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Bessie Smith

Bessie Smith (April 15, 1894 – September 26, 1937) was an African-American blues singer widely renowned during the Jazz Age. Nicknamed the "Empress of the Blues", she was the most popular female blues singer of the 1930s. Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989, she is often regarded as one of the greatest singers of her era and was a major influence on fellow blues singers, as well as jazz vocalists.

Born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Smith was young when her parents died, and she and her six siblings survived by performing on street corners. She began touring and performed in a group that included Ma Rainey, and then went out on her own. Her successful recording career with Columbia Records began in 1923, but her performing career was cut short by a car crash that killed her at the age of 43.

Early life
The 1900 census indicates that her family reported that Bessie Smith was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in July 1892. The 1910 census gives her age as 16, and a birth date of April 15, 1894, which appears on subsequent documents and was observed as her birthday by the Smith family. The 1870 and 1880 censuses report several older siblings or half-siblings.

Smith was the daughter of Laura and William Smith, a laborer and part-time Baptist preacher (he was listed in the 1870 census as a "minister of the gospel", in Moulton, Lawrence County, Alabama). He died while his daughter was too young to remember him. By the time Bessie was nine, her mother and a brother had also died and her older sister Viola took charge of caring for her siblings. As a consequence, Bessie was unable to gain an education.

Due to her parents' death and her poverty, Bessie experienced a "wretched childhood". To earn money for their impoverished household, Bessie and her brother Andrew busked on the streets of Chattanooga. She sang and danced as he played the guitar. They often performed on "street corners for pennies", and their habitual location was in front of the White Elephant Saloon at Thirteenth and Elm streets, in the heart of the city's African-American community.

In 1904, her oldest brother Clarence left home and joined a small traveling troupe owned by Moses Stokes. "If Bessie had been old enough, she would have gone with him", said Clarence's widow, Maud. "That's why he left without telling her, but Clarence told me she was ready, even then. Of course, she was only a child."

In 1912, Clarence returned to Chattanooga with the Stokes troupe and arranged an audition for his sister with the troupe managers, Lonnie and Cora Fisher. Bessie was hired as a dancer rather than a vocalist since the company already included popular singer Ma Rainey. Contemporary accounts indicate that, while Ma Rainey did not teach Smith to sing, she likely helped her develop a stage presence. Smith eventually moved on to performing in chorus lines, making the "81" Theatre in Atlanta her home base. She also performed in shows on the black-owned Theater Owners Booking Association (T.O.B.A.) circuit and would become one of its major attractions.

Career
Smith began forming her own act around 1913, at Atlanta's "81" Theater. By 1920, she had established a reputation in the South and along the East Coast. At the time, sales of over 100,000 copies of "Crazy Blues", recorded for Okeh Records by the singer Mamie Smith (no relation), pointed to a new market. The recording industry had not directed its product to black people, but the success of the record led to a search for female blues singers.

Hoping to capitalize on this new market, Smith began her recording career in 1923. Bessie Smith was signed to Columbia Records in 1923 by Frank Walker, a talent agent who had seen her perform years earlier. Her first recording session for Columbia was on February 15, 1923; it was engineered by Dan Hornsby who was recording and discovering many southern music talents of that era. For most of 1923, her records were issued on Columbia's regular A-series. When the company established a "race records" series, Smith's "Cemetery Blues" (September 26, 1923) was the first issued. Both sides of her first record, "Downhearted Blues" backed with "Gulf Coast Blues", were hits (an earlier recording of "Downhearted Blues" by its co-writer Alberta Hunter had previously been released by Paramount Records).

As her popularity increased, Smith became a headliner on the Theatre Owners Booking Association (T.O.B.A.) circuit and rose to become its top attraction in the 1920s. Working a heavy theater schedule during the winter and performing in tent shows the rest of the year, Smith became the highest-paid black entertainer of her day and began traveling in her own 72-foot-long railroad car. Columbia's publicity department nicknamed her "Queen of the Blues", but the national press soon upgraded her title to "Empress of the Blues". Smith's music stressed independence, fearlessness, and sexual freedom, implicitly arguing that working-class women did not have to alter their behavior to be worthy of respect.

Despite her success, neither she nor her music was accepted in all circles. She once auditioned for Black Swan Records (W. E. B. Du Bois was on its board of directors) and was dismissed because she was considered too rough as she supposedly stopped singing to spit. The businessmen involved with Black Swan Records were surprised when she became the most successful diva because her style was rougher and coarser than Mamie Smith. Even her admirers—white and black—considered her a "rough" woman (i.e., working class or even "low class").

Smith had a strong contralto voice, which recorded well from her first session, which was conducted when recordings were made acoustically. The advent of electrical recording made the power of her voice even more evident. Her first electrical recording was "Cake Walking Babies [From Home]", recorded on May 5, 1925. Smith also benefited from the new technology of radio broadcasting, even on stations in the segregated South. For example, after giving a concert to a white-only audience at a theater in Memphis, Tennessee, in October 1923, she performed a late-night concert on station WMC, which was well received by the radio audience. Musicians and composers like Danny Barker and Tommy Dorsey compared her presence and delivery to a preacher because of her ability to enrapture and move her audience.

She made 160 recordings for Columbia, often accompanied by the finest musicians of the day, notably Louis Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins, Fletcher Henderson, James P. Johnson, Joe Smith, and Charlie Green. A number of Smith's recordings—such as "Alexander's Ragtime Band" in 1927—quickly became among the best-selling records of their release years.

Broadway
Smith's career was cut short by the Great Depression, which nearly put the recording industry out of business, and the advent of sound in film, which spelled the end of vaudeville. She never stopped performing, however. The days of elaborate vaudeville shows were over, but Smith continued touring and occasionally sang in clubs. In 1929, she appeared in a Broadway musical, Pansy. The play was a flop; top critics said she was its only asset.

Film
In November 1929, Smith made her only film appearance, starring in a two-reeler, St. Louis Blues, based on composer W. C. Handy's song of the same name. In the film, directed by Dudley Murphy and shot in Astoria, Queens, she sings the title song accompanied by members of Fletcher Henderson's orchestra, the Hall Johnson Choir, the pianist James P. Johnson and a string section, a musical environment radically different from that of any of her recordings.

Swing era
In 1933, John Henry Hammond, who also mentored Billie Holiday, asked Smith to record four sides for Okeh (which had been acquired by Columbia Records in 1925). He claimed to have found her in semi-obscurity, "working as a hostess in a speakeasy on Ridge Avenue in Philadelphia." Smith worked at Art's Cafe on Ridge Avenue, but not as a hostess and not until the summer of 1936. In 1933, when she made the Okeh sides, she was still touring. Hammond was known for his selective memory and gratuitous embellishments.

Smith was paid a non-royalty fee of $37.50 for each selection on these Okeh sides, which were her last recordings. Made on November 24, 1933, they serve as a hint of the transformation she made in her performances as she shifted her blues artistry into something that fit the swing era. The relatively modern accompaniment is notable. The band included such swing era musicians as the trombonist Jack Teagarden, the trumpeter Frankie Newton, the tenor saxophonist Chu Berry, the pianist Buck Washington, the guitarist Bobby Johnson, and the bassist Billy Taylor. Benny Goodman, who happened to be recording with Ethel Waters in the adjoining studio, dropped by and is barely audible on one selection. Hammond was not entirely pleased with the results, preferring to have Smith revisit her old blues sound. "Take Me for a Buggy Ride" and "Gimme a Pigfoot", both written by Wesley Wilson, were among her most popular recordings.

