ACCAROX
42
ACCEPT
ami Nimrud Ti-p'isse, lioth designations signifying the j ers, whose office is only to walk before the ileacons, hill of Nimrod (see Ker Porter's Travels, ii, 275). It etc. , with lighted tapers, are derived from the practice consists of a mound, surmounted by a mass of build- j of the acolyths. The two offices are widely different ,
ing which looks like a tower, or an irregular pyramid, according to the point from which it is viewed , it is about 400 feet in circumference at the bottom, and rises to the height of 125 feet above the elevation on which it stands (Ainsworth's Researches in Assyria, p. 175). The mound which seems to form the foundation of the pile is a mass of rubbish, accumulated from the
ifferent, and the assumption that the Romish practice is de- rived from apostolical institution is absurd.— Bingham, Oriff. Eccl. bk. iii, ch. iii. See Acolyths.
Accent, in a grammatical sense, is the tone or stress of the voice upon a particular syllable, which is the means of distinguishing or separating words in rapid enunciation, and is not to be confounded with the rhythmical or mu- sical ictus or force which regulates poetry or me- tre, and is, at the same time, independent of the jjgl prosodiacal quantity.
In English, as in most jtg^ European languages, \ there is no fixed rule for the position of the accent, which often dif- J fers in words formed y*, after the same analogy.
In Latin, in the absence 3 of all positive informa- S tion as to how the Ro- mans themselves pro- nounced their language, ^^^Ri£> - at least in this particu- lar, an arbitrary rule has been invented and •^' '-. - ,\^± .^^i. i*~" , generally acceded to by
scholars of all nations, by which the tone is placed upon every lung penult, and upon the an- tepenult of words hav- decay of the superincumbent structure (Bonomi's | ing a short or doubtful (" common") vowel in the pe- Nineveh, p. 41). In the ruin itself, the layers of sun- j nult. Many apply the same rule to the Greek lan- dried bricks can be traced very distinctly. They are \ guage; but, as this has a written accent, the custom, cemented together by lime or bitumen, and arc divided j still preserved among the modern Greeks, is gradually into courses varying from 12 to 20 feet in height, and , prevailing, of conforming the spoken to the written
fM^-
Moiinil i if Akker-ku
are separated by layers of reeds, as is usual in the more ancient remains of this primitive region (Buck- ingham, Mesopotamia, ii, 217 sq.). Travellers have been perplexed to make out the use of this remarkable monument, and various strange conjectures have been hazarded. The embankments of canals and reservoirs, and the remnants of brick -work and pottery occupying the place all around, evince that the Tel stood in an important city ; and, as its construction announces it to be a Babylonian relic, the greater probability is that it was one of those pyramidal structures erected upon high places, which were consecrated to the heav- enly bodies, and served at once as the temples and the observatories of those remote times. Such build- ings were common to all Babylonian towns; and those which remain appear to have been constructed more or less on the model of that in the metropolitan city of Babylon. — Kitto, s. v. See Babel.
Ac'caron (1 Mace, x, 89). See Ekron.
Accensorii. In the early Church there was a class of officers called acolyths, corresponding to the Unman apparitor or pi dellus, In dellus, beadle. In their ordination, the bishop, after informing them as to the duties of their office, placed in the hands of each a can- dlestick with a lighted taper in it, intimating that it was their duty to light the candles of the church; hence they were sometimes called accensorii, taper- lighters. Jerome says it. was a custom in the Oriental churches to set up lighted tapers when the Gospel was read, as a demonstration of joy ; but it does not ap- pear that there was a peculiar order of acolyths for this purpose. The duty in question seems to have been nothing more than lighting the candles at night, when the church was to meet at evening prayer. The Romanists contend that their cero-ferarii, taper-bear-
tone. In Hebrew the place of the accent is carefully designated in the common or Masoretic text (see R. Jehuda Ibn Balam, Treatise on the Poetic Accents, in Hebrew, Paris, 155G; reprinted with annotations, Amst. 1858), although the Jews of some nations, dis- regarding this, pronounce the words with the accent on the penult, after the analogy of modern languages, and as is done b}' natives in speaking Syriac and Arabic (see J. D. Michaelis, Anfaiigsgriinde der Heir. Accentuation, Hall. 1741; Hirts, Einleit. in d. Flebr. Abtkeilungskunst, Jena, 17G2; Spitzner, Idea Analytical V, T. ex Accentibus, Lips. 1709 ; Stem, Grundl, Lehre d. Ilebr. Accentuation, Frankf. 1840). In words angli- cized from the Greek the Latin rules arc observed for the accent; and in those introduced from the Hebrew, as they have mostly come to us through the Vulgate, the same principle is in the main adhered to. so far as applicable, though with great irregularity and disa- greement among orthoepists, and generally to the ut- ter neglect of the proper Hebrew tone. In pronounc- ing Scripture and other foreign names, therefore, care should be taken to conform to the practice of the best speakers and readers, rather than to any affected or pedantic standard, however exact in itself (see Wor- cester's Kurj. Dirt. 1860, Append.).