Agal′matolite (Gr. agalma, image), a kind of stone, a clay-slate altered by heat and by the addition of alkalies, which is carved into images, &c., by the Chinese.
Ag′ama, a name of several lizards allied to the iguana, natives of both hemispheres.
Agamem′non, in Greek mythology, son of Atreus, King of Mycenæ and Argos, brother of Menelaus, and commander of the allied Greeks at the siege of Troy. Returning home after the fall of Troy, he was treacherously assassinated by his wife, Clytemnestra, and her paramour, Ægisthus, Agamemnon's cousin. He was the father of Orestes, Iphigenīa, and Electra.
Ag′ami. See Trumpeter.
Agamogenesis (-jen′e-sis; Gr. a, priv., gamos, marriage, genesis, reproduction), the production of young without the congress of the sexes, one of the phenomena of alternate generation. See Generation and Parthenogenesis.
Aganippe (-nip′ē), daughter of the river-god Parmessos, or Termessos, nymph of a fountain on Mount Helicon, in Greece, sacred to the Muses, which had the property of inspiring with poetic fire whoever drank of it. The name is often given to the wife of Acrisius and mother of Danae.
Agape (ag′a-pē; Gr. agapē, love), in ecclesiastical history, the love-feast or feast of charity, in use among the primitive Christians, when a liberal contribution was made by the rich to feed the poor. For a time the agape coincided with the eucharist, which, at its origin, was clearly funerary in its intention. "For as often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till he come." During the first
three centuries love-feasts were held in the churches without scandal, but in after-times they acquired a bad reputation, not undeservedly, and they were condemned at the Council of Carthage in 397. Some modern sects, as the Wesleyans, Sandemanians, Moravians, &c., have attempted to revive this feast.
Agapemone (ag-a-pem′o-nē; lit. 'the abode of love'), the name of a singular conventual establishment which has existed at Spaxton, near Bridgewater, Somersetshire, since 1859, the originator of it being a certain Henry James Prince, at one time a clergyman of the Church of England, who called himself the Witness of the First Resurrection. The life spent by the inmates appears to be a sort of religious epicureanism. Some of the proceedings of the inmates of the 'Abode of Love' have resulted in applications to the courts of law, where parties formerly members of the society have returned to the world and sought to regain their rights from Prince and his followers, and such cases have caused some scandal. In 1902 Prince was succeeded by T. H. Smyth-Pigott.
A′gar-a′gar, a dried seaweed of the Asiatic Archipelago, the Gracilaria lichenoides, much used in the East for soups and jellies, and also by paper and silk manufacturers.