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[1] The hide (hid, hiwisc, familia, tributarius, cassatus, manens, &c.) was in later times a measure of land, usually 120 acres. In early times, however, it seems to have meant (1) household, (2) normal amount of land appertaining to a household.
BRITANNICUS, son of the Roman emperor Claudius by his third wife Messallina, was born probably A.D. 41. He was originally called Claudius Tiberius Germanicus, and received the name Britannicus from the senate on account of the conquest made in Britain about the time of his birth. Till 48, the date of his mother's execution, he was looked upon as the heir presumptive; but Agrippina, the new wife of Claudius, soon persuaded the feeble emperor to adopt Lucius Domitius, known later as Nero, her son by a previous marriage. After the accession of Nero, Agrippina, by playing on his fears, induced him to poison Britannicus at a banquet (A.D. 55). A golden statue of the young prince was set up by the emperor Titus. Britannicus is the subject of a tragedy by Racine.
Tacitus, Annals, xii. 25, 41, xiii. 14-16; Suetonius, Nero, 33; Dio Cassius lx. 32, 34; works quoted under Nero.
BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA, the general name given to the British protectorates in South Central Africa north of the Zambezi river, but more particularly to a large territory lying between 8° 25? S. on Lake Tanganyika and 17° 6? S. on the river Shiré, near its confluence with the Zambezi, and between 36° 10? E. (district of Mlanje) and 26° 30? E. (river Luengwe-Kafukwe). Originally the term "British Central Africa" was applied by Sir H.H. Johnston to all the territories under British influence north of the Zambezi which were formerly intended to be under one administration; but the course of events having prevented the connexion of Barotseland (see Barotse) and the other Rhodesian territories with the more direct British administration north of the Zambezi, the name of British Central Africa was confined officially (in 1893) to the British protectorate on the Shiré and about Lake Nyasa. In 1907 the official title of the protectorate was changed to that of Nyasaland Protectorate, while the titles "North Eastern Rhodesia" and "North Western Rhodesia" (Barotseland) have been given to the two divisions of the British South Africa Company's territory north of the Zambezi. The western boundary, however, of the territory here described has been taken to be a line drawn from near the source of the Lualaba on the southern boundary of Belgian Congo to the western source of the Luanga river, and thence the course of the Luanga to its junction with the Luengwe-Kafukwe, after which the main course of the Kafukwe delimits the territory down to the Zambezi. Thus, besides the Nyasaland Protectorate and North Eastern Rhodesia, part of North Western Rhodesia is included, and for the whole of this region British Central Africa is the most convenient designation.
