Agrigentum
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
the parentage), he was born in Imus, in the the S.'coast modern Girgenti, a town on the province of Cavité, in Luzon, in 1870. His father was a planter and he received of Sicily, founded by a colony from Gela his early education at Catholic colleges, in 582 B. C., and in the earlier ages one and studied medicine. In 1888 he of the most important places in the island. After being at first free, it was utterly some trouble with the authorities and went to Hong Kong. On the outbreak demolished by the Carthaginians in 405 B. C. In the course of the Punic Wars it of the rebellion against Spanish auwas compelled to submit to the Romans. thority, in 1896, Aguinaldo became a com- From 827 to 1080 A. D. it was in the posmanding figure with the insurgents. He session of the Saracens, from whom it was at the head of the diplomatic party, Roger Guiscard. which succeeded in making terms wit was conquered by Count R The modern Girgenti still shows numerthe Spanish Government, the latter pay- Ieplendid ruins. Empedocles was ing a large sum to the Philippine leaders to lay down their arms. Aguinaldo quar- AGRIPPA II., HEROD, tetrarch of Abilene, Galilee, Iturea, and Trachonitis, born in 27 A. D. During his reign he en- Philippi and named it Neronias, in honor of Nero. He remained faithful to the Romans, and tried to dissuade the Jews from rebelling. After the fall of Jerusalem he retired to Rome, where he died in 100 A. D. Before him the AGUAS CALIENTES (ag'waz kalyān'taz), a town of Mexico, capital of a central State of the same name, with an area of 2,900 square miles and a population of about 125,000, stands on a plain 6,000 feet above the sea-level, 270 miles N. W. of the City of Mexico. The environs abound in hot springs, from which Pop. about
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When Collier's wrote this in 1921 the town was "modern Girgenti"; in 1927 Mussolini's government restored the classical name, and it has been Agrigento ever since. The "numerous splendid ruins" the entry mentions in passing are now the chief thing the place is known for: the ridge of Doric temples, excavated and consolidated through the twentieth century, was inscribed as the UNESCO World Heritage site "Archaeological Area of Agrigento" in 1997 and draws hundreds of thousands of visitors a year. The historical outline still stands, with small adjustments — the Carthaginian sack is now usually dated 406 rather than 405 B.C., and the foundation from Gela placed around 580 B.C. The town has also gained a literary claim the 1921 writer could not have made much of: Luigi Pirandello, born just outside it in 1867, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1934.
Written for this edition, 2026.