Chapter XIX: Part 19

As a formulated creed, the Druse system is not a thousand years old. In the year A.D. 996 (386 A.H.) Hakim Biamrillahi (i.e. he who judges by the command of God), sixth of the Fatimite caliphs (third in Egypt), began to reign; and during the next twenty-five years he indulged in a tyranny at once so terrible and so fantastic that little doubt can be entertained of his insanity. He believed that he held direct intercourse with the deity, or even that he was an incarnation of the divine intelligence; and in A.D. 1016 (407 A.H.) his claims were made known in the mosque at Cairo, and supported by the testimony of Ismael Darazi. The people showed such bitter hostility to the new gospel that Darazi was compelled to seek safety in flight; but even in absence he was faithful to his god, and succeeded in winning over certain ignorant inhabitants of Lebanon. According to the Druses, this great conversion took place in A.D. 1019 (410 A.H.). Meanwhile the endeavours of the caliph to get his divinity acknowledged by the people of Cairo continued. The advocacy of Hasan ibn Haidara Fergani was without avail; but in 1017 (408 A.H.) the new religion found a more successful apostle in the person of Hamza ibn Ali ibn Ahmed, a Persian mystic, felt-maker by trade, who became Hakim's vizier, gave form and substance to his creed, and by an ingenious adaptation of its various dogmas to the prejudices of existing sects, finally enlisted an extensive body of adherents. In 1020 (411 A.H.) the caliph was assassinated by contrivance of his sister Sitt ul-Mulk; but it was given out by Hamza that he had only withdrawn for a season, and his followers were encouraged to look forward with confidence to his triumphant return. Darazi, who had acted independently in his apostolate, was branded by Hamza as a heretic, and thus, by a curious anomaly, he is actually held in detestation by the very sect which perhaps bears his name. The propagation of the faith in accordance with Hamza's initiation was undertaken by Ismael ibn Mahommed Tamimi, Mahommed ibn Wahab, Abul-Khair Selama ibn Abd al-Wahal ibn Samurri, and Moktana Baha ud-Din, the last of whom became known by his writings from Constantinople to the borders of India. In two letters addressed to the emperors Constantine VIII. and Michael the Paphlagonian he endeavoured to prove that the Christian Messiah reappeared in the person of Hamza.

It is possible, even probable, that the segregation of the Druses as a people dates only from the adoption of Hamza's creed. But when it is recalled that other inhabitants of the same mountain system, e.g. the Maronites, the Ansarieh, the Metawali and the "Isma'ilites," also profess creeds which, like the Druse system, differ from Sunni Islam in the important feature of admitting incarnations of the Deity, it is impossible not to suspect that Hamza's emissaries only gave definition and form to beliefs long established in this part of the world. Many of the fundamental ideas of Druse theology belong to a common West Asiatic stock; but the peculiar history of the Mountain is no doubt responsible for beliefs, held elsewhere by different peoples, being combined there in a single creed. Some allowance, too, must be made for the probability that Hamza's system owed something to doctrines Christian and other, with which the metropolitan position of Cairo brought Fatimite society into contact.

_History_--There is good reason to regard the Druses as, racially, a mixture of refugee stocks, in which the Arab largely predominates, grafted on to an original mountain population of Aramaic blood and Incarnationist tendencies. The latter is represented more purely by the Maronites (q.v.). The native tradition regards an immigration of Hira Arabs into S. Lebanon, under Khalid ibn Walid in the 9th century, as the beginning of Druse distinctiveness and power; but it also accepts Turkoman and Kurdish elements in the original Druse state. About the same time, or a little later (in the reign of Saladin), it believes that Hermon was colonized by a population of 15,000 Hira and Yemenite Arabs, who had sojourned awhile in Hauran. The name Druse is met with first in Benjamin of Tudela (c. A.D. 1170), and its origin has been much disputed. Some authorities see in it a descriptive epithet, derived from Arabic _darasa_ (those who _read_ the Book), or _darisa_ (those in _possession_ of Truth) or _durs_ (the _clever_ or _initiated_); but more connect it with the name of the first missionary, Ismael _Darazi_.

As soon as we begin to know anything of the Druses they were living in a feudal state of society, as village communities under _sheikhs_, themselves generally subordinate to one or more amirs. In the time of the first crusades the main power was in the hands of the Arslan family, which, however, suffered so severely in wars with the Franks, that it was superseded by the Tnuhs, who, holding Beirut and nearly all the Phoenician coast, came into conflict with the sultans of Egypt. One of these latter, Malik Ashraf, about A.D. 1300, forced outward compliance with Sunni Islam on the Mountain, after defeating the Druses at Ain Sofar. Meanwhile, however, the _Maan_ family, lately immigrant from N. Arabia, was growing in power, and throwing in its lot with the Osmanli invaders in the reign of Selim I., it was promoted to the supreme amirate about 1517. Fakr ud-Din Maan II. increased Druse dominion until it included all the N. Syrian region from the edge of the Antioch plain to Acre, with part of the eastern desert, dominated by his castle at Tadmor (Palmyra), and the important towns of Latakia, Tripoli, Beirut and Saida; and forming further ambitious designs, he intrigued with Christians and broke with the Turks. In 1614 the pasha of Damascus moved against him with a large force, and compelled him to fly from Syria. He sought the courts of Tuscany and Naples and tried to enlist Frank sympathies, inventing (probably) the curious myth, so often credited since, that the Druses are of crusading origin and owe their name to the counts of Dreux.[1] He landed again at Saida in 1619 and recovered his old position. But in 1633 Kuchuk Ahmed Pasha was sent against him with a large army, and succeeded in capturing him with his sons. The family was sent to Constantinople, and two years later strangled. The dynasty struggled on till the end of the century, amid civil war, in which the parties seem to have been divided by the earlier Arab factions of Kaisites (Qaisites) and Yemenites, the Maan belonging to the latter.

