ZANTE (15), one of the Ionian Islands, 9 m. off the NW. coast of the Morea, is 24 m. long and 12 broad; raises currants, the produce of a dwarf vine, and exports large quantities annually. Zante (14), the capital, on a bay on the E. coast, is a clean and prosperous town, most so of any in the group of islands.

ZANZIBAR, a kingdom of East Africa, under British protection, consisting of the islands of Zanzibar (150), with a capital (30) of the same name, and the island of Pemba (50), and a strip of the coast extending 10 m. inland from Cape Delgado to Kipini; has a hot unhealthy climate, and a rich tropical vegetation; its products are cloves chiefly, coco-nuts, betel-nuts, and grain, and the exports ivory, india-rubber, gum, &c.; the natives are mostly Arab Mohammedans under a sultan.

ZAPOROGIANS, Cossacks of the Ukraine, who revolted under Mazeppa as chief, and were transported by Catherine II to the shores of the Sea of Azov.

ZARA (11), the capital of Dalmatia, and a seaport of Austria, on a promontory on the coast, 129 m. SE. of Trieste; it was founded by the Venetians, has a spacious harbour, was strongly fortified, and the chief manufactures are glass and a liqueur called maraschino.

ZARAGOZA. See SARAGOSSA.

ZEA, the ancient Ceos, an island of the Grecian Archipelago; of great fertility; produces wine, honey, silk, and maize.

ZEALAND, the largest island in the Danish Archipelago, situated between the Cattegat and the Baltic, being 81 m. long and 67 m. broad, with COPENHAGEN (q. v.) on the E. coast; the surface is nearly everywhere fiat, and agriculture and cattle-rearing the chief industries.

ZEALAND (213), a province of the Netherlands, formed chiefly of islands, of which WALCHEREN (q. v.) is one, constituting a delta as if formed by the Maas and Scheldt; great part of it is reclaimed from the sea.

ZEALAND, NEW. See NEW ZEALAND.

ZEALOTS, THE, a fanatical party among the Jews in Judea, who rose in revolt against the Roman domination on the appointment over them of a Roman governor instead of a native prince, which they regarded as an insult to their religion and religious belief.

ZEBU, one of the Visaya group of the Philippine Islands, E. of Negros.

ZECHARIAH, a Hebrew prophet who appears to have been born in Babylon during the captivity, and to have prophesied in Jerusalem at the time of the restoration, and to have contributed by his prophecies to encourage the people in rebuilding the temple and reorganising its worship; his prophecies are divided into two great sections, but the authenticity of the latter has been much debated; he is reckoned one of the Minor Prophets.

ZEDLITZ, JOSEPH CHRISTIAN VON, poet, born in Austrian Silesia; entered and served in the army, and did service as a diplomatist; wrote dramas and lyrics, and translated Byron's "Childe Harold" into German (1790-1862).

ZEEHAN, a township of recent growth on the W. coast of Tasmania, with large silver-lead mines wrought by several companies, and a source of great wealth.

ZEIT-GEIST (i. e. Time-spirit), German name for the spirit of the time, or the dominant trend of life and thought at any particular period.

ZEITUN (20), a town in the province of Aleppo, with iron mines, inhabited chiefly by Armenian Christians; distinguished as having for centuries maintained their independence under Turkish oppression.

ZELLER, EDUARD, German professor of Philosophy, born in Wuertemberg; studied at Tuebingen; was first a disciple of Baur, and then of Hegel; became professor at Berlin, and devoted himself chiefly to the history of Greek philosophy, and distinguished himself most in that regard; b. 1814.

ZEMINDAR, in India a holder or farmer of land from the government, and responsible for the land-tax.

ZEM-ZEM, a sacred well in Mecca, and all built round along with the CAABA (q. v.); has its name from the bubbling sound of the waters; the Moslems think it the Well which Hagar found with her little Ishmael in the wilderness when he was dying of thirst.

