Hiero
or HIERON I., King of Syracuse. He succeeded his brother Gelon in 478 B. C. The most important event of his reign was the naval victory gained by his fleet and that of the Cumani over the Etruscans in 474, which deprived the latter of their supremacy in the Tyrrhenian Sea. Though violent and rapacious, he was a lover of poetry, and the patron of Simonides, Æschylus, Bacchylides, and Pindar. Hiero died in Catana, Sicily, in 467 B. C.
HIERONYMITES HIERO II., King of Syracuse; born about 307 B. C. He was a son of Hierocles, a noble Syracusan, who claimed descent from the family of Gelon. He was chosen by the soldiers as general in 275 B. c., and recognized as king about 270.
In 264 he made an alliance with the Carthaginians against Rome, and thus began the first Punic War. Being defeated by the Romans he made peace by the payment of tribute, and was ever after a faithful and useful ally to them.
He died in 216 B. c.
HIEROCHLOA (-rok'lō-ä), the holygrasses, a genus of plants, order Graminaceæ. H. borealis, the Holy or Seneca grass, is a grass about a foot high, with a brownish glossy lax panicle. It is found in the N. of Europe, and in America from Virginia up to the Arctic regions. It has a sweet smell, and in Iceland is used for scenting apartments and clothes.
HIEROCLES (-er'ō-klēz), the name of several Greeks: (1) A professor of rhetoric at Alabanda, Caria. Lived in the 1st century before the Christian era. whose work three chapters have been (2) A writer on the veterinary art, of preserved. (3) A Stoic philosopher, who is said to have flourished about the time of Hadrian. (4) A writer of a work which, under the title of "Traveling Companion," gave a description of the provinces of the Eastern empire. He is supposed to have lived in the 6th century. (5) A persecutor of the Christians, who was president of Bithynia, and afterward governor of Alexandria.
Lived in the 4th century. (6) An Alexandrine Neoplatonic philosopher; wrote seven books on Providence and Destiny, and a commentary on the Golden Verses of Pythagoras; the latter of which is extant, also fragments of the former.
Lived in the 5th century.
HIEROGLYPHIC (-glif'ik), in ordinary language, written in characters difficult to decipher. Hieroglyphics or hierglyphs are representations of animals, plants, and other more or less material bodies, sculptured on Egyptian temples, obelisks, sarcophagi, etc., and designed for ideographic or other writings. Hieroglyphics are of two kinds: some are ideographs, others stand for syllables or for letters. They are not confined to Egypt; they exist in the adjacent lands and in Mexico. or HIERONYMITES (-on'i-mītz), JERONYMITES (je-ron'-), hermits of St. Jerome (Hieronymus), an order of religious persons established in 1374, who wear a white habit, with a black HIGGINS scapulary. They possessed the convent of St. Lawrence in the Escurial, and still have convents in Sicily, the West Indies, and South America.