title: Princess Irene of the Netherlands

text: Queen Juliana attempted to stop the marriage, first by sending a member of her staff to Madrid to persuade the Princess not to go ahead with a marriage that would be a political disaster for the monarchy in the Netherlands. It seemed to work and the Queen went on Dutch radio to tell the citizens that Princess Irene had agreed to cancel her engagement and was returning to the Netherlands. When the airplane arrived at Schiphol Airport, the Princess was not on it, and Queen Juliana and her husband, Prince Bernhard were supplied with a Dutch military plane to go to Spain to retrieve their daughter. However, a message was delivered to the Queen from the Dutch government warning that it would resign "en masse" if she set foot in Spain. It was suggested that Princess Irene was a pawn of General Francisco Franco who tried to maximize the event to his benefit.


title: Princess Irene of the Netherlands

text: Given the ramifications and the fact that a monarch from the House of Orange had never visited Spain, the Queen had no choice but to turn back. Prince Bernhard then traveled to Madrid to meet with his daughter and her fiancé, who both accompanied him back to the Netherlands, where an immediate meeting took place with the couple, the Queen, Prime Minister Marijnen, himself a Roman Catholic, and three top cabinet ministers. When the meeting ended in the early hours of the morning on Sunday, 9 February 1964, Dutch radio broke its traditional Sabbath day silence to announce that Princess Irene would give up any rights of succession to the throne so she could marry Carlos Hugo. The princess further stated that she did not want the government to create a bill which would grant official consent to her marriage. In an attempt to gain public favour for her proposed marriage, Princess Irene publicly stated that her marriage was intended to help end religious intolerance. This caused a division in public opinion, as less than 40 percent of the country ruled by the Protestant House of Orange was Roman Catholic. Over the ensuing weeks, things deteriorated further when Pope Paul VI granted an audience requested by the couple in Rome. The Vatican believed the meeting was being held with the consent of the Dutch Royal Family. The Queen at first denied such a meeting had taken place, but it was later verified. Because the constitution prohibits members of the royal family from any involvement in foreign politics, Irene alienated herself from almost every Dutch citizen when a photo appeared in a Dutch paper showing her at a Carlist rally in Spain and she declared that she supported her fiancé's political goals. The Dutch government officially announced that it had no responsibility for either the words or actions of Princess Irene in the future on 10 April 1964. It was done in response to Irene's declaration of joining Carlos Hugo's political campaign to regain the throne of Spain on 8 April 1964.


title: Princess Irene of the Netherlands

text: No one from the Dutch Royal family or any Dutch diplomatic representative attended the marriage of Princess Irene and Prince Carlos Hugo in the Borghese Chapel at the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, Italy, on 29 April 1964. There were also no representatives of Spain's Franco government at the ceremony; the couple chose Rome as the site of their nuptials because of its neutrality.


title: Princess Irene of the Netherlands

text: Dutch television provided coverage of the marriage and Irene's family was among those who watched the ceremonies, although fate conspired in the form of a power failure which made them unable to see the last part of the rite. The Dutch royal family gathered at the home of Prince Bernhard's mother, Armgard of Sierstorpff-Cramm, for the television coverage. Princess Armgard had also converted to Roman Catholicism like her granddaughter, but decided against attending the wedding. Irene and her mother spoke on the telephone before she left for the Basilica. Governmental fears that attendance at the wedding by the Dutch royal family might be construed as approval of Spanish politics made it impossible for the family to do anything else. The Dutch government had also vetoed the possibility of the wedding being held in the Netherlands. While it is said that Pope Paul VI had been asked to officiate at the wedding and declined, he did send the couple his special blessing before the ceremony. He received the newlyweds at a private Vatican audience after their wedding. Because she had failed to obtain the approval of the States-General to marry, Irene lost her right of succession to the Dutch throne. She agreed that she would live outside of the Netherlands. In an effort to maintain no conflict between the royal family and the government, Queen Juliana invited Premier Marijnen to her birthday celebration at the palace the day after Irene's wedding.


title: Princess Irene of the Netherlands

text: In 1968, Princess Irene was libeled by the West German "rainbow press". The publications operated similarly to movie and television gossip magazines, with the exception being that instead of stories about film or television stars, the rainbow press wrote about royalty and their supposed secret lives. One of the publications printed a story that Irene had undergone an abortion with parental consent before she was married. Irene's father, Prince Bernhard, took the paper to court to clear his daughter's name. The court found in favor of father and daughter, ordering the newspaper to pay them both damages and to print a public apology.


title: Princess Irene of the Netherlands

text: After the wedding, Irene was very active in her husband's right-wing political cause, but over time they drifted away from right-wing extremism to left-wing sympathies and became a part of the international jet-set crowd. In 1977, Irene was expelled from Spain because of her political views; her husband was also barred from the country for the same reason. Prince Carlos was allowed to return in late 1977, but Princess Irene was not permitted back in the country until April 1978. The prince, head of the Royal House of Bourbon-Parma, became a naturalized Spanish citizen in 1979. The couple had four children, but the marriage ended in divorce in 1981.


title: Princess Irene of the Netherlands

text: Having been married to the Duke of Parma, she is the only one of her sisters whose husband was of princely status. Her youngest sister, Princess Christina, later waived her rights to the throne when she married Jorge Guillermo, a United States citizen born in Cuba and a Roman Catholic.


title: Princess Irene of the Netherlands

text: In 1980, Irene and her children returned to live in the Netherlands, initially moving back into Soestdijk Palace. She became involved in various personal development workshops. By 1981, she and her children had moved to their own home across the street from the palace, where Irene did traditional household chores like grocery shopping. In 1983 and 1985, she publicly spoke out against the additional deployment of NATO missiles at a large anti-nuclear rally in The Hague and with a letter to the newspaper "De Volkskrant". Her connection with nature, that she says she had felt since childhood, intensified, and in 1995 she published her book "Dialogue with Nature". The book outlined her philosophy that human beings are alienated from the natural world, but the Dutch media seized upon passages that recounted conversations she said she had with the trees and dolphins.


title: Princess Irene of the Netherlands

text: In 1999 Princess Irene purchased a farm near Nieu-Bethesda in South Africa, turning it into a sanctuary. In 2001, she helped establish the NatuurCollege in the Netherlands. She is also the founder of NatureWise, an organization that brings elementary school children in the Netherlands directly in touch with nature. The Princess is an honorary member of the Club of Budapest.


title: Solar Power Tour

text: The Solar Power Tour is the third tour by New Zealander singer-songwriter Lorde, in support of her third studio album "Solar Power" (2021). Beginning in April 2022, the tour will play over 60 concerts in Australia, Asia, North America, South America, and Europe.


title: Solar Power Tour

text: The show consisted of three segments and an encore, with two or three costume changes. The set list changed frequently as the tour went on, but consistently featured songs from all three of her studio albums, occasionally performing covers as well.


title: Solar Power Tour

text: The Primavera Sound setlist for their 2022 festival was revealed on 25 May 2021, which included Lorde as a headliner. The dates for the Solar Power Tour were announced alongside the tracklist and release date of "Solar Power" on 21 June 2021. Lorde offered presale tickets for her fans subscribed to her mailing list, with presale tickets available from 24 June 2021 in North America and Europe, and 30 June 2021 in Australia and New Zealand. The general sale opened in North America and Europe on 25 June 2021, and in Australia and New Zealand on 5 July 2021. "Taranaki Daily News" reported that prices for her concert in New Plymouth started from NZ$89.90 plus fees.


title: Solar Power Tour

text: On 24 May 2022, shows for Mexico were added, including Mexico City, Monterrey and Guadalajara. Lorde announced the shows via email with a presale code for fans. A second show for Mexico City was added on June 01st, at Pepsi Center WTC, scheduled for October 11 and 12. The show in Monterrey is part of the Tecate Live Out Festival. Lorde also announced plans to play a different setlist of the tour in the Mexico shows.


title: Solar Power Tour

text: On 25 June 2021, after her two London shows sold out instantly, Lorde added two new dates in London, with a third show in the Roundhouse Theatre scheduled for 3 June 2022, and another performance to close out the tour on 28 June 2022 at Alexandra Palace. A second show was added in Šibenik on the same day, with "Croatia Week" reporting that tickets for her first show sold out in 3 seconds. Additional shows were also added in Toronto, Boston, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. On 1 July 2021, two additional shows were added in Australia, after "overwhelming demand", with one show each added in Melbourne and Sydney.


title: Solar Power Tour

text: It was announced on 10 November 2021 that the Australasian leg of the Solar Power Tour would be postponed to 2023. Lorde said of the decision that "touring internationally through a Covid outbreak has a ton of unforeseen moving parts, and I'd much rather play for you when we're all confident it will go smoothly", and promoters Frontier Touring said that the tour was initially scheduled with the expectation that there would be no restrictions on quarantine and that the borders of Australia and New Zealand would be open to non-citizens. New shows in Lower Hutt, Brisbane, and Perth were also announced.


title: Solar Power Tour

text: This set list is representative of the show on 20 April 2022, in Philadelphia. It is not representative of all concerts for the duration of the tour.


title: Macedonia (Roman province)

text: Macedonia () was a province of the Roman Empire, encompassing the territory of the former Antigonid Kingdom of Macedonia, which had been conquered by Rome in 168 BC at the conclusion of the Third Macedonian War. The province was created in 146 BC, after the Roman general Quintus Caecilius Metellus defeated Andriscus of Macedon, the last self-styled king of Macedonia in the Fourth Macedonian War. The province incorporated the former kingdom of Macedonia with the addition of Epirus, Thessaly, and parts of Illyria, Paeonia and Thrace.


title: Macedonia (Roman province)

text: During the Republican period, the province was of great military significance, as the main bulwark protecting the Aegean region from attacks from the north. The Via Egnatia, which crossed the province from west to east was of great strategic importance, providing the main overland link between Rome and its domains in the Eastern Mediterranean. In this period, campaigns against the Dardani and Scordisci to the north and the Thracians to the east were nearly constant. By the first century BC, the province notionally extended to the Danube.


