Rodon. See Derodon.
Rodriguez, Girao, called Father Joao, a Portu- guese missionary, was born near Lisbon in 1559. He entered the Jesuit order in 1576, and in 1583 went to Japan, where he gave himself to the study of the lan- guage. He soon spoke the dialect of Nagasaki with fluency, received the protection of the government, and consequently escaped the persecutions to which the oth- er missionaries were subjected. He returned to Europe late in life, and died in 1633. His principal work was printed at Nagasaki, and was entitled A rte da Liiiyua do Japao (1604). It was translated into French by Laudresse and annotated by Remusat (1825). Rodriguez also wrote letters on the persecutions to which Chris- tians were subjected in Japan, entitled Cartas Annuos de Nangazachi dos Annos 1604 e 1605, transl. into Latin (Antw. 1611-12) and into Italian (1808-10) :— .4 ««?(«« de 1609 e 1610 (Rome, 1615). Some smaller works of Rodriguez appeared at Rome in 1615 and 1632. See Antonio, Bibl. Ilispana ; Pages, Bibliogr. Japonuise. — Hoefer, Nouv. Biog. Generate, s. v.
Roe is properly the rendering in the A. V. of n^2S, tsebiijah (Cant, iv, 5; vii, 3), which is the fem. of "^33, tsebi, the HoK-buck (so called from its beauty, Dent, xii, 15, 22; xiv, 5; xv, 22; 1 Kings iv, 23; elsewhere im- properly "roe," 2 Sam. ii, 18; 1 Chron. xii, 8; Prov. vi, 5 ; Cant, ii, 7, 9, 17 ; iii, 5 ; viii, 14; Isa. xiii, 14 ; " beau- ty," 2 Sam. i, 19). These are the masculine and femi- nine apijcllations of an anteldjie, which was considered the very im|wrsonation of beauty ; and so, in the later Hebrew Scriptures, i.e. from Isaiah downward, it is al- ways used in an abstract sense, and is rendered by such terms as " glory," " beauty," " ornament," " delight," etc. The word was not only found in the various Arama;an dialects of Western Asia, but has spread to nations where we should Iiave.little expected to find it, as those of the extreme south of Africa. Thus the elegant sjiringbok of the Cape Colony {A ntilope euchore), an animal nearly allied to the gazelles of Asia, is named tsehi by the Be- chuanas, and tesbe by the CaftVes. The Sept. generally renders the word by SopKf'i£ ; and this is given in the New Test, as the Greek equivalent of the Syriac tabilha
ROE
60
ROE
(Acts ix, 36), wliicl) is but the feminine form with the ts Sdfteneil to t by the dropiiinfi of the sibilant.
The animal in ((uestion is tiie dorcas gazelle of the moilern Orientals {Anfilope tlorcds), the most abundant of all the nmiinants inhabiting Palestine and its vicin- ity in a state of freedom. It appears to be replaced in the surrounding regions by what some naturalists con- sider as distinct, though closely allied, species, and oth- ers are disposed to view as only local varieties of the same. Thus in Asia iSIinor, extending southward into Syria and eastward into Central Asia, there is the ahu (.1 lit Hope siih(iutlurosa), with rather stouter horns than the
Kuebuck (Antilope ihrcas).
gazelle ; in ^Yestern India the kalsepi (.1 . Bennettii, Sykes ; A. com, II. Smith), closely like the gazelle, but higher on the limbs, with the tail entirely black, and scarcely gregarious; all along the eastern shore of the Red Sea lives the ariel gazelle (A. Arabicu), scarcely to be dis- tinguished from A.Jorcds except by being somewhat darker in color, and usually a little sliglitor in furm. On the continent of Africa we have, in the north of Abys- sinia, tiie A. ScEiniHeriiiijii of KUppel, an animal consid- erably larger than the gazelle, with boldly lyrate horns, and associating in pairs; on the western side of the desert, the kevel {A. kevella), nearer the gazelle, but with the horns compressed, more annidatcd, and lyrate; an<l. tinally, in the southern half of tiie continent, the springbok {A.fiichore) and the blessbok {A. pijgarga), large species with lyrate horns, and the sides and flanks marked with conspicuous dark bands, which enclose a white patch on the buttocks. Tliese merge into anoth- er group, chiefly inhabiting North Africa, containing the mhorr and the addra. See Pvgaug. Of all these spe- cies the Isehi properly includes only the A. dorcas and A. Arabicd; and in all prol)abilitv these were not dis- tinguished, but supposed. Stanley {Si/r. and Palest, p. 207) says that the signitication of the word Ajalon, the valley " of stags," is still jnstilied l)v " the gazelles which the peasants hunt on its mountain slopes." Thomson (Land and Book, i, 252) says that the mountains of Naphtali '' abound in gazelles to this day." See Ante-
LOl'K.
So elegant is the form, so light and slender the limbs, 80 graceful the movements, so shy and timid the dispo- sition, of the gazelle that the Oriental genius has ever delighted to make it the representative of female love- liness. The eye in particidar is large, soft, liipiid, lan- guishing, and of the <leepest black — iiualities which are HO admired in the eyes of an Oriental woman that to say "she has the eyes of a gazelle" is the most Matter- ing compliment that can be paid to beauty. The poetry of the Arabs and Persians is full of such allusions, while the lightness an<l fioetness of tlie creature att'ord similes by which to illustrate the activity and grace of the youthful man. David, in his excpiisite elegy on the death of Saul and Jonathan, calls his friend " the gazelle