ACHAIA. in Ancient Geography, a name differently applied at different periods. In the earliest times the name was borne by a small district in the south of Thessaly, and was the first residence of the Achaeans. At a later period Achaia Propria was a narrow tract of country in the north of the Peloponnesus, running 65 miles along the Gulf of Corinth, and bounded by the Ionian Sea on the W., by Elis and Arcadia on the S., and by Sicyonia on the E. On the south it is separated from Arcadia by lofty mountains, but the plains between the mountains and the sea are very fertile. Its chief town was Patrae. The name of Achaia was afterwards employed to denote collectively the states that joined the Achaean League. When Greece was subdued by the Romans, Achaia was the name given to the most southerly of the provinces into which they divided the country, and included the Peloponnesus, the greater part of Greece Proper, and the islands....

This name is used to denote the whole of Greece, as it existed as a Roman province; or Achaia Proper, a district in the northern part of the Peloponnesus, on the bay of Corinth, and in which the city of that name stood. It appears to have been used in the former sense in 2 Cor. xi, 10; and in the latter, in Acts xix, 21.

ACHAN, the son of Carmi, of the tribe of Judah, at the taking of Jericho concealed two hundred shekels of silver, a Babylonish garment, and a wedge of gold, contrary to the express command of God. This sin proved fatal to the Israelites, who were repulsed at the siege of Ai. In this emergency Joshua prostrated himself before the Lord, and begged that he would have mercy upon his people. Achan was discovered by casting lots, and he and his children were stoned to death. This expiation being made, Ai was taken by stratagem. (Josh. vii. viii.)

the son of Carmi, of the tribe of Judah, who having taken a part of the spoils of Jericho, against the injunction of God, who had _accursed_ or devoted the whole city, was, upon being taken by lot, doomed to be stoned to death. The whole history is recorded, Joshua vii. It would appear that Achan’s family were also stoned; for they were led out with him, and all his property, “And all Israel stoned him with stones, and burned them with fire, after they had stoned them with stones.” Some of the critics have made efforts to confine the stoning to Achan, and the burning to his goods; but not without violence to the text. It is probable, therefore, that his family were privy to the theft, seeing he hid the accursed things which he had stolen in the earth, in his tent. By concealment they therefore became partakers of his crime, and so the sentence was justified.

ACHARD, Franz Carl, a Prussian chemist, born at Berlin on the 28th April 1753, was the first to turn Marggraff’s discovery of the presence of sugar in beet-root to commercial account. He erected a factory on an estate in Silesia, granted to him about 1800 by the king of Prussia, and produced there large quantities of sugar to meet the scarcity occasioned by the closing of the West Indian ports to continental traders. In 1812 a similar establishment was erected by Napoleon at Rambouillet, although the Institute of France in 1800, while honouring Achard for his researches, had declared his process to have little practical value. At the close of the war the manufacture of beet-root sugar was protected by duties on other sugars that were almost prohibitive, so that the real worth of Achard’s discoveries could not be tested. Achard was a frequent contributor to the Memoirs of the Academy of Berlin, and published in 1780 Chymisch-Physische Schriften, containing descriptions and results of his very numerous and carefully conducted experiments on the adhesion of bodies. He died in 1821.

ACHARIUS, Erik, a Swedish physician and botanist, born at Gefle in 1757. The son of a comptroller of customs, he studied first in his native town, and then in 1773 at the University of Upsal, where Linnaeus was one of his teachers. In 1782 he took the degree of M.D. at the University of Lund, and practised thereafter in various districts of Sweden. But the direction of his studies had been determined by his contact with Linnaeus, and he found his appropriate sphere when he was appointed Professor of Botany at the Wadstena Academy in 1801. Five years before he had been admitted a member of the Academy at Stockholm. He devoted himself to the study of the cryptogamic orders of plants, and especially of the family of lichens. All his publications were connected with this subject, the Lichenographia Universalis (Göttingen, 1804) being the most important. Acharius died of apoplexy in 1819. His name has been given by botanists to more than one species of plants.

ACHATES, the faithful friend and companion of Aeneas, celebrated in Virgil's Aenid as fidus Achates.

ACHEEN. See Ach í n.

ACHELOUS, the largest river in Greece, rises in Mount Pindus, and dividing Aetolia from Acarnania, falls into the Ionian Sea. In the lower part of its course the river winds in an extraordinary manner through very fertile but marshy plains. Its water descends from the mountains, heavily charged with fine mud, which is deposited along its banks and in the sea at its mouth, where a number of small islands have gradually been formed. It was formerly called Thoas, from its impetuosity in its upper portion, and Homer gave it the name of king of rivers. It has a course of 130 miles. The epithet Acheloius is used for aqueus (Virgil), the ancients calling all water Achelous, according to Ephorus. The river is now called Aspro Potamo.