title: Macedonia (Roman province)

text: Macedonia was a central theatre for several campaigns of the civil wars at the end of the Republic, including the Battles of Pharsalus and Philippi. During the Second Triumvirate, it fell within Marc Antony's sphere. Several important Roman military colonies were established in Macedonia in this period. After the province came under the control of the Augustus following the Battle of Actium in 30 BC, the northern sections were split off as the provinces of Moesia, Dalmatia and Pannonia, meaning that the province lost much of its military role in defending the Danube border, but it remained important for supply purposes and as a source of military manpower. Until AD 15 and again after AD 44, Macedonia was a senatorial province, governed by a proconsul.


title: Macedonia (Roman province)

text: Throughout the Imperial Period, Macedonia was a prosperous region with several thriving cities, notably Thessalonica and Philippi. These communities were organised in a similar way to other cities of the Roman Empire and were largely self-governing. Greek was the main language of the region, but Latin was used for official purposes and in the Roman colonies. There were substantial Christian communities in the province by the mid-first century AD.


title: Macedonia (Roman province)

text: In Late Antiquity, the province was split into several smaller units, but the old provincial capital, Thessalonica, became the regional centre for the Balkan region and was briefly an Imperial capital under Licinius. The provincial system gradually faded away, until it was replaced altogether by the theme system in the mid-7th century AD, but the region continued to form part of the Eastern Roman Empire until the end of the fourteenth century.


title: Macedonia (Roman province)

text: The Romans clashed with the Macedonian kingdom in three wars in the early third century BC. After defeating Perseus in the Third Macedonian War, Rome abolished the Macedonian monarchy and divided Macedon into four client republics, called "merides", with capitals located at Amphipolis, Thessalonica, Pella, and Pelagonia, which were members of a federal league, the League of the Macedonians. Numismatic evidence indicates that the cult of Roma was introduced at this time, being depicted on coins of Amphipolis, Pella, and Thessalonica in this period. Thessaly had been separated from the Macedonian monarchy already, following the Second Macedonian War and a separate Thessalian League was created with Roman permission in 194 BC, with Zeus Eleutherius ('of Freedom') and Athena Itonia as its patron deities. Its coinage superseded that of the individual Thessalian cities and continued until the end of the first century BC.


title: Macedonia (Roman province)

text: The kingdom was briefly reunited in 150 BC by the pretender Andriscus (or 'Pseudo-Philip'), leading to the Fourth Macedonian War. After defeating Andriscus near Pydna in 148 BC, Quintus Caecilius Metellus Macedonicus made Macedonia into Rome's fifth provincia - the first new province since the creation of Hispania Ulterior and Citerior in 197 BC. Surviving sources do not explicitly discuss how or why it was decided to convert the region into a permanent province. A number of factors may have been involved, including increased familiarity with territorial expansion, the proven failure of the previous system to maintain the peace, the desire for a new base from which further military expeditions could be undertaken in order to acquire booty and triumphs, and the desire for further tax revenue. The four republics continued to exist as subdivisions of the province, as did the federal league. The date of the establishment of the province in autumn 148 BC is indicated by the epoch date of the provincial era, but in practice it may have been a gradual process.


title: Macedonia (Roman province)

text: At its creation, the province of Macedonia encompassed Macedon itself, Paeonia and parts of Illyria, Thessaly to the south, and Epirus to the west. Notionally, the northern border ran from Lissus on the Adriatic coast, due east until it reached the Hebrus river, which formed the eastern border with Thrace. These borders were only loosely defined and dependent on the military competence of the governors, with Cicero claiming that "for the governors of Macedonia, the borders were always the same as those marked by swords and shields." The capital was Thessalonica and the governor held proconsular status.


title: Macedonia (Roman province)

text: Two years after the foundation of the new province, in 146 BC, Romans defeated the Achaean League in the Achaean War and gained control of the rest of Mainland Greece. Scholars disagree on whether or not Achaia was formally incorporated into the province of Macedonia following this defeat, but intermittent interventions in Achaian affairs by the governors are attested.


title: Macedonia (Roman province)

text: Sometime after 146 BC, Gnaeus Egnatius initiated the construction of the Via Egnatia, a Roman road, which began at Dyrrhachium on the Adriatic coast opposite the terminus of the Via Appia in Italy, stretched across the Pindus mountains and continued through Macedonia to Thessalonica, and from there to Cypsela, on the east bank of the Hebrus river. This stretch was completed by 120 BC; it followed a pre-existing route, but was a more solid, level road than the previous road, with a width of between three and six metres. A second road from the Adriatic coast at Apollonia, which joined the main Via Egnatia somewhere inland was added shortly after 120 BC. Later in the second century BC, the eastern end of the road was extended all the way to the Byzantium. The road was important for military and economic purposes, providing the main overland link between Rome and its domains in the Eastern Mediterranean.


title: Macedonia (Roman province)

text: Macedonia was of central importance to Roman military strategy in this period as a bulwark against attacks from the north. The Dardani to the northwest, had initially supported the Romans in their conquest of Macedonia, but after 148 BC, they increasingly came into conflict with the Romans. There were also occasional conflicts with the Thracians to the east. However, the key enemy of the Romans in this period were the Scordisci, a Celtic group that largely supplanted the Dardanians as the most powerful group in the central Balkans. They first invaded Macedonia in 149 BC during the Fourth Macedonian War and had to be driven out by Metellus.


title: Macedonia (Roman province)

text: In the first years of the province two pretenders attempted to restore the Macedonian kingdom. The first, Alexander, invaded from Thrace in 148 BC and was defeated by Metellus. The second, referred to in the sources as 'Pseudo-Philip' or 'Pseudo-Perseus' also invaded from the east, in 143 or 142, with an army of up to 16,000 men, but was defeated by the quaestor Tremellus Scrofa. The Scordisci invaded in 141 BC and defeated a Roman army commanded by Decimus Junius Silanus Manlianus or, less likely, Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica. In belated response to this defeat, Marcus Cosconius launched an attack on the Scordisci in 135 BC, defeating them in Thrace. The delay may have been because Roman attention was focussed on the construction of the Via Egnatia.


title: Macedonia (Roman province)

text: In 119 BC, the Scordisci invaded again, ravaging the area near Stobi. The praetor Sextus Pompeius met the forces in battle and was killed, leaving his quaestor Marcus Annius to regroup and drive the Scordisci out, defeating a second invasion with the help of the Thracians. Following this set-back, a series of consuls were sent to Macedonia, apparently to settle the threat from the Scordisci decisively. The first of these, Quintus Fabius Maximus Eburnus arrived in 115 BC but his activities are not attested. In 114 BC, his successor, Gaius Porcius Cato launched a large-scale invasion, but he was defeated and nearly the whole army was killed. The Romans dispatched several further commanders, Gaius Caecilius Metellus Caprarius in 113 BC and Marcus Livius Drusus in 112, who inflicted defeats on the Thracians and the Scordisci respectively. From 110 to 107 BC, Marcus Minucius Rufus campaigned against the Scordisci and the Bessian tribe of Thracians to the east, bringing an end to their raids for about twenty years.


title: Macedonia (Roman province)

text: After this, the Romans turned their attention to the eastern border. The Romans defeated some Thracians under an unnamed commander in 104 BC. In 101 or 100 BC, Titus Didius conquered an area referred to as the "Caenic Chersonese" (exact location unknown, but some region of the Thracian coast). Another unnamed commander defeated the Maedian Thracians in the east and the Dardanians in the northwest in 97 BC. Gaius Sentius Saturninus was defeated by the Maedi in 92 BC and was involved in a conflict with a Thracian king called Sordinus in 89 BC, only achieving victory after a struggle. From 87 BC onwards, Thracian forces allied with Mithridates VI attacked Macedonia, as part of the First Mithridatic War. In 84 BC a force of Scordisci, Dardianians and Maedi penetrated all the way to Delphi and sacked the sanctuary, before they were violently expelled by Lucius Cornelius Scipio Asiaticus (consul 83 BC).


title: Macedonia (Roman province)

text: In the aftermath of the Mithridatic Wars, the Romans again launched a concerted military effort in the region. Before the war, governors had tended to be praetors or propraetors, usually in office for a single year. Henceforth, they were consuls or proconsuls and often held command for several years. Appius Claudius Pulcher had some success in the Rhodope Mountains in 77 BC, but was replaced after his death from illness by C. Scribonius Curio, who was given a force of five legions. He campaigned from 75 to 74 BC, becoming the first Roman commander to lead an army to the Danube and reduced the Dardanians to submission. Between 73 and 71 BC, Marcus Terentius Varro Lucullus led another force of five legions against the Bessi and entered Moesia, bringing the Greek cities on the west coast of the Black Sea under Roman control and campaigning against the Getae all the way to the mouth of the Danube. These campaigns were intended to secure the northern border so that Macedonia and Greece would no longer be threatened by raids and to put Rome in a better position to confront Mithridates VI in future conflicts. Efforts to consolidate these enormous conquests continued for decades, often meeting with rebuffs, most notably the two campaigns of Gaius Antonius Hybrida in the north ca. 62-61 BC, in which he was defeated disastrously by the Dardianians and at the Battle of Histria by the Bastarnae.


title: Macedonia (Roman province)

text: The governorship of Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus from 57 to 55 BC is the subject of Cicero's "In Pisonem", in which Caesoninus is accused of corruption, abuse, and murder of the provincials on a grand scale, as well as shaving sparked another invasion by the Dardianians and Bessi that even placed Thessaloniki under siege, but the speech may not give an accurate picture of Caesoninus' conduct.


