhibit the eternal victory of good over evil, of love over wrath.
Editions of Boehme"s works were published by H. Betke (Amsterdam, 1675); by J.G. Gichtel (Amsterdam, 1682-1683, 10 vols.); by K.W.
Schiebler (Leipzig, 1831-1847, 7 vols.). Translations of sundry treatises have been made into Latin (by J.A. Werdenhagen, 1632), Dutch (complete, by W. v. Bayerland, 1634-1641), and French (by Jean Macle, c. 1640, and L.C. de Saint-Martin, 1800-1809). Between 1644 and 1662 all Boehme"s works were translated by John Ellistone (d. 1652) and John Sparrow, a.s.sisted by Durand Hotham and Humphrey Blunden, who paid for the undertaking. At that time regular societies of _Behmenists_, embracing not only the cultivated but the vulgar, existed in England and in Holland. They merged into the Quaker movement, holding already in common with Friends that salvation is nothing short of the very presence and life of Christ in the believer, and only kept apart by an objective doctrine of the sacraments which exposed them to the polemic of Quakers (e.g. J. Anderdon). Muggleton led an anthropomorphic reaction against them, and between the two currents they were swept away. The Philadelphian Society at the beginning of the 18th century consisted of cultured mystics, Jane Lead, Pordage, Francis Lee, Bromley, &c., who fed upon Boehme. William Law (1686-1761) somewhat later recurred to the same spring, with the result, however, in those dry times of bringing his own good sense into question rather than of reviving the credit of his author. After Law"s death the old English translation was in great part re-edited (4 vols., 1762-1784) as a tribute to his memory, by George Ward and Thomas Langcake, with plates from the designs of D.A. Freher (Brit. Mus. Add. MSS. 5767-5794). This forms what is commonly called Law"s translation; to complete it a 5th vol. (12mo, Dublin, 1820) is needed.
See also J. Hambetger, _Die Lehre des deutschen Philosophen J.
Boehmes_ (1844); Alb. Peip, _J. Boehme der deutsche Philosoph_ (1860); von Harless, _J. Boehme und die Alchimisten_ (1870, 2nd ed. 1882). For Boehme"s life see the _Memoirs_ by Abraham von Frankenberg (d. 1652) and others, trans, by F. Okely (1870); La Motte Fouque, _J. Boehm, ein biographischer Denkstein_ (1831); H.A. Fechner, _J. Boehme, sein Leben und seine Schriften_ (1857); H.L. Martensen, _J. Boehme, Theosophiske Studier_ (Copenhagen, 1881; English trans. 1885); J. Claa.s.sen, _J.
Boehme, sein Leben und seine theosophische Werke_ (Gutersloh, 1885); P. Deussen, _J. Boehme, uber sein Leben und seine Philosophie_ (Kiel, 1897).
BOEOTIA, a district of central Greece, stretching from Phocis and Locris in the W. and N. to Attica and Megaris in the S. between the strait of Euboea and the Corinthian Gulf. This area, amounting in all to 1100 sq.
m., naturally falls into two main divisions. In the north the basin of the Cephissus and Lake Copas lies between parallel mountain-walls continuing eastward the line of Parna.s.sus in the extensive ridge of Helicon, the "Mountain of the Muses" (5470 ft.) and the east Locrian range in Mts. Ptoum, Messapium and other smaller peaks. These ranges, which mostly lie close to the seaboard, form by their projecting spurs a narrow defile on the Phocian frontier, near the famous battlefield of Chaeroneia, and shut in Copas closely on the south between Coronea and Haliartus. The north-east barrier was pierced by underground pa.s.sages (_katavothra_) which carried off the overflow from Copas. The southern portion of the land forms a plateau which slopes to Mt. Cithaeron, the frontier range between Boeotia and Attica. Within this territory the low ridge of Teumessus separates the plain of Ismenus and Dirce, commanded by the citadel of Thebes, from the upland plain of the Asopus, the only Boeotian river that finds the eastern sea. Though the Boeotian climate suffered from the exhalations of Copas, which produced a heavy atmosphere with foggy winters and sultry summers, its rich soil was suited alike for crops, plantations and pasture; the Copas plain, though able to turn into marsh when the choking of the _katavothra_ caused the lake to encroach, being among the most fertile in Greece.
The central position of Boeotia between two seas, the strategic strength of its frontiers and the ease of communication within its extensive area were calculated to enhance its political importance. On the other hand the lack of good harbours hindered its maritime development; and the Boeotian nation, although it produced great men like Pindar, Epaminondas, Pelopidas and Plutarch, was proverbially as dull as its native air. But credit should be given to the people for their splendid military qualities: both their cavalry and heavy infantry achieved a glorious record.
