It appears that the lot of Speratus was not without anxieties growing out of a meagre income, so that he complained of poverty, which the duke was not in haste to relieve; but after he had determined to resign his office and depart to other lands his request for a better support was at length gratified in the donation of an
estate. Before the close of his life he was permitted to provide a refuge for his Bohemian friends of earlier days, who were now fleeing from the persecutions of king Ferdinand I. He also drew up the statute by which their relations were governed (comp. Gindely, desch. d. buhm. Brikkr, ii, 340 sq.). It does not appear that Speratus took any prominent part in the Osian- drian disputes. His health gave way, and his last years were a constant struggle against illness, from which he was relieved by death Aug. 12, 1551. See the docu- mentary sources in the secret archives at Konigsberg, and Khesa, Vita Pauli Sperati (Progr. 1823) ; also Qo- sack, Paul. Speratus Leben u. Liedtr (Brunsw. 1801). — Herzog, Real-Encyklop. s. v,
Sperchius was a Thessalian river-god in Grecian mythology, son of Oceanus and the Earth. He be- came the father of Menesthius by Polydora, the daugh- ter of Peleus (Homer, Iliad, xvi, 174; xxiii, 142; Apol- lod. iii, 14, 4 ; Pausan. i, 37, 2; Herod, vii, 198).
Spere, the screen across the lower end of the mo- nastic hall in the Middle Ages; a North-country word.
Sperl, Joseph, a Roman Catholic divine of Ger- many, was born June 1, 1761, at Lauchheim, in Bava- ria. In 1800 he was appointed to the pastorate at Ziischingen, and afterwards to that of Schneidheim, having at the same time the superintendence of the schools. He died in 1834. In 1800 he published a hymn-book especially for the use of Roman Catholics, where some fine specimens of his own poetry can be found, as Um die Erd" vnd ihre Kinder (Engl, transl. " Round this earth and round her children," in Hymns from the Land of Luther, p. 155). See Koch, Gesch. des deutschen Kirchenliedes, vi, 547; Knapp, Evangel. Liedeischatz, p. 1345. (B. P.)
Sperver, the tester, canopj', or covering of an altar or shrine.
Spes, the personified Hope of the Romans, was orig- inally conceived of as the Hope of yearly harvests, for which reason she was represented with a wreath of fiowers in her hair and ears of grain or a cornucopia in her hands. Subsequently she became the goddess of the marriage-bed, and only at a later day Hope in an ab- stract sense. She was worshipped at Rome, where sev- eral temples were dedicated to her, the most ancient of which had been built by the consul Atiliiis Calatinus, B.C. 354 (Livy, ii, 51, etc.; Tacit. A7in. ii, 49). The Greeks, too, worshipped Elpis, the personification of hope. When the different evils escaped from tlie Pan- dora-box, Elpis alone remained behind for the consola- tion of mankind. See Hesiod, Op. et D. 96 ; Theognis, 570 sq.
Sphaltes, the feller, was a surname of Bacchus in Grecian mythology, conferred because he brought down Telephus in battle by causing him to stumble over a vine (Pindar, Isthm. viii, 109, etc.).
Sphingius, in Grecian mythology, was a son of Athamas by Themisto; probably identical with Schce- neus.
Sphinx, a Greek word signifying the Squeezer, or Straugler, a|>plicd to certain symbolical forms of Egvp- tian origin, having the body of a lion, a human or an animal head, and two wings attached to the sides. Va- rious other combinations of animal forms have been called by this name, although they are rather griffins or chimneras. Human-headed sphinxes have been call- ed androsphinxes; one with the head of a ram, a crio- sphinx; with a hawk's head, a hieracos[)hinx. The form, when complete, had wings added at the sides; but these are of a later period, and seem to have orig- inated with the Babylonians or Assyrians. In the Egyptian hieroglyphs the sphinx bears the name of Xeb, or Lord, and Akar, or Intelligence, corresponding to the account of (Jlemens that these emblematic fig- ures depicted intellect and force. The idea that they allegorized the overfiow of the Nile when the sun was
SPHINX
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in the constellations Leo and Virgo appears quite un- fouiulfd. In Kyvpt the sphinx also appears as the symbolical form of the monarch consiilereil as a con- queror, the lieatl of the reigning king being placed upon a lion's body, the face bearded, and the usual dress-dra- pery being suspended before it. Tims used, the spliinx was generally male ; but in the case of female rulers the figure has a female head and the body of a lioness.
The most remarkable sphinx is the Great Sphinx at Gizeli. a colossal form hewn out of the natural rock, and lying three hundred feet east of the second |»yra- mid. It is sculptured out of a spur of the rock itself,
View of the Great Sphinx duiiiisr the Excavations of Ca- viglia, ISIO. (From Col. Vyse's Pyrainids of Gizeh.)
to which masonry has been added in certain places to complete the form, and measures one hundred and sev- ty-two feet six inches long by fifty-six feet high. Im- mediately in front of the breast, Caviglia found, in IHlCt, a small nans, or chapel, formed of three hieroglyphical tablet.'*, dedicated by the monarchs Thotmes III and Rameses II to the sphinx, which they adore under the name of Ilaremakhu, or Ilarmachis, as the Greek in- scriptions found at the same place call it — i. e. the Sun on the Ilori/on. These tablets formed three walls of the chapel; the fourth, in front, had a door in the cen- tre and two couchaiit lions ])laced upon it. A small lion was found on the (lavement, and an altar between its fore-paws, apparently for sacrifices offered to it in the time of the Komans. Hefore the altar was a paved esplanade, or dromos, leading to a staircase of thirty steps placed Ix'tween two walls, and repaired in the reigns of M. Aurelius and L. Verus, on May 10, A.I). It'it;. lu I Ik; reign of Severus and his sons, A.D. 199- 2iKt, another dromos, in the same line as the first, and a diverging staircase were made, while some additions were fmuid to have been made to the parts between the two staircases in the reign of Nero. Votive inscrip- tions of the Roman period, soine as late as the 3d cen- tury, were discovered in iIk; walls and constructions. On the tecond digit of the left claw of the sphinx an inscription in pentameter (iret-k verses by Arrian, prob- ably of the time of Severus, was disc(»vered. Another metrical an<l prosaic ins4;riptiou was also foun<l. In ad- dition to thejtc, walls of unburned brick, gall<>ries and shnfiH, were found in the rear of the sphinx extending northward. The excavations, however, of M. Marielte in 1H.'.2 have thrown further light on the sphinx, dis- cnvering the perilMilos, or riuter wall that encircled it; that tin- head oidy was sculptured ; anci that the sand which had ai'cumidated round it was brought bv tlie hands of man, and not an encroachment of the desert; aNo that the niaMinry of the belly was supported by a kind of abutment. To the south of the 8i)hinx Mari-