CHALCIDICUM, in Roman architecture, the vestibule or portico of a public building opening on to the forum; as in the basilica of Eumactria at Pompeii, and the basilica of Constantine at Rome, where it was placed at one end.
CHALCIS, the chief town of the island of Euboea in Greece, situated on the strait of the Euripus at its narrowest point. The name is preserved from antiquity and is derived from the Greek χαλκός (copper, bronze), though there is no trace of any mines in the neighbourhood. Chalcis was peopled by an Ionic stock which early developed great industrial and colonizing activity. In the 8th and 7th centuries it founded thirty town-ships on the peninsula of Chalcidice, and several important cities in Sicily (q.v.). Its mineral produce, metal-work, purple and pottery not only found markets among these settlements, but were distributed over the Mediterranean in the ships of Corinth and Samos. With the help of these allies Chalcis engaged the rival league of its neighbour Eretria (q.v.) in the so-called Lelantine War, by which it acquired the best agricultural district of Euboea and became the chief city of the island. Early in the 6th century its prosperity was broken by a disastrous war with the Athenians, who expelled the ruling aristocracy and settled a cleruchy on the site. Chalcis subsequently became a member of both the Delian Leagues. In the Hellenistic period it gained importance as a fortress by which the Macedonian rulers controlled central Greece. It was used by kings Antiochus III. of Syria (192) and Mithradates VI. of Pontus (88) as a base for invading Greece. Under Roman rule Chalcis retained a measure of commercial prosperity; since the 6th century A.D. it again served as a fortress for the protection of central Greece against northern invaders. From 1209 it stood under Venetian control; in 1470 it passed to the Ottomans, who made it the seat of a pasha. In 1688 it was successfully held against a strong Venetian attack. The modern town has about 10,000 inhabitants, and maintains a considerable export trade which received an impetus from the establishment of railway connexion with Athens and Peiraeus (1904). It is composed of two parts—the old walled town towards the Euripus, called the Castro, where the Jewish and Turkish families who have remained there mostly dwell; and the more modern suburb that lies outside it, which is chiefly occupied by the Greeks. A part of the walls of the Castro and many of the houses within it were shaken down by the earthquake of 1894; part has been demolished in the widening of the Euripus. The most interesting object is the church of St Paraskeve, which was once the chief church of the Venetians; it dates from the Byzantine period, though many of its architectural features are Western. There is also a Turkish mosque, which is now used as a guard-house.
Authorities.—Strabo vii. fr. 11, x. p. 447; Herodotus v. 77; Thucydides i. 15; Corpus Inscr. Atticarum, iv. (1) 27a, iv. (2) 10, iv. (2) p. 22; W. M. Leake, Travels in Northern Greece (London, 1835), ii. 254-270; E. Curtius in Hermes, x. (1876), p. 220 sqq.; A. Holm, Lange Fehde (Berlin, 1884); H. Dondorff, De Rebus Chalcidensium (Göttingen, 1869); for coinage, B. V. Head, Historia Numorum (Oxford, 1887), pp. 303-5; and art. Numismatics: Greek § Euboea.
CHALCONDYLES[1] (or Chalcocondylas), LAONICUS, the only Athenian Byzantine writer. Hardly anything is known of his life. He wrote a history, in ten books, of the period from 1298–1463, describing the fall of the Greek empire and the rise of the Ottoman Turks, which forms the centre of the narrative, down to the conquest of the Venetians and Mathias, king of Hungary, by Mahommed II. The capture of Constantinople he rightly regarded as an historical event of far-reaching importance, although the comparison of it to the fall of Troy is hardly appropriate. The work incidentally gives a quaint and interesting sketch of the manners and civilization of England, France and Germany, whose assistance the Greeks sought to obtain against the Turks. Like that of other Byzantine writers, Chalcondyles’ chronology is defective, and his adherence to the old Greek geographical nomenclature is a source of confusion. For his account of earlier events he was able to obtain information from his father, who was one of the most prominent men in Athens during the struggles between the Greek and Frankish nobles. His model is Thucydides (according to Bekker, Herodotus); his language is tolerably pure and correct, his style simple and clear. The text, however, is in a very corrupt state.