Death
On September 26, 1937, Smith was critically injured in a car crash on U.S. Route 61 between Memphis, Tennessee, and Clarksdale, Mississippi. Her lover, Richard Morgan, was driving, and misjudged the speed of a slow-moving truck ahead of him. Skid marks at the scene suggested that Morgan tried to avoid the truck by driving around its left side, but he hit the rear of the truck side-on at high speed. The tailgate of the truck sheared off the wooden roof of Smith's old Packard vehicle. Smith, who was in the passenger seat, probably with her right arm or elbow out the window, took the full brunt of the impact. Morgan escaped without injuries.

The first person on the scene was a Memphis surgeon, Dr. Hugh Smith (no relation). In the early 1970s, Hugh Smith gave a detailed account of his experience to Bessie's biographer Chris Albertson. This is the most reliable eyewitness testimony about the events surrounding her death.

Arriving at the scene, Dr. Smith examined Smith, who was lying in the middle of the road with obviously severe injuries. He estimated she had lost about a half pint of blood, and immediately noted a major traumatic injury: her right arm was almost completely severed at the elbow. He stated that this injury alone did not cause her death. Though the light was poor, he observed only minor head injuries. He attributed her death to extensive and severe crush injuries to the entire right side of her body, consistent with a sideswipe collision.

Henry Broughton, a fishing partner of Dr. Smith's, helped him move Smith to the shoulder of the road. Dr. Smith dressed her arm injury with a clean handkerchief and asked Broughton to go to a house about 500 feet off the road to call an ambulance. By the time Broughton returned, about 25 minutes later, Smith was in shock.

Time passed with no sign of the ambulance, so Dr. Smith suggested that they take her into Clarksdale in his car. He and Broughton had almost finished clearing the back seat when they heard the sound of a car approaching at high speed. Dr. Smith flashed his lights in warning, but the oncoming car failed to slow and plowed into his car at full speed. It sent his car careening into Smith's overturned Packard, completely wrecking it. The oncoming car ricocheted off Hugh Smith's car into the ditch on the right, barely missing Broughton and Bessie Smith.

The young couple in the speeding car did not sustain life-threatening injuries. Two ambulances then arrived from Clarksdale—one from the black hospital, summoned by Broughton, the second from the white hospital, acting on a report from the truck driver, who had not seen the crash victims.

Smith was taken to the G. T. Thomas Afro-American Hospital in Clarksdale, where her right arm was amputated. She died that morning without regaining consciousness. After her death, an often repeated, but now discredited story emerged that she died because a whites-only hospital in Clarksdale refused to admit her. The jazz writer and producer John Hammond gave this account in an article in the November 1937 issue of DownBeat magazine. The circumstances of Smith's death and the rumor reported by Hammond formed the basis for Edward Albee's 1959 one-act play The Death of Bessie Smith.

"The Bessie Smith ambulance would not have gone to a white hospital; you can forget that", Hugh Smith told Albertson. "Down in the Deep South Cotton Belt, no ambulance driver, or white driver, would even have thought of putting a colored person off in a hospital for white folks."

Smith's funeral was held in Philadelphia a little over a week later, on October 4, 1937. Initially, her body was laid out at Upshur's funeral home. As word of her death spread through Philadelphia's black community, her body had to be moved to the O. V. Catto Elks Lodge to accommodate the estimated 10,000 mourners who filed past her coffin on Sunday, October 3. Contemporary newspapers reported that her funeral was attended by about seven thousand people. Far fewer mourners attended the burial at Mount Lawn Cemetery, in nearby Sharon Hill. Jack Gee thwarted all efforts to purchase a stone for his estranged wife, once or twice pocketing money raised for that purpose.

Unmarked grave
Smith's grave remained unmarked until a tombstone was erected on August 7, 1970, paid for by the singer Janis Joplin and Juanita Green, who as a child had done housework for Smith. Dory Previn wrote a song about Joplin and the tombstone, "Stone for Bessie Smith", for her album Mythical Kings and Iguanas. The Afro-American Hospital (now the Riverside Hotel) was the site of the dedication of the fourth historical marker on the Mississippi Blues Trail.

Personal life
In 1923, Smith was living in Philadelphia when she met Jack Gee, a security guard, whom she married on June 7, 1923, just as her first record was being released. During the marriage, Smith became the highest-paid black entertainer of the day, heading her own shows, which sometimes featured as many as 40 troupers, and touring in her own custom-built railroad car. Their marriage was stormy with infidelity on both sides, including numerous female sex partners for Bessie. Gee was impressed by the money, but never adjusted to show business life or to Smith's bisexuality. In 1929, when she learned of his affair with another singer, Gertrude Saunders, Smith ended the relationship, although neither of them sought a divorce.

Smith later entered a common-law marriage with an old friend, Richard Morgan, who was Lionel Hampton's uncle. She stayed with him until her death.

Musical themes
Songs like "Jail House Blues", "Work House Blues", "Prison Blues", "Sing Sing Prison Blues" and "Send Me to the 'Lectric Chair" dealt critically with social issues of the day such as chain gangs, the convict lease system and capital punishment. "Poor Man's Blues" and "Washwoman's Blues" are considered by scholars to be an early form of African-American protest music.

What becomes evident after listening to her music and studying her lyrics is that Smith emphasized and channeled a subculture within the African-American working class. Additionally, she incorporated commentary on social issues like poverty, intra-racial conflict, and female sexuality into her lyrics. Her lyrical sincerity and public behavior were not widely accepted as appropriate expressions for African-American women; therefore, her work was often written off as distasteful or unseemly, rather than as an accurate representation of the African-American experience.

Smith's work challenged elitist norms by encouraging working-class women to embrace their right to drink, party, and satisfy their sexual needs as a means of coping with stress and dissatisfaction in their daily lives. Smith advocated for a wider vision of African-American womanhood beyond domesticity, piety, and conformity; she sought empowerment and happiness through independence, sassiness, and sexual freedom. Although Smith was a voice for many minority groups and one of the most gifted blues performers of her time, the themes in her music were precocious, which led to many believing that her work was undeserving of serious recognition.

Smith's lyrics are often speculated to have portrayed her sexuality. In "Prove it On Me", performed by Ma Rainey, Rainey famously sang, "Went out last night with a crowd of my friends. They must've been women, 'cause I don't like no mens.. they say I do it, ain't nobody caught me. Sure got to prove it on me." African American queer theorists and activists have often looked to Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith as "gender-bending" role models of the early 20th-century blues era.

Hit records
There was no official national record chart in the US until 1936. National positions have been formulated post facto by music historian Joel Whitburn.

Compilation albums

 * Bessie Smith Album (1938)
 * Empress of the Blues (1940)
 * Empress of the Blues, Vol. II (1947)
 * The Bessie Smith Story, in 4 Volumes (1951)
 * The World's Greatest Blues Singer (1970)
 * Any Woman's Blues (1970)
 * Empty Bed Blues (1971)
 * The Empress (1971)
 * Nobody's Blues But Mine (1972)

Grammy Hall of Fame
Three recordings by Smith were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, an award established in 1973 to honor recordings that are at least 25 years old and that have "qualitative or historical significance".

National Recording Registry
In 2002, Smith's recording of "Downhearted Blues" was included in the National Recording Registry by the National Recording Preservation Board of the Library of Congress. The board annually selects recordings that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

"Downhearted Blues" was also included in the list of Songs of the Century by the Recording Industry of America and the National Endowment for the Arts in 2001, and in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 songs that shaped rock 'n' roll.

Inductions
In 1984, Smith was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.

U.S. postage stamp
The U.S. Postal Service issued a 29-cent commemorative postage stamp honoring Smith in 1994.

