LOBE, any round projecting part, specifically the lower part of the external ear, one of the parts into which the liver is divided, also one of several parts of the brain, divided by marked fissures (see [Liver] and [Brain]). The Greek λοβός, from which “lobe” is derived, was applied to the lobe of the ear and of the liver, and to the pod of a leguminous plant.
LOBECK, CHRISTIAN AUGUST (1781-1860), German classical scholar, was born at Naumburg on the 5th of June 1781. After having studied at Jena and Leipzig, he settled at Wittenberg in 1802 as privat-docent, and in 1810 was appointed to a professorship in the university. Four years later, he accepted the chair of rhetoric and ancient literature at Königsberg, which he occupied till within two years of his death (25th of August 1860). His literary activities were devoted to the history of Greek religion and to the Greek language and literature. His greatest work, Aglaophamus (1829), is still valuable to students. In this he maintains, against the views put forward by G. F. Creuzer in his Symbolik (1810-1823), that the religion of the Greek mysteries (especially those of Eleusis) did not essentially differ from the national religion; that it was not esoteric; that the priests as such neither taught nor possessed any higher knowledge of God; that the Oriental elements were a later importation. His edition of the Ajax of Sophocles (1809) had gained him the reputation of a sound scholar and critic; his Phrynichus (1820) and Paralipomena grammaticae graecae (1837) exhibit the widest acquaintance with Greek literature. He had little sympathy with comparative philology, holding that it needed a lifetime to acquire a thorough knowledge of a single language.
See the article by L. Friedländer in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie; C. Bursian’s Geschichte der klassischen Philologie in Deutschland (1883); Lehrs, Populäre Aufsätze aus dem Altertum (2nd ed., Leipzig, 1875); Ludwich, Ausgewählte Briefe von und an Chr. Aug. Lobeck und K. Lehrs (1894); also J. E. Sandys, History of Classical Scholarship, i. (1908), 103.
LOBEIRA, JOÃO (c. 1233-1285), a Portuguese troubadour of the time of King Alphonso III., who is supposed to have been the first to reduce into prose the story of Amadis de Gaula (q.v.). D. Carolina Michaelis de Vasconcellos, in her masterly edition of the Cancioneiro de Ajuda (Halle, 1904, vol. i. pp. 523-524), gives some biographical notes on João Lobeira, who is represented in the Colocci Brancuti Canzoniere (Halle, 1880) by five poems (Nos. 230-235). In number 230, João Lobeira uses the same ritournelle that Oriana sings in Amadis de Gaula, and this has led to his being generally considered by modern supporters of the Portuguese case to have been the author of the romance, in preference to Vasco de Lobeira, to whom the prose original was formerly ascribed. The folklorist A. Thomas Pires (in his Vasco de Lobeira, Elvas, 1905), following the old tradition, would identify the novelist with a man of that name who flourished in Elvas at the close of the 14th and beginning of the 15th century, but the documents he publishes contain no reference to this Lobeira being a man of letters.
LOBELIA, the typical genus of the tribe Lobelieae, of the order Campanulaceae, named after Matthias de Lobel, a native of Lille, botanist and physician to James I. It numbers about two hundred species, natives of nearly all the temperate and warmer regions of the world, excepting central and eastern Europe as well as western Asia. They are annual or perennial herbs or under-shrubs, rarely shrubby; remarkable arborescent forms are the tree-lobelias found at high elevations on the mountains of tropical Africa. Two species are British, L. Dortmanna (named by Linnaeus after Dortmann, a Dutch druggist), which occurs in gravelly mountain lakes; and L. urens, which is only found on heaths, &c., in Dorset and Cornwall. The genus is distinguished from Campanula by the irregular corona and completely united anthers, and by the excessive acridity of the milky juice. The species earliest described and figured appears to be L. cardinalis, under the name Trachelium americanum sive cardinalis planta, “the rich crimson cardinal’s flower”; Parkinson (Paradisus, 1629, p. 357) says, “it groweth neere the riuer of Canada, where the French plantation in America is seated.” It is a native of the eastern United States. This and several other species are in cultivation as ornamental garden plants, e.g. the dwarf blue L. Erinus, from the Cape, which, with its numerous varieties, forms a familiar bedding plant. L. splendens and L. fulgens, growing from 1 to 2 ft. high, from Mexico, have scarlet flowers; L. Tupa, a Chilean perennial 6 to 8 ft. high, has reddish or scarlet flowers; L. tenuior with blue flowers is a recent acquisition to the greenhouse section, while L. amaena, from North America, as well as L. syphilitica and its hybrids, from Virginia, have also blue flowers. The last-named was introduced in 1665. The hybrids raised by crossing cardinalis, fulgens, splendens and syphilitica, constitute a fine group of fairly hardy and showy garden plants. Queen Victoria is a well-known variety, but there are now many others.