Chaŏnia, a mountainous part of Epirus, which receives its name from Chaon, a son of Priam, inadvertently killed by his brother Helenus. There was a wood near, where doves (Chaoniæ aves) were said to deliver oracles. The words Chaonius victus are by ancient authors applied to acorns, the food of the first inhabitants. Lucan, bk. 6, li. 426.—Claudian, de Raptu Proserpinæ, bk. 3, li. 47.—Virgil, Æneid, bk. 3, li. 335.—Propertius, bk. 1, poem 9.—Ovid, Ars Amatoria, bk. 1.
Chaonitis, a country of Assyria.
Chaos, a rude and shapeless mass of matter, and confused assemblage of inactive elements, which, as the poets suppose, pre-existed the formation of the world, and from which the universe was formed by the hand and power of a superior being. This doctrine was first established by Hesiod, from whom the succeeding poets have copied it; and it is probable that it was obscurely drawn from the account of Moses, by being copied from the annals of Sanchoniathon, whose age is fixed antecedent to the siege of Troy. Chaos was deemed by some as one of the oldest of the gods, and invoked as one of the infernal deities. Virgil, Æneid, bk. 4, li. 510.—Ovid, Metamorphoses, bk. 1, fable 1.
Charădra, a town of Phocis. Herodotus, bk. 8, ch. 33.
Charadros, a river of Phocis, falling into the Cephisus. Statius, Thebiad, bk. 4, li. 46.
Charădrus, a place of Argos where military causes were tried. Thucydides, bk. 5, ch. 60.
Choræadas, an Athenian general, sent with 20 ships to Sicily during the Peloponnesian war. He died 426 B.C., &c. Thucydides, bk. 3, ch. 86.
Charandæi, a people near Pontus.
Charax, a town of Armenia.——A philosopher of Pergamus, who wrote a history of Greece in 40 books.
Charaxes and Charaxus, a Mitylenean, brother to Sappho, who became passionately fond of the courtesan Rhodope, upon whom he squandered all his possessions, and reduced himself to poverty, and the necessity of piratical excursions. Ovid, Heroides, poem 17, li. 117.—Herodotus, bk. 2, ch. 135, &c.