ZENANA, in India the part of a house reserved for the women among Hindu families of good caste, and to which only since 1860 Christian women missionaries have been admitted, and a freer intercourse established.

ZEND, name applied, mistakenly it would seem, by the Europeans to the ancient Iranian language of Persia, or the language in which the Zend-Avesta is written, closely related to the Sanskrit of the Vedas it appears.

ZEND-AVESTA, the name given to the sacred writings of the Guebres or Parsees, ascribed to Zoroaster, of which he was more the compiler than the author, and of which many are now lost; they represent several stages of religious development, and as a whole yield no consistent system.

ZENITH, name of Arab origin given to the point of the heaven directly overhead, being as it were the pole of the horizon, the opposite point directly under foot being called the Nadir, a word of similar origin; the imaginary line connecting the two passes through the centre of the earth.

ZENO, Greek philosopher of the ELEATIC SCHOOL (q. v.), and who flourished in 500 B.C.; was the founder of the dialectic so successfully adopted by Socrates, which argues for a particular truth by demonstration of the absurdity that would follow from its denial, a process of argument known as the reductio ad absurdum.

ZENO, Greek philosopher, the founder of Stoic philosophy, born at Citium, in Cyprus, son of a merchant and bred to merchandise, but losing all in a shipwreck gave himself up to the study of philosophy; went to Athens, and after posing as a cynic at length opened a school of his own in the Stoa, where he taught to extreme old age a gospel called Stoicism, which, at the decline of the heathen world, proved the stay of many a noble soul that but for it would have died without sign, although it is thus "Sartor," in the way of apostrophe, underrates it: "Small is it that thou canst trample the Earth with its injuries under thy feet, as old Greek Zeno trained thee; thou canst love the Earth while it injures thee, and even because it injures thee; for this a Greater than Zeno was needed, and he too was sent" (342-270 B.C.). See STOICS, THE.

ZENOBIA, queen of Palmyra and ultimately of the East, whose ambition provoked the jealousy of the Emperor Aurelian, who marched an army against her, and after a succession of defeats subdued her and brought her to Rome to adorn his triumph as conqueror, though afterwards he presented her with a domain at Tivoli, where she spent the rest of her days in queen-like dignity, with her two sons by her side; she was a woman of great courage and surpassing beauty. See LONGINUS.

ZEPHANIAH, a Hebrew prophet who prophesied in the interval between the decline and fall of Nineveh and the hostile advance of Babylon; forewarned the nation of the judgment of God impending over them for their ungodliness, and exhorted them to repentance as the only way of averting the inevitable doom, while he at the same time encouraged the faithful to persevere in their godly course with the assurance that the day of judgment would be succeeded by a day of glorious deliverance, that they would yet become "a name and a praise among the people of the earth."

ZEPHON (searcher of secrets), name of a cherub sent, along with ITHURIEL (q. v.), by the archangel Gabriel to find out the whereabouts of Satan after his flight from hell.

ZEPHYRUS, a personification in the Greek mythology of the West Wind, and in love with Flora.

ZERMATT, a small village of the canton Valais, in Switzerland, 23 in. SW. of Brieg, a great centre of tourists and the starting-point in particular for the ascent of the Matterhorn.

ZERO, a word of Arab origin signifying a cipher, and employed to denote a neutral point in scale between an ascending and descending series, or between positive and negative.

ZEUS, the chief deity of the Greeks, the sovereign ruler of the world, the father of gods and men, the mightiest of the gods, and to whose will as central all must bow; he was the son of Kronos and Rhea; by the help of his brothers and sisters dethroned his father, seized the sovereign power, and appointed them certain provinces of the universe to administer in his name—Hera to rule with him as queen above, Poseidon over the sea, Pluto over the nether world, Demeter over the fruits of the earth, Hestia over social life of mankind; to his dynasty all the powers in heaven and earth were more or less related, descended from it and dependent on it; and he himself was to the Greeks the symbol of the intelligence which was henceforth to be the life and light of men, an idea which is reflected in the name Jupiter given him by the Romans, which means "father of the day"; he is represented as having his throne in heaven, and as wielding a thunderbolt in his right hand, in symbol of the jealousy with which he guards the order of the world established under him as chief.