The Shehab family, originally Hira Arabs, which had governed Hauran under the early caliphs of Damascus, and thereafter held power in Hermon, intermarried with the Maan; and in the latter's day of weakness sided with the Kaisi faction and obtained the supreme amirate of the Mountain. But it appears never to have professed the Druse creed, remaining Sunnite. Haidar Shehab, third of the line, inflicted a notable defeat on the pasha of Saida (capital of an Ottoman eyalet since 1688) and the Yemenite Druses at Ain Dara, near Zahleh, in 1711, and proceeded to consolidate Shehab power, breaking up the old feudal society and substituting for the sheikhs _mukatajis_ (tax-contractors), who had penal jurisdiction. The Yemenite Druses thereupon emigrated in large numbers to the Hauran, and laid the foundation of Druse power there. The Turks recognized the _status quo_, and made terms with the Shehab amir in 1748; but his power was none too well secured against the opposition of the Kurdish _Jumblat_ family, even though he was supported by the _Talhuk_, _Abd al-Malik_ and _Yezbeki_ families; and it appears that some members of the Shehab joined the Maronite faith in the middle of the 18th century, causing a suspicion of secret apostasy to fall on all the family.

It is said that the amir Beshir, who succeeded about 1786, was himself a crypto-Christian. This remarkable man, who ruled the Mountain for fifty-four years, maintained his power by taking the side of one rebel pasha after another, betraying each in turn, and cultivating relations with European admirals. His earliest ally was Ahmed "Jezzar," who established himself in Acre in contumacious independence late in the 18th century. Beshir supported Jezzar against Napoleon in 1799 and earned the friendship of Sir Sidney Smith. Falling out with Jezzar, Beshir fled to Cairo in 1805, attached himself to Mehemet Ali, and returned to take up the reins. Once more chased out by the Turks, he was again in the Mountain in 1823, allied with Abdallah, on whom Jezzar's mantle had ultimately fallen at Acre, and maintaining friendly relations with the "English Princess," Lady Hester Stanhope. He now finally worsted the Jumblat. The invasion of Syria by Mehemet Ali in 1831 caused Beshir to desert Abdallah and throw in his lot with Ibrahim Pasha; but he was not cordially followed by the Druses in general, and had good excuse for revolt in 1839, and intrigue with the British admiral in 1840. Ibrahim, however, by his possession of Druse hostages, restrained the amir, and after the bombardment of Acre, the Turks called him to account for his record of rebellion and treachery. He fled to Malta on a British ship, but was induced to go to Constantinople, where he died in 1851.

His successor, Beshir al-Kassim, openly joined the Maronites, and instigating these against the malcontents of his own people, brought enmities, which had been growing for a century, to a head, and initiated a devastating internecine warfare which was to continue for twenty years. The state of the Lebanon went from bad to worse, and at last, in January 1842, the Turkish government appointed Omar Pasha as administrator of the Druses and Maronites, with a council of four chiefs from each party; but the pasha, attempting to effect a disarming, was besieged in November in the castle of Beit ed-Din by the Druses under Shibli el-Arrian. At the instigation of the European powers he was recalled in December, and the Druses and Maronites were placed under separate _kaimakams_ (governors), who, it was stipulated, were not to be of the family of Shehab. Disturbances again broke out in 1845, the native _mukatajis_ refusing to obey the _kaimakams_. The Maronites flew to arms, but with the assistance of the Turks their opponents carried the day. A superficial pacification effected by Shekib Effendi, the Ottoman commissioner, lasted only till his departure; and the Porte was obliged to despatch a force of 12,000 men to the Lebanon. Forty of the chiefs were seized, the people was nominally disarmed, and in 1846 a new constitution was inaugurated, by which the _kaimakam_ was to be assisted by two Druses, two Maronites, four Greeks, two Turks and one Metawali. All, however, was in vain: the conflict was continued through 1858, 1859 and 1860; and the disturbance culminated in the famous Damascus massacre (see SYRIA). The European powers now determined to interfere; and, by a protocol of the 3rd of May 1860, it was decided that the Lebanon should be occupied by a force of 20,000 men, of whom half were to be French. A body of troops was accordingly landed on the 16th of August under General Beaufort d'Hautpoul; and Fuad Pasha, who had been appointed Turkish commissioner with full powers, proceeded to bring the leaders of the massacres to justice. The French occupation continued till the 5th of June 1861, and the French and English squadrons cruised on the coast for several months after. In accordance with the recommendation of the European powers the Porte determined to appoint a Christian governor not belonging to the district, and independent of the pasha of Beirut, to hold office for three years. The choice fell on Daud Pasha, an Armenian Catholic, who was installed on the 4th of July. In spite of many difficulties, and especially the ambitious conduct of the Maronite Jussuf Karam, he succeeded in restoring order; and by the formation of a military force from the inhabitants of the Lebanon he rendered unnecessary the presence of the Turkish soldiery.

The privileged province of Lebanon (q.v.) was finally constituted by the Organic Statute of the 6th of September 1864, and the subsequent history of the Lebanon Druses is one of gradual withdrawal from the jurisdiction of that state, in which they see their ancient independence irretrievably compromised, and their religion subordinated to Christian supremacy. Many now emigrate, when occasion offers, to America.

