and became a disciple of his father, Giovanni
Francesco Cassana, a Genoese, who had been taught the art of painting by
Bernardino Strozzi ("il Prete Genovese"). Having painted portraits of
the Florentine court, and also of some of the English nobility,
Nicoletto was invited to England, and introduced to Queen Anne, who sat
to him for her likeness, and conferred on him many marks of favour. He
died in London in 1714, having given way to drinking in his later years.
Cassana was a man of the most vehement temper, and would wallow on the
ground if provoked with his work. One of his principal paintings is the
"Conspiracy of Catiline," now in Florence.

CASSANDER (c. 350-297 B.C.), king of Macedonia, eldest son of Antipater,
first appears at the court of Alexander at Babylon, where he defended
his father against the accusations of his enemies. Having been passed
over by his father in favour of Polyperchon as his successor in the
regency of Macedonia, Cassander allied himself with Ptolemy Soter and
Antigonus, and declared war against the regent. Most of the Greek states
went over to him, and Athens also surrendered. He further effected an
alliance with Eurydice, the ambitious wife of King Philip Arrhidaeus of
Macedon. Both she and her husband, however, together with Cassander's
brother, Nicanor, were soon after slain by Olympias. Cassander at once
marched against Olympias, and, having forced her to surrender in Pydna,
put her to death (316). In 310 or 309 he also murdered Roxana and
Alexander, the wife and son of Alexander the Great, whose natural son
Heracles he bribed Polyperchon to poison. He had already connected
himself with the royal family by marriage with Thessalonica, Alexander
the Great's half-sister, and, having formed an alliance with Seleucus,
Ptolemy and Lysimachus, against Antigonus, he became, on the defeat and
death of Antigonus in 301, undisputed sovereign of Macedonia. He died of
dropsy in 297. Cassander was a man of literary taste, but violent and
ambitious. He restored Thebes after its destruction by Alexander the
Great, transformed Therma into Thessalonica, and built the new city of
Cassandreia upon the ruins of Potidaea.

See Diod. Sic. xviii., xix., xx.; Plutarch, _Demetrius_, 18. 31,
_Phocion_, 31; also MACEDONIAN EMPIRE.

CASSANDER (or CASSANT), GEORGE (1513-1566), Flemish theologian, born at
Pitthem near Bruges, went at an early age to Louvain and was teaching
theology and literatur