ZEUSS, JOHANN KASPAR, great Celtic scholar, and the founder of Celtic philology, born at Voghtendorf, in Upper Franconia, professor at Bamberg; his great work, "Grammatica Celtica" (1806-1856).

ZEUXIS, famous Greek painter, born at Heraclea, and who flourished from 420 B.C. to the close of the century; was unrivalled in rendering types of sensuous, specially female, beauty, and his principal works are his pictures of "Helen," "Zeus Enthroned," "The Infant Hercules Strangling the Serpent"; he is said to have given away several of his works rather than sell them, as no price could pay him for them.

ZIDON, an ancient town of Phoenicia, 20 m. N. of Tyre, and the original capital.

ZIETHEN, JOHANN JOACHIM VON, Prussian general, born in Russia; entered the army at the age of 15, served as a cavalry officer under Frederick the Great, was one of the greatest of his generals, became his personal friend, and contributed to a great many of his victories, all of which he lived through, spending his days thereafter in quiet retirement at Berlin in favour with the people and in honour to the last with the king; is described by Carlyle at 45 as "beautiful" to him, though with "face one of the coarsest," but "face thrice-honest, intricately ploughed with thoughts which are well kept silent (the thoughts indeed being themselves mostly inarticulate, thoughts of a simple-hearted, much-enduring, hot-tempered son of iron and oatmeal); decidedly rather likeable" (1699-1786). See Carlyle's "Frederick."

ZIG, a giant cock in the Talmud (q. v.), which stands with its foot on the earth, touches heaven with its head, and when it spreads its wings causes a total eclipse of the sun.

ZILLERTHAL, a valley in the Tyrol, watered by the Ziller, an affluent of the Inn, some 400 of the inhabitants of which were in 1837 obliged to seek a home elsewhere because of their opposition to the practice of auricular confession, and which they found near Liegnitz, in Prussian Silesia.

ZIMBABYE, a remarkable ruin in Mashonaland, the remains apparently of some enterprising colony of nature-worshippers that settled there in ancient times, in the interest of trade presumably.

ZIMMERMANN, JOHAN GEORG VON, Swiss physician, born at Brugg, in the canton of Bern; studied at Goettingen, became the friend of HALLER (q. v.), and settled down to practice in his native town, where he continued 16 years, very successful both in medicine and literature, but "tormented with hypochondria," and wrote his book on "Solitude," which was translated into every European language; wrote also on "Medical Experiences," a famed book in its day too, also on "National Pride," and became "famed throughout the universe"; attended Frederick the Great on his deathbed, and wrote an unwise book about him, "a poor puddle of calumnies and credulities" (1728-1795). For insight into the man and his ways see CARLYLE'S "FREDERICK," a curious record.

ZINDIKITES, a Mohammedan heretical sect, who disbelieve in Allah, and deny the resurrection and a future life.

ZINZENDORF, a German count, born in Dresden; studied at Wittenberg, came under the influence of the Pietist Spener, gave himself up to evangelical labours, and established a religious community on his estate at Herrnhut, in Saxony, consisting chiefly of a body of Moravian Brethren, who had been driven out of Bohemia and Moravia on account of their religious opinions, and were called Herrnhuters, of which he became one of the leaders and chief apostles, labouring far and wide in the propagation of their doctrines and suffering no small persecution by the way; he was an earnest man, the author of religious writings, controversial and devotional; wrote a number of hymns, and died at Herrnhut, from which he was driven forth, but to which he was allowed to return before the end (1700-1760).

ZION, that one of the four hills on which Jerusalem is built, on the SW. of the city, and the site of the palace of King David and his successors.