Meanwhile, the Hauran, the old seat of the Shehab family and Hermon Druses, had been steadily receiving a Druse influx, since the day of Ain Dara (see above). Towards the close of the 18th century some 600 families left Lebanon for the Hauran, in discontent with the rule of the Shehab dynasty, and their place and property were taken by 1500 families driven out of Jebel Ansarieh by Topal Ali in 1811. The Hauran Druses increased by the middle of the 19th century to 7000 souls. They had successfully resisted Ibrahim, the Egyptian, in 1839 in the Lija, and asserted complete independence of the Turks, living under a theocratic government directed by the chief Akil in Suweda. A great effort, made by Kibrisli Pasha in 1852 to subdue the Hauran, came to nothing. In 1879 the population numbered 20,000, and by a murderous raid attracted the attention of Midhat Pasha, then vali of the province of Syria. After experiencing one disaster he defeated their forces and imposed a _kaimakam_, at first drawn from the Talhuks, but subsequently chosen from the Atrash family of Kunawat. But the Druses still refused to pay taxes, to serve in the Ottoman army, or to recognize the _kaimakam_, and maintained their contumacy under the lead of the Jumblat, till 1896; when, as the result of a military expedition under Tahir Pasha and a great defeat at Ijun, a compromise was arrived at, under which the Druses agreed to pay taxes, but to serve in their own territory only as a frontier guard. The government was put into the hands of a mutessarif resident at Sheikh Saad, under whom are _kaimakams_ at Suweda and Salkhad. Since that epoch there has been comparative peace between the Druses and the government, largely because the latter, having learned wisdom, leaves the people very much to itself, maintaining only a small garrison of regular troops, and enlisting Druse police for service in Jebel Druz itself. The Druses are allowed to carry on their feuds with the Bedouins of the E. Desert as they will, so long as they do not disturb western districts. With the recent opening out of the W. Hauran by railway, the Druse sheikhs are beginning to acquire commercial ambitions, and to desire peace.

The Hauran Druses are a vigorous, independent folk, with a well-deserved reputation for courage, very astute, and hospitable to Europeans, especially the British, with whom they have an old tradition of friendship. But, like most persecuted but semi-independent peoples, they are both cruel, and, by our standards, treacherous. They are a handsome race, the women being often beautiful. The latter no longer carry the head-horn which used to support the veil dropped over the face out of doors. But their dress is still black with the exception of red slippers, and the veil is never abandoned, not even, it is said, during sleep. An English lady, who has been much among them, states that the Druse women of the Hauran never unveiled before her. The men wear a _tarbush_ with white roll, a black under-robe with white girdle, a short loose jacket, and when necessary an _aba_ or parti-coloured cloak over all. They go habitually armed with scimitar and half-moon axe, besides gun or rifle.

Polygamy is forbidden. Marriage retains certain traces of the original system of capture; but Druse women enjoy much consideration, and are comparatively well educated, dignified and free in their bearing in spite of their close veiling. As has been stated above, they join the men in religious functions. Divorce is easy and can be initiated by the woman; but remarriage of the pair can only be effected by the good offices of a proxy (as in Moslem societies, after a third divorce). Burial takes place in family mausoleums, walled up after each interment; but Akils are buried in their own houses. The body is laid on its side, with its face to the south (Mecca).

Education is widely spread, and there is a considerable religious literature, much of which is known in Europe. A copy of the _Book of the Testimonies to the Mysteries of the Unity_, consisting of seventy treatises in four folio volumes, was found in the house of the chief Akil at Bakhlin, and presented in 1700 to Louis XIV. by Nusralla ibn Gilda, a Syrian doctor. Other manuscripts are to be found at Rome in the Vatican, at Oxford in the Bodleian, at Vienna, at Leiden, at Upsala and at Munich; and Dr J. L. Porter got possession of seven standard works of Druse theology while at Damascus. The Munich collection was presented to the king of Bavaria by Clot Bey, the chief physician in the Egyptian army during its occupation of Syria; and for a number of the other manuscripts we are indebted to the elder Niebuhr. A history of the Druse nation by the amir Haidar Shehab is quoted by Urquhart.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--Adler, "Druze Catechism," in _Museum Cuficum Borgianum_
(1782); Silvestre de Sacy, _Expose de la religion des Druses_ (1838);
Ph. Wolff, _Reise in das gelobte Land_, and _Die Drusen und ihre
Vorlaufer_ (1842); C. H. Churchill, _Ten Years' Residence in Mount
Lebanon_ (3 vols., 1853); G. W. Chasseaud, _The Druzes of the Lebanon_
(1855); E. G. Ray, _Voyage dans le Haouran, execute pendant les annees
1857 et 1858_; C. H. Churchill, _The Druzes and Maronites under the
Turkish Rule from 1840 to 1860_ (London, 1862); H. Guys, _Le Theogonie
des Druses_ (1863), and _La Nation Druse_ (1864); M. von Oppenheim,
_Vom Mittelmeer_, &c. (1899); Gertrude L. Bell, _The Desert and the
Sown_ (1907). (D. G. H.; G. BE.)

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Sophisticated Druses still sometimes claim connexion with
Rosicrucians, and a special relation to Scottish freemasons.