Other
In 2023, Rolling Stone ranked Smith at No. 33 on their list of the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time.

Digital remastering
Technical faults in the majority of her original gramophone recordings (especially variations in recording speed, which raised or lowered the apparent pitch of her voice) misrepresented the "light and shade" of her phrasing, interpretation and delivery. They altered the apparent key of her performances (sometimes raised or lowered by as much as a semitone). The "center hole" in some of the master recordings had not been in the true middle of the master disc, so that there were wide variations in tone, pitch, key and phrasing, as commercially released records revolved around the spindle.

Given those historic limitations, the digitally remastered versions of her work deliver noticeable improvements in the sound quality of Smith's performances, though some critics believe that the American Columbia Records compact disc releases are somewhat inferior to subsequent transfers made by the late John R. T. Davies for Frog Records.

In popular culture
The 1948 short story "Blue Melody", by J. D. Salinger, and the 1959 play The Death of Bessie Smith, by Edward Albee, are based on Smith's life and death, but poetic license was taken by both authors; for instance, Albee's play distorts the circumstances of her medical treatment, or lack of it, before her death, attributing it to racist medical practitioners. The circumstances related by both Salinger and Albee were widely circulated until being debunked at a later date by Smith's biographer.

Dinah Washington and LaVern Baker released tribute albums to Smith in 1958. Released on Exodus Records in 1965, Hoyt Axton Sings Bessie Smith is another collection of Smith's songs performed by folk singer Hoyt Axton.

Each June, the Bessie Smith Cultural Center in Chattanooga sponsors the Bessie Smith Strut as part of the city's Riverbend Festival.

She was the subject of a 1997 biography by Jackie Kay, reissued in February 2021 and featuring as Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4, read in an abridged version by the author.

The song "Bessie Smith" by The Band first appeared on The Basement Tapes in 1975, but probably dates from 1970 to 1971, although musician Artie Traum recalls bumping into Rick Danko, the co-writer of the song, at Woodstock in 1969, who sang a verse of "Going Down The Road to See Bessie" on the spot.

In the 2015 HBO film Bessie, Queen Latifah portrays Smith, focusing on the struggle and transition of Smith's life and sexuality. The film was well received critically and garnered four Primetime Emmy Awards, winning Outstanding Television Movie.

title: Bessie Smith


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Talk:Ionic bonding

Electron affinity
Dear author, in the Formation section,second line......Electron affinity of an atom should be negative for it to accept electrons and form an anion. It is the energy released. ([User:Mani_g1|Dr. Manisha Jain]) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mani g1 (talk • contribs) 13:41, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Electronegativity
I was taught that the difference in electronegativity between the atoms in an ionic bond is greater than 1.25, and anything less is Polar Covalent. The article mentions electronegativity but does not go into enough detail to explain what's going on. 76.123.165.106 (talk) 22:25, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Caption
How about a nice caption to say something about the figure - what it represents, how it was made, etc.? -- Marj Tiefert, Wednesday, May 14, 2002

Reformatted
I've done a faily major reformat of this page. If it looks bad to anyone please reformat, or alternativly say what the problem is on this page along with their browser and screen resolution. I'm a bit worried about the equation overlapping the table on the right, which I think it might do with a small enough screen size Theresa knott

 * I think the phosphorus anion is fairly unlikely to exist, the third ionisation energy is probably prohibitivly large. In addition to this, since P is a relatively large atom anyway, there will almost undoubtedly be considerable covalency in the bond. Good old NaCl, although for less exotic, is probably a better example. jwasey 16:16, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Difference with covalent bonds
Would be great if someone could add a paragraph discussing how exactly they're different from covalent bonds. Tempshill 20:46, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)

 * I think some sort of general bonding page needs to be created which explains either end of the covalent/ionic continuum but emphasises that nothing really exists in these theoretical bonding modes. I don't know how to do this, is it possible? jwasey 16:16, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * Covalent is sharing of electrons and ionic is electrostatic forces of attraction resulting from the non metal having more electrons than protons (so being - ve) and the metal having less electrons than protons (+ve) Tourskin 05:27, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Why does it happen?
Since the Lithium and Fluorine atoms are both electrically neutral prior to bonding, what causes an electron to "leave" the Lithium atom for the Fluorine atom in the first place? --RussAbbott 02:27, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

 * Atoms always "try" to obtain the most stable electron configuration (that of a noble gas). As the Li athom has 1 electron in its last electron shield, it gives up 1 electron and loses its last shield: the next outer shield has 8 electrons, which is a stable configuration. The F has 7 electrons in its last shield: it catches the electron the Li gave up and then has 8 electrons in its last shield: another stable configuration. Maybe this explanation should be in the main article? -- Habbit 17:13, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

 * Is it really the case that if there were a free electron floating about in the vicinity of a Fluorine atom, the Fluorine atom would capture it, thereby becoming electrically negative in the process? And is it really the case that a sole Lithium atom expels its sole outershell electron so that it can empty its outermost shell--becoming electrically positive in the process? Neither of these seem likely.  Perhaps the two together make more sense.  But what is the force that causes it to happen?  It isn't an electrical attraction or repulsion (since the two atoms are neutral).  In fact, the electron is going in the "wrong" direction with respect to both the Lithium and Fluorine atoms.  So it must be something else.   What is it?  --RussAbbott 23:48, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

 * This is an extremely important point in all of chemistry. How do quantum effects create "forces" that favor complete energy levels, at the expense of having a net charge -- and thus violating our intuition (correct in the classical world) that a net charge leads to electostatic instability?

 * Keep in mind first that there is no stable electric configuration in the classical world -- in fact there is no equilibrium configuration -- and one of the the first things that quantum did was to fix that, without introducing any new forces. It's fermionic exclusion plus h-bar as embodied in the Schroedinger equation.

 * But that's just the warm up. To explain the capture of the 10th electron, continue to think in terms of the Schroedinger equation.

 * The most important point: the 9 electrons of neutral F are smeared out, not concentrated on top of the positive charge (for h-bar and fermion reasons). The electric force felt by a hypothetical 10th electron is the sum of a standard attractive inward Coulomb toward the nucleus, plus a smeared-out (convolved) integral combination of repulsive Coulombs from the all points of the 9-electron cloud. The latter force is radially outward (at least assuming the distribution of the 9 electrons is spherically symmetric), but it is weaker than the inward attraction when near the nucleus. It cancels the inward attraction (fully shields it) when the hypothetical 10th electron is far from the nucleus. So there is a zone near the nucleus where the attraction is toward the nucleus, and the potential energy for the 10th electron is lower than at infinity. So the 10th electron would like to go there, or at least would like to stay there if it gets there. Of course, for h-bar and fermion reasons it can't just squeeze in there, it also has to be diffuse, but it turns out that it can get close enough, without moving too fast, to have a total energy less than it would have at infinity. So it likes to be there, and that completes the shell.

 * Now in reality, this was a simplification. Actually, the 9-electron cloud is not spherically symmetric, but is a combination of 9 quantum states whose sum effect is not spherically symmetric, and the 10th electron fits in as a 10th quantum state together with the first 9 and nicely completes a representation of SO(3). Indeed, the 10 together now have spherically symmetrical distribution. Furthermore, the interaction of the 10th electron is not with a 9-electron fluid spread out in a density (a mean-field), but rather it interacts via a 10-fold alternating tensor product that allows for all the electrical couplings, phase cancellation (interference) effects, and the exclusion principle to be handled all at once. Finally there is second quantization, QED, relativistic effects and so forth.