ZIONISM, the name given a movement on the part of the Jews to re-establish themselves in Palestine as a nation.

ZIRCONIA LIGHT, an intensely brilliant light, similar to the Drummond light, but differing from it chiefly in the employment of cones of zirconium instead of cylinders of lime; it has been superseded by the electric light.

ZIRCONIUM, a metallic element often found in connection with silica, commonly in the form of a black powder.

ZIRKNITZ, LAKE, a high-lying lake in Carniola, 20 m. SW. of Laybach, the waters of which in the dry season will sometimes disappear altogether through the fissures, and in rainy will sometimes expand into a lake 5 m. long and 3 m. broad.

ZISKA, JOHANN, Hussite leader, born in Bohemia of a noble family; began life as a page at the court of King Wenceslas, but threw up a courtier's life in disgust for a career in arms; fought and distinguished himself by his valour against the Teutonic knights at Tannenberg in 1410, to their utter defeat; signalised himself afterwards against the Turks, and in 1413 fought on the English side at Agincourt; failing to rouse Wenceslas to avenge the death of HUSS (q. v.) and of JEROME OF PRAGUE (q. v.), he joined the Hussites, organised their forces, assumed the chief command, and in 1420 gained, with a force of 4000 men, a victory over the Emperor Sigismund with an army of 40,000 mustered to crush him; captured next year the castle of Prague, erected fortresses over the country, one in particular called Tabor, whence the name Taborites given to his party; blind of one eye from his childhood, lost the other at the siege of Ratz, fought on blind notwithstanding, gaining victory after victory, but was seized with the plague and carried off by it at Czaslav, where his remains were buried and his big mace or battle-club, mostly iron, hung honourably on the wall close by; that his skin was tanned and made into the cover of a drum is a fable; he was a tough soldier, and is called once and again in Carlyle's "Frederick" "Rhinoceros Ziska" (1360-1424).

ZITTAU (25), a town of Saxony, 71 m. SE. of Dresden, with a magnificent Rathhaus; stands on a vast lignite deposit; manufactures cotton, linen, machinery, &c.

ZLATOUST (21), a Russian town near the Urals, 130 m. NE. of Ufa, with iron and gold mines near; manufactures sword-blades and other steel ware.

ZOAR, a small village of Ohio, U.S., 91 m. S. of Cleveland, and the seat of a German Socialistic community.

ZOeCKLER, OTTO, German theologian, professor at Greifswald; edited a "Handbuch der theologischen Wissenschaft," and other works; b. 1833.

ZODIAC, the name given to a belt of the heavens extending 8 deg. on each side of the ecliptic, composed of twelve constellations called signs of the zodiac, which the sun traverses in the course of a year. These signs, of which six are on the N. of the ecliptic and six on the S., are, commencing with the former, named successively: Aries, the Ram; Taurus, the Bull; Gemini, the Twins; Cancer, the Crab; Leo, the Lion; Virgo, the Virgin; Libra, the Balance; Scorpio, the Scorpion; Sagittarius, the Archer; Capricornus, the Goat; Aquarius, the Water-bearer; and Pisces, the Fishes. The sun enters Aries at the spring equinox and Libra at the autumnal equinox, while the first point of Cancer marks the summer solstice, and that of Capricorn the winter. The name Zodiac is derived from the Greek zoon, an animal, and has been given to the belt because the majority of the signs are named after animals.

ZODIACAL LIGHT, a track of light of triangular figure with its base on the horizon, which in low latitudes is seen within the sun's equatorial plane before sunrise in the E. or after sunset in the W., and which is presumed to be due to a glow proceeding from some illuminated matter surrounding the sun.

ZOHAR, a Jewish book of cabalistic commentaries on the Old Testament.

ZOILUS, a Greek rhetorician who flourished in the 3rd century B.C.; was distinguished for the bitterness with which he criticised Homer, and whose name has in consequence become a synonym for a malignant critic, hence the saying, "Every great poet has his Zoilus."