DRUSIUS (or VAN DEN DRIESCHE), JOHANNES (1550-1616), Protestant divine, distinguished specially as an Orientalist and exegete, was born at Oudenarde, in Flanders, on the 28th of June 1550. Being designed for the church, he studied Greek and Latin at Ghent, and philosophy at Louvain; but his father having been outlawed for his religion, and deprived of his estate, retired to England, where the son followed him in 1567. He found an admirable teacher of Hebrew in Chevalier, the celebrated Orientalist, with whom he resided for some time at Cambridge. In 1572 he became professor of Oriental languages at Oxford. Upon the pacification of Ghent (1576) he returned with his father to their own country, and was appointed professor of Oriental languages at Leiden in the following year. In 1585 he removed to Friesland, and was admitted professor of Hebrew in the university of Franeker, an office which he discharged with great honour till his death, which happened in February 1616. He acquired so extended a reputation as a professor that his class was frequented by students from all the Protestant countries in Europe. His works prove him to have been well skilled in Hebrew and in Jewish antiquities; and in 1600 the states-general employed him, at a salary of 400 florins a year, to write notes on the most difficult passages in the Old Testament; but this work was not published until after his death. As the friend of Arminius, he was charged by the orthodox and dominant party with unfairness in the execution of the task, and the last sixteen years of his life were therefore somewhat embittered by controversy. He carried on an extensive correspondence with the learned in different countries; for, besides letters in Hebrew, Greek and other languages, there were found amongst his papers upwards of 2000 written in Latin. He had a son, John, who died in England at the age of twenty-one, and was accounted a prodigy of learning. He had mastered Hebrew at the age of nine, and Scaliger said that he was a better Hebrew scholar than his father. He wrote a large number of letters in Hebrew, besides notes on the Proverbs of Solomon and other works.

Paquot states the number of the printed works and treatises of the
elder Drusius at forty-eight, and of the unprinted at upwards of
twenty. Of the former more than two-thirds were inserted in the
collection entitled _Critici sacri, sive annolata doctissimorum
virorum in Vetus et Novum Testamentum_ (Amsterdam, 1698, in 9 vols.
folio, or London, 1660, in 10 vols. folio). Amongst the works of
Drusius not to be found in this collection may be mentioned--(1)
_Alphabetum Hebraicum vetus_ (1584, 4to); (2) _Tabulae in grammaticam
Chaldaicam ad usum juventutis_ (1602, 8vo); (3) An edition of
Sulpicius Severus (Franeker, 1807, 12mo); (4) _Opuscula quae ad
grammaticam spectant omnia_ (1609, 4to); (5) _Lacrymae in obitum J.
Scaligeri_ (1609, 4to); and (6) _Grammatica linguae sanctae nova_
(1612, 4to).

DRUSUS, MARCUS LIVIUS, Roman statesman, was colleague of Gaius Gracchus in the tribuneship, 122 B.C. The proposal of Gracchus (q.v.) to confer the full franchise on the Latins had been opposed not only by the senate, but also by the mob, who imagined that their own privileges would thereby be diminished. Drusus threatened to veto the proposal. Encouraged by this, the senatorial party put up Drusus to outbid Gracchus. Gracchus had proposed to found colonies outside Italy; Drusus provided twelve in Italy, to each of which 3000 citizens were to be sent. Gracchus had proposed to distribute allotments to the poorer citizens subject to a state rent-charge; Drusus promised them free of all charge, and further that they should be inalienable. In addition to the franchise, immunity from corporal punishment (even in the field) was promised the Latins. The absence of Gracchus, and the inefficiency of his representative at Rome, led to the acceptance of these proposals, which were never intended to be carried. Drusus himself declined all responsibility in connexion with carrying them out. He was rewarded for his services by the consulship (112), and the title of _patronus senatus_. He received Macedonia for his province, where he distinguished himself in a campaign against the Scordisci, whom he drove across the Danube, being the first Roman general who reached that river. It is possible that he is the Drusus mentioned by Plutarch as having died in 109, the year of his censorship.

Appian, _Bell. Civ._ i. 23; Plutarch, _Gaius Gracchus_, 8-11; Florus
iii. 4; A. H. J. Greenidge, _Hist. of Rome_, vol. i. (1904).

His son, MARCUS LIVIUS DRUSUS, became tribune of the people in 91 B.C. He was a thoroughgoing conservative, wealthy and generous, and a man of high integrity. With some of the more intelligent members of his party (such as Marcus Scaurus and L. Licinius Crassus the orator) he recognized the need of reform. At that time an agitation was going on for the transfer of the judicial functions from the equites to the senate; Drusus proposed as a compromise a measure which restored to the senate the office of judices, while its numbers were doubled by the admission of 300 equites. Further, a special commission was to be appointed to try and sentence all judices guilty of taking bribes. But the senate was lukewarm, and the equites, whose occupation was threatened, offered the most violent opposition. In order, therefore, to catch the popular votes, Drusus proposed the establishment of colonies in Italy and Sicily, and an increased distribution of corn at a reduced rate. By help of these riders the bill was carried. Drusus now sought a closer alliance with the Italians, promising them the long-coveted boon of the Roman franchise. The senate broke out into open opposition. His laws were abrogated as informal, and each party armed its adherents for the civil struggle which was now inevitable. Drusus was stabbed one evening as he was returning home. His assassin was never discovered.

See Rome: _History_, ii. "The Republic" (Period C); also Appian,
_Bell. Civ._ i. 35; Florus iii. 17; Diod. Sic. xxxvii. 10; Livy,
_Epit._ 70; Vell. Pat. ii. 13.