title: Macedonia (Roman province)

text: Macedonia was one of the main arenas of the civil wars at the end of the Roman Republic. When Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 49 BC, starting Caesar's Civil War, his opponents, led by Pompey abandoned Italy and retreated to Macedonia with five legions. Around two hundred Senators set themselves up in Thessalonica as a Senate in exile and raised a further legion from veterans in Macedonia and Crete. At the beginning of 48 BC, Caesar crossed the Adriatic and besieged Pompey at Dyrrhachium. During this period, one Menedemos came to Caesar as a delegate from "the part of the province that was called free" offering him support; he was subsequently captured by Pompey's forces and executed. After several months, Pompey broke out of Dyrrhachium and headed southeast toward Thessaly. On the march he was met by another Macedonian, Acornion of Dionysiopolis, who came offering an alliance with Burebista, the king of Dacia. However, this offer had come too late to be of use to Pompey. Caesar decisively defeated him at the Battle of Pharsalus in August 48 BC and he fled for Egypt. On taking control of the province, Caesar separated it from Greece to the south for the first time. This division was reversed after his death in 44 BC, but would be revived in the Imperial period.


title: Macedonia (Roman province)

text: After the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BC, the assassins, led by Brutus and Cassius, also fled east. Caesar's former lieutenant, Mark Antony passed a law requiring the governor, Quintus Hortensius Hortalus to hand the province over to Antony. Instead, he chose to place the province under Brutus' control - a move that was recognised by the Senate in 43 BC. This led Mark Antony to ally with Octavian in the Second Triumvirate and invade Macedonia, defeating Brutus and his forces at the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC.


title: Macedonia (Roman province)

text: After Philippi, Macedonia fell within the territories assigned to Mark Antony and it was governed by his legates until war broke out between Octavian and Antony in 32 BC and Antony was defeated in 31 BC at the Battle of Actium, after which Macedonia and the rest of the Eastern Mediterranean came under Octavian's control, marking the beginning of the Principate.


title: Macedonia (Roman province)

text: Following Actium, Octavian entrusted Macedonia to the proconsul M. Licinius Crassus, grandson of Crassus the triumvir, who led a campaign into the north that lasted until 27 BC, finally subjugating the whole region south of the Danube, for which he was granted a triumph.


title: Macedonia (Roman province)

text: In the Augustan Settlement of 27 BC, provinces were divided into two categories: imperial provinces, which fell were governed by legates appointed by the Emperor, and senatorial provinces, which continued to be governed by senators who had previously served as consuls or praetors. Most of the provinces with a large military presence on the borders of the empire were Imperial provinces, but Macedonia was anomalous in being a senatorial province despite its military significance. The territories south of Thermopylae and the Ceraunian Mountains now became the separate province of Achaia. This province included the territory which would become the province of Epirus (later "Epirus Vetus") under Emperor Trajan.


title: Macedonia (Roman province)

text: Moesia was split off as a separate military command some time before 10 BC, and had become a separate province by AD 6. Territories to the northwest of Macedonia in Illyricum were separated off into the provinces of Dalmatia and Pannonia. In AD 15, complaints about the corruption of the governors led Tiberius to convert Macedonia and Achaia into imperial provinces, under the control of the governor of Moesia, but Claudius made them both Senatorial provinces once more in AD 44 In the same year, the portion of Macedonia between the Hebrus and Nestus rivers in the east and the island of Thasos were handed over to the newly created province of Thrace.


title: Macedonia (Roman province)

text: The establishment of new provinces to the north and the consolidation of Roman control in the Balkans in general led to a decline in the military importance of Macedonia to Rome, as the legions defending the northern border were henceforth based in Dalmatia, Moesia, and Thrace. Nevertheless, the province continued to provide a vital role in the transport of supplies from Italy to the northern and eastern borders of the Empire, as well as serving as a source of manpower.


title: Macedonia (Roman province)

text: The cities of the province had a range of different statuses. Six Roman colonies ("coloniae") were established in the Triumviral period: Cassandrea, established in the late 40s BC by the proconsul Quintus Hortensius Hortalus, Philippi ("Colonia Iulia Augusta Philippensis") founded by Antony's legate Quintus Paquius Rufus, Dium, Pella, Byllis, and Dyrrhachium. These communities were settled with veterans who became or remained Roman citizens. Local inhabitants of these communities were not expelled, but they did not receive citizenship of the new colonies or of Rome, except perhaps for some members of the local elite. Some scholars have suggested that these "coloniae" formed "double communities," with the old Greek city-state ("polis") and the new "colonia" existing side-by-side. This now seems unlikely, but has not been disproven. Stobi was a "municipium". Amphipolis, Thessalonica, Abdera, and Maroneia held the status of 'free cities' ("civitates liberae"), and Edessa was probably an 'allied city' ("civitas foederata").


title: Macedonia (Roman province)

text: In the Republican period a cult of "the Roman Benefactors" ("Rhomaioi euergetai"), the goddess Roma, and Zeus "Eleutherios" ("of freedom") developed in Macedonia. This cult is first attested in 95 or possibly 119 BC, but probably dates back to the establishment of the province. It endured in the Imperial period. The Roman Imperial cult was introduced under Augustus, with numismatic and epigraphic evidence attesting to the worship of Julius Caesar as "Divus Julius" following Actium. Under Tiberius, cults of Augustus and of Livia are attested as well, while divine honours for Caligula and subsequent emperors are attested during their own lifetimes.


title: Macedonia (Roman province)

text: The cities of Macedonia were arranged into the League of the Macedonians (Greek: "koinon ton Makedonon"), with its seat at Beroea. From 27 BC, they used their own "Macedonian era," in which the years were counted from the Battle of Actium in 31/30 BC. This league was a continuation of an institution first attested under Philip V. In the Imperial period, its main duties related to the Imperial cult, especially the organisation of games in honour of the emperors. It also hosted a local version of the Olympic games, and from AD 229, games in honour of Alexander the Great. From the time of the emperor Claudius until the end of the second century AD, the league minted its own coinage, with the thunderbolt, a traditional symbol of Macedon on the reverse. In the third century AD, the league continued to mint coinage, but with new types, relating to athletic competition. Through this institution, Macedonian identity and loyalty to the Roman emperor were closely aligned.


title: Macedonia (Roman province)

text: The reforms of Diocletian around AD 293 saw provinces replaced by dioceses and praetorian prefectures as the first order subdivision of the Roman Empire and provinces began to be split into smaller units. The province of Macedonia was initially part of the Diocese of Moesia, but subsequently became part of a new Diocese of Macedonia (administered from Thessaloniki), one of three dioceses comprising the praetorian prefecture of Illyricum (administered from Sirmium until 379, then from Thessaloniki). Meanwhile, the province of Macedonia was divided into a number of smaller provinces.


title: Macedonia (Roman province)

text: When the Prefecture of Macedonia was divided between the Western and Eastern Empires in 379, the Macedonian provinces were included in Eastern Illyricum. With the permanent division of the Empire in 395, Macedonia passed to the East, which would evolve into the Byzantine Empire.


title: Macedonia (Roman province)

text: The reign of Augustus (27 BC14 AD) began a long period of peace, prosperity and wealth for Macedonia, although its importance in the economic standing of the Roman world diminished when compared to its neighbor, Asia Minor.


title: Macedonia (Roman province)

text: The economy was greatly stimulated by the construction of the Via Egnatia during 130s and 120s BC, the installation of Roman merchants in the cities, and the founding of Roman colonies. The Imperial government brought, along with its roads and administrative system, an economic boom, which benefited both the Roman ruling class and the lower classes. With vast arable and rich pastures, the great ruling families amassed huge fortunes in the society based on slave labor.


title: Macedonia (Roman province)

text: The improvement of the living conditions of the productive classes brought about an increase in the number artisans and craftspeople to the region. Stonemasons, miners, blacksmiths, etc. were employed in every kind of commercial activity and craft. Greek people were also widely employed as tutors, educators and doctors throughout the Roman world.


title: Macedonia (Roman province)

text: The export economy was based essentially on agriculture and livestock, while iron, copper, and gold along with such products as timber, resin, pitch, hemp, flax, and fish were also exported. Another source of wealth was the kingdom's ports, such as Thessalonica, Cassandreia.


title: Hassium

text: Hassium is a chemical element with the symbol Hs and the atomic number 108. Hassium is highly radioactive; its most stable known isotopes have half-lives of approximately ten seconds. One of its isotopes, Hs, has magic numbers of both protons and neutrons for deformed nuclei, which gives it greater stability against spontaneous fission. Hassium is a superheavy element; it has been produced in a laboratory only in very small quantities by fusing heavy nuclei with lighter ones. Natural occurrences of the element have been hypothesised but never found.


title: Hassium

text: In the periodic table of elements, hassium is a transactinide element, a member of the 7th period and group 8; it is thus the sixth member of the 6d series of transition metals. Chemistry experiments have confirmed that hassium behaves as the heavier homologue to osmium, reacting readily with oxygen to form a volatile tetroxide. The chemical properties of hassium have been only partly characterized, but they compare well with the chemistry of the other group 8 elements.


title: Hassium

text: The principal innovation that led to the discovery of hassium was the technique of cold fusion, in which the fused nuclei did not differ by mass as much as in earlier techniques. It relied on greater stability of target nuclei, which in turn decreased excitation energy. This decreased the number of neutron ejections during synthesis, creating heavier, more stable resulting nuclei. The technique was first tested at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, Moscow Oblast, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union, in 1974. JINR used this technique to attempt synthesis of element 108 in 1978, in 1983, and in 1984; the latter experiment resulted in a claim that element 108 had been produced. Later in 1984, a synthesis claim followed from the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung (GSI) in Darmstadt, Hesse, West Germany. The 1993 report by the Transfermium Working Group, formed by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry and the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics, concluded that the report from Darmstadt was conclusive on its own whereas that from Dubna was not, and major credit was assigned to the German scientists. GSI formally announced they wished to name the element "hassium" after the German state of Hesse (Hassia in Latin) home to the facility in 1992; this name was accepted as final in 1997.


title: Hassium

text: Nuclear reactions used in the 1960s resulted in high excitation energies that required expulsion of four or five neutrons; these reactions used targets made of elements with high atomic numbers to maximize the size difference between the two nuclei in a reaction. While this increased the chance of fusion due to the lower electrostatic repulsion between the target and the projectile, the formed compound nuclei often broke apart and did not survive to form a new element. Moreover, fusion processes inevitably produce neutron-poor nuclei, as heavier elements require more neutrons per proton to maximize stability; therefore, the necessary ejection of neutrons results in final products with typically have shorter lifetimes. As such, light beams (six to ten protons) allowed synthesis of elements only up to 106.