ZOLA, EMILE, a noted French novelist of the realistic school, or of what he prefers to call the naturalist school, born in Paris, of Italian descent; began literature as a journalist, specially in the critical department, but soon gave himself up to novel-writing, ultimately on realistic lines, and an undue catering, as some think, to a morbid interest on the seamy side of life, to which he addressed himself with great vigour and not a little graphic power, but in an entire misconception of his proper functions as an artist and a man of letters, though, it may be pleaded, he has done so from a strong conviction on his part that his duty lay the other way, and that it was high time literature should, regardless of merely dilettante aestheticism, address itself to exposing, by depicting it, the extent to which the evil genius is gnawing at and corroding the vitals of society; and it is not for a moment to be supposed he has done so from any pleasure he takes in gloating over the doings of the ghoul, or that he is in sympathy with those who do; of his works suffice it to mention here some recent ones, as the story of "Lourdes," published in 1894, "Rome" in 1896, and "Paris" in 1897; he has recently distinguished himself by his courage in connection with the Dreyfus affair and his bold condemnation of the sentence under which Dreyfus was condemned; b. 1840.

ZOLAISM, name given to an excessive realism in depicting the worst side of human life and society. See ZOLA.

ZOLLVEREIN (Customs Union), a union of the German States under Prussia in 1827, and extended in 1867, to establish among them a uniform system of customs rates.

ZONES, the name given to belts of climate on the surface of the earth marked off by the tropical and polar circles, of which the former are 231/2 deg. from the equator and the latter 231/2 deg. from the poles, the zone between the tropical circles, subject to extremes of heat, being called the Torrid Zone, the zones between the polar circles and the poles, subject to extremes of cold, being called respectively the North Frigid Zone and the South Frigid Zone, and the zones north and south of the Torrid, subject to moderate temperature, being called respectively the North Temperate, and the South Temperate Zone.

ZOROASTER, ZARATHUSTHRA, or ZERDUSHT, the founder or reformer of the Parsee religion, of whom, though certainly a historical personage, nothing whatever is for certain known except that his family name was Spitama, that he was born in Bactria, and that he could not have flourished later than 800 B.C.; he appears to have been a pure monotheist, and not to be responsible for the Manichean doctrine of dualism associated with his name, as Zoroastrianism, or the institution of fire-worship.

ZOSIMUS, Greek historian; wrote a history of the Roman emperors from the time of Augustus to the year 410, and ascribed the decline of the empire to the decay of paganism (408-450).

ZOUAVES, the name given to a body of light infantry in the French army wearing the Arab dress, a costume copied from that of Kabyles, in North Africa, and adopted since the French conquest of Algiers; some regiments of them consist of French soldiers, some of Algerines, though originally the two were incorporated into one body.

ZOUTSPANSBERG, a ridge of mountains on the NE. of the Transvaal, being a continuation of the Drakensberg.

ZSCHOKKE, JOHANN HEINRICH, a German writer, born in Magdeburg, lived chiefly at Aarau, in Aargau, Switzerland, where he spent forty years of his life, part of them in the service of his adopted country, and where he died; wrote histories, and a series of tales, but is best known by his "Stunden der Andacht" (i. e. hours of devotion), on ethico-rationalistic lines (1771-1845).

ZUG (23), the smallest canton of Switzerland, and sends only one representative to the National Council; is 12 m. long by 9 m. broad; is hilly and pastoral in the SE., and has cultivated fields and orchards in the NW.; all but includes Lake Zug, at the NE. of which is Zug (5), the capital, which carries on sundry industries on a small scale.