 * And at the same time, it is clear that you can't just keep adding electrons this way. If you add enough electrons, the favorable "zone" for the next added electron to have lower net energy than infinity gets too small to be usable, both because there is more negative charge around, but also because more orbitals are filled and the new electron can't get close enough to the nucleus to profit much from the positive charge there. But what determines when you can't continue to add electrons?

 * Indeed, it turns out that the average distance from the nucleus, or the net energy -- in fact, these are probably the same thing -- will jump upward a big leap once the energy level gets exactly filled. The next electron is forced to be suddenly a considerable distance further out and it is no longer favorable. Indeed, this is exactly when the representation gets full and the positional distribution gets spherically symmetric again.

 * At least this is my take on it, not having done the calculations. 89.217.0.120 (talk) 01:22, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

 * Update: see Slater's rules, effective nuclear charge, shielding effect. They don't give the shape of the potential, but gives some guide on the behavior of the shielding. In particular, Slater's rules says that (as an empirical rule of thumb, anyway) adding more electrons to a given d or f orbital does not increase the repulsive effect at all for further electrons in the same subshell. That is, the shielding they produce doesn't kick in until you get to a higher subshell. A modified version of this happens for s and p orbitals. This says, more or less, that the effective potential due to the combination of the nucleus and the already-present electrons is significantly more positive at a given radius, which I called a zone, than you would think just from computing the total charge of the atom. (In fact, the total charge only predicts the behavior of the potential much further out, near infinity.)

 * I see that I've only explained why the fluorine atom would capture the electron (because shielding will fail to be complete), not why the lithium one would let go of it. Of course, the latter takes energy. To expel the electron you have to assume it happens because of an opportunistic, random "bump" either from radiation that creates an ion, or some kind of quantum jumping over an energy hump into the waiting fluorine "zone" if the fluorine atom is close enough. In either case, it comes from the dynamism of the situation and does not happen just passively by itself.

 * BTW I no longer think equal average distance (in some way of measuring) predicts equal energy. 89.217.0.120 (talk) 02:13, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

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doesn't litium have three electrons? I don't think the diagram is right

-

It is energetically unfavorable to transfer an electron from Lithium to Fluorine to form separate ions. However, quite a lot of energy is released when the ions pack into the lattice, and this more than compensates for the energy required to form the ions.

I am somewhat suspicious of the statement that no bond is purely ionic. In the compound sodium borohydride, there are Na+ and BH4- ions. There are no lone pairs available on BH4- to share with sodium, so how can there possibly be any covalency?

 * You are forgetting, that covalent bonds aren't just confined to the "sticks between atoms" model. If you think about it using the LCAO model, the borohydride anion has a molecular orbital that is a linear combination of the atomic orbitals; this can then engage in mixing with the remaining electrons floating around the sodium (and the unoccupied shells too).  The net energy contribution of this mixing is probably inconsequential next to the "ionic" contribution, however.

 * Dative bonding? Theresa Knott (a tenth stroke) 16:39, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Well the bond starts off as a covalent bond, with the two atoms sharing lithium's single valence electron. However, their electrongativities are 1.0 for lithium and 4.0 for fluorine. The electronegativity of fluorine is obviously much stronger, so it pulls the electron closer to itself, until it gets to the point that the electron has comletely left lithium and has completed fluorine's octet.24.188.27.7 03:35, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Ionic Bonding

Ionic bonding reminds me of the mooring lines that get cast into the harbour when the big ship arrives. A sodium atom sails close to a chlorine atom. It takes an interest in it, and then it casts over a mooring electron. The two atoms then haul themselves together. Clearly the bonding has begun before the official explanation for the bond has even come into existence. See 'Gravity Reversal and Atomic Bonding' at http://www.wbabin.net/science/tombe6.pdf Yours sincerely, David Tombe (124.217.36.28 12:22, 8 December 2006 (UTC)).

Re: Li and F reaction. I think it is a mistaken notion that they should not react. The most stable state for lithium and fluorine are as lithium cations and fluoride anions. That is the most common state you would find them in nature, i.e., the same electronic configuration as their nearest noble gas. You must supply energy to convert a lithium cation to lithium metal. That energy suggests lithium is sufficiently reactive to enable it to react with water. I understand the reason to ascribe elements as 0 kJ/mol in their elemental states, but that wrongly implies they are actually at some neutral state. Petedskier (talk) 23:03, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Ion pairs?
'ion pair' redirects to this page, but there is no mention of it in the article. From what i understand it is a case when two ions which perhaps were formally attached are still next to each other, but not necessarily bonded. Does this sound about right? Do they influence each other significantly?

 * It is virtualy imposible to separate ions enough that they are not bonded to each other any longer. Atempting to do so though the input of considerable energy (in, for example, an electrochemical cell) invariably produces the uncharged elemental atoms. The only instances where ions can exist without some sort of latice or solvent is under extreemly high temperatures (on the level of the corona of the sun) or under vacume conditions where ions can be produced via radiation bombardment. To get back to your quesiton, "Ion Pairs" are always bonded.

DANGER!!! INACCURATE!!!
Hang on a a day!! Not a minute! This is wrong. The first paragraph states a nonpolar covalent bond is weaker than a covalent polar bond. Okay. But you CAN'T use that to determine if an ionic bond is stronger than a covalent. Because Covalent bonding is very very strong between the actual atoms involved and weak only as an intermolecular force. Ionic bonds are between molecules as in a lattice (intermolecular) and between the actual ions. To prove this, you only need to look at Diamond, Carbon-Carbon bonds, all covalent 100%, with no degree of ionic behavior. Diamond is the hardest material in the world. So I shall remove this very damaging bit at the first paragraph, unless someone with more real scientific knowledge (like a degree or something) rules me wrong. Tourskin.

Strength of Ionic Bonds vs. Strength of Covalent Bonds
Ionic bonds are generally stronger than covalent bonds. Any plausible arguments as to say otherwise? Correctist (talk) 02:16, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

B class?
There are some problems here of accuracy.

Polarisation effects - this para is pretty good until it says AlCl3 is covalent! Its an ionic solid (6 coordinate Al) and forms 4 coordinate Al dimers (covalent) only in the melt and gas phase.

Ionic structure - What is this paragraph saying- is there a confusion here with metal structures where some metals approximate closest packing with hcp and fcc structures being common (bcc isn't closest packed)? Simple cubic what is that? In the unit cell the weight is one of the atoms? In an ionic solid the unit cell has to contain at least one formula unit i.e 2 different atoms. Keeping it really simple and only considering binary ionic compounds - there are two factors - the ratio of positive to negative and the relative sizes of the two ions involved.

Ionic v Covalent - the assertion that covalent bonding is determined by VSEPR overstates the power of VSEPR - which best predicts molecular shapes of main group compounds (inert pair effect and inner shell polarisation effects ignored). --Axiosaurus (talk) 09:41, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

 * I agree there are some problems. I suppose AlCl3 has some tendency toward covalent bonding, which allows it to readily form molecules by melting at a low temperature or dissolving in organic solvents. That statement could be improved by specifying under which conditions AlCl3 (or Al2Cl6) is really molecular, or by using a different example (isn't Al2Br6 is molecular even in the solid?). Simple cubic is the name given to the structure of CsCl. Even if it has two different atoms, the atoms of each individual element are in a simple cubic lattice. But anyway, feel free to downgrade the rating. This could be a good use for the new "C-class" rating--more than a "Start" but less than a "B". --Itub (talk) 08:50, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I have made some remedial changes - the AlCl3 story is interesting but I feel irrelevant to this article- e.g. how conductivity changes as melting point approaches- AlCl3 article is very specific in saying that it is covalently bonded- and that article needs attention and more detail adding.--Axiosaurus (talk) 13:46, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

"Stock system Name" for ions
I changed the heading to "Common name" from the previous heading "Stock System Name" If there ever was a formal Stock system for ions, it has now,  80 years or so later, been superseded many times, most recently by IUPAC latest 2005 recommendations. --Axiosaurus (talk) 17:09, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

conflict of interest
The author of the papers is the author of the section in the wikipedia article:

Some charge transfer (i. e., ionic character) can exist even in pure elemental crystals, if atoms occupy symmetrically inequivalent positions - but usually such ionic character is too small to be important. Significant charge transfer was recently reported in a high-pressure phase of boron, which consists of two types of clusters: B12-icosahedra and B2-pairs, arranged as ions in a NaCl-type structure, with charge transfer of ~0.5 electrons from B2 to B12.