DRUSUS, NERO[1] CLAUDIUS (38-9 B.C.) Roman general, son of Tiberius Claudius Nero and Livia Drusilla, stepson of Augustus and younger brother of the emperor Tiberius. Having held the office of quaestor and acted as praetor for his brother during the latter's absence in Gaul, he began (in 15 B.C.) the military career which has made his name famous. In conjunction with Tiberius, he carried on a successful campaign against the Raeti and Vindelici, who, although repulsed from Italy, continued to threaten the frontiers of Gaul. The credit of the decisive victory, however, must be assigned to Tiberius. Two of the _Odes_ of Horace (iv. 4 and 14) were written to glorify the exploits of the brothers. In 13 Drusus was sent as governor to the newly organized province of the three Gauls, where considerable discontent had been aroused by the exactions of the Roman governor Licinius. Drusus made a fresh assessment for taxation purposes, and summoned the Gallic representatives to a meeting at Lugdunum to discuss their grievances. It was of great importance to pacify the Gauls, in order to have his hands free to deal with the German tribes, one of which, the Sugambri, on the right bank of the Rhine, had seized the opportunity, during the absence of Augustus, to cross the river (12). Drusus drove them back and pursued them through the island of the Batavi and the land of the Usipetes (Usipes, Usipii) to their own territory, which he devastated. Sailing down the Rhine, he subdued the Frisii and, in order to facilitate operations against the Chauci, dug a canal (Fossa Drusiana) leading from the Rhenus (Rhine) to the Isala (Yssel)[2] into the lacus Flevus (Zuidersee) and the German Ocean. Making his way along the Frisian coast, he conquered the island of Burchanis (_Borkum_), defeated the Bructeri in a naval engagement on the Amisia (_Ems_), and went on to the mouth of the Visurgis (_Weser_) to attack the Chauci. On the way back his vessels grounded on the shallows, and were only got off with the assistance of the Frisii. Winter being close at hand, the campaign was abandoned till the following spring, and Drusus returned to Rome with the honour of having been the first Roman general to reach the German Ocean.

In his second campaign (11), Drusus defeated the Usipetes, threw a bridge over the Luppia (_Lippe_), attacked the Sugambri, and advanced through their territory and that of the Tencteri and Chatti as far as the Weser, where he gained a victory over the Cherusci. Lack of provisions, the approach of winter, and an inauspicious portent prevented him from crossing the Weser. While making his way back to the Rhine he fell into an ambuscade, but the carelessness of the enemy enabled him to inflict a crushing defeat upon them. In view of future operations, he built two castles, one at the junction of the Luppia and Aliso (_Alme_), the other in the territory of the Chatti on the Taunus, near Moguntiacum (_Mainz_).

The third campaign (10) was of little importance. The Chatti had joined the Sugambri in revolt; and, after some insignificant successes, Drusus returned with Augustus and Tiberius to Rome, and was elected consul for the following year. In spite of unfavourable portents at Rome, he determined to enter upon his fourth and last campaign (9) without delay. He attacked and defeated the Chatti, Suebi, Marcomanni and Cherusci, crossed the Weser and penetrated as far as the Albis (_Elbe_). Here trophies were set up to mark the farthest point ever reached by a Roman army. Various measures were taken to secure the possession of the conquered territory: fortresses were erected along the Elbe, Weser and Maas (_Meuse_, _Mosa_); a flotilla was placed upon the Rhine and a dam built upon the right arm of its estuary to increase the flow of water into the canal mentioned above. Drusus was said to have been deterred from crossing the Elbe by the sudden appearance of a woman of supernatural size, who predicted his approaching end. On his return, probably between the Elbe and the Saale (_Sala_), his horse stumbled and threw him. His leg was fractured and he died thirty days after the accident, on the 14th of September. Suetonius mentions an absurd rumour that he had been poisoned by order of Augustus, because he had refused to obey the order for his recall. The body was carried to the winter quarters of the army, whence it was escorted by Tiberius to Rome, the procession being joined by Augustus at Ticinum (Pavia). Tiberius delivered an oration over the remains in the Forum, whence they were conveyed to the Campus Martius and cremated, and ashes being deposited in the mausoleum of Augustus.

Drusus was one of the most distinguished men of his time. His agreeable manners, handsome person and brilliant military talents gained him the affection of the troops, while his sympathy with republican principles, endeared him to the people. It is not too much to say that, had he and his son lived long enough, they might have brought about the abolition of the monarchy. Although the successes of Drusus, resulting in the subjection of the German tribes from the Rhine to the Elbe, were too rapid to be lasting, they brought home the fact of the existence of the Romans to many who had never heard their name. For his victories he received the title of Germanicus. He married Antonia, the daughter of Marcus Antonius the triumvir, by whom he had three children: Germanicus, adopted by Tiberius; Claudius, afterwards emperor; and a daughter Livilla.

The chief ancient authorities for the life of Drusus are Dio Cassius,
the epitomes of Livy, Suetonius (_Claudius_), Tacitus (portions of the
_Annals_), Florus (whose chief source is Livy), Velleius Paterculus,
and the _Consolatio ad Liviam_. The German campaigns were described in
the last books of Livy and the lost _Bella Germaniae_ of the elder
Pliny. As would naturally be expected, they have produced an extensive
literature in Germany, J. Asbach's "Die Feldzuge des Nero Claudius
Drusus" (_Rhein. Jahrb._ lxxxv. 14-30) being especially recommended;
see also Mommsen's _History of the Roman Provinces_, i.; Merivale,
_History of the Romans under the Empire_, ch. 36; A. Stein in
Pauly-Wissowa's _Realencyclopadie_ (1899), where other authorities are
given; J. C. Tarver, _Tiberius the Tyrant_ (1902).

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Originally Decimus.

[2] The district extending from Westervoort to Doesborgh.

DRUSUS CAESAR (c. 15 B.C.-A.D. 23), commonly called Drusus junior, to distinguish him from his uncle Nero Claudius Drusus, was the only son of the emperor Tiberius by his first wife Vipsania Agrippina. After having held several curule offices, he was consul elect in A.D. 14, the year of Augustus's death. His father, on his accession to the throne, immediately sent him to put down a mutiny of the troops in Pannonia, a task which he successfully accomplished (Tacitus, _Annals_, i. 24-30). As governor of Illyricum (17), he set the Germanic tribes against one another, and encouraged Catualda, chief of the Gothones, to drive out Marbod (Maroboduus), king of the Marcomanni. On his return Drusus was consul a second time (21) and in the following year received the tribunician authority from Tiberius, which practically indicated him as heir to the throne. Sejanus, who also aspired to the supreme power, determined to remove Drusus. He endeavoured to poison Tiberius's mind against him, seduced Drusus's wife and persuaded her to assist him in murdering her husband. Her physician Eudemus prepared and the eunuch Lygdus administered a slow poison, from the effects of which Drusus died after a lingering illness. Although Tiberius is said to have received the news of his death with indifference, there is no reason to suppose that he had any hand in it; indeed, he seems to have entertained a genuine affection for his son. Drusus was a man of violent passions, a drunkard and a debauchee, but not entirely devoid of better feelings, as is shown by his undoubtedly sincere grief at the death of Germanicus. The cunning and reserve which he exhibited on occasion were probably due to the instructions or influence of Tiberius (_Annals_, iii. 8), since he was himself naturally frank and open, and for this reason, notwithstanding his vices, more popular than his father. He revelled in bloody gladiatorial displays, and the sharpest swords used on such occasions were called "Drusine."

