ANTEQUERA (the ancient Anticaria), a town of southern Spain, in the province of Málaga; on the Bobadilla-Granada railway. Pop. (1900) 31,609. Antequera overlooks the fertile valley bounded on the S. by the Sierra de los Torcales, and on the N. by the river Guadalhorce. It occupies a commanding position, while the remains of its walls, and of a fine Moorish castle on a rock that overhangs the town, show how admirably its natural defences were supplemented by art. Besides several interesting churches and palaces, it contains a fine arch, erected in 1595 in honour of Philip II., and partly constructed of inscribed Roman masonry. In the eastern suburbs there is one of the largest grave-mounds in Spain, said to be of prehistoric date, and with subterranean chambers excavated to a depth of 65 ft. The Peña de los Enamorados, or “Lovers’ Peak,” is a conspicuous crag which owes its name to the romantic legend adapted by Robert Southey (1774-1843) in his Laila and Manuel. Woollen fabrics are manufactured, and the sugar industry established in 1890 employs several thousand hands; but the majority of the inhabitants are occupied by the trade in grain, fruit, wine and oil. Marble is quarried; and at El Torcal, 6 m. south, there is a very curious labyrinth of red marble rocks. Antequera was captured from the Moors in 1410, and became until 1492 one of the most important outposts of the Christian power in Spain.
See C. Fernandez, Historia de Antequera, desde su fondacion (Malaga, 1842).
ANTEROS, pope for some weeks at the end of the year 235. He died on the 3rd of January 236. His original epitaph was discovered in the Catacombs.
ANTHELION (late Gr. ἀνθήλιος, opposite the sun), the luminous ring or halo sometimes seen in Alpine or polar regions surrounding the shadow of the head of an observer cast upon a bank of cloud or mist. The halo diminishes in brightness from the centre outwards, and is probably due to the diffraction of light. Under favourable conditions four concentric rings may be seen round the shadow of the observer’s head, the outermost, which seldom appears, having an angular radius of 40°.
ANTHEM, derived from the Gr. ἀντίφωνα, through the Saxon antefn, a word which originally had the same meaning as antiphony (q.v.). It is now, however, generally restricted to a form of church music, particularly in the service of the Church of England, in which it is appointed by the rubrics to follow the third collect at both morning and evening prayer, “in choirs and places where they sing.” It is just as usual in this place to have an ordinary hymn as an anthem, which is a more elaborate composition than the congregational hymns. Several anthems are included in the English coronation service. The words are selected from Holy Scripture or in some cases from the Liturgy, and the music is generally more elaborate and varied than that of psalm or hymn tunes. Anthems may be written for solo voices only, for the full choir, or for both, and according to this distinction are called respectively Verse, Full, and Full with Verse. Though the anthem of the Church of England is analogous to the motet of the Roman Catholic and Lutheran Churches, both being written for a trained choir and not for the congregation, it is as a musical form essentially English in its origin and development. The English school of musicians has from the first devoted its chief attention to this form, and scarcely a composer of any note can be named who has not written several good anthems. Tallis, Tye, Byrd, and Farrant in the 16th century; Orlando Gibbons, Blow, and Purcell in the 17th, and Croft, Boyce, James Kent, James Nares, Benjamin Cooke, and Samuel Arnold in the 18th were famous composers of anthems, and in more recent times the names are too numerous to mention.