LINTOT, BARNABY BERNARD (1675-1736), English publisher, was born at Southwater, Sussex, on the 1st of December 1675, and started business as a publisher in London about 1698. He published for many of the leading writers of the day, notably Vanbrugh, Steele, Gay and Pope. The latter’s Rape of the Lock in its original form was first published in Lintot’s Miscellany, and Lintot subsequently issued Pope’s translation of the Iliad and the joint translation of the Odyssey by Pope, Fenton and Broome. Pope quarrelled with Lintot with regard to the supply of free copies of the latter translation to the author’s subscribers, and in 1728 satirized the publisher in the Dunciad, and in 1735 in the Prologue to the Satires, though he does not appear to have had any serious grievance. Lintot died on the 3rd of February 1736.
LINUS, one of the saints of the Gregorian canon, whose festival is celebrated on the 23rd of September. All that can be said with certainty about him is that his name appears at the head of all the lists of the bishops of Rome. Irenaeus (Adv. Haer. iii. 3. 3) identifies him with the Linus mentioned by St Paul in 2 Tim. iv. 21. According to the Liber Pontificalis, Linus suffered martyrdom, and was buried in the Vatican. In the 17th century an inscription was found near the confession of St Peter, which was believed to contain the name Linus; but it is not certain that this epitaph has been read correctly or completely. The apocryphal Latin account of the death of the apostles Peter and Paul is falsely attributed to Linus.
See Acta Sanctorum, Septembris, vi. 539-545; C. de Smedt, Dissertatione selectae in primam aetatem hist. eccl. pp. 300-312 (Ghent, 1876); L. Duchesne’s edition of the Liber Pontificalis, i. 121 (Paris, 1886); R. A. Lipsius, Die apokryphen Apostelgeschichten, ii. 85-96 (Brunswick, 1883-1890); J. B. de Rossi, Bullettino di archeologia cristiana, p. 50 (1864).
(H. De.)
LINUS, one of a numerous class of heroic figures in Greek legend, of which other examples are found in Hyacinthus and Adonis. The connected legend is always of the same character: a beautiful youth, fond of hunting and rural life, the favourite of some god or goddess, suddenly perishes by a terrible death. In many cases the religious background of the legend is preserved by the annual ceremonial that commemorated it. At Argos this religious character of the Linus myth was best preserved: the secret child of Psamathe by the god Apollo, Linus is exposed, nursed by sheep and torn in pieces by sheep-dogs. Every year at the festival Arnis or Cynophontis, the women of Argos mourned for Linus and propitiated Apollo, who in revenge for his child’s death had sent a female monster (Poinē), which tore the children from their mothers’ arms. Lambs were sacrificed, all dogs found running loose were killed, and women and children raised a lament for Linus and Psamathe (Pausanias i. 43. 7; Conon, Narrat. 19). In the Theban version, Linus, the son of Amphimarus and the muse Urania, was a famous musician, inventor of the Linus song, who was said to have been slain by Apollo, because he had challenged him to a contest (Pausanias ix. 29. 6). A later story makes him the teacher of Heracles, by whom he was killed because he had rebuked his pupil for stupidity (Apollodorus ii. 4. 9). On Mount Helicon there was a grotto containing his statue, to which sacrifice was offered every year before the sacrifices to the Muses. From being the inventor of musical methods, he was finally transformed by later writers into a composer of prophecies and legends. He was also said to have adapted the Phoenician letters introduced by Cadmus to the Greek language. It is generally agreed that Linus and Ailinus are of Semitic origin, derived from the words ai lanu (woe to us), which formed the burden of the Adonis and similar songs popular in the East. The Linus song is mentioned in Homer; the tragedians often use the word αἴλινος as the refrain in mournful songs, and Euripides calls the custom a Phrygian one. Linus, originally the personification of the song of lamentation, becomes, like Adonis, Maneros, Narcissus, the representative of the tender life of nature and of the vegetation destroyed by the fiery heat of the dog-star.
The chief work on the subject is H. Brugsch, Die Adonisklage und das Linoslied (1852); see also article in Roscher’s Lexikon der Mythologie; J. G. Frazer, Golden Bough (ii. 224, 253), where, the identity of Linus with Adonis (possibly a corn-spirit) being assumed, the lament is explained as the lamentation of the reapers over the dead corn-spirit; W. Mannhardt, Wald- und Feldculte, ii. 281.
LINZ, capital of the Austrian duchy and crownland of Upper Austria, and see of a bishop, 117 m. W. of Vienna by rail. Pop. (1900) 58,778. It lies on the right bank of the Danube and is connected by an iron bridge, 308 yds. long, with the market-town of Urfahr (pop. 12,827) on the opposite bank. Linz possesses two cathedrals, one built in 1669-1682 in rococo style, and another in early Gothic style, begun in 1862. In the Capuchin church is the tomb of Count Raimondo Montecucculi, who died at Linz in 1680. The museum Francisco-Carolinum, founded in 1833 and reconstructed in 1895, contains several important collections relating to the history of Upper Austria. In the Franz Josef-Platz stands a marble monument, known as Trinity Column, erected by the emperor Charles VI. in 1723, commemorating the triple deliverance of Linz from war, fire, and pestilence. The principal manufactories are of tobacco, boat-building, agricultural implements, foundries and cloth factories. Being an important railway junction and a port of the Danube, Linz has a very active transit trade.