immediate hopes of subduing Greece; the wreck of his fleet

was ordered to the Hellespont, and his guard of sixty thousand soldiers suffered greatly during the forty-live days of their retreat. The bridge of boats had been destroyed by tempests; the king, alarmed for his personal safety, crossed hastily in a skiff, arriving at Sardis, beaten and baffled, eight months after he had started from it flushed with hopes of fame and conquest. Mardonius was left in Greece with three hundred thousand soldiers to complete the subjugation, as he imagined, but was defeated at Platæa. Xerxes, on his return to Sardis, abandoned himself to sensual pleasures. He urged his incestuous love in vain on the wife of Masistes his brother; but her daughter Artaynte, married by his intrigue to his own son Darius, was seduced by him at Susa. His injured queen Amestris, seeing his paramour wearing a robe which her own imperial hands had woven for her lord, came to a knowledge of the guilty connection, and took savage vengeance—not on the favourite, but on her mother—the wife of Masistes. On the royal birthday she got her victim into her power, and cutting off her breasts, ears, lips, and tongue, sent her home in this mutilated state to her husband. Masistes at once made an effort to escape to Bactria, of which he was satrap, and head a revolt; but himself and sons were overtaken and put to death. After a reign of twenty years Xerxes was assassinated by Artabanus, and a eunuch called Spamitres or Mithridates. Artaxerxes being persuaded by Artabanus that his brother Darius was the murderer of their father, executed him under this false charge of parricide. Artabanus, who aspired to the throne himself, next endeavoured to put Artaxerxes to death, but the plot was discovered, and the conspirators suffered the penalty. Xerxes was both a cruel and a cowardly despot, effeminate and vain, rash, self-willed, and ostentatious, fond of arbitrary power, and unable in his petulance to wield it to any good advantage.—J. E. XIMENEZ DE CISNEROS, Francisco Gonzallas, Cardinal and Primate of Spain, was born at Torrelaguna in New Castile in 1437. He studied at Alcala and at Salamanca, and afterwards went to Rome, where he obtained such a reputation as a pleader before the consistory that Pope Sixtus IV. promised him the first vacant preferment in his own province. This promise brought him into collision with the archbishop of Toledo, who threw him into prison for asserting his claim. Eventually he was released, and became grand vicar to Cardinal Mendoza, who intrusted to him the entire administration of his diocese. In 1482 he abandoned his brilliant prospects, entered the Franciscan order, and took up his abode in the monastery of St. John of Toledo, which he afterwards exchanged for a hermitage near the city. In 1492 Mendoza, now archbishop of Toledo, recommended him to Queen Isabella as her confessor—an office which he accepted only on condition that he should retain his monastic habit, and should attend the court only in the discharge of his spiritual duties. In 1495, on the death of Mendoza, he was promoted to the archbishopric of Toledo, retaining the simplicity of his order, and disposing of his vast revenues in the relief of the poor and the ransom of captives. Pope Alexander VI. reprimanded him for neglecting the splendour usually associated with his high rank; and in obedience to this injunction he consented to wear the usual episcopal vestments, but so that his monk's habit might be seen under them. He was not, however, negligent in the use of the power which he possessed, and in his efforts to reform the Franciscan monks and the canons of Toledo he displayed a vigour which gave promise of his future successes. He founded a university at Alcala de Henares, and invited thither the most distinguished men from Paris, Bologna, and Salamanca. He also established a fund for poor students, and a seminary for young ladies of good families, who were without fortune. In 1502 he undertook the compilation of the Complutensian Polyglot Bible, founded on a comparison of all the MSS. then attainable. The whole cost of this undertaking, which was spread over fifteen years, is said to have amounted to fifty thousand ducats. In 1499 Ximenez was summoned to attend Ferdinand and Isabella in their visit to the newly-conquered province of Granada, and advised conciliatory measures for the conversion of the Moors; but when these failed he did not scruple to use more severe means, destroying not only copies of the Koran, but all works of Arabic literature except some on medicine. The aid of the inquisition was called in, and the severities which were practised gave rise to tumults which nearly cost Ximenez his life. The death of Isabella (1504) called the archbishop more directly into the field of politics. He was the executor of her will, and Ferdinand relied upon his support in maintaining his right to the regency of Castile against the claims of the Archduke Philip, the husband of the imbecile Joanna, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella. After the death of Philip, Ferdinand being absent in Italy, Ximenez was by common consent of the nobles chosen guardian of the queen and governor of the state. In this capacity he showed his resolution to abridge the importance of the nobility; and by enlisting the citizens into a regular militia, he created a counterpoise to their lawless power. On the return of Ferdinand he was named grand inquisitor for Spain, and nearly at the same time he received a cardinal's hat from Pope Julius II. As soon as he was free from the responsibilities of the regency, Ximenez betook himself to his beloved university of Alcala, where a magnificent pile of buildings devoted to the purpose had just been completed. Staying only a year to complete its organization, he next undertook an expedition into Africa. He proposed to the king the conquest of Oran; and when the calculating monarch demurred at the expense, he fitted out an expedition at his own cost, which in a single assault captured the magnificent city. He had reason, however, to suppose, that Ferdinand was not more pleased at this splendid addition to his dominions than at his prolonged absence. He therefore returned unostentatiously to Alcala, where he chiefly spent the next few years of his life, trusted but not beloved by Ferdinand. He showed himself an able opponent of the overweening assumptions of the pope. He refused to allow "dispensations" to be sold within the kingdom; and he it was who first established the salutary rule, that no papal bull should be published until it had first been approved by the royal council. On the death of Ferdinand (1506) Ximenez was appointed regent of the kingdom until the arrival of Charles V. from Flanders. Although there were other claimants to the dignity professing to hold their authority from Charles, Ximenez maintained his position by mere force of character, and, that he might be more free from intrigues, fixed the seat of government at Madrid. At this crisis Jean d'Albret, the dispossessed king of Navarre, supported by some of the grandees, made a public effort to recover his kingdom. Ximenez, however, who was as much a soldier as a priest, frustrated the attempt by occupying the country with a strong body of troops, and destroyed all the fortresses in the province except that of Pampeluna. In this undertaking he found occasion to carry out his plan of opposing a citizen soldiery to the bands raised by the several nobles, and thus commenced a radical change in the constitution of the country. At the same time he was as much averse to popular control as to that of individual nobles, and was generally opposed to the summoning of the cortes when it could be avoided. When the Flemish advisers of Charles sanctioned a measure which authorized the horrible traffic in slaves, Ximenez protested against it as both impolitic and immoral. In the twenty months during which he held the supreme power, he undertook the reform of the military orders and the suppression of unnecessary pensions, so as to relieve the finances of the court. He did his best, likewise, to restrain the avarice of the Flemish courtiers of Charles, who, by seizing on all vacant appointments, created discontent among the sensitive Spaniards. The return of Charles to his dominions was delayed as long as possible by these courtiers, and when he arrived the cardinal was seriously ill. Charles, to his disgrace, avoided the statesman who had maintained the greatness of Spain for twenty years, and wrote a letter in which, coldly thanking him for his past services, he relieved him from all offices of state. The mortification arising from the receipt of this letter, it is said, proved fatal to the cardinal, who expired in November, 1517, aged eighty-one. He was buried in his beloved Alcala.—F. M. W. XYLANDER, Wilhelm, a German humanist, whose real name was Holtzmann, was born in the lower walks of life at Augsburg, 20th December, 1532. He studied at Tübingen and Basle, and in his twenty-sixth year obtained the chair of Greek at Heidelberg, where he died in 1576. He published a large number of Latin translations and critical editions of Greek authors, e.g., Plutarch, Dio Cassius, Strabo, Marcus Antoninus, &c. His works, however, often bear the marks of haste, and he is said by Scaliger to have been much given to drinking, which may serve to account for many inaccuracies.—K. E.