In the mythical days Boeotia played a prominent part. Of the two great centres of legends, Thebes with its Cadmean population figures as a military stronghold, and Orchomenus, the home of the Minyae, as an enterprising commercial city. The latter"s prosperity is still attested by its archaeological remains (notably the "Treasury of Minyas") and the traces of artificial conduits by which its engineers supplemented the natural outlets. The "Boeotian" population seems to have entered the land from the north at a date probably anterior to the Dorian invasion.
With the exception of the Minyae, the original peoples were soon absorbed by these immigrants, and the Boeotians henceforth appear as a h.o.m.ogeneous nation. In historical times the leading city of Boeotia was Thebes, whose central position and military strength made it a suitable capital. It was the constant ambition of the Thebans to absorb the other townships into a single state, just as Athens had annexed the Attic communities. But the outlying cities successfully resisted this policy, and only allowed the formation of a loose federation which in early times seems to have possessed a merely religious character. While the Boeotians, unlike the Arcadians, generally acted as a united whole against foreign enemies, the constant struggle between the forces of centralization and disruption perhaps went further than any other cause to check their development into a really powerful nation. Boeotia hardly figures in history before the late 6th century. Previous to this its people is chiefly known as the producer of a type of geometric pottery similar to the Dipylon ware of Athens. About 519 the resistance of Plataea to the federating policy of Thebes led to the interference of Athens on behalf of the former; on this occasion, and again in 507, the Athenians defeated the Boeotian levy. During the Persian invasion of 480, while some of the cities fought whole-heartedly in the ranks of the patriots, Thebes a.s.sisted the invaders. For a time the presidency of the Boeotian League was taken away from Thebes, but in 457 the Spartans reinstated that city as a bulwark against Athenian aggression. Athens retaliated by a sudden advance upon Boeotia, and after the victory of Oenophyta brought under its power the whole country excepting the capital. For ten years the land remained under Athenian control, which was exercised through the newly installed democracies; but in 447 the oligarchic majority raised an insurrection, and after a victory at Coronea regained their freedom and restored the old const.i.tutions. In the Peloponnesian War the Boeotians, embittered by the early conflicts round Plataea, fought zealously against Athens. Though slightly estranged from Sparta after the peace of Nicias, they never abated their enmity against their neighbours. They rendered good service at Syracuse and Arginusae; but their greatest achievement was the decisive victory at Delium over the flower of the Athenian army (424), in which both their heavy infantry and their cavalry displayed unusual efficiency.
About this time the Boeotian League comprised eleven groups of sovereign cities and a.s.sociated townships, each of which elected one Boeotarch or minister of war and foreign affairs, contributed sixty delegates to the federal council at Thebes, and supplied a contingent of about a thousand foot and a hundred horse to the federal army. A safeguard against undue encroachment on the part of the central government was provided in the councils of the individual cities, to which all important questions of policy had to be submitted for ratification. These local councils, to which the propertied cla.s.ses alone were eligible, were subdivided into four sections, resembling the _prytaneis_ of the Athenian council, which took it in turns to take previous cognizance of all new measures.[1]
Boeotia took a prominent part in the war of the Corinthian League against Sparta, especially at Haliartus and Coronea (395-394). This change of policy seems due mainly to the national resentment against foreign interference. Yet disaffection against Thebes was now growing rife, and Sparta fostered this feeling by stipulating for the complete independence of all the cities in the peace of Antalcidas (387). In 374 Pelopidas restored the Theban dominion. Boeotian contingents fought in all the campaigns of Epaminondas, and in the later wars against Phocis (356-346); while in the dealings with Philip of Macedon the federal cities appear merely as the tools of Thebes. The federal const.i.tution was also brought into accord with the democratic governments now prevalent throughout the land. The sovereign power was vested in the popular a.s.sembly, which elected the Boeotarchs (between seven and twelve in number), and sanctioned all laws. After the battle of Chaeroneia, in which the Boeotian heavy infantry once again distinguished itself, the land never rose again to prosperity. The destruction of Thebes by Alexander (335) seems to have paralysed the political energy of the Boeotians, though it led to an improvement in the federal const.i.tution, by which each city received an equal vote. Henceforth they never pursued an independent policy, but followed the lead of protecting powers.
Though the old military training and organization continued, the people proved unable to defend the frontiers, and the land became more than ever the "dancing-ground of Ares." Though enrolled for a short time in the Aetolian League (about 245 B.C.) Boeotia was generally loyal to Macedonia, and supported its later kings against Rome. In return for the excesses of the democracies Rome dissolved the league, which, however, was allowed to revive under Augustus, and merged with the other central Greek federations in the Achaean synod. The death-blow to the country"s prosperity was given by the devastations during the first Mithradatic War.