title: Hassium

text: To advance to heavier elements, Soviet physicist Yuri Oganessian at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, Moscow Oblast, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union, proposed a different mechanism, in which the bombarded nucleus would be lead-208, which has magic numbers of protons and neutrons, or another nucleus close to it. Each proton and neutron has a fixed value of rest energy; those of all protons are equal and so are those of all neutrons. In a nucleus, some of this energy is diverted to binding protons and neutrons; if a nucleus has a magic number of protons and/or neutrons, then even more of its rest energy is diverted, which gives the nuclide additional stability. This additional stability requires more energy for an external nucleus to break the existing one and penetrate it. More energy diverted to binding nucleons means less rest energy, which in turn means less mass (mass is proportional to rest energy). More equal atomic numbers of the reacting nuclei result in greater electrostatic repulsion between them, but the lower mass excess of the target nucleus balances it. This leaves less excitation energy for the newly created compound nucleus, which necessitates fewer neutron ejections to reach a stable state. Because of this energy difference, the former mechanism became known as "hot fusion" and the latter as "cold fusion".


title: Hassium

text: Cold fusion was first declared successful in 1974 at JINR, when it was tested for synthesis of the yet-undiscovered element106. These new nuclei were projected to decay via spontaneous fission. The physicists at JINR concluded element 106 was produced in the experiment because no fissioning nucleus known at the time showed parameters of fission similar to what was observed during the experiment and because changing either of the two nuclei in the reactions negated the observed effects. Physicists at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (LBL; originally Radiation Laboratory, RL, and later Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, LBNL) of the University of California in Berkeley, California, United States, also expressed great interest in the new technique. When asked about how far this new method could go and if lead targets were a physics' Klondike, Oganessian responded, "Klondike may be an exaggeration [...] But soon, we will try to get elements 107... 108 in these reactions."


title: Hassium

text: The synthesis of element108 was first attempted in 1978 by a research team led by Oganessian at the JINR. The team used a reaction that would generate element108, specifically, the isotope 108, from fusion of radium (specifically, the isotope and calcium . The researchers were uncertain in interpreting their data, and their paper did not unambiguously claim to have discovered the element. The same year, another team at JINR investigated the possibility of synthesis of element108 in reactions between lead and iron ; they were uncertain in interpreting the data, suggesting the possibility that element108 had not been created.


title: Hassium

text: In 1983, new experiments were performed at JINR. The experiments probably resulted in the synthesis of element108; bismuth was bombarded with manganese to obtain 108, lead , was bombarded with iron to obtain 108, and californium was bombarded with neon to obtain 108. These experiments were not claimed as a discovery and Oganessian announced them in a conference rather than in a written report.


title: Hassium

text: In 1984, JINR researchers in Dubna performed experiments set up identically to the previous ones; they bombarded bismuth and lead targets with ions of lighter elements manganese and iron, respectively. Twenty-one spontaneous fission events were recorded; the researchers concluded they were caused by 108.


title: Hassium

text: Later in 1984, a research team led by Peter Armbruster and Gottfried Münzenberg at Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung (GSI; "Institute for Heavy Ion Research") in Darmstadt, Hesse, West Germany, attempted to create element108. The team bombarded a lead target with accelerated iron nuclei. GSI's experiment to create element108 was delayed until after their creation of element109 in 1982, as prior calculations had suggested that even–even isotopes of element108 would have spontaneous fission half-lives of less than one microsecond, making them difficult to detect and identify. The element108 experiment finally went ahead after 109 had been synthesized and was found to decay by alpha emission, suggesting that isotopes of element108 would do likewise, and this was corroborated by an experiment aimed at synthesizing isotopes of element106. GSI reported synthesis of three atoms of 108. Two years later, they reported synthesis of one atom of the even–even 108.


title: Hassium

text: In 1985, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) and the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) formed the Transfermium Working Group (TWG) to assess discoveries and establish final names for elements with atomic numbers greater than 100. The party held meetings with delegates from the three competing institutes; in 1990, they established criteria for recognition of an element and in 1991, they finished the work of assessing discoveries and disbanded. These results were published in 1993.


title: Hassium

text: According to the report, the 1984 works from JINR and GSI simultaneously and independently established synthesis of element108. Of the two 1984 works, the one from GSI was said to be sufficient as a discovery on its own. The JINR work, which preceded the GSI one, "very probably" displayed synthesis of element108. However, that was determined in retrospect given the work from Darmstadt; the JINR work focused on chemically identifying remote granddaughters of element108 isotopes (which could not exclude the possibility that these daughter isotopes had other progenitors), while the GSI work clearly identified the decay path of those element108 isotopes. The report concluded that the major credit should be awarded to GSI. In written responses to this ruling, both JINR and GSI agreed with its conclusions. In the same response, GSI confirmed that they and JINR were able to resolve all conflicts between them.


title: Hassium

text: Historically, a newly discovered element was named by its discoverer. The first regulation came in 1947, when IUPAC decided naming required regulation in case there are conflicting names. These matters were to be resolved by the Commission of Inorganic Nomenclature and the Commission of Atomic Weights. They would review the names in case of a conflict and select one; the decision would be based on a number of factors, such as usage, and would not be an indicator of priority of a claim. The two commissions would recommend a name to the IUPAC Council, which would be the final authority. The discoverers held the right to name an element, but their name would be subject to approval by IUPAC. The Commission of Atomic Weights distanced itself from element naming in most cases.


title: Hassium

text: Under Mendeleev's nomenclature for unnamed and undiscovered elements, hassium would be known as "eka-osmium", as in "the first element below osmium in the periodic table" (from Sanskrit "eka" meaning "one"). In 1979, IUPAC published recommendations according to which the element was to be called "unniloctium" and assigned the corresponding symbol of "Uno", a systematic element name as a placeholder until the element was discovered and the discovery then confirmed, and a permanent name was decided. Although these recommendations were widely followed in the chemical community, the competing physicists in the field ignored them. They either called it "element108", with the symbols "E108", "(108)" or "108", or used the proposed name "hassium".


title: Hassium

text: In 1990, in an attempt to break a deadlock in establishing priority of discovery and naming of several elements, IUPAC reaffirmed in its nomenclature of inorganic chemistry that after existence of an element was established, the discoverers could propose a name. (In addition, the Commission of Atomic Weights was excluded from the naming process.) The first publication on criteria for an element discovery, released in 1991, specified the need for recognition by TWG.


title: Hassium

text: Armbruster and his colleagues, the officially recognized German discoverers, held a naming ceremony for the elements 107 through 109, which had all been recognized as discovered by GSI, on 7September 1992. For element108, the scientists proposed the name "hassium". It is derived from the Latin name "Hassia" for the German state of Hesse where the institute is located. This name was proposed to IUPAC in a written response to their ruling on priority of discovery claims of elements, signed 29 September 1992.


title: Hassium

text: The process of naming of element 108 was a part of a larger process of naming a number of elements starting with element 101; three teams—JINR, GSI, and LBL—claimed discoveries of several elements and the right to name those elements. Sometimes, these claims clashed; since a discoverer was considered entitled to naming of an element, conflicts over priority of discovery often resulted in conflicts over names of these new elements. These conflicts became known as the Transfermium Wars. Different suggestions to name the whole set of elements from 101 onward and they occasionally assigned names suggested by one team to be used for elements discovered by another. However, not all suggestions were met with equal approval; the teams openly protested naming proposals on several occasions.


title: Hassium

text: In 1994, IUPAC Commission on Nomenclature of Inorganic Chemistry recommended that element108 be named "hahnium" (Hn) after the German physicist Otto Hahn so elements named after Hahn and Lise Meitner (it was recommended element109 should be named meitnerium, following GSI's suggestion) would be next to each other, honouring their joint discovery of nuclear fission; IUPAC commented that they felt the German suggestion was obscure. GSI protested, saying this proposal contradicted the long-standing convention of giving the discoverer the right to suggest a name; the American Chemical Society supported GSI. The name "hahnium", albeit with the different symbol Ha, had already been proposed and used by the American scientists for element105, for which they had a discovery dispute with JINR; they thus protested the confusing scrambling of names. Following the uproar, IUPAC formed an ad hoc committee of representatives from the national adhering organizations of the three countries home to the competing institutions; they produced a new set of names in 1995. Element108 was again named "hahnium"; this proposal was also retracted. The final compromise was reached in 1996 and published in 1997; element108 was named "hassium" (Hs). Simultaneously, the name "dubnium" (Db; from Dubna, the JINR location) was assigned to element105, and the name "hahnium" was not used for any element.


title: Hassium

text: The official justification for this naming, alongside that of darmstadtium for element110, was that it completed a set of geographic names for the location of the GSI; this set had been initiated by 19th-century names europium and germanium. This set would serve as a response to earlier naming of americium, californium, and berkelium for elements discovered in Berkeley. Armbruster commented on this, "this bad tradition was established by Berkeley. We wanted to do it for Europe." Later, when commenting on the naming of element112, Armbruster said, "I did everything to ensure that we do not continue with German scientists and German towns."


title: Hassium

text: Hassium has no stable or naturally occurring isotopes. Several radioactive isotopes have been synthesized in the laboratory, either by fusing two atoms or by observing the decay of heavier elements. As of 2019, the quantity of all hassium ever produced was on the order of hundreds of atoms. Thirteen isotopes with mass numbers ranging from 263 to 277 (with the exceptions of 274 and 276) have been reported, four of which—hassium-265, -266, -267, and -277—have known metastable states, although that of hassium-277 is unconfirmed. Most of these isotopes decay predominantly through alpha decay; this is the most common for all isotopes for which comprehensive decay characteristics are available, the only exception being hassium-277, which undergoes spontaneous fission. Lighter isotopes were usually synthesized by direct fusion between two lighter nuclei, whereas heavier isotopes were typically observed as decay products of nuclei with larger atomic numbers.


