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Orpheus in the Underworld

Orpheus in the Underworld and Orpheus in Hell are English names for Orphée aux enfers, a comic opera with music by Jacques Offenbach and words by Hector Crémieux and Ludovic Halévy. It was first performed as a two-act "opéra bouffon" at the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens, Paris, on 21 October 1858, and was extensively revised and expanded in a four-act "opéra féerie" version, presented at the Théâtre de la Gaîté, Paris, on 7 February 1874.

The opera is a lampoon of the ancient legend of Orpheus and Eurydice. In this version Orpheus is not the son of Apollo but a rustic violin teacher. He is glad to be rid of his wife, Eurydice, when she is abducted by the god of the underworld, Pluto. Orpheus has to be bullied by Public Opinion into trying to rescue Eurydice. The reprehensible conduct of the gods of Olympus in the opera was widely seen as a veiled satire of the court and government of Napoleon III, Emperor of the French. Some critics expressed outrage at the librettists' disrespect for classic mythology and the composer's parody of Gluck's opera Orfeo ed Euridice; others praised the piece highly.

Orphée aux enfers was Offenbach's first full-length opera. The original 1858 production became a box-office success, and ran well into the following year, rescuing Offenbach and his Bouffes company from financial difficulty. The 1874 revival broke records at the Gaîté's box-office. The work was frequently staged in France and internationally during the composer's lifetime and throughout the 20th century. It is one of his most often performed operas, and continues to be revived in the 21st century.

In the last decade of the 19th century the Paris cabarets the Moulin Rouge and Folies Bergère adopted the music of the "Galop infernal" from the culminating scene of the opera to accompany the can-can, and ever since then the tune has been popularly associated with the dance.

Background and first productions
Between 1855 and 1858 Offenbach presented more than two dozen one-act operettas, first at the Bouffes-Parisiens, Salle Lacaze, and then at the Bouffes-Parisiens, Salle Choiseul. The theatrical licensing laws then permitted him only four singers in any piece, and with such small casts, full-length works were out of the question. In 1858 the licensing restrictions were relaxed, and Offenbach was free to go ahead with a two-act work that had been in his mind for some time. Two years earlier he had told his friend the writer Hector Crémieux that when he was musical director of the Comédie-Française in the early 1850s he swore revenge for the boredom he suffered from the posturings of mythical heroes and gods of Olympus in the plays presented there. Cremieux and Ludovic Halévy sketched out a libretto for him lampooning such characters. By 1858, when Offenbach was finally allowed a large enough cast to do the theme justice, Halévy was preoccupied with his work as a senior civil servant, and the final libretto was credited to Crémieux alone. Most of the roles were written with popular members of the Bouffes company in mind, including Désiré, Léonce, Lise Tautin, and Henri Tayau as an Orphée who could actually play Orpheus's violin.

The first performance took place at the Salle Choiseul on 21 October 1858. At first the piece did reasonably well at the box-office but was not the tremendous success Offenbach had hoped for. He insisted on lavish stagings for his operas: expenses were apt to outrun receipts, and he was in need of a substantial money-spinner. Business received an inadvertent boost from the critic Jules Janin of the Journal des débats. He had praised earlier productions at the Bouffes-Parisiens but was roused to vehement indignation at what he maintained was a blasphemous, lascivious outrage – "a profanation of holy and glorious antiquity". His attack, and the irreverent public ripostes by Crémieux and Offenbach, made headlines and provoked huge interest in the piece among the Parisian public, who flocked to see it. In his 1980 study of Offenbach, Alexander Faris writes, "Orphée became not only a triumph, but a cult." It ran for 228 performances, at a time when a run of 100 nights was considered a success. Albert Lasalle, in his history of the Bouffes-Parisiens (1860), wrote that the piece closed in June 1859 – although it was still performing strongly at the box-office – "because the actors, who could not tire the public, were themselves exhausted".

In 1874 Offenbach substantially expanded the piece, doubling the length of the score and turning the intimate opéra bouffon of 1858 into a four-act opéra féerie extravaganza, with substantial ballet sequences. This version opened at the Théâtre de la Gaîté on 7 February 1874, ran for 290 performances, and broke box-office records for that theatre. During the first run of the revised version Offenbach expanded it even further, adding ballets illustrating the kingdom of Neptune in Act 3 and bringing the total number of scenes in the four acts to twenty-two.

Act 1, Scene 1: The countryside near Thebes, Ancient Greece
A spoken introduction with orchestral accompaniment (Introduction and Melodrame) opens the work. Public Opinion explains who she is – the guardian of morality ("Qui suis-je? du Théâtre Antique"). She says that unlike the chorus in Ancient Greek plays she does not merely comment on the action, but intervenes in it, to make sure the story maintains a high moral tone. Her efforts are hampered by the facts of the matter: Orphée is not the son of Apollo, as in classical myth, but a rustic teacher of music, whose dislike of his wife, Eurydice, is heartily reciprocated. She is in love with the shepherd, Aristée (Aristaeus), who lives next door ("La femme dont le coeur rêve"), and Orphée is in love with Chloë, a shepherdess. When Orphée mistakes Eurydice for her, everything comes out, and Eurydice insists they abandon the marriage. Orphée, fearing Public Opinion's reaction, torments his wife into keeping the scandal quiet using violin music, which she hates ("Ah, c'est ainsi").