ZUIDER ZEE (i. e. south sea), a deep inlet of the North Sea, in the Netherlands, which includes the islands of Texel, Vlieland, Terschelling, and Ameland, and was formed by irruptions of the North Sea into a lake called Flevo, in the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries, when thousands of people were drowned; is 85 m. long and 45 m. broad, and is embraced in a circuit of 210 m.; it was for some time in contemplation to reclaim this area, and after much weighing of the matter the Dutch Government in 1897 adopted a scheme to give effect to this project; according to the scheme adopted it is reckoned it will take 31 years to complete the reclamation at the rate of several thousand acres every year.

ZULEIKA, the bride of Abydos, celebrated by Byron, a pure-souled woman of great beauty, who, in love with Selim, promises to flee with him and become his bride, but her father shoots him, and she dies of a broken heart.

ZULULAND (181), a territory to the NE. of Natal, from which it is separated by the Tugela, and of which it was independent till 1898, but it is now an integral part; it is a little larger than Belgium, is well watered, is capable of cultivation, and has 140 m. of seaboard; it is understood to possess some mineral wealth, though it has not yet been wrought.

ZULUS, a section of the Bantu family which originally occupied the SE. seaboard of Africa from Delagoa Bay to the Great Fish River; they are a race of superior physique and intellectual endowment, as well as moral temperament, and incline to a quiet pastoral life; they were attacked under Cetywayo by the English in 1879, but after falling upon an English force at Isandula, and cutting it in pieces, were overpowered at Ulundi, and put to rout.

ZUMPT, KARL, philologist, born in Berlin, and professor at the University; edited a number of the Latin classics, and is best known by his Latin Grammar (1792-1849).

ZURBARAN, FRANCISCO, Spanish painter, born in Estremadura; did mostly religious subjects; his chef-d'oeuvre an altar-piece in Seville, where he lived and worked (1598-1662).

ZURICH (392), a northern canton in Switzerland, and the second largest; is in the basin of the Rhine, with a well-cultivated fertile soil, and manufactures of cottons and silks, and with a capital (151) of the same name at the foot of the Lake of Zurich; a large manufacturing and trading centre; has a Romanesque cathedral and a university, with silk mills and cotton mills, as well as foundries and machine shops; here Lavater was born and Zwingli was pastor.

ZUTPHEN (17), manufacturing town in the Dutch province of Guelderland, in the neighbourhood of which Sir Philip Sidney fell wounded in a skirmish.

ZWICKAU (50), a town in Saxony, in a division (1,389) of the same name, 82 m. SW. of Dresden; it is in the midst of rich beds of coal, and has a number of manufactures.

ZWINGLI, ULRICH, the Swiss Reformer, born at Wildhaus, in the canton of St. Gall, and founder of the Reformed Church; studied at Bern and Vienna, afterwards theology at Basel, and was appointed pastor at Glarus; he got acquainted with Erasmus at Basel, and gave himself to the study of Greek, and in particular the epistles of St. Paul; attached to the monastery of Einsiedeln he, in 1516, attacked the sale of indulgences, and was in 1518 elected to be preacher in the cathedral of Zurich; his preaching was attended with an awakening, and the bishop of Constance tried to silence him, but he was silenced himself in a public debate with the Reformer, the result of which was the abolition of the Mass and the dispensation instead of the Lord's Supper; the movement thus begun went on and spread, and Zwingli met in conference with Luther, but they failed to agree on the matter of the Eucharist, and on that point the Lutheran and the Reformed Churches separated; in 1531 the Catholic cantons declared war against the reformers of Zurich and Bern, but the latter were defeated at Cappel, and among the dead on the battlefield was the Reformer; his last words were, "They may kill the body, but not the soul" (1484-1531). See LUTHERANS.

ZWOLLE (25), a manufacturing town in the Dutch province of Oberyssel, 50 m. NE. of Amsterdam; close to it is Agnetenberg, famous as the seat of the monastery where Thomas a Kempis lived and died.

ZYME, name of a germ presumed to be the cause of zymotic diseases.

ZYMOTIC DISEASES, diseases of a contagious nature, presumed to be due to some virus or organism which acts in the system like a ferment.

THE END