title: Hassium

text: Atomic nuclei have well-established nuclear shells, and the existence of these shells provides nuclei with additional stability. If a nucleus has certain numbers of protons or neutrons, called magic numbers, that complete certain nuclear shells, then the nucleus is even more stable against decay. The highest known magic numbers are 82 for protons and 126 for neutrons. This notion is sometimes expanded to include additional numbers between those magic numbers, which also provide some additional stability and indicate closure of "sub-shells". In contrast to the better-known lighter nuclei, superheavy nuclei are deformed. Until the 1960s, the liquid drop model was the dominant explanation for nuclear structure. It suggested that the fission barrier would disappear for nuclei with about 280nucleons. It was thus thought that spontaneous fission would occur nearly instantly before nuclei could form a structure that could stabilize them; it appeared that nuclei with Z≈103 were too heavy to exist for a considerable length of time.


title: Hassium

text: The later nuclear shell model suggested that nuclei with about three hundred nucleons would form an island of stability in which nuclei will be more resistant to spontaneous fission and will primarily undergo alpha decay with longer half-lives, and the next doubly magic nucleus (having magic numbers of both protons and neutrons) is expected to lie in the center of the island of stability in the vicinity of "Z"=110–114 and the predicted magic neutron number "N"=184. Subsequent discoveries suggested that the predicted island might be further than originally anticipated; they also showed that nuclei intermediate between the long-lived actinides and the predicted island are deformed, and gain additional stability from shell effects. The addition to the stability against the spontaneous fission should be particularly great against spontaneous fission, although increase in stability against the alpha decay would also be pronounced. The center of the region on a chart of nuclides that would correspond to this stability for deformed nuclei was determined as Hs, with 108 expected to be a magic number for protons for deformed nuclei—nuclei that are far from spherical—and 162 a magic number for neutrons for such nuclei. Experiments on lighter superheavy nuclei, as well as those closer to the expected island, have shown greater than previously anticipated stability against spontaneous fission, showing the importance of shell effects on nuclei.


title: Hassium

text: Theoretical models predict a region of instability for some hassium isotopes to lie around "A"=275 and "N"=168–170, which is between the predicted neutron shell closures at "N"=162 for deformed nuclei and "N"=184 for spherical nuclei. Nuclides within this region are predicted to have low fission barrier heights, resulting in short partial half-lives toward spontaneous fission. This prediction is supported by the observed eleven-millisecond half-life of Hs and that of the neighbouring isobar Mt because the hindrance factors from the odd nucleon were shown to be much lower than otherwise expected. The measured half-lives are even lower than those predicted for the even–even Hs and Ds, which suggests a gap in stability away from the shell closures and perhaps a weakening of the shell closures in this region.


title: Hassium

text: In 1991, Polish physicists Zygmunt Patyk and Adam Sobiczewski predicted that 108 is a proton magic number for deformed nuclei and 162 is a neutron magic number for such nuclei. This means such nuclei are permanently deformed in their ground state but have high, narrow fission barriers to further deformation and hence relatively long life-times toward spontaneous fission. Computational prospects for shell stabilization for Hs made it a promising candidate for a deformed doubly magic nucleus. Experimental data is scarce, but the existing data is interpreted by the researchers to support the assignment of "N"=162 as a magic number. In particular, this conclusion was drawn from the decay data of Hs, Hs, and Hs. In 1997, Polish physicist Robert Smolańczuk calculated that the isotope Hs may be the most stable superheavy nucleus against alpha decay and spontaneous fission as a consequence of the predicted "N"=184 shell closure.


title: Hassium

text: Hassium is not known to occur naturally on Earth; the half-lives of all its known isotopes are short enough that no primordial hassium would have survived to the present day. This does not rule out the possibility of the existence of unknown, longer-lived isotopes or nuclear isomers, some of which could still exist in trace quantities if they are long-lived enough. As early as 1914, German physicist Richard Swinne proposed element108 as a source of X-rays in the Greenland ice sheet. Although Swinne was unable to verify this observation and thus did not claim discovery, he proposed in 1931 the existence of "regions" of long-lived transuranic elements, including one around "Z"=108.


title: Hassium

text: In 1963, Soviet geologist and physicist Viktor Cherdyntsev, who had previously claimed the existence of primordial curium-247, claimed to have discovered element108—specifically the 108 isotope, which supposedly had a half-life of 400 to 500million years—in natural molybdenite and suggested the provisional name "sergenium" (symbol Sg); this name takes its origin from the name for the Silk Road and was explained as "coming from Kazakhstan" for it. His rationale for claiming that sergenium was the heavier homologue to osmium was that minerals supposedly containing sergenium formed volatile oxides when boiled in nitric acid, similarly to osmium.


title: Hassium

text: Cherdyntsev's findings were criticized by Soviet physicist Vladimir Kulakov on the grounds that some of the properties Cherdyntsev claimed sergenium had were inconsistent with the then-current nuclear physics. The chief questions raised by Kulakov were that the claimed alpha decay energy of sergenium was many orders of magnitude lower than expected and the half-life given was eight orders of magnitude shorter than what would be predicted for a nuclide alpha-decaying with the claimed decay energy. At the same time, a corrected half-life in the region of 10years would be impossible because it would imply the samples contained about a hundred milligrams of sergenium. In 2003, it was suggested that the observed alpha decay with energy 4.5MeV could be due to a low-energy and strongly enhanced transition between different hyperdeformed states of a hassium isotope around Hs, thus suggesting that the existence of superheavy elements in nature was at least possible, although unlikely.


title: Hassium

text: In 2006, Russian geologist Alexei Ivanov hypothesized that an isomer of Hs might have a half-life of around years, which would explain the observation of alpha particles with energies of around 4.4MeV in some samples of molybdenite and osmiridium. This isomer of Hs could be produced from the beta decay of Bh and Sg, which, being homologous to rhenium and molybdenum respectively, should occur in molybdenite along with rhenium and molybdenum if they occurred in nature. Because hassium is homologous to osmium, it should occur along with osmium in osmiridium if it occurs in nature. The decay chains of Bh and Sg are hypothetical and the predicted half-life of this hypothetical hassium isomer is not long enough for any sufficient quantity to remain on Earth. It is possible that more Hs may be deposited on the Earth as the Solar System travels through the spiral arms of the Milky Way; this would explain excesses of plutonium-239 found on the ocean floors of the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Finland. However, minerals enriched with Hs are predicted to have excesses of its daughters uranium-235 and lead-207; they would also have different proportions of elements that are formed during spontaneous fission, such as krypton, zirconium, and xenon. The natural occurrence of hassium in minerals such as molybdenite and osmiride is theoretically possible, but very unlikely.


title: Hassium

text: In 2004, JINR started a search for natural hassium in the Modane Underground Laboratory in Modane, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France; this was done underground to avoid interference and false positives from cosmic rays. In 2008–09, an experiment run in the laboratory resulted in detection of several registered events of neutron multiplicity (number of emitted free neutrons after a nucleus hit has been hit by a neutron and fissioned) above three in natural osmium, and in 2012–13, these findings were reaffirmed in another experiment run in the laboratory. These results hinted natural hassium could potentially exist in nature in amounts that allow its detection by the means of analytical chemistry, but this conclusion is based on an explicit assumption that there is a long-lived hassium isotope to which the registered events could be attributed.


title: Hassium

text: Since Hs may be particularly stable against alpha decay and spontaneous fission, it was considered as a candidate to exist in nature. This nuclide, however, is predicted to be very unstable toward beta decay and any beta-stable isotopes of hassium such as Hs would be too unstable in the other decay channels to be observed in nature. A 2012 search for Hs in nature along with its homologue osmium at the Maier-Leibnitz Laboratory in Garching, Bavaria, Germany, was unsuccessful, setting an upper limit to its abundance at of hassium per gram of osmium.


title: Hassium

text: Various calculations suggest hassium should be the heaviest group 8 element so far, consistently with the periodic law. Its properties should generally match those expected for a heavier homologue of osmium; as is the case for all transactinides, a few deviations are expected to arise from relativistic effects.


title: Hassium

text: Very few properties of hassium or its compounds have been measured; this is due to its extremely limited and expensive production and the fact that hassium (and its parents) decays very quickly. A few singular chemistry-related properties have been measured, such as enthalpy of adsorption of hassium tetroxide, but properties of hassium metal remain unknown and only predictions are available.


title: Hassium

text: Relativistic effects on hassium should arise due to the high charge of its nuclei, which causes the electrons around the nucleus to move faster—so fast their velocity becomes comparable to the speed of light. There are three main effects: the direct relativistic effect, the indirect relativistic effect, and spin–orbit splitting. (The existing calculations do not account for Breit interactions, but those are negligible, and their omission can only result in an uncertainty of the current calculations of no more than 2%.)


title: Hassium

text: As atomic number increases, so does the electrostatic attraction between an electron and the nucleus. This causes the velocity of the electron to increase, which leads to an increase in its mass. This in turn leads to contraction of the atomic orbitals, most specifically the s and p orbitals. Their electrons become more closely attached to the atom and harder to pull from the nucleus. This is the direct relativistic effect. It was originally thought to be strong only for the innermost electrons, but was later established to significantly influence valence electrons as well.


title: Hassium

text: Since the s and p orbitals are closer to the nucleus, they take a bigger portion of the electric charge of the nucleus on themselves ("shield" it). This leaves less charge for attraction of the remaining electrons, whose orbitals therefore expand, making them easier to pull from the nucleus. This is the indirect relativistic effect. As a result of the combination of the direct and indirect relativistic effects, the Hs ion, compared to the neutral atom, lacks a 6d electron, rather than a 7s electron. In comparison, Os lacks a 6s electron compared to the neutral atom. The ionic radius (in oxidation state +8) of hassium is greater than that of osmium because of the relativistic expansion of the 6p orbitals, which are the outermost orbitals for an Hs ion (although in practice such highly charged ions would be too polarised in chemical environments to have much reality).


