AGA, or Agha, a word, said to be of Tatar origin, signifying a dignitary or lord. Among the Turks it is applied to the chief of the janissaries, to the commanders of the artillery, cavalry, and infantry, and to the eunuchs in charge of the seraglio. It is also employed generally as a term of respect in addressing wealthy men of leisure, landowners, &c. The word is found with a somewhat similar usage in Tartary, Persia, and Algiers.

a prophet, and as the Greeks say, one of the seventy disciples of our Saviour. He foretold that there would be a great famine over all the earth; which came to pass accordingly, under the emperor Claudius, in the fourth year of his reign, A. D. 44, Acts xi, 28. Ten years after this, as St. Paul was going to Jerusalem, and had already landed at Cæsarea, in Palestine, the same prophet, Agabus, arrived there, and coming to visit St. Paul and his company, he took this Apostle’s girdle, and binding himself hand and feet, he said, “Thus saith the Holy Ghost, So shall the Jews at Jerusalem bind the man that owneth this girdle, and shall deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles,” Acts xxi, 10. We know no other particulars of the life of Agabus. The Greeks say that he suffered martyrdom at Antioch.

AGADES, the capital of the kingdom of Aïr, or Asben, in Central Africa, situated in 17° 2' N. lat., 8° 5' E. long. The town is built on the edge of a plateau, 2500 feet above the level of the sea, and is supposed to have been founded by the Berbers to serve as a secure magazine for their extensive trade with the Songhay empire. The language of the people is a dialect of Songhay. In former times Agades was a place of great traffic, and had a population of about 50,000. Its importance may be estimated by the fact that the king of Agades paid a tribute of 150,000 ducats to the king of Songhay. Since the beginning of the 16th century the prosperity of the place has gradually declined. Extensive quarters of the town, which has a circuit of 3½ miles, are deserted and ruinous. The occupied houses number only 600 or 700, and the population does not exceed 7000. The houses, which are built of clay, are low and flat-roofed; and the only building of importance is the chief mosque, which is surmounted by a tower 95 feet high. There is little traffic in the markets; no money is used, and the usual medium of exchange is millet. The chief trade is in grain. Agades derives its main importance from its situation on the direct route from the countries to the north-east to Sokoto and other important towns in the Hansa states. The great salt caravans pass through it, as well as pilgrims on their way to Mecca. From its healthy climate and advantageous position, the place might prove to be a good station for a European agent. (See Barth’s Travels in Central Africa, vol. i.)

This seems to have been a common name of the princes of Amalek, one of whom was very powerful as early as the time of Moses, Num. xxiv, 7. On account of the cruelties exercised by this king and his army against the Israelites, as they returned from Egypt, a bloody and long contested battle took place between Joshua and the Amalekites, in which the former was victorious, Exod. xvii, 8–13. At the same time, God protested with an oath to destroy Amalek, verses 14–16; Deut. xxv, 17–19, A. M. 2513. About four hundred years after this, the Lord remembered the cruel treatment of his people, and his own oath; and he commanded Saul, by the mouth of Samuel, to destroy the Amalekites. Saul mustered his army, and found it two hundred thousand strong, 1 Sam. xv, 1, &c. Having entered into their country, he cut in pieces all he could meet with from Havilah to Shur. Agag their king, and the best of their cattle, were however spared, an act of disobedience on the part of Saul, probably dictated by covetousness. But Agag did not long enjoy this reprieve; for Samuel no sooner heard that he was alive, than he sent for him; and notwithstanding his insinuating address, and the vain hopes with which he flattered himself that the bitterness of death was past, he caused him to be hewed to pieces in Gilgal before the Lord, saying, “As, כאשר, _in the same identical mode as_, thy sword hath made women childless, so shall thy mother be childless among women.” This savage chieftain had hewed many prisoners to death; and, therefore, by command of the Judge of the whole earth, he was visited with the same punishment which he had inflicted upon others. AGAPÆ. See LOVE FEAST.

AGAMEMNON. The stern obligations of a king and the majesty of his office, as compared with his humane desires and occasional frailty, give the keynote to the character of Agamemnon. But the kingly office, like the sceptre which was the symbol of it, had come to him from Pelops (Iliad, ii. 100) through the stained hands of Atreus and Thyestes, and had brought with it a certain fatality, by which his misfortunes, and especially the catastrophe at the close of his fife, were explained. As his title of Atrides implies, Agamemnon was a son of Atreus, his mother being Aërope. In a later account he is a son of Pleisthenes. But, apart from this difference, it is agreed that he succeeded to the sovereignty of Atreus over Argolis, Corinth, Achaia, and many islands, his seat being at Mycenae, not, as Aeschylus for political reasons asserts, at Argos. The succession had been usurped by Thyestes and Aegisthus. During the usurpation Agamemnon and his brother Menelaus visited Tyndareus, the king of Sparta, and obtained in marriage his two daughters—the former Clytaemnestra, the latter Helena: with his help Agamemnon was reinstated in his rights. Menelaus succeeded Tyndareus. The children born by Clytaemnestra were Chrysothemis, Iphigenia, Electra, and one son, Orestes. Elsewhere are mentioned also Iphianassa and Laodice; but the latter was the original name of Electra, it appears, and it has been suggested that Iphianassa stood in the same relation to Iphigenia. Agamemnon was then the most powerful prince in Greece; and to him of right, as well as naturally, his brother Menelaus turned for aid to compel the Trojans to give up his wife Helena, whom Paris had carried off. The various princes of Greece having been brought to unite in an expedition for this purpose, Agamemnon was ...