We have to decide If this is notable enough to keep.--Stone (talk) 20:18, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

List of common ions
I'm tempted to delete the entire section listing common ions, as (1) it is of limited usefulness, (2) it is incomplete, (3) it cannot be completed practically, (4) there is already Category:Cations and Category:Anions, and (5) there is already a list of representative ions at Ion. Any objections?—Tetracube (talk) 16:32, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

 * Alright, since nobody objects, I will remove the section.—Tetracube (talk) 17:04, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Percent ionic versus covalent
In the page there is a segment dicussing that all ionic bonds must have some covalent nature. It also dicusses the percent of ionicity. It would be useful to also include the equation by which percent ionicity can be calculated. % ionic character of a bond = 1 - exp (1/4 * delta chi ^2) where delta chi is the difference between electronegativity of the anion and cation. Also in response to the below comment about electronegativity - linking to the page on electronegativity is a legitimate explanation for electronegativity. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.61.137.218 (talk) 16:01, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree with the above, but a reference would be necessary. Also, adding a diagram illustrating the ranges for the three types of electrochemical bonds (ionic, polar covalent, and non-polar covalent) would be useful. Mego (talk) 04:56, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Ach ja.. und, deine Mudda !!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.146.238.147 (talk) 13:05, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Ionic interactions redirects here
It shouldn't. Ionic interactions refers to the weak electrical attraction which occurs between atoms that are already covalently bonded, e.g. in globular proteins. There doesn't appear to be a page for this type of interaction. :S —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.30.209.82 (talk) 18:23, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Extra Ionic Bonding Examples
In the summary section, the example of Sodium and Chlorine seems rather incomplete and simple as the bonding of complex ions require new sets of rules (parentheses...). In other words, eg) MgSO4 + AlCl3 => MgCl2 + Al(SO4)3 Such "more complex" examples, in my opinion, should be added. --Jjeong12 (talk) 17:43, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

New image
The new gif is nifty, but I'm a little concerned that it shows um... perhaps the gas-phase reaction of sodium with fluorine, rather than simply the ionic bond. --Rifleman 82 (talk) 22:50, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

 * Well yes, but I think it is the right image for the audience of this article. It's unlikely that PhD research students are likely to be looking at this fairly brief page on ionic bonding to get to grips with the subject. Either way, the previous image was just too awful for the year 2011. Wdcf (talk) 00:20, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Formation Section
I have a problem with the Formation section, but I'm not brave enough to make a change in it. The sentences that seem incorrect are:

"The removal of electrons from the cation is endothermic, raising the system's overall energy." and "However, the action of the anion accepting the cation's valence electrons and the subsequent attraction of the ions to each other releases energy and thus lowers the overall energy of the system."

In both cases, they are not cations or anions until they lose or gain the electron. They are just elements that become either cations or anions.

Hopefully someone with experience here at Wikipedia will make the correction. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Puntific (talk • contribs) 21:03, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I think the reason the author used cation and anion even though they aren't ions yet (as you pointed out) is because they could not come up with a better/clearer label for which atom they are referring to. If you can come up with better labels, than be bold and change it! Wertyu739 (talk) 16:31, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Bond Strength
This is not the first discussion of bond strengths. In the discussion there are comments on ionic v covalent bonds. I ended up on this article still trying to understand the differences in bond energies. What or how are bond dissociation energies for covalent bonds different than the bond strength of NaCl? What is actually measured in determining bond dissociation energy vs bond strength? Petedskier (talk) 23:19, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Disputed
Ionic bonding exists but there is not really such thing as AN ionic bond. IMHO the article should therefore be renamed "ionic bonding". The term ionic bond should be avoided completely.

The term is wrong and very misleading because of what it suggests in analogy with covalent bonding: directionality and localized behavior. (For metallic bonding the same argument holds.) In an ionic compound like NaCl there is no single bond between one Na and one Cl. Each ion has six neighbors at angles of 90 degrees. This is completely incomprehensible from a covalent VSEPR point of view. Not everything is an organic molecule! Jcwf (talk) 16:19, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

 * Agree. So just move it to Ionic bonding (easy part) and rewrite the whole thing (not so easy part). Vsmith (talk) 17:34, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

 * @User:Jcwf, Can we remove the dispute tag again? Christian75 (talk) 11:55, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

 * Now that the article has been moved and rather thoroughly rewritten the dispute tag is also gone.

Jcwf (talk) 01:01, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 01:12, 22 May 2016 (UTC)

Opposite trend?
The last sentence in the lead doesn't quite work for me. "Here, the opposite trend roughly holds: the weaker the cohesive forces, the greater the solubility." The trend is only 'opposite' because of the terms in which it's expressed in the sentence; if you were to word it differently, the trend between melting point and solubility would be the same, which I believe is intuitively a better way to express this.

I think of it like this: The higher the charges, the stronger the cohesive forces and the stronger the melting point, and the lesser the solubility - which is what you would expect, there are stronger forces binding the ions together so they are more resistant to dissolving. It's a minor point, but I think that introducing the concept of an 'opposite trend' is unnecessarily confusing, and would propose simply striking that part out of the sentence as follows:

'''The higher the charges the stronger the cohesive forces and the higher the melting point. They also tend to be soluble in water. Here, the weaker the cohesive forces, the greater the solubility.'''

Any thoughts/comments?Girth Summit (talk) 00:51, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

Update opening paragraph to correct misleading sentence
In the opening paragraph it states, "In the simplest case, the cation is a metal atom and the anion is a nonmetal atom, but these ions can be of a more complex nature, e.g. molecular ions like NH4+ or SO2 −4. In simpler words, an ionic bond is the transfer of electrons from a metal to a non-metal in order to obtain a full valence shell for both atoms."

These two sentences are inconsistent with each other (IE it states you can have NH4+ as a cation, yet then makes the common mistake of declaring all ionic compounds must have a metal and nonmetal). Ammonium salts are all ionic compounds that do not have a metal cation, yet they are ionic. I would change it myself but the article is semiprotected. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 167.88.240.8 (talk) 18:35, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Ionic bonding
Guys does ionic bonding happen purely because of a cation and anion bonding? Or it also happens because of two sharply contrasting electronegativities (as said by iupac ). Pls enlighten me! Ice bear johny (talk) 07:02, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

Formation
There would seem to be something missing from this statement'  Many sulfides, e.g., do form non-stoichiometric compounds. Ériugena (talk) 15:37, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Talk:Ionic bonding


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Embedding

In mathematics, an embedding (or imbedding ) is one instance of some mathematical structure contained within another instance, such as a group that is a subgroup.

When some object $$X$$ is said to be embedded in another object $$Y$$, the embedding is given by some injective and structure-preserving map $$f:X\rightarrow Y$$. The precise meaning of "structure-preserving" depends on the kind of mathematical structure of which $$X$$ and $$Y$$ are instances. In the terminology of category theory, a structure-preserving map is called a morphism.