title: Hassium

text: There are several kinds of electronic orbitals, denoted by the letters s, p, d, and f (g orbitals are expected to start being chemically active among elements after element 120). Each of these corresponds to an azimuthal quantum number "l": s to 0, p to 1, d to 2, and f to 3. Every electron also corresponds to a spin quantum number "s", which may equal either +1/2 or −1/2. Thus, the total angular momentum quantum number "j = l" + "s" is equal to "j" = "l" ± 1/2 (except for "l" = 0, for which for both electrons in each orbital "j =" 0 + 1/2 = 1/2). Spin of an electron relativistically interacts with its orbit, and this interaction leads to a split of a subshell into two with different energies (the one with "j" = "l" − 1/2 is lower in energy and thus these electrons more difficult to extract): for instance, of the six 6p electrons, two become 6p and four become 6p. This is the spin–orbit splitting (sometimes also referred to as subshell splitting or "jj" coupling). It is most visible with p electrons, which do not play an important role in the chemistry of hassium, but those for d and f electrons are within the same order of magnitude (quantitatively, spin–orbit splitting in expressed in energy units, such as electronvolts).


title: Hassium

text: These relativistic effects are responsible for the expected increase of the ionization energy, decrease of the electron affinity, and increase of stability of the +8 oxidation state compared to osmium; without them, the trends would be reversed. Relativistic effects decrease the atomization energies of the compounds of hassium because the spin–orbit splitting of the d orbital lowers binding energy between electrons and the nucleus and because relativistic effects decrease ionic character in bonding.


title: Hassium

text: The previous members of group8 have relatively high melting points: Fe, 1538°C; Ru, 2334°C; Os, 3033°C. Much like them, hassium is predicted to be a solid at room temperature although its melting point has not been precisely calculated. Hassium should crystallize in the hexagonal close-packed structure (/=1.59), similarly to its lighter congener osmium. Pure metallic hassium is calculated to have a bulk modulus (resistance to uniform compression) of 450GPa, comparable with that of diamond, 442GPa. Hassium is expected to be one of the densest of the 118 known elements, with a predicted density of 27–29 g/cm vs. the 22.59 g/cm measured for osmium.


title: Hassium

text: The atomic radius of hassium is expected to be around 126pm. Due to the relativistic stabilization of the 7s orbital and destabilization of the 6d orbital, the Hs ion is predicted to have an electron configuration of [Rn]5f6d7s, giving up a 6d electron instead of a 7s electron, which is the opposite of the behaviour of its lighter homologues. The Hs ion is expected to have an electron configuration of [Rn]5f6d7s, analogous to that calculated for the Os ion. In chemical compounds, hassium is calculated to display bonding characteristic for a d-block element, whose bonding will be primarily executed by 6d and 6d orbitals; compared to the elements from the previous periods, 7s, 6p, 6p, and 7p orbitals should be more important.


title: Hassium

text: Hassium is the sixth member of the 6d series of transition metals and is expected to be much like the platinum group metals. Some of these properties were confirmed by gas-phase chemistry experiments. The group8 elements portray a wide variety of oxidation states but ruthenium and osmium readily portray their group oxidation state of +8; this state becomes more stable down the group. This oxidation state is extremely rare: among stable elements, only ruthenium, osmium, and xenon are able to attain it in reasonably stable compounds. Hassium is expected to follow its congeners and have a stable +8 state, but like them it should show lower stable oxidation states such as +6, +4, +3, and +2. Hassium(IV) is expected to be more stable than hassium(VIII) in aqueous solution. Hassium should be a rather noble metal. The standard reduction potential for the Hs/Hs couple is expected to be 0.4V.


title: Hassium

text: The group 8 elements show a distinctive oxide chemistry. All the lighter members have known or hypothetical tetroxides, MO. Their oxidizing power decreases as one descends the group. FeO is not known due to its extraordinarily large electron affinity—the amount of energy released when an electron is added to a neutral atom or molecule to form a negative ion—which results in the formation of the well-known oxyanion ferrate(VI), . Ruthenium tetroxide, RuO, which is formed by oxidation of ruthenium(VI) in acid, readily undergoes reduction to ruthenate(VI), . Oxidation of ruthenium metal in air forms the dioxide, RuO. In contrast, osmium burns to form the stable tetroxide, OsO, which complexes with the hydroxide ion to form an osmium(VIII) -"ate" complex, [OsO(OH)]. Therefore, hassium should behave as a heavier homologue of osmium by forming of a stable, very volatile tetroxide HsO, which undergoes complexation with hydroxide to form a hassate(VIII), [HsO(OH)]. Ruthenium tetroxide and osmium tetroxide are both volatile due to their symmetrical tetrahedral molecular geometry and because they are charge-neutral; hassium tetroxide should similarly be a very volatile solid. The trend of the volatilities of the group8 tetroxides is experimentally known to be RuO<OsO>HsO, which confirms the calculated results. In particular, the calculated enthalpies of adsorption—the energy required for the adhesion of atoms, molecules, or ions from a gas, liquid, or dissolved solid to a surface—of HsO, −(45.4±1)kJ/mol on quartz, agrees very well with the experimental value of −(46±2)kJ/mol.


title: Hassium

text: The first goal for chemical investigation was the formation of the tetroxide; it was chosen because ruthenium and osmium form volatile tetroxides, being the only transition metals to display a stable compound in the +8 oxidation state. Despite this selection for gas-phase chemical studies being clear from the beginning, chemical characterization of hassium was considered a difficult task for a long time. Although hassium isotopes were first synthesized in 1984, it was not until 1996 that a hassium isotope long-lived enough to allow chemical studies was synthesized. Unfortunately, this hassium isotope, Hs, was synthesized indirectly from the decay of Cn; not only are indirect synthesis methods not favourable for chemical studies, but the reaction that produced the isotope Cn had a low yield—its cross section was only 1pb—and thus did not provide enough hassium atoms for a chemical investigation. Direct synthesis of Hs and Hs in the reaction Cm(Mg,"x"n)Hs ("x"=4 or 5) appeared more promising because the cross section for this reaction was somewhat larger at 7pb. This yield was still around ten times lower than that for the reaction used for the chemical characterization of bohrium. New techniques for irradiation, separation, and detection had to be introduced before hassium could be successfully characterized chemically.


title: Hassium

text: Ruthenium and osmium have very similar chemistry due to the lanthanide contraction but iron shows some differences from them; for example, although ruthenium and osmium form stable tetroxides in which the metal is in the +8 oxidation state, iron does not. In preparation for the chemical characterization of hassium, research focused on ruthenium and osmium rather than iron because hassium was expected to be similar to ruthenium and osmium, as the predicted data on hassium closely matched that of those two.


title: Hassium

text: The first chemistry experiments were performed using gas thermochromatography in 2001, using the synthetic osmium radioisotopes Os and Os as a reference. During the experiment, seven hassium atoms were synthesized using the reactions Cm(Mg,5n)Hs and Cm(Mg,4n)Hs. They were then thermalized and oxidized in a mixture of helium and oxygen gases to form hassium tetroxide molecules.


title: Hassium

text: The measured deposition temperature of hassium tetroxide was higher than that of osmium tetroxide, which indicated the former was the less volatile one, and this placed hassium firmly in group 8. The enthalpy of adsorption for HsO measured, , was significantly lower than the predicted value, , indicating OsO is more volatile than HsO, contradicting earlier calculations that implied they should have very similar volatilities. For comparison, the value for OsO is . (The calculations that yielded a closer match to the experimental data came after the experiment, in 2008.) It is possible hassium tetroxide interacts differently with silicon nitride than with silicon dioxide, the chemicals used for the detector; further research is required to establish whether there is a difference between such interactions and whether it has influenced the measurements. Such research would include more accurate measurements of the nuclear properties of Hs and comparisons with RuO in addition to OsO.


title: Hassium

text: In 2004, scientists reacted hassium tetroxide and sodium hydroxide to form sodium hassate(VIII), a reaction that is well known with osmium. This was the first acid-base reaction with a hassium compound, forming sodium hassate(VIII):


title: Hassium

text: The team from the University of Mainz planned in 2008 to study the electrodeposition of hassium atoms using the new TASCA facility at GSI. Their aim was to use the reaction Ra(Ca,4n)Hs. Scientists at GSI were hoping to use TASCA to study the synthesis and properties of the hassium(II) compound hassocene, Hs(CH), using the reaction Ra(Ca,"x"n). This compound is analogous to the lighter compounds ferrocene, ruthenocene, and osmocene, and is expected to have the two cyclopentadienyl rings in an eclipsed conformation like ruthenocene and osmocene and not in a staggered conformation like ferrocene. Hassocene, which is expected to be a stable and highly volatile compound, was chosen because it has hassium in the low formal oxidation state of +2—although the bonding between the metal and the rings is mostly covalent in metallocenes—rather than the high +8 state that had previously been investigated, and relativistic effects were expected to be stronger in the lower oxidation state. The highly symmetrical structure of hassocene and its low number of atoms make relativistic calculations easier. , there are no experimental reports of hassocene.


title: Restoration comedy

text: "Restoration comedy" is English comedy written and performed in the Restoration period of 1660–1710. Comedy of manners is used as a synonym for this. After public stage performances were banned for 18 years by the Puritan regime, reopening of the theatres in 1660 marked a renaissance of English drama. Sexually explicit language was encouraged by King Charles II (1660–1685) personally and by the rakish style of his court. Historian George Norman Clark argues:


title: Restoration comedy

text: The socially diverse audiences included aristocrats, their servants and hangers-on and a major middle-class segment. They were attracted to the comedies by up-to-the-minute topical writing, crowded and bustling plots, introduction of the first professional actresses, and the rise of the first celebrity actors. The period saw the first professional female playwright, Aphra Behn.


title: Restoration comedy

text: Charles II was an active and interested patron of drama. Soon after his restoration in 1660 he granted exclusive staging rights, so-called Royal patents, to the King's Company and the Duke's Company, led by two middle-aged Caroline playwrights, Thomas Killigrew and William Davenant. The patentees scrambled for performance rights to the previous generation's Jacobean and Caroline plays, as the first necessity for economic survival before any new plays existed. Their next priority was to build splendid patent theatres in Drury Lane and Dorset Gardens, respectively. Striving to outdo each other, Killigrew and Davenant ended with quite similar theatres, both designed by Christopher Wren, both optimally providing music and dancing, and both fitted with moveable scenery and elaborate machines for thunder, lightning, and waves.