See Tacitus, _Annals_, i. 76, iv. 8-11; Dio Cassius lvii. 13, 14;
Suetonius, _Tiberius_, 62; J. C. Tarver, _Tiberius the Tyrant_ (1902).

DRYADES, or HAMADRYADES, in Greek mythology, nymphs of trees and woods. Each particular tree ([Greek: drus]) was the home of its own special Dryad, who was supposed to be born and to die with it ([Greek: hama]).

DRYANDER, JONAS (1748-1810), Swedish botanist, was born in 1748. By his uncle, Dr Lars Montin, to whom his education was entrusted, he was sent to the university of Gothenburg, whence he removed to Lund. After taking his degree there in 1776, he studied at Upsala under Linnaeus, and then became for a time tutor to a young Swedish nobleman. He next visited England, and, on the death of his friend Dr Daniel Charles Solander (1736-1782), succeeded him as librarian to Sir Joseph Banks. He was librarian to the Royal Society and also to the Linnean Society. Of the latter, in 1788, he was one of the founders, and, when it was incorporated by royal charter in 1802, he took a leading part in drawing up its laws and regulations. He was vice-president of the society till his death, which took place in London on the 19th of October 1810. Besides papers in the Transactions of the Linnean and other societies, Dryander published _Dissertatio gradualis fungos regno vegetabili vindicans_ (Lund, 1776), and _Catalogus bibliothecae historico-naturalis Josephi Banks, Bart._ (London, 1796-1800, 5 vols.). He also edited the first and part of the second edition of W. Aiton's _Hortus Kewensis_ and W. Roxburgh's _Plants of the Coast of Coromandel_.

DRYBURGH ABBEY, a monastic ruin in the extreme south-west of Berwickshire, Scotland, about 5 m. S.E. of Melrose, and 1-1/4 m. E. of St Boswells station on the North British railway's Waverley route from Edinburgh to Carlisle. The name has been derived from the Gaelic _darach bruach_, "oak bank," in allusion to the fact that the Druids once practised their rites here. The abbey occupies the spot where, about 522, St Modan, an Irish Culdee, established a sanctuary--a secluded position on a tongue of land washed on three sides by the Tweed. Founded in 1150 by David I.--though it has also been ascribed to Hugh de Morville (d. 1162), lord of Lauderdale and constable of Scotland--it enjoyed great prosperity until 1322, when it was partially destroyed by the English under Edward II. It suffered again at the hands of Richard II. in 1385, and was reduced to ruin during the expedition of the earl of Hertford in 1545. After the Reformation the estate was erected into a temporal lordship and given (1604) by James VI. to John Erskine, 2nd earl of Mar. At a later date it was sold, but reverted to a branch of the Erskines in 1786, when it was acquired by the 11th earl of Buchan. In 1700 the abbey lands belonged to Thomas Haliburton, Scott's great-grandfather, and, but for an extravagant grand-uncle who became bankrupt and had to part with the property, they would have descended to Sir Walter by inheritance. "We have nothing left of Dryburgh," he said, "but the right of stretching our bones there." The style in general is Early English, but the west door and the restored entrance from the nave to the cloisters are fine examples of transitional Norman. Though in various stages of decay, nearly every one of the monastic buildings is represented by a fragment. Of the cruciform church--190 ft. long by 75 broad at the transepts--there remain some of the outer walls, a segment of the choir, the east aisle of the north transept, the stumps of some of the pillars of the nave, the west gable, the south transept and its adjacent chapel of St Modan. The most beautiful of these relics is St Mary's aisle of the north transept, in which were buried Sir Walter Scott (1832), his wife, son, his son-in-law John Gibson Lockhart, and his ancestors, the Haliburtons of New Mains. Sir Walter's tomb is a plain block of polished Peterhead granite, inscribed only with his name and the dates of his birth and death. The next aisle is the burial-place of the Erskines of Shielhill and the Haigs of Bemersyde. On the south side of the church, at a lower level, stand the cloisters, about 100 ft. square, bounded on the west by the dungeons, on the south-west by the cellars and refectory, in the west wall of which is an exquisite ivy-clad rose window, and on the east by the chapter-house, on a still lower level. The chapter-house, a lofty building with vaulted roof, is the most complete structure of the group, and adjoining it on the south are, first the abbot's parlour and then the library, the three apartments communicating with each other, and constituting the oldest portion of the abbey. In the grounds are many venerable trees, a yew near the chapter-house being at least coeval with the abbey.