Editio princeps, ed. J. B. Baumbach (1615); in Bonn Corpus Scriptorum Hist. Byz. ed. I. Bekker (1843); Migne, Patrologia Graeca, clix. There is a French translation by Blaise de Vigenère (1577, later ed. by Artus Thomas with valuable illustrations on Turkish matters); see also F. Gregorovius, Geschichte der Stadt Athen im Mittelalter, ii. (1889); Gibbon, Decline and Fall, ch. 66; C. Krumbacher, Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur (1897). There is a biographical sketch of Laonicus and his brother in Greek by Antonius Calosynas, a physician of Toledo, who lived in the latter part of the 16th century (see C. Hopf, Chroniques gréco-romanes, 1873).
His brother, Demetrius Chalcondyles (1424–1511), was born in Athens. In 1447 he migrated to Italy, where Cardinal Bessarion gave him his patronage. He became famous as a teacher of Greek letters and the Platonic philosophy; in 1463 he was made professor at Padua, and in 1479 he was summoned by Lorenzo de’ Medici to Florence to fill the professorship vacated by John Argyropoulos. In 1492 he removed to Milan, where he died in 1511. He was associated with Marsilius Ficinus, Angelus Politianus, and Theodorus Gaza, in the revival of letters in the western world. One of his pupils at Florence was the famous John Reuchlin. Demetrius Chalcondyles published the editio princeps of Homer, Isocrates, and Suidas, and a Greek grammar (Erotemata) in the form of question and answer.
See H. Hody, De Graecis illustribus (1742); C. Hopf, Chroniques gréco-romanes (1873); E. Legrand, Bibliographic hellénique, i. (1885).
CHALDAEA. The expressions “Chaldaea'” and “Chaldaeans” are frequently used in the Old Testament as equivalents for “Babylonia” and “Babylonians.” Chaldaea was really the name of a country, used in two senses. It was first applied to the extreme southern district, whose ancient capital was the city of Bīt Yakīn, the chief seat of the renowned Chaldaean rebel Merodach-baladan, who harassed the Assyrian kings Sargon and Sennacherib. It is not as yet possible to fix the exact boundaries of the original home of the Chaldaeans, but it may be regarded as having been the long stretch of alluvial land situated at the then separate mouths of the Tigris and Euphrates, which rivers now combine to flow into the Persian Gulf in the waters of the majestic Shatt el ‛Arab.
The name “Chaldaea,” however, soon came to have a more extensive application. In the days of the Assyrian king Rammān-nirāri III. (812–783 B.C.), the term mat Kaldū covered practically all Babylonia. Furthermore, Merodach-baladan was called by Sargon II. (722–705 B.C.) “king of the land of the Chaldaeans” and “king of the land of Bīt Yakīn” after the old capital city, but there is no satisfactory evidence that Merodach-baladan had the right to the title “Babylonian.” The racial distinction between the Chaldaeans and the Babylonians proper seems to have existed until a much later date, although it is almost certain that the former were originally a Semitic people. That they differed from the Arabs and Aramaeans is also seen from the distinction made by Sennacherib (705–681 B.C.) between the Chaldaeans and these races. Later, during the period covering the fall of Assyria and the rise of the Neo-Babylonian empire, the term mat Kaldū was not only applied to all Babylonia, but also embraced the territory of certain foreign nations who were later included by Ezekiel (xxiii. 23) under the expression “Chaldaeans.”
As already indicated, the Chaldaeans were most probably a Semitic people. It is likely that they first came from Arabia, the supposed original home of the Semitic races, at a very early date along the coast of the Persian Gulf and settled in the neighbourhood of Ur (“Ur of the Chaldees,” Gen. xi. 28), whence they began a series of encroachments, partly by warfare and partly by immigration, against the other Semitic Babylonians. These aggressions after many centuries ended in the Chaldaean supremacy of Nabopolassar and his successors (c. 626 ff.), although there is no positive proof that Nabopolassar was
- ↑ A shortened form of Chalcocondyles, from χαλκός, copper, and κόνδυλος, knuckle.
