by Various
Available in 585 free installments
Owner:
BRIANZA, a district of Lombardy, Italy, forming the south part of the province of Como, between the two southern arms of the lake of that name. It is thickly populated and remarkable for its fertility; and being hilly is a favourite summer resort of the Milanese.
BRIARE, a town of north-central France in the department of Loiret on the right bank of the Loire, 45½ m. S.E. of Orléans on the railway to Nevers. Pop. (1906) 4613. Briare, the Brivodorum of the Romans, is situated at the extremity of the Canal of Briare, which unites the Loire and its lateral canal with the Loing and so with the Seine. The canal of Briare was constructed from 1605 to 1642 and is about 36 m. long. The industries include the manufacture of fine pottery, and of so-called porcelain buttons made of felspar and milk by a special process; its inventor, Bapterosses, has a bust in the town. The canal traffic is in wood, iron, coal, building materials, &c. A modern hospital and church, and the hôtel de ville installed in an old moated château, are the chief buildings. The lateral canal of the Loire crosses the Loire near Briare by a fine canal-bridge 720 yds. in length.
BRIAREUS, or Aegaeon, in Greek mythology, one of the three hundred-armed, fifty-headed Hecatoncheires, brother of Cottus and Gyges (or Gyes). According to Homer (Iliad i. 403) he was called Aegaeon by men, and Briareus by the gods. He was the son of Poseidon (or Uranus) and Gaea. The legends regarding him and his brothers are various and somewhat contradictory. According to the most widely spread myth, Briareus and his brothers were called by Zeus to his assistance when the Titans were making war upon Olympus. The gigantic enemies were defeated and consigned to Tartarus, at the gates of which the three brothers were placed (Hesiod, Theog. 624, 639, 714). Other accounts make Briareus one of the assailants of Olympus, who, after his defeat, was buried under Mount Aetna (Callimachus, Hymn to Delos, 141). Homer mentions him as assisting Zeus when the other Olympian deities were plotting against the king of gods and men (Iliad i. 398). Another tradition makes him a giant of the sea, ruler of the fabulous Aegaea in Euboea, an enemy of Poseidon and the inventor of warships (Schol. on Apoll. Rhod. i. 1165). It would be difficult to determine exactly what natural phenomena are symbolized by the Hecatoncheires. They may represent the gigantic forces of nature which appear in earthquakes and other convulsions, or the multitudinous motion of the sea waves (Mayer, Die Giganten und Titanen, 1887).
BRIBERY (from the O. Fr. briberie, begging or vagrancy, bribe, Mid. Lat. briba, signifying a piece of bread given to beggars; the Eng. "bribe" has passed through the meanings of alms, blackmail and extortion, to gifts received or given in order to influence corruptly). The public offence of bribery may be defined as the offering or giving of payment in some shape or form that it may be a motive in the performance of functions for which the proper motive ought to be a conscientious sense of duty. When this is superseded by the sordid impulses created by the bribe, a person is said to be corrupted, and thus corruption is a term sometimes held equivalent to bribery. The offence may be divided into two great classes?the one where a person invested with power is induced by payment to use it unjustly; the other, where power is obtained by purchasing the suffrages of those who can impart it. It is a natural propensity, removable only by civilization or some powerful counteracting influence, to feel that every element of power is to be employed as much as possible for the owner's own behoof, and that its benefits should be conferred not on those who best deserve them, but on those who will pay most for them. Hence judicial corruption is an inveterate vice of imperfect civilization. There is, perhaps no other crime on which the force of law, if unaided by public opinion and morals, can have so little influence; for in