Save for a short period of prosperity under the Frankish rulers of Athens (1205-1310), who repaired the _katavothra_ and fostered agriculture, Boeotia long continued in a state of decay, aggravated by occasional barbarian incursions. The first step towards the country"s recovery was not until 1895, when the outlets of Copas were again put into working order. Since then the northern plain has been largely reclaimed for agriculture, and the natural riches of the whole land are likely to develop under the influence of the railway to Athens. Boeotia is at present a Nomos with Livadia (the old Turkish capital) for its centre; the other surviving townships are quite unimportant. The population (65,816 in 1907) is largely Albanian.
AUTHORITIES.--Thuc. iv. 76-101; Xenophon, _h.e.l.lenica_, iii.-vii.; Strabo, pp. 400-412; Pausanias ix.; Theopompus (or Cratippus) in the _Oxyrhynchus Papyri_, vol. v. (London, 1908), No. 842, col. 12; W.M.
Leake, _Travels in Northern Greece_, chs. xi.-xix. (London, 1835); H.F.
Tozer, _Geography of Greece_ (London, 1873), pp. 233-238; W. Rhys Roberts, _The Ancient Boeotians_ (Cambridge, 1895); E.A. Freeman.
_Federal Government_ (ed. 1893, London), ch. iv. -- 2; B.V. Head, _Historia Numorum_, pp. 291 sqq. (Oxford, 1887); W. Larfeld, _Sylloge Inscriptionum Boeoticarum_ (Berlin, 1883). (See also THEBES.)
FOOTNOTE:
[1] Thucydides (v. 38), in speaking of the "four councils of the Boeotians," is referring to the plenary bodies in the various states.
BOER, the Dutch form of the Eng. "boor," in its original signification of husbandman (Ger. _Bauer_), a name given to the Dutch farmers of South Africa, and especially to the Dutch population of the Transvaal and Orange River States. (See SOUTH AFRICA and TRANSVAAL.)
BOERHAAVE, HERMANN (1668-1738), Dutch physician and man of science, was born at Voorhout near Leiden on the 31st of December 1668. Entering the university of Leiden he took his degree in philosophy in 1689, with a dissertation _De distinctione mentis a corpore_, in which he attacked the doctrines of Epicurus, Hobbes and Spinoza. He then turned to the study of medicine, in which he graduated in 1693 at Harderwyck in Guelderland. In 1701 he was appointed lecturer on the inst.i.tutes of medicine at Leiden; in his inaugural discourse, _De commendando Hippocratis studio_, he recommended to his pupils that great physician as their model. In 1709 he became professor of botany and medicine, and in that capacity he did good service, not only to his own university, but also to botanical science, by his improvements and additions to the botanic garden of Leiden, and by the publication of numerous works descriptive of new species of plants. In 1714, when he was appointed rector of the university, he succeeded Govert Bidloo (1649-1713) in the chair of practical medicine, and in this capacity he had the merit of introducing the modern system of clinical instruction. Four years later he was appointed also to the chair of chemistry. In 1728 he was elected into the French Academy of Sciences, and two years later into the Royal Society of London. In 1729 declining health obliged him to resign the chairs of chemistry and botany; and he died, after a lingering and painful illness, on the 23rd of September 1738 at Leiden. His genius so raised the fame of the university of Leiden, especially as a school of medicine, that it became a resort of strangers from every part of Europe. All the princes of Europe sent him disciples, who found in this skilful professor not only an indefatigable teacher, but an affectionate guardian. When Peter the Great went to Holland in 1715, to instruct himself in maritime affairs, he also took lessons from Boerhaave. His reputation was not confined to Europe; a Chinese mandarin wrote him a letter directed "To the ill.u.s.trious Boerhaave, physician in Europe," and it reached him in due course.
His princ.i.p.al works are--_Inst.i.tutiones medicae_ (Leiden, 1708); _Aphorismi de cognoscendis et curandis morbis_ (Leiden, 1709), on which his pupil and a.s.sistant, Gerard van Swieten (1700-1772) published a commentary in 5 vols.; and _Elementa chemiae_ (Paris, 1724).
BOETHUS, a sculptor of the h.e.l.lenistic age, a native of Carthage (or possibly Chalcedon). His date cannot be accurately fixed, but was probably the 2nd century B.C. He was noted for his representations of children, in dealing with whom earlier Greek art had not been very successful; and especially for a group representing a boy struggling with a goose, of which several copies survive in museums.
BOETIUS (or BOETHIUS), ANICIUS MANLIUS SEVERINUS (c. A.D. 480-524), Roman philosopher and statesman, described by Gibbon as "the last of the Romans whom Cato or Tully could have acknowledged for their countryman."