title: Restoration comedy

text: The Restoration dramatists renounced the tradition of satire recently embodied by Ben Jonson, devoting themselves to a comedy of manners that accepted the social code of the upper class uncritically.


title: Restoration comedy

text: The audience of the early Restoration period was not exclusively courtly, as has sometimes been supposed, but it was quite small and could barely support two companies. There was no untapped reserve of occasional playgoers. Ten consecutive performances constituted a success. This closed system forced playwrights to respond strongly to popular taste. Fashions in drama would change almost week by week rather than season by season, as each company responded to the offerings of the other, and new plays were urgently sought. In this hectic climate the new genres of heroic drama, pathetic drama and Restoration comedy were born and flourished.


title: Restoration comedy

text: Both the quantity and quality of drama suffered in 1682 when the more successful Duke's Company absorbed the struggling King's Company to form the "United Company". Production of new plays dropped off sharply in the 1680s, affected by the monopoly and the political situation (see Decline of comedy below). The influence and incomes of actors dropped too. In the late 1680s, predatory investors ("adventurers") converged on the United Company. Management was taken over by the lawyer Christopher Rich, who tried to finance a tangle of "farmed" shares and sleeping partners by slashing salaries and dangerously by abolishing traditional perks of senior performers, who were stars with the clout to fight back.


title: Restoration comedy

text: The company owners, wrote the young United Company employee Colley Cibber, "had made a monopoly of the stage, and consequently presum'd they might impose what conditions they pleased upon their people. [They] did not consider that they were all this while endeavouring to enslave a set of actors whom the public were inclined to support." Performers like the legendary Thomas Betterton, the tragedienne Elizabeth Barry and the rising young comedian Anne Bracegirdle had the audience on their side, and confident of this walked out.


title: Restoration comedy

text: The actors gained a Royal "licence to perform", so bypassing Rich's ownership of the original Duke's and King's Company patents from 1660 and forming their own cooperative company. This venture was set up with detailed rules for avoiding arbitrary managerial authority, regulating the ten actors' shares, setting the conditions of salaried employees and the sickness and retirement benefits of both categories. The cooperative had the good luck to open in 1695 with the première of William Congreve's famous "Love For Love" and the skill to make it a huge box-office success.


title: Restoration comedy

text: London again had two competing companies. Their dash to attract audiences briefly revitalised Restoration drama, but also set it on a fatal slope to the lowest common denominator of public taste. Rich's company notoriously offered Bartholomew Fair-type attractions – high kickers, jugglers, rope dancers, performing animals – while the co-operating actors, while appealing to snobbery by setting themselves up as the one legitimate theatre company in London, were not above retaliating with "prologues recited by boys of five and epilogues declaimed by ladies on horseback".


title: Restoration comedy

text: Restoration comedy was strongly influenced by the first professional actresses. Before the closing of the theatres, all female roles had been taken by boy players and the predominantly male audiences of the 1660s and 1670s were curious, censorious and delighted at the novelty of seeing real women engage in risqué repartee and take part in physical seduction scenes. Samuel Pepys refers many times in his diary to visiting the playhouse to watch or re-watch performances by particular actresses and to his enjoyment of these.


title: Restoration comedy

text: Daringly suggestive comedy scenes involving women became especially common, although of course Restoration actresses were, just like male actors, expected to do justice to all kinds and moods of plays. (Their role in the development of Restoration tragedy is also important, compare She-tragedy.)


title: Restoration comedy

text: A speciality introduced almost as early as actresses was the breeches role – an actress appearing in male clothes (breeches of tight-fitting knee-length pants, the standard male garment of the time), for instance to play a witty heroine who disguises herself as a boy to hide or to engage in escapades disallowed to girls. A quarter of the plays produced on the London stage between 1660 and 1700 contained breeches roles. Women playing them behaved with the freedom society allowed to men. Some feminist critics such as Jacqueline Pearson saw them as subverting conventional gender roles and empowering female members of the audience. Elizabeth Howe has objected that the male disguise, when studied in relation to play texts, prologues, and epilogues, comes out as "little more than yet another means of displaying the actress as a sexual object" to male patrons, by showing off her body, normally hidden by a skirt, outlined by the male outfit."


title: Restoration comedy

text: Successful Restoration actresses included Charles II's mistress Nell Gwyn, the tragedienne Elizabeth Barry, famous for an ability to "move the passions" and make whole audiences cry, the 1690s comedian Anne Bracegirdle, and Susanna Mountfort (Susanna Verbruggen), who had many roles written specially for her in the 1680s and 1690s. Letters and memoirs of the period show men and women in the audience relishing Mountfort's swaggering, roistering impersonations of young women breeched to enjoy the social and sexual freedom of male Restoration rakes.


title: Restoration comedy

text: Male and female actors on the London stage in the Restoration period became for the first time public celebrities. Documents of the period show audiences attracted to performances by the talents of specific actors as much as by specific plays, and more than by authors (who seem to have been the least important draw, no performance being advertised by an author until 1699). Although playhouses were built for large audiences – the second Drury Lane theatre from 1674 held 2000 patrons – they were compact in design and an actor's charisma could be intimately projected from the thrust stage.


title: Restoration comedy

text: With two companies competing for their services from 1660 to 1682, star actors could negotiate star deals, comprising company shares and benefit nights as well as salaries. This advantage changed when the two companies were amalgamated in 1682, but the way the actors rebelled and took command of a new company in 1695 is in itself an illustration of how far their status and power had developed since 1660.


title: Restoration comedy

text: The greatest fixed stars among Restoration actors were Elizabeth Barry ("Famous Mrs Barry" who "forc 'd Tears from the Eyes of her Auditory") and Thomas Betterton, both active in running the actors' revolt in 1695 and both original patent-holders in the resulting actors' cooperative.


title: Restoration comedy

text: Betterton played every great male part there was from 1660 into the 18th century. After watching "Hamlet" in 1661, Pepys reports in his diary that the young beginner Betterton "did the prince's part beyond imagination." Such expressive performances seem to have attracted playgoers as magnetically, as did the novelty of seeing women on the stage. He was soon established as the leading man in the Duke's Company, and played Dorimant, the seminal irresistible Restoration rake, at the première of George Etherege's "Man of Mode" (1676). Betterton's position remained unassailed through the 1680s, both as leading man of the United Company and as its stage manager and "de facto" day-to-day leader. He remained loyal to Rich longer than many of his co-workers, but eventually it was he who headed an actors' walkout in 1695 and became the acting manager of the new company.


title: Restoration comedy

text: Variety and dizzying fashion changes are typical of Restoration comedy. Though the "Restoration drama" unit taught to college students is likely to be telescoped in a way that makes the plays all sound contemporary, scholars now have a strong sense of the rapid evolution of English drama over these 40 years and its social and political causes. The influence of theatre-company competition and playhouse economics is also acknowledged.


title: Restoration comedy

text: Restoration comedy peaked twice. The genre came to marked maturity in the mid-1670s with an extravaganza of aristocratic comedies. Twenty lean years followed this short golden age, though the achievement of Aphra Behn in the 1680s can be noted. In the mid-1690s a brief second Restoration comedy renaissance arose, aimed at a wider audience. The comedies of the golden 1670s and 1690s peak times are extremely different from each other. An attempt is made below to illustrate the generational taste shift by describing "The Country Wife" (1675) and "The Provoked Wife" (1697) in some detail. The two plays differ in some typical ways, just as a Hollywood movie of the 1950s differs from one of the 1970s. The plays are not, however, offered as "typical" of their decades. Indeed, there exist no typical comedies of the 1670s or the 1690s; even within these two short peak-times, comedy types kept mutating and multiplying.


title: Restoration comedy

text: The drama of the 1660s and 1670s was vitalised by the competition between the two patent companies created at the Restoration, and by the personal interest of Charles II, while comic playwrights arose to the demand for new plays. They stole freely from the contemporary French and Spanish stage, from English Jacobean and Caroline plays, and even from Greek and Roman classical comedies, combining the looted plotlines in adventurous ways. Resulting differences of tone in a single play were appreciated rather than frowned on: audiences prized "variety" within as well as between plays. Early Restoration audiences had little enthusiasm for structurally simple, well-shaped comedies such as those of Molière. They demanded bustling, crowded multi-plot action and fast pace. Even a splash of high heroic drama might be thrown in to enrich the comedy mix, as in George Etherege's "Love in a Tub" (1664), which has one heroic verse "conflict between love and friendship" plot, one urbane wit comedy plot, and one burlesque pantsing plot. ("See illustration, top right".) Such incongruities contributed to the low esteem held by Restoration comedy in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, whereas today such total theatre experience is again valued on the stage and by postmodern academic critics.


title: Restoration comedy

text: The unsentimental or "hard" comedies of John Dryden, William Wycherley, and George Etherege reflected the atmosphere at Court. They celebrated with frankness an aristocratic macho lifestyle of unremitting sexual intrigue and conquest. The Earl of Rochester, a real-life Restoration rake, courtier and poet, is flatteringly portrayed in Etherege's "The Man of Mode" (1676) as a riotous, witty, intellectual, sexually irresistible aristocrat, a template for posterity's idea of the glamorous Restoration rake (actually never a very common character in Restoration comedy). Wycherley's "The Plain Dealer" (1676), a variation on the theme of Molière's "Le Misanthrope", was highly regarded for uncompromising satire and earned Wycherley the appellation "Plain Dealer" Wycherley or "Manly" Wycherley, after the play's main character Manly. The single play that does most to support the charge of obscenity levelled then and now at Restoration comedy is probably Wycherley's "The Country Wife" (1675).