The fact that a map $$f:X\rightarrow Y$$ is an embedding is often indicated by the use of a "hooked arrow" ; thus: $$ f : X \hookrightarrow Y.$$ (On the other hand, this notation is sometimes reserved for inclusion maps.)

Given $$X$$ and $$Y$$, several different embeddings of $$X$$ in $$Y$$ may be possible. In many cases of interest there is a standard (or "canonical") embedding, like those of the natural numbers in the integers, the integers in the rational numbers, the rational numbers in the real numbers, and the real numbers in the complex numbers. In such cases it is common to identify the domain $$X$$ with its image $$f(X)$$ contained in $$Y$$, so that $$X\subseteq Y$$.

General topology
In general topology, an embedding is a homeomorphism onto its image. More explicitly, an injective continuous map $$f : X \to Y$$ between topological spaces $$X$$ and $$Y$$ is a topological embedding if $$f$$ yields a homeomorphism between $$X$$ and $$f(X)$$ (where $$f(X)$$ carries the subspace topology inherited from $$Y$$). Intuitively then, the embedding $$f : X \to Y$$ lets us treat $$X$$ as a subspace of $$Y$$. Every embedding is injective and continuous. Every map that is injective, continuous and either open or closed is an embedding; however there are also embeddings that are neither open nor closed. The latter happens if the image $$f(X)$$ is neither an open set nor a closed set in $$Y$$.

For a given space $$Y$$, the existence of an embedding $$X \to Y$$ is a topological invariant of $$X$$. This allows two spaces to be distinguished if one is able to be embedded in a space while the other is not.

Related definitions
If the domain of a function $$f : X \to Y$$ is a topological space then the function is said to be  if there exists some neighborhood $$U$$ of this point such that the restriction $$f\big\vert_U : U \to Y$$ is injective. It is called  if it is locally injective around every point of its domain. Similarly, a  is a function for which every point in its domain has some neighborhood to which its restriction is a (topological, resp. smooth) embedding.

Every injective function is locally injective but not conversely. Local diffeomorphisms, local homeomorphisms, and smooth immersions are all locally injective functions that are not necessarily injective. The inverse function theorem gives a sufficient condition for a continuously differentiable function to be (among other things) locally injective. Every fiber of a locally injective function $$f : X \to Y$$ is necessarily a discrete subspace of its domain $$X.$$

Differential topology
In differential topology: Let $$M$$ and $$N$$ be smooth manifolds and $$f:M\to N$$ be a smooth map. Then $$f$$ is called an immersion if its derivative is everywhere injective. An embedding, or a smooth embedding, is defined to be an immersion that is an embedding in the topological sense mentioned above (i.e. homeomorphism onto its image). In other words, the domain of an embedding is diffeomorphic to its image, and in particular the image of an embedding must be a submanifold. An immersion is precisely a local embedding, i.e. for any point $$x\in M$$ there is a neighborhood $$x\in U\subset M$$ such that $$f:U\to N$$ is an embedding.

When the domain manifold is compact, the notion of a smooth embedding is equivalent to that of an injective immersion.

An important case is $$N = \mathbb{R}^n$$. The interest here is in how large $$n$$ must be for an embedding, in terms of the dimension $$m$$ of $$M$$. The Whitney embedding theorem states that $$n = 2m$$ is enough, and is the best possible linear bound. For example, the real projective space $$\mathbb{R}\mathrm{P}^m$$ of dimension $$m$$, where $$m$$ is a power of two, requires $$n = 2m$$ for an embedding. However, this does not apply to immersions; for instance, $$\mathbb{R}\mathrm{P}^2$$ can be immersed in $$\mathbb{R}^3$$ as is explicitly shown by Boy's surface—which has self-intersections. The Roman surface fails to be an immersion as it contains cross-caps.

An embedding is proper if it behaves well with respect to boundaries: one requires the map $$f: X \rightarrow Y$$ to be such that

 * $$f(\partial X) = f(X) \cap \partial Y$$, and
 * $$f(X)$$ is transverse to $$\partial Y$$ in any point of $$f(\partial X)$$.

The first condition is equivalent to having $$f(\partial X) \subseteq \partial Y$$ and $$f(X \setminus \partial X) \subseteq Y \setminus \partial Y$$. The second condition, roughly speaking, says that $$f(X)$$ is not tangent to the boundary of $$Y$$.

Riemannian and pseudo-Riemannian geometry
In Riemannian geometry and pseudo-Riemannian geometry: Let $$(M,g)$$ and $$(N,h)$$ be Riemannian manifolds or more generally pseudo-Riemannian manifolds. An isometric embedding is a smooth embedding $$f:M\rightarrow N$$ that preserves the (pseudo-)metric in the sense that $$g$$ is equal to the pullback of $$h$$ by $$f$$, i.e. $$g=f^{*}h$$. Explicitly, for any two tangent vectors $$v,w\in T_x(M)$$ we have

 * $$g(v,w)=h(df(v),df(w)).$$

Analogously, isometric immersion is an immersion between (pseudo)-Riemannian manifolds that preserves the (pseudo)-Riemannian metrics.

Equivalently, in Riemannian geometry, an isometric embedding (immersion) is a smooth embedding (immersion) that preserves length of curves (cf. Nash embedding theorem).

Algebra
In general, for an algebraic category $$C$$, an embedding between two $$C$$-algebraic structures $$X$$ and $$Y$$ is a $$C$$-morphism $e:X\rightarrow Y$ that is injective.

Field theory
In field theory, an embedding of a field $$E$$ in a field $$F$$ is a ring homomorphism $\sigma:E\rightarrow F$.

The kernel of $$\sigma$$ is an ideal of $$E$$, which cannot be the whole field $$E$$, because of the condition $1=\sigma(1)=1$. Furthermore, any field has as ideals only the zero ideal and the whole field itself (because if there is any non-zero field element in an ideal, it is invertible, showing the ideal is the whole field). Therefore, the kernel is $$0$$, so any embedding of fields is a monomorphism. Hence, $$E$$ is isomorphic to the subfield $$\sigma(E)$$ of $$F$$. This justifies the name embedding for an arbitrary homomorphism of fields.

Universal algebra and model theory
If $$\sigma$$ is a signature and $$A,B$$ are $$\sigma$$-structures (also called $$\sigma$$-algebras in universal algebra or models in model theory), then a map $$h:A \to B$$ is a $$\sigma$$-embedding exactly if all of the following hold:
 * $$h$$ is injective,
 * for every $$n$$-ary function symbol $$f \in\sigma$$ and $$a_1,\ldots,a_n \in A^n,$$ we have $$h(f^A(a_1,\ldots,a_n))=f^B(h(a_1),\ldots,h(a_n))$$,
 * for every $$n$$-ary relation symbol $$R \in\sigma$$ and $$a_1,\ldots,a_n \in A^n,$$ we have $$A \models R(a_1,\ldots,a_n)$$ iff $$B \models R(h(a_1),\ldots,h(a_n)).$$

Here $$A\models R (a_1,\ldots,a_n)$$ is a model theoretical notation equivalent to $$(a_1,\ldots,a_n)\in R^A$$. In model theory there is also a stronger notion of elementary embedding.

Order theory and domain theory
In order theory, an embedding of partially ordered sets is a function $$F$$ between partially ordered sets $$X$$ and $$Y$$ such that

 * $$\forall x_1,x_2\in X: x_1\leq x_2 \iff F(x_1)\leq F(x_2).$$

Injectivity of $$F$$ follows quickly from this definition. In domain theory, an additional requirement is that

 * $$ \forall y\in Y:\{x \mid F(x) \leq y\}$$ is directed.