DRYDEN, JOHN (1631-1700), English poet, born on or about the 9th of August 1631, at Aldwinkle, in Northamptonshire, was of Cumberland stock, though his family had been settled for three generations in Northamptonshire, had acquired estates and a baronetcy, and intermarried with landed families in that county. His great-grandfather, who first carried the name south, and acquired by marriage the estate of Canons Ashby, is said to have known Erasmus, and to have been so proud of the great scholar's friendship that he gave the name of Erasmus to his eldest son. The name Erasmus was borne by the poet's father, the third son of Sir Erasmus Dryden. The leanings and connexions of the family were Puritan and anti-monarchical. Sir Erasmus Dryden went to prison rather than pay loan money to Charles I.; the poet's uncle, Sir John Dryden, and his father Erasmus, served on government commissions during the Commonwealth. His mother's family, the Pickerings, were still more prominent on the Puritan side. Sir Gilbert Pickering, his cousin, was chamberlain to the Protector, and was summoned to Cromwell's House of Lords in 1657. A trustworthy tradition asserts that John Dryden was born at the rectory of Aldwinkle All Saints, of which his maternal grandfather, Henry Pickering, was rector.

Dryden's education was such as became a scion of these respectable families of squires and rectors, among whom the chance contact with Erasmus had left a certain tradition of scholarship. His father, whose own fortune, added to his wife's, was not large, procured for the poet, who was the eldest of fourteen children, admission to Westminster school as a king's scholar, under the famous Dr Busby. Some elegiac verses which Dryden wrote there on the death of a schoolfellow, Henry, Lord Hastings, son of the earl of Huntingdon, in 1649, were published in _Lacrymae Musarum_, among other elegies by "divers persons of nobility and worth" in commemoration of the same event. He appeared soon after again in print, among writers of commendatory verses to a friend of his, John Hoddesdon, who published a volume of _Epigrams_ in 1650. Dryden's contribution is signed "John Dryden of Trinity C.," as he had gone up from Westminster to Cambridge in May 1650. He was elected a scholar of Trinity on the Westminster foundation in October of the same year, and took his degree of B.A. in 1654. The only recorded incident of his college residence is some unexplained act of disobedience to the vice-master, for which he was "put out of commons" and "gated" for a fortnight. His father died in 1654, leaving him master of two-thirds of a small estate near Blakesley, worth about L60 a year. The next three years he is said to have spent at Cambridge. In any case they were spent somewhere in study; for his first considerable poem bears indisputable marks of scholarly habits, as well as of a command of verse that could not have been acquired without practice.

The middle of 1657 is given as the date of his leaving the university to take up his residence in London. In one of his many subsequent literary quarrels, it was said by Shadwell that he had been clerk to Sir Gilbert Pickering, his cousin, who was chamberlain to Cromwell; and nothing is more likely than that he obtained some employment under his powerful cousin when he came to London. He is said to have lived at first in the house of his first publisher, Herringman, with whom he was connected till 1679, when Jacob Tonson began to publish his books. He first emerged from obscurity with his _Heroic Stanzas_ (1659) to the memory of the Protector. That these stanzas should have made him a name as a poet does not appear surprising when we compare them with Waller's verses on the same occasion. Dryden took some time to consider them, and it was impossible that they should not give an impression of his intellectual strength. Donne was his model; it is obvious that both his ear and his imagination were saturated with Donne's elegiac strains when he wrote; yet when we look beneath the surface we find unmistakable traces that the pupil was not without decided theories that ran counter to the practice of the master. It is plainly not by accident that each stanza contains one clear-cut brilliant point. The poem is an academic exercise, and it seems to be animated by an under-current of strong contumacious protest against the irregularities tolerated by the authorities. Dryden had studied the ancient classics for himself, and their method of uniformity and elaborate finish commended itself to his robust and orderly mind. In itself the poem is a magnificent tribute to the memory of Cromwell.

To those who regard the poet as a seer with a sacred mission, and refuse the name altogether to a literary manufacturer to order, it comes with a certain shock to find Dryden, the hereditary Puritan, the panegyrist of Cromwell, hailing the return of King Charles in _Astraea Redux_ (1660), deploring his long absence, and proclaiming the despair with which he had seen "the rebel thrive, the loyal crost." _A Panegyric on the Coronation_ followed in 1661. From a literary point of view also, _Astraea Redux_ is inferior to the _Heroic Stanzas_.

Dryden was compelled to supplement his slender income by his writings. He naturally first thought of tragedy,--his own genius, as he has informed us, inclining him rather to that species of composition; and in the first year of the Restoration he wrote a tragedy on the fate of Henry, duke of Guise. But some friends advised him that its construction was not suited to the requirements of the stage, so he put it aside, and used only one scene of the original play later on, when he again attempted the subject with a more practised hand. Having failed to write a suitable tragedy, he next turned his attention to comedy, although, as he admitted, he had little natural turn for it. "I confess," he said, in a short essay in his own defence, printed before _The Indian Emperor_, "my chief endeavours are to delight the age in which I live. If the humour of this be for low comedy, small accidents and raillery, I will force my genius to obey it, though with more reputation I could write in verse. I know I am not so fitted by nature to write comedy; I want that gaiety of humour which is required to it. My conversation is slow and dull; my humour saturnine and reserved; in short, I am none of those who endeavour to break jests in company or make repartees. So that those who decry my comedies do me no injury, except it be in point of profit; reputation in them is the last thing to which I shall pretend." He was really as well as ostentatiously a playwright; the age demanded comedies, and he endeavoured to supply the kind of comedy that the age demanded. His first attempt was unsuccessful. Bustle, intrigue and coarsely humorous dialogue seemed to him to be part of the popular demand; and, looking about for a plot, he found something to suit him in a Spanish source, and wrote _The Wild Gallant_. The play was acted in February 1663, by Thomas Killigrew's company in Vere Street. It was not a success, and Pepys showed good judgment in pronouncing the play "so poor a thing as ever I saw in my life." Dryden never learned moderation in his humour; there is a student's clumsiness and extravagance in his indecency; the plays of Etheredge, a man of the world, have not the uncouth riotousness of Dryden's. Of this he seems to have been conscious, for when the play was revived, in 1667, he complained in the epilogue of the difficulty of comic wit, and admitted the right of a common audience to judge of the wit's success. Dryden, indeed, took a lesson from the failure of _The Wild Gallant_; his next comedy, _The Rival Ladies_, also founded on a Spanish plot, produced before the end of 1663, and printed in the next year, was correctly described by Pepys as "a very innocent and most pretty witty play," though there was much in it which the taste of our time would consider indelicate. But he never quite conquered his tendency to extravagance. _The Wild Gallant_ was not the only victim. _The Assignation, or Love in a Nunnery_, produced in 1673, shared the same fate; and even as late as 1680, when he had had twenty years' experience to guide him, _The Kind Keeper, or Mr Limberham_ was prohibited, after three representations, as being too indecent for the stage. Dislike to indecency we are apt to think a somewhat ludicrous pretext to be made by Restoration playgoers, and probably there was some other reason for the sacrifice of _Limberham_; still there is a certain savageness in the spirit of Dryden's indecency which we do not find in his most licentious contemporaries. The undisciplined force of the man carried him to an excess from which more dexterous writers held back.

