[Agamem`non], a son of Atreus, king of Mycenæ and general-in-chief of the Greeks in the Trojan war, represented as a man of stately presence and a proud spirit. On the advice of the soothsayer Calchas sacrificed his daughter [Iphigenia] (q. v.) for the success of the enterprise he conducted. He was assassinated by Ægisthus and Clytæmnestra, his wife, on his return from the war. His fate and that of his house is the subject of Æschylus' trilogy "Oresteia."
[Agamogenesis], name given to reproduction without sex, by fission, budding, &c.
[Aganippe], a fountain in Boeotia, near Helicon, dedicated to the Muses as a source of poetic inspiration.
[Ag`ape], love-feasts among the primitive Christians in commemoration of the Last Supper, and in which they gave each other the kiss of peace as token of Christian brotherhood.
[Agar-agar], a gum extracted from a sea-weed, used in bacteriological investigations.
[Aga`sias], a sculptor of Ephesus, famous for his statue of the "Gladiator."
[Agass`iz], a celebrated Swiss naturalist, in the department especially of ichthyology, and in connection with the glaciers; settled as a professor of zoology and geology in the United States in 1846 (1807-1873).
[Ag`athe, St.], a Sicilian virgin who suffered martyrdom at Palermo under Decius in 251; represented in art as crowned with a long veil and bearing a pair of shears, the instruments with which her breast were cut off. Festival, Feb. 5.
[Aga`thias], a Byzantine poet and historian (536-582).
[Agath`ocles], the tyrant of Syracuse, by the massacre of thousands of the inhabitants, was an enemy of the Carthaginians, and fought against them; was poisoned in the end (361-289 B.C.).