Metric spaces
A mapping $$\phi: X \to Y$$ of metric spaces is called an embedding (with distortion $$C>0$$) if
 * $$ L d_X(x, y) \leq d_Y(\phi(x), \phi(y)) \leq CLd_X(x,y) $$

for every $$x,y\in X$$ and some constant $$L>0$$.

Normed spaces
An important special case is that of normed spaces; in this case it is natural to consider linear embeddings.

One of the basic questions that can be asked about a finite-dimensional normed space $$(X, \| \cdot \|)$$ is, what is the maximal dimension $$k$$ such that the Hilbert space $$\ell_2^k$$ can be linearly embedded into $$X$$ with constant distortion?

The answer is given by Dvoretzky's theorem.

Category theory
In category theory, there is no satisfactory and generally accepted definition of embeddings that is applicable in all categories. One would expect that all isomorphisms and all compositions of embeddings are embeddings, and that all embeddings are monomorphisms. Other typical requirements are: any extremal monomorphism is an embedding and embeddings are stable under pullbacks.

Ideally the class of all embedded subobjects of a given object, up to isomorphism, should also be small, and thus an ordered set. In this case, the category is said to be well powered with respect to the class of embeddings. This allows defining new local structures in the category (such as a closure operator).

In a concrete category, an embedding is a morphism $$f:A\rightarrow B$$ that is an injective function from the underlying set of $$A$$ to the underlying set of $$B$$ and is also an initial morphism in the following sense: If $$g$$ is a function from the underlying set of an object $$C$$ to the underlying set of $$A$$, and if its composition with $$f$$ is a morphism $$fg:C\rightarrow B$$, then $$g$$ itself is a morphism.

A factorization system for a category also gives rise to a notion of embedding. If $$(E,M)$$ is a factorization system, then the morphisms in $$M$$ may be regarded as the embeddings, especially when the category is well powered with respect to $$M$$. Concrete theories often have a factorization system in which $$M$$ consists of the embeddings in the previous sense. This is the case of the majority of the examples given in this article.

As usual in category theory, there is a dual concept, known as quotient. All the preceding properties can be dualized.

An embedding can also refer to an embedding functor.

title: Embedding


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User talk:A.J.Armitage

Hello there, welcome to the 'pedia! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. If you need any questions answered about the project then check out Help or drop me a line. Cheers! --maveric149

title: User talk:A.J.Armitage


text:
Strabo

Strabo (Στράβων Strábōn; 64 or 63 BC – c. 24 AD) was a Greek geographer, philosopher, and historian who lived in Asia Minor during the transitional period of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire. He is best known for his work Geographica ("Geography"), which presented a descriptive history of people and places from different regions of the world known during his lifetime. Additionally, Strabo authored historical works, but only fragments and quotations of these survive in the writings of other authors.

Life

Strabo was born to an affluent family from Amaseia in Pontus (in present-day Cappadocia) in around 64BC. His family had been involved in politics since at least the reign of Mithridates V. Strabo was related to Dorylaeus on his mother's side. Several other family members, including his paternal grandfather, had served Mithridates VI during the Mithridatic Wars. As the war drew to a close, Strabo's grandfather had turned several Pontic fortresses over to the Romans. Strabo wrote that "great promises were made in exchange for these services", and as Persian culture endured in Amaseia even after Mithridates and Tigranes were defeated, scholars have speculated about how the family's support for Rome might have affected their position in the local community, and whether they might have been granted Roman citizenship as a reward.

Strabo's life was characterized by extensive travels. He journeyed to Egypt and Kush, as far west as coastal Tuscany and as far south as Ethiopia in addition to his travels in Asia Minor and the time he spent in Rome. Travel throughout the Mediterranean and Near East, especially for scholarly purposes, was popular during this era and was facilitated by the relative peace enjoyed throughout the reign of Augustus (27 BC – AD 14). He moved to Rome in 44 BC, and stayed there, studying and writing, until at least 31 BC. In 29 BC, on his way to Corinth (where Augustus was at the time), he visited the island of Gyaros in the Aegean Sea. Around 25 BC, he sailed up the Nile until he reached Philae, after which point there is little record of his travels until AD 17.

It is not known precisely when Strabo's Geography was written, though comments within the work itself place the finished version within the reign of Emperor Tiberius. Some place its first drafts around 7 BC, others around AD 17 or AD 18. The latest passage to which a date can be assigned is his reference to the death in AD 23 of Juba II, king of Maurousia (Mauretania), who is said to have died "just recently". He probably worked on the Geography for many years and revised it steadily, but not always consistently. It is an encyclopaedic chronicle and consists of political, economic, social, cultural, and geographic descriptions covering almost all of Europe and the Mediterranean: Britain and Ireland, the Iberian Peninsula, Gaul, Germania, the Alps, Italy, Greece, Northern Black Sea region, Anatolia, Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa. The Geography is the only extant work providing information about both Greek and Roman peoples and countries during the reign of Augustus.

On the presumption that "recently" means within a year, Strabo stopped writing that year or the next (AD 24), at which time he is thought to have died. He was influenced by Homer, Hecataeus and Aristotle. The first of Strabo's major works, Historical Sketches (Historica hypomnemata), written while he was in Rome (c. 20 BC), is nearly completely lost. Meant to cover the history of the known world from the conquest of Greece by the Romans, Strabo quotes it himself and other classical authors mention that it existed, although the only surviving document is a fragment of papyrus now in the possession of the University of Milan (renumbered [Papyrus] 46).

Education
Strabo studied under several prominent teachers of various specialities throughout his early life at different stops during his Mediterranean travels. The first chapter of his education took place in Nysa (modern Sultanhisar, Turkey) under the master of rhetoric Aristodemus, who had formerly taught the sons of the Roman general who had taken over Pontus. Aristodemus was the head of two schools of rhetoric and grammar, one in Nysa and one in Rhodes. The school in Nysa possessed a distinct intellectual curiosity in Homeric literature and the interpretation of the ancient Greek epics. Strabo was an admirer of Homer's poetry, perhaps as a consequence of his time spent in Nysa with Aristodemus.

At around the age of 21, Strabo moved to Rome, where he studied philosophy with the Peripatetic Xenarchus, a highly respected tutor in Augustus's court. Despite Xenarchus's Aristotelian leanings, Strabo later gives evidence to have formed his own Stoic inclinations. In Rome, he also learned grammar under the rich and famous scholar Tyrannion of Amisus. Although Tyrannion was also a Peripatetic, he was more relevantly a respected authority on geography, a fact of some significance considering Strabo's future contributions to the field.

The final noteworthy mentor to Strabo was Athenodorus Cananites, a philosopher who had spent his life since 44 BC in Rome forging relationships with the Roman elite. Athenodorus passed onto Strabo his philosophy, his knowledge and his contacts. Unlike the Aristotelian Xenarchus and Tyrannion who preceded him in teaching Strabo, Athenodorus was a Stoic and almost certainly the source of Strabo's diversion from the philosophy of his former mentors. Moreover, from his own first-hand experience, Athenodorus provided Strabo with information about regions of the empire which Strabo would not otherwise have known about.

Geographica

Strabo is best known for his work Geographica ("Geography"), which presented a descriptive history of people and places from different regions of the world known during his lifetime.

Although the Geographica was rarely used by contemporary writers, a multitude of copies survived throughout the Byzantine Empire. It first appeared in Western Europe in Rome as a Latin translation issued around 1469. The first printed edition was published in 1516 in Venice. Isaac Casaubon, classical scholar and editor of Greek texts, provided the first critical edition in 1587.