After the production of _The Rival Ladies_ in 1663, Dryden assisted Sir Robert Howard in the composition of a tragedy in heroic verse, _The Indian Queen_, produced with great splendour in January 1664. He married Lady Elizabeth Howard, Sir Robert's sister and daughter of the 1st earl of Berkshire, on the 1st of December 1663. Lady Elizabeth's reputation was somewhat compromised before this union, which was not a happy one, and there is some evidence for the scandal in a letter written by her before her marriage to Philip, 2nd earl of Chesterfield. _The Indian Queen_ was a great success, one of the greatest since the reopening of the theatres. This was in all likelihood due much less to the heroic verse and the exclusion of comic scenes from the tragedy than to the magnificent scenic accessories--the battles and sacrifices on the stage, the spirits singing in the air, and the god of dreams ascending through a trap. The novelty of these Indian spectacles, as well as of the Indian characters, with the splendid Queen Zempoalla, acted by Mrs Marshall in a real Indian dress of feathers presented to her by Mrs Aphra Behn, as the centre of the play, was the chief secret of the success of _The Indian Queen_. These melodramatic properties were so marked a novelty that they could not fail to draw the town. Dryden was tempted to return to tragedy; he followed up _The Indian Queen_ with _The Indian Emperor, or the Conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards_, which was acted in 1665, and also proved a success.

But Dryden was not content with writing tragedies in rhymed verse. He took up the question of the propriety of rhyme in serious plays immediately after the success of _The Indian Queen_, in the preface to an edition (1664) of _The Rival Ladies_. In that first statement of his case, he considered the chief objection to the use of rhyme, and urged his chief argument in its favour. Rhyme was not natural, some people had said; to which he answers that it is as natural as blank verse, and that much of its unnaturalness is not the fault of the rhyme but of the writer, who has not sufficient command of language to rhyme easily. In favour of rhyme he has to say that it at once stimulates the imagination, and prevents it from being too discursive in its flights.

During the Great Plague, when the theatres were closed, and Dryden was living at Charlton, Wiltshire, at the seat of his father-in-law, the earl of Berkshire, he occupied a considerable part of his time in thinking over the principles of dramatic composition, and threw his conclusions into the form of a dialogue, which he called an _Essay of Dramatick Poesie_ and published in 1668. The essay takes the form of a dialogue between Neander (Dryden), Eugenius (Charles, Lord Buckhurst, afterwards earl of Dorset), Crites (Sir R. Howard), and Lisideius (Sir C. Sedley), who is made responsible for the famous definition of a play as a "just and lively image of human nature, representing its passions and humours, and the changes of fortune to which it is subject, for the delight and instruction of mankind." Dryden's form is of course borrowed from the ancients, and his main source is the critical work of Corneille in the prefaces and discourses contained in the edition of 1660, but he was well acquainted with the whole body of contemporary French and Spanish criticism. Crites maintains the superiority of the classical drama; Lisideius supports the exacting rules of French dramatic writing; Neander defends the English drama of the preceding generations, including, in a long speech, an examination of Ben Jonson's _Silent Woman_. Neander argues, however, that English drama has much to gain by the observance of exact methods of construction without abandoning entirely the liberty which English writers had always claimed. He then goes on to defend the use of rhyme in serious drama. Howard had argued against the use of rhyme in a "preface" to _Four New Plays_ (1665), which had furnished the excuse for Dryden's essay. Howard replied to Dryden's essay in a preface to _The Duke of Lerma_ (1668). Dryden at once replied in a masterpiece of sarcastic retort and vigorous reasoning, _A Defence of an Essay of Dramatique Poesie_, prefixed to the second edition (1668) of _The Indian Emperor_. It is the ablest and most complete statement of his views about the employment of rhymed couplets in tragedy.

Before his return to town at the end of 1666, when the theatres (which had been closed during the disasters of 1665 and 1666) were reopened, Dryden wrote a poem on the Dutch war and the Great Fire entitled _Annus Mirabilis_. The poem is in quatrains, the metre of his _Heroic Stanzas_ in praise of Cromwell, which Dryden chose, he tells us, "because he had ever judged it more noble and of greater dignity both for the sound and number than any other verse in use amongst us." The preface to the poem contains an interesting discussion of what he calls "wit-writing," introduced by the remark that "the composition of all poems is or ought to be of wit." His description of the Great Fire is a famous specimen of this wit-writing, much more careless and daring, and much more difficult to sympathize with, than the graver conceits in his panegyric of the Protector. In _Annus Mirabilis_ the poet apostrophizes the newly founded Royal Society, of which he had been elected a member in 1662.