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817
IDUS——IMPERATOR.
sacrificed ; a plague thereupon broke out, he was banished by the Cretans, and betook himself to Calabria. He afterwards withdrew to CSlophon in Asia, where he is said to have been buried. His tomb, however, was shown by the Cretans at Cnosus, where he_was worshipped as a hero.
Idus. The thirteenth or fifteenth day of the Roman month (see calendar). It was sacred to Jupiter.
Idyll (in Greek eidylliSn, diminutive of eidos, "form," "a small picture"). A poetic sketch of character, specially in connexion with pastoral life. (See further wider bucolic poetry.)
lie ("a troop"). (1) The Spartan term for a company of boys of the same age, who were brought up together. (See education.) (2) In the organization of the Macedonian army, a squadron of cavalry, generally 200 strong, under the command of an ilarchus. (See hippeis.)
Ilia. Daughter of ^Eneas and Lavinla. According to the legend, Romulus and Remus were her sons by Mars. (See yENEAS and rhea silvia.)
Iliad. See homer and trojan war.
IU6ne. Daughter of Priam and Hecuba, and wife of the Thracian prince P5l}’-mestor. Her youngest brother Polydorus was entrusted to her care by her parents, and she brought him up as her own son, while she gave out that her own son Dei-philus or Delpylus was Polydorus. When Polymestor (who was bribed by the Greeks) murdered the supposed Polydorus, Ilione blinded and killed him.
Ilithyia. See eileitkyia,
fins. The son of Tros, and great-grandson of Dard&nus, brother of Assaracus and Ganymede, and father of LaSmSdon. He once went from his native town of Dar-dania upon Mount Ida to Phrygia, where he was victorious in an athletic contest held by the king of the country. Beside fifty youths and fifty maidens, the prize of the contest, the king gave him, at the command of an oracle, a spotted cow, and told him there to found a city on the spot where she lay. He accordingly founded on the hill of the Phrygian Ate, the town which after him was called Ilwn, and also Troy (Gr. Troia) after his father. When he demanded a sign of Zeus, on the following morning he found the Palladium before Ms^tent.
Imagines. The Roman portrait masks of deceased members of a family; they were made of wax and painted, and pro-
bably fastened on to busts. They were kept in small wooden shrines let into the inner walls of the atrium. [The design of the funeral monument represented in the accompanying cut has been obviously suggested by this method of enshrining the bust.] Inscriptions under the shrines recorded the names, merits, and exploits of the persons they referred to. The images were arranged and connected with one another by means of coloured lines, in such a way as to exhibit the pedigree (stemina) of the family. On festal days the shrines were opened, and the busts crowned with bay-leaves. At family funerals, there were
* MEMORIAL BUST OF A ROMAN I.ADY.
(Rome, Lateran Museum.}
people specially appointed to walk in procession before the body, wearing the masks of the deceased members of the family, and clothed in the insignia of the rank which they had held when alive. The right of having these ancestral images carried in procession was one of the privileges of the nobility. [Polybius, vi 53; Pliny, N. H., xxxv 2 §§ 6, 7; Mommsen, Rom. Hist., book iii, chap, xiii.)
Imp6rator (commander – in – chief). A Roman title, originally the designation of each separate possessor of an independent command (imperium). In the course of time it became customary to assume the title after a man had gained his first great
