ies, till they were subdued by Charlemagne,
and all but exterminated in 827.

AVATAR`, or Descent, the incarnation and incarnated manifestation of
a Hindu deity, a theory both characteristic of Vishnuism and marking a
new epoch in the religious development of India.

AVE MARIA, an invocation to the Virgin, so called as forming the
first two words of the salutation of the angel in Luke i. 28.

AVEBURY, or ABERY, a village in Wiltshire, 6 m. W. of
Marlborough, in the middle of a so-called Druidical structure consisting
of 100 monoliths, surmised to have been erected and arranged in memory of
some great victory.

AVELLI`NO (26), chief town in a province of the name in Campania, 59
m. E. of Naples, famous for its trade in hazel-nuts and chestnuts;
manufactures woollens, paper, macaroni, &c.; has been subject to
earthquakes.

AVENTINE HILL, one of the seven hills of Rome, the mount to which
the plebs sullenly retired on their refusal to submit to the patrician
oligarchy, and from which they were enticed back by Menenius Agrippa by
the well-known fable of the members of the body and the stomach.

AVENTI`NUS, a Bavarian historian, author of the "Chronicon Bavariae"
(Annals of Bavaria), a valuable record of the early history of Germany
(1477-1534).

AVENZO`AR, an Arabian physician, the teacher of Averroes
(1073-1103).

AVERNUS, a deep lake in Italy, near Naples, 11/2 m. in circumference,
occupying the crater of an extinct volcano, at one time surrounded by a
dark wood, and conceived, from its gloomy appearance, as well as from the
mephitic vapours it exhaled, to be the entrance to the infernal world,
and identified with it.

AVER`ROES, an Arabian physician and philosopher, a Moor by birth and
a native of Cordova; devoted himself to the study and the exposition of
Aristotle, earning for himself the title of the "Commentator," though he
appears to have coupled with the philosophy of Aristotle the Oriental
pantheistic doctrine of emanations (1126-1198).

AVERSA (24), an Italian town 8 m. from Naples, amid vineyards and
orange groves; much resorted to by the Neapolitans.

AVEYRON`, a mountainous dep. in the S. of France, with excellent
pastures, where the Roquefort cheese is produced.

AVICEN`NA, an illustrious Arabian physician, surnamed the prince of
physicians, a man of immense learning and extensive practice in his art;
of authority in philosophy as well as in medicine, his philosophy bein