ARCHIL (a corruption of “orchil,” Ital. oricello, the origin of which is unknown), a purple dye obtained from various species of lichens. Archil can be extracted from many species of the genera Roccella, Lecanora, Umbilicaria, Parmelia and others, but in practice two species of Roccella—R. tinctoria and R. fuciformis—are almost exclusively used. These, under the name of “orchella weed” or “dyer’s moss,” are obtained from Angola, on the west coast of Africa, where the most valuable kinds are gathered; from Cape Verde Islands; from Lima, on the west coast of South America; and from the Malabar coast of India. The colouring properties of the lichens do not exist in them ready formed, but are developed by the treatment to which they are subjected. A small proportion of a colourless, crystalline principle, termed orcinol (a dioxytoluene), is found in some, and in all a series of acid substances, erythric, lecanoric acids, &c. Orcinol in presence of oxygen and ammonia takes up nitrogen and becomes changed into a purple substance, orceine (C7H7NO3), which is essentially the basis of all lichen dyes. Two other colouring-matters, azoerythin and erythroleinic acid, are sometimes present. Archil is prepared for the dyer’s use in the form of a “liquor” (archil) and a “paste” (persis), and the latter, when dried and finely powdered, forms the “cudbear” of commerce, a dye formerly manufactured in Scotland from a native lichen, Lecanora tartarea. The manufacturing process consists in washing the weeds, which are then ground up with water to a thick paste. If archil paste is to be made this paste is mixed with a strong ammoniacal solution, and agitated in an iron cylinder heated by steam to about 140° F. till the desired shade is developed—a process which occupies several days. In the preparation of archil liquor the principles which yield the dye are separated from the ligneous tissue of the lichens, agitated with a hot ammoniacal solution, and exposed to the action of air. When potassium or sodium carbonate is added, a blue dye known as litmus, much used as an “indicator,” is produced. French purple or lime lake is a lichen dye prepared by a modification of the archil process, and is a more brilliant and durable colour than the other. The dyeing of worsted and home-spun cloth with lichen dyes was formerly a very common domestic employment in Scotland; and to this day, in some of the outer islands, worsted continues to be dyed with “crottle,” the name given to the lichens employed.
ARCHILOCHUS, Greek lyric poet and writer of lampoons, was born at Paros, one of the Cyclades islands. The date of his birth is uncertain, but he probably flourished about 650 B.C.; according to some, about forty years earlier but certainly not before the reign of Gyges (687-652), whom he mentions in a well-known fragment. His father, Telesicles, who was of noble family, had conducted a colony to Thasos, in obedience to the command of the Delphic oracle. To this island Archilochus himself, hard pressed by poverty, afterwards removed. Another reason for leaving his native place was personal disappointment and indignation at the treatment he had received from Lycambes, a citizen of Paros, who had promised him his daughter Neobule in marriage, but had afterwards withdrawn his consent. Archilochus, taking advantage of the licence allowed at the feasts of Demeter, poured out his wounded feelings in unmerciful satire. He accused Lycambes of perjury, and his daughters of leading the most abandoned lives. Such was the effect produced by his verses, that Lycambes and his daughters are said to have hanged themselves. At Thasos the poet passed some unhappy years; his hopes of wealth were disappointed; according to him, Thasos was the meeting-place of the calamities of all Hellas. The inhabitants were frequently involved in quarrels with their neighbours, and in a war against the Saians—a Thracian tribe—he threw away his shield and fled from the field of battle. He does not seem to have felt the disgrace very keenly, for, like Alcaeus and Horace, he commemorates the event in a fragment in which he congratulates himself on having saved his life, and says he can easily procure another shield. After leaving Thasos, he is said to have visited Sparta, but to have been at once banished from that city on account of his cowardice and the licentious character of his works (Valerius Maximus vi. 3, externa 1). He next visited Siris, in lower Italy, a city of which he speaks very favourably. He then returned to his native place, and was slain in a battle against the Naxians by one Calondas or Corax, who was cursed by the oracle for having slain a servant of the Muses.
The writings of Archilochus consisted of elegies, hymns—one of which used to be sung by the victors in the Olympic games (Pindar, Olympia, ix. i)—and of poems in the iambic and trochaic measures. To him certainly we owe the invention of iambic poetry and its application to the purposes of satire. The only previous measures in Greek poetry had been the epic hexameter, and its offshoot the elegiac metre; but the slow measured structure of hexameter verse was utterly unsuited to express the quick, light motions of satire. Archilochus made use of the iambus and the trochee, and organized them into the two forms of metre known as the iambic trimeter and the trochaic tetrameter. The trochaic metre he generally used for subjects of a serious nature; the iambic for satires. He was also the first to make use of the arrangement of verses called the epode. Horace in his metres to a great extent follows Archilochus (Epistles, i. 19. 23-35). All ancient authorities unite in praising the poems of Archilochus, in terms which appear exaggerated (Longinus xiii. 3; Dio Chrysostom, Orationes, xxxiii.; Quintilian x. i. 60; Cicero, Orator, i.). His verses seem certainly to have possessed strength, flexibility, nervous vigour, and, beyond everything else, impetuous vehemence and energy. Horace (Ars Poetica, 79) speaks of the “rage” of Archilochus, and Hadrian calls his verses “raging iambics.” By his countrymen he was reverenced as the equal of Homer, and statues of these two poets were dedicated on the same day.
His poems were written in the old Ionic dialect. Fragments in Bergk, Poetae Lyrici Graeci; Liebel, Archilochi Reliquiae (1818); A. Hauvette-Besnault, Archiloque, sa vie et ses poésies (1905).
ARCHIMANDRITE (from Gr. ἄρχων, a ruler, and μάνδρα, a fold or monastery), a title in the Greek Church applied to a superior abbot, who has the supervision of several abbots and monasteries, or to the abbot of some specially great and important monastery, the title for an ordinary abbot being hegumenos. The title occurs for the first time in a letter to Epiphanius, prefixed to his Panarium (c. 375), but the Lausiac History of Palladius may be evidence that it was in common use in the 4th century as applied to Pachomius (q.v.). In Russia the bishops are commonly selected from the archimandrites. The word occurs in the Regula Columbani (c. 7), and du Cange gives a few other cases of its use in Latin documents, but it never came into vogue in the West. Owing to intercourse with Greek and Slavonic Christianity, the title is sometimes to be met with in southern Italy and Sicily, and in Hungary and Poland.
See the article in the Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie.