Search the scanned history of knowledge.

ENIGMA (Gr. alviypa), a riddle or puzzle, especially a form of verse or prose composition in which the answer is concealed by means of metaphors. Such were the famous riddle of the Sphinx and the riddling answers of the ancient oracles. The composition of enig ...

... sia propounds to her father are obviously interpolated. They are taken from the Enigmata of Caelius Firmianus Symposius. The many inconsistencies of the story seem to be best explained by the supposition (E. Rohde, Der griechische Roman, 2nd ed., 1900, pp. 435 ...

... m Andrea Caesalpino; the " triplicate " appearance of Saturn always remained an enigma to him; and in regarding comets as atmospheric emanations he lagged far behind Tycho Brahe. Yet he unquestionably ranks as the true founder of descriptive astronomy; while h ...

... ning of a great branch of research which may ultimately explain many heretofore enigmatical phenomena of nature. The discovery of radio-activity may, by explaining the interior heat of the great bodies of the universe, solve a difficulty which since the middle ...

... with its own sub-varieties, has its peculiar effect and attraction. ENGROSSING— ENIGMA A real knowledge of engraving can only be attained by a careful study and comparison of the prints themselves, or of accurate facsimiles, so that books are of little use exc ...

... e reign of James, with its conspiracies, its Somerset and Overbury horrors, its enigmatic and sombre figures like Raleigh, and its revulsion from Elizabethan buoyancy. In the same decade were written the chief tragediesof Jonson, Chapman, Dekker, Marston, Tour ...

... hich from an educational point of view he had treated as a jest. Somewhat of an enigma as he was to his companions, with his alternate fits of feverish gaiety and melancholy abstraction, aristocratic hauteur and liberal views, there was yet found a little band ...