Although Strabo cited the classical Greek astronomers Eratosthenes and Hipparchus, acknowledging their astronomical and mathematical efforts covering geography, he claimed that a descriptive approach was more practical, such that his works were designed for statesmen who were more anthropologically than numerically concerned with the character of countries and regions.

As such, Geographica provides a valuable source of information on the ancient world of his day, especially when this information is corroborated by other sources. He travelled extensively, as he says: "Westward I have journeyed to the parts of Etruria opposite Sardinia; towards the south from the Euxine [Black Sea] to the borders of Ethiopia; and perhaps not one of those who have written geographies has visited more places than I have between those limits."

It is not known when he wrote Geographica, but he spent much time in the famous library in Alexandria taking notes from "the works of his predecessors". A first edition was published in 7 BC and a final edition no later than 23 AD, in what may have been the last year of Strabo's life. It took some time for Geographica to be recognized by scholars and to become a standard.

Alexandria itself features extensively in the last book of Geographica, which describes it as a thriving port city with a highly developed local economy. Strabo notes the city's many beautiful public parks, and its network of streets wide enough for chariots and horsemen. "Two of these are exceeding broad, over a plethron in breadth, and cut one another at right angles ... All the buildings are connected one with another, and these also with what are beyond it."

Lawrence Kim observes that Strabo is "... pro-Roman throughout the Geography. But while he acknowledges and even praises Roman ascendancy in the political and military sphere, he also makes a significant effort to establish Greek primacy over Rome in other contexts."

In Europe, Strabo was the first to connect the Danube (which he called Danouios) and the Istros – with the change of names occurring at "the cataracts," the modern Iron Gates on the Romanian/Serbian border.

In India, a country he never visited, Strabo described small flying reptiles that were long with snake-like bodies and bat-like wings (this description matches the Indian flying lizard Draco dussumieri), winged scorpions, and other mythical creatures along with those that were actually factual. Other historians, such as Herodotus, Aristotle, and Flavius Josephus, mentioned similar creatures.

Geology
Charles Lyell, in his Principles of Geology, wrote of Strabo:

Fossil formation
Strabo commented on fossil formation mentioning Nummulite (quoted from Celâl Şengör): "One extraordinary thing which I saw at the pyramids must not be omitted. Heaps of stones from the quarries lie in front of the pyramids. Among these are found pieces which in shape and size resemble lentils. Some contain substances like grains half peeled. These, it is said, are the remnants of the workmen's food converted into stone; which is not probable. For at home in our country (Amaseia), there is a long hill in a plain, which abounds with pebbles of a porous stone, resembling lentils. The pebbles of the sea-shore and of rivers suggest somewhat of the same difficulty [respecting their origin]; some explanation may indeed be found in the motion [to which these are subject] in flowing waters, but the investigation of the above fact presents more difficulty. I have said elsewhere, that in sight of the pyramids, on the other side in Arabia, and near the stone quarries from which they are built, is a very rocky mountain, called the Trojan mountain; beneath it there are caves, and near the caves and the river a village called Troy, an ancient settlement of the captive Trojans who had accompanied Menelaus and settled there."

Volcanism
Strabo commented on volcanism (effusive eruption) which he observed at Katakekaumene (modern Kula, Western Turkey). Strabo's observations predated Pliny the Younger who witnessed the eruption of Mount Vesuvius on 24 August AD 79 in Pompeii: "…There are no trees here, but only the vineyards where they produce the Katakekaumene wines which are by no means inferior from any of the wines famous for their quality. The soil is covered with ashes, and black in colour as if the mountainous and rocky country was made up of fires. Some assume that these ashes were the result of thunderbolts and subterranean explosions, and do not doubt that the legendary story of Typhon takes place in this region. Ksanthos adds that the king of this region was a man called Arimus. However, it is not reasonable to accept that the whole country was burned down at a time as a result of such an event rather than as a result of a fire bursting from underground whose source has now died out. Three pits are called 'Physas' and separated by forty stadia from each other. Above these pits, there are hills formed by the hot masses burst out from the ground as estimated by a logical reasoning. Such type of soil is very convenient for viniculture, just like the Katanasoil which is covered with ashes and where the best wines are still produced abundantly. Some writers concluded by looking at these places that there is a good reason for calling Dionysus by the name ('Phrygenes')."

Editions

 * Jones, H. L., transl. (1917). The Geography of Strabo. London: Heinemann.
 * Strabo's Geography in three volumes as translated by H.C. Hamilton and W. Falconer, ed. by H.G. Bohn, 1854–1857
 * Jones, H. L., transl. (1917). The Geography of Strabo. London: Heinemann.
 * Strabo's Geography in three volumes as translated by H.C. Hamilton and W. Falconer, ed. by H.G. Bohn, 1854–1857
 * Strabo's Geography in three volumes as translated by H.C. Hamilton and W. Falconer, ed. by H.G. Bohn, 1854–1857

title: Strabo


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228

Year 228 (CCXXVIII) was a leap year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Modestus and Maecius (or, less frequently, year 981 Ab urbe condita). The denomination 228 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years.

Roman Empire

 * Domitius Ulpianus, a Roman jurist and prefect, is assassinated by the Praetorian Guard, in the presence of Emperor Severus Alexander. His curtailment of the privileges of the palace guard becomes Ulpianus' downfall, who in the course of a riot at Rome is murdered, between the soldiers and the mob.

Persian Empire

 * King Ardashir I, four years after establishing the Sassanid Persian Empire, completes his conquest of Parthia.

China

 * c. February–May – Battle of Jieting: The Cao Wei Kingdom decisively defeats the Shu Han Kingdom.
 * June–October – Battle of Shiting: The Eastern Wu Kingdom defeats the Cao Wei Kingdom.

Births

 * Paul of Thebes, Christian hermit (approximate date)
 * Wang Fan, Chinese politician and astronomer (d. 266)

Deaths

 * Cao Xiu, Chinese general of the Cao Wei state
 * Domitius Ulpianus, Roman jurist and prefect (b. 170)
 * Jia Kui, Chinese general of the Cao Wei state (b. 174)
 * Lü Fan, Chinese general of the Eastern Wu state
 * Luo Tong, Chinese official and general (b. 193)
 * Ma Su, Chinese general of the Shu Han state (b. 190)
 * Meng Da, Chinese general of the Cao Wei state
 * Wang Lang, Chinese official of the Cao Wei state
 * Zhuge Qiao, Chinese official and general (b. 204)

title: 228


text:
229

Year 229 (CCXXIX) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Severus and Cassius (or, less frequently, year 982 Ab urbe condita). The denomination 229 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years.

Roman Empire

 * Emperor Alexander Severus and Dio Cassius are joint Consuls.

China

 * February–May – Battle of Jianwei: The state of Shu Han is victorious over the state of Cao Wei.
 * June 23 – Chinese warlord Sun Quan formally declares himself emperor of the Eastern Wu state. The city of Jianye (modern Nanjing) is founded as the capital of Eastern Wu. The independent kingdoms in Cambodia and Laos become Eastern Wu vassals.
 * Eastern Wu merchants reach Vietnam; ocean transport is improved to such an extent that sea journeys are made to Manchuria and the island of Taiwan.

Art and Science

 * Ammonius Saccas renews Greek philosophy by creating Neoplatonism.

Deaths

 * Cao Li, Chinese prince of the Cao Wei state (b. 208)
 * Cao Yong, Chinese prince of the Cao Wei state
 * Zhao Yun, Chinese general of the Shu Han state

title: 229