title: Restoration comedy

text: "The Country Wife" has three interlinked but distinct plots, which each project sharply different moods:


title: Restoration comedy

text: 1. Horner's impotence trick provides the main plot and the organising principle. The upper-class rake Horner mounts a campaign to seduce as many respectable ladies as possible, first spreading a false rumour of his own impotence, so as to be allowed where no other men might go. The trick is a great success and Horner has sex with many married ladies of virtuous reputation, whose husbands are happy to leave them alone with him. In the famously outrageous "China scene", sexual intercourse is assumed to take place repeatedly just off stage, where Horner and his mistresses carry on a sustained double entendre dialogue purportedly about Horner's china collection. "The Country Wife" is driven by a succession of near-discoveries of the truth about Horner's sexual prowess (and so the truth about the respectable ladies), from which he extricates himself by quick thinking and luck. Horner never reforms, but keeps his secret to the end and is seen to go on merrily reaping the fruits of his planted misinformation past the last act and beyond.


title: Restoration comedy

text: 2. The married life of Pinchwife and Margery draws on Molière's "School for Wives". Middle-aged Pinchwife has married an ignorant young country girl in the hope that she will not know to cuckold him. Horner teaches her, and Margery cuts a swathe through the sophistications of London marriage without even noticing them. She is enthusiastic about the virile handsomeness of town gallants, rakes, and especially theatre actors (such self-referential stage jokes were nourished by the new higher status of actors), and keeps Pinchwife in a state of continual horror with her plain-spokenness and interest in sex. A running joke is the way Pinchwife's pathological jealousy always leads him into supplying Margery with the very information he wishes her not to have.


title: Restoration comedy

text: 3. The courtship of Harcourt and Alithea is a comparatively uplifting love story, in which the witty Harcourt wins the hand of Pinchwife's sister Alithea from the hands of the upper-class town snob Sparkish, to whom she was engaged until discovering he loved her only for her money.


title: Restoration comedy

text: When the two companies merged in 1682 and the London stage became a monopoly, both the number and the variety of new plays dropped sharply. There was a swing away from comedy to serious political drama, reflecting preoccupations and divisions after the Popish Plot (1678) and Exclusion Crisis (1682). The few comedies produced tended to be political in focus, the Whig dramatist Thomas Shadwell sparring with the Tories John Dryden and Aphra Behn. Behn's achievement as an early professional woman writer has been the subject of much recent study.


title: Restoration comedy

text: During a second wave of Restoration comedy in the 1690s, the "softer" comedies of William Congreve and John Vanbrugh reflected mutating cultural perceptions and great social change. The playwrights of the 1690s set out to appeal to more socially mixed audiences with a strong middle-class element, and to female spectators, for instance by moving the war between the sexes from the arena of intrigue into that of marriage. The focus in comedy is less on young lovers outwitting the older generation, more on marital relations after the wedding bells. Thomas Southerne's dark "The Wives' Excuse" (1691) is not yet "soft": it shows a woman miserably married to the fop Friendall, everybody's friend, whose follies and indiscretions undermine her social worth, as her honour is bound up in his. Mrs Friendall is pursued by a would-be lover, a matter-of-fact rake devoid of all the qualities that made Etherege's Dorimant charming. She is kept from action and choice by the unattractiveness of all her options. The humour of this "comedy" is in the subsidiary love-chase and fornication plots, none in the main plot.


title: Restoration comedy

text: In Congreve's "Love for Love" (1695) and "The Way of the World" (1700), the "wit duels" between lovers typical of 1670s comedy are underplayed. The give-and-take set pieces of couples still testing their attraction for each other have mutated into witty prenuptial debates on the eve of marriage, as in the famous "Proviso" scene in "The Way of the World" (1700). Vanbrugh's "The Provoked Wife" (1697) follows in the footsteps of Southerne's "Wives' Excuse", with a lighter touch and more humanly recognisable characters.


title: Restoration comedy

text: "The Provoked Wife" is something of a Restoration problem play in its attention to the subordinate legal position of married women and the complexities of "divorce" and separation, issues that had been highlighted in the mid-1690s by some notorious cases before the House of Lords (see Stone).


title: Restoration comedy

text: Sir John Brute in "The Provoked Wife" is tired of matrimony. He comes home drunk every night and is continually rude and insulting to his wife. She is meanwhile tempted to embark on an affair with the witty and faithful Constant. Divorce is no option for either of the Brutes at this time, but forms of legal separation have recently arisen and would entail separate maintenance for the wife. Such an arrangement would prevent remarriage. Still, muses Lady Brute, in one of many discussions with her niece Bellinda, "These are good times. A woman may have a gallant and a separate maintenance too."


title: Restoration comedy

text: Bellinda is meanwhile grumpily courted by Constant's friend Heartfree, who is surprised and dismayed to find himself in love with her. The bad example of the Brutes is a constant warning to Heartfree not to marry.


title: Restoration comedy

text: "The Provoked Wife" is a talk play, with the focus less on love scenes and more on discussions between friends, female (Lady Brute and Bellinda) and male (Constant and Heartfree). These are full of jokes, but are also thoughtful, with a dimension of melancholy and frustration.


title: Restoration comedy

text: After a forged-letter complication, the play ends with marriage between Heartfree and Bellinda and stalemate between the Brutes. Constant continues to pay court to Lady Brute, and she continues to shilly-shally.


title: Restoration comedy

text: The tolerance for Restoration comedy even in its modified form was running out by the end of the 17th century, as public opinion turned to respectability and seriousness faster than playwrights did. Interconnected causes for this shift in taste were demographic change, the Glorious Revolution of 1688, William's and Mary's dislike of the theatre, and the lawsuits brought against playwrights by the Society for the Reformation of Manners (founded in 1692). When Jeremy Collier attacked Congreve and Vanbrugh in his "Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage" in 1698, he was confirming a shift in audience taste that had taken place. At the much-anticipated all-star première in 1700 of "The Way of the World", Congreve's first comedy for five years, the audience showed only moderate enthusiasm for that subtle and almost melancholy work. The comedy of sex and wit was about to be replaced by the drama of obvious sentiment and exemplary morality.


title: Restoration comedy

text: During the 18th and 19th centuries, the sexual frankness of Restoration comedy ensured that theatre producers cannibalised it or adapted it with a heavy hand, rather than actually performed it. Today Restoration comedy is again appreciated on stage. The classics – Wycherley's "The Country Wife" and "The Plain-Dealer", Etherege's "The Man of Mode", and Congreve's "Love For Love" and "The Way of the World" – have competition not only from Vanbrugh's "The Relapse" and "The Provoked Wife", but from such dark, unfunny comedies as Thomas Southerne's "The Wives Excuse". Aphra Behn, once considered unstageable, has had a renaissance, with "The Rover" now a repertory favourite.


title: Restoration comedy

text: Distaste for sexual impropriety long kept Restoration comedy off the stage, locked in a critical poison cupboard. Victorian critics like William Hazlitt, though valuing the linguistic energy and "strength" of the canonical writers Etherege, Wycherley and Congreve, found it necessary to temper aesthetic praise with heavy moral condemnation. Aphra Behn received the condemnation without the praise, as outspoken sex comedy was seen as particularly offensive from a woman author. At the turn of the 20th century, an embattled minority of academic Restoration comedy enthusiasts began to appear, such as the editor Montague Summers, whose work ensured that plays of Restoration comedy authors remained in print.


title: Restoration comedy

text: "Critics remain astonishingly defensive about the masterpieces of this period," wrote Robert D. Hume as late as 1976. It is only over the last few decades that the statement has become untrue, with Restoration comedy acknowledged as a rewarding subject for high theory analysis, and Wycherley's "The Country Wife", long branded the most obscene play in the English language, becoming something of an academic favourite. "Minor" comic writers are getting a fair share of attention, especially the post-Aphra Behn generation of women playwrights around the turn of the 18th century: Delarivier Manley, Mary Pix, Catharine Trotter, and Susanna Centlivre. A broad study of most never-reprinted Restoration comedies has been made possible by internet access (by subscription only) to the first editions at the British Library.


title: Battle of Clontarf

text: The Battle of Clontarf () took place on 23 April 1014 at Clontarf, near Dublin, on the east coast of Ireland. It pitted an army led by Brian Boru, High King of Ireland, against a Norse-Irish alliance comprising the forces of Sigtrygg Silkbeard, King of Dublin; Máel Mórda mac Murchada, King of Leinster; and a Viking army from abroad led by Sigurd of Orkney and Brodir of Mann. It lasted from sunrise to sunset, and ended in a rout of the Viking and Leinster armies.


title: Battle of Clontarf

text: It is estimated that between 7,000 and 10,000 men were killed in the battle, including most of the leaders. Although Brian's forces were victorious, Brian himself was killed, as were his son Murchad and his grandson Toirdelbach. Leinster king Máel Mórda and Viking leaders Sigurd and Brodir were also slain. After the battle, the power of the Vikings and the Kingdom of Dublin was largely broken.


title: Battle of Clontarf

text: The battle was an important event in Irish history and is recorded in both Irish and Norse chronicles. In Ireland, the battle came to be seen as an event that freed the Irish from foreign domination, and Brian was hailed as a national hero. This view was especially popular during English rule in Ireland. Although the battle has come to be viewed in a more critical light, it still has a hold on the popular imagination.


title: Battle of Clontarf

text: The Vikings (or Norsemen) began carrying out raids on Gaelic Ireland in the late eighth century, and over the following few decades they founded a number of settlements along the coast. Vikings first established themselves in Dublin in 838 when they built a fortified area, or "", there. During the tenth century, Viking Dublin developed into the Kingdom of Dublin—a thriving town and a large area of the surrounding countryside, whose rulers controlled extensive territories in the Irish Sea and, at one time, York. Over time, many Vikings were assimilated into Gaelic society and became the Norse-Gaels. Dublin was closely involved in the affairs of the Kingdom of the Isles, which included the Isle of Man and the Hebrides, and when the Dublin king Amlaíb Cuarán was defeated by Máel Sechnaill mac Domnaill at the Battle of Tara in 980, he was supported by the men of the Isles. Amlaíb's son, Sigtrygg Silkbeard, who was King of Dublin from 990, allied himself with his uncle Máel Mórda mac Murchada, King of Leinster. They met Máel Sechnaill mac Domnaill and Brian Boru at the Battle of Glenmama in 999, where they were defeated.