Aristée enters. Though seemingly a shepherd he is in reality Pluton (Pluto), God of the Underworld. He keeps up his disguise by singing a pastoral song about sheep ("Moi, je suis Aristée"). Eurydice has discovered what she thinks is a plot by Orphée to kill Aristée – letting snakes loose in the fields – but is in fact a conspiracy between Orphée and Pluton to kill her, so that Pluton may have her and Orphée be rid of her. Pluton tricks her into walking into the trap by showing immunity to it, and she is bitten. As she dies, Pluton transforms into his true form (Transformation Scene). Eurydice finds that death is not so bad when the God of Death is in love with one ("La mort m'apparaît souriante"). They descend into the Underworld as soon as Eurydice has left a note telling her husband she has been unavoidably detained.

All seems to be going well for Orphée until Public Opinion catches up with him, and threatens to ruin his violin teaching career unless he goes to rescue his wife. Orphée reluctantly agrees.

Act 1, Scene 2: Olympus
The scene changes to Olympus, where the Gods are sleeping ("Dormons, dormons"). Cupidon and Vénus enter separately from amatory nocturnal escapades and join their sleeping colleagues, but everyone is soon woken by the sound of the horn of Diane, supposedly chaste huntress and goddess. She laments the sudden absence of Actaeon, her current love ("Quand Diane descend dans la plaine"); to her indignation, Jupiter tells her he has turned Actaeon into a stag to protect her reputation. Mercury arrives and reports that he has visited the Underworld, to which Pluton has just returned with a beautiful woman. Pluton enters, and is taken to task by Jupiter for his scandalous private life. To Pluton's relief the other Gods choose this moment to revolt against Jupiter's reign, their boring diet of ambrosia and nectar, and the sheer tedium of Olympus ("Aux armes, dieux et demi-dieux!"). Jupiter's demands to know what is going on lead them to point out his hypocrisy in detail, poking fun at all his mythological affairs ("Pour séduire Alcmène la fière").

Orphée's arrival, with Public Opinion at his side, has the gods on their best behaviour ("Il approche! Il s'avance"). Orphée obeys Public Opinion and pretends to be pining for Eurydice: he illustrates his supposed pain with a snatch of "Che farò senza Euridice" from Gluck's Orfeo. Pluton is worried he will be forced to give Eurydice back; Jupiter announces that he is going to the Underworld to sort everything out. The other gods beg to come with him, he consents, and mass celebrations break out at this holiday ("Gloire! gloire à Jupiter... Partons, partons").

Act 2, Scene 1: Pluton's boudoir in the Underworld
Eurydice is being kept locked up by Pluton, and is finding life very tedious. Her gaoler is a dull-witted tippler by the name of John Styx. Before he died, he was King of Boeotia (a region of Greece that Aristophanes made synonymous with country bumpkins), and he sings Eurydice a doleful lament for his lost kingship ("Quand j'étais roi de Béotie").

Jupiter discovers where Pluton has hidden Eurydice, and slips through the keyhole by turning into a beautiful, golden fly. He meets Eurydice on the other side, and sings a love duet with her where his part consists entirely of buzzing ("Duo de la mouche"). Afterwards, he reveals himself to her, and promises to help her, largely because he wants her for himself. Pluton is left furiously berating John Styx.

Act 2, Scene 2: The banks of the Styx
The scene shifts to a huge party the gods are having, where ambrosia, nectar, and propriety are nowhere to be seen ("Vive le vin! Vive Pluton!"). Eurydice is present, disguised as a bacchante ("J'ai vu le dieu Bacchus"), but Jupiter's plan to sneak her out is interrupted by calls for a dance. Jupiter insists on a minuet, which everybody else finds boring ("La la la. Le menuet n'est vraiment si charmant"). Things liven up as the most famous number in the opera, the "Galop infernal", begins, and all present throw themselves into it with wild abandon ("Ce bal est original").

Ominous violin music heralds the approach of Orphée (Entrance of Orphée and Public Opinion), but Jupiter has a plan, and promises to keep Eurydice away from her husband. As with the standard myth, Orphée must not look back, or he will lose Eurydice forever ("Ne regarde pas en arrière!"). Public Opinion keeps a close eye on him, to keep him from cheating, but Jupiter throws a lightning bolt, making him jump and look back, and Eurydice vanishes. Amid the ensuing turmoil, Jupiter proclaims that she will henceforth belong to the god Bacchus and become one of his priestesses. Public Opinion is not pleased, but Pluton has had enough of Eurydice, Orphée is free of her, and all ends happily.

Revised 1874 version
The plot is essentially that of the 1858 version. Instead of two acts with two scenes apiece, the later version is in four acts, which follow the plot of the four scenes of the original. The revised version differs from the first in having several interpolated ballet sequences, and some extra characters and musical numbers. The additions do not affect the main narrative but add considerably to the length of the score. In Act I there is an opening chorus for assembled shepherds and shepherdesses, and Orpheus has a group of youthful violin students, who bid him farewell at the end of the act. In Act 2 Mercure is given a solo entrance number ("Eh hop!"). In Act 3, Eurydice has a new solo, the "Couplets des regrets" ("Ah! quelle triste destinée!"), Cupidon has a new number, the "Couplets des baisers" ("Allons, mes fins limiers"), the three judges of Hades and a little band of policemen are added to the cast to be involved in Jupiter's search for the concealed Eurydice, and at the end of the act the furious Pluton is seized and carried off by a swarm of flies.

Music
The score of the opera, which formed the pattern for the many full-length Offenbach operas that followed, is described by Faris as having an "abundance of couplets" (songs with repeated verses for one or more singers), "a variety of other solos and duets, several big choruses, and two extended finales". Offenbach wrote in a variety of styles – from Rococo pastoral vein, via pastiche of Italian opera, to the uproarious galop – displaying, in Faris's analysis, many of his personal hallmarks, such as melodies that "leap backwards and forwards in a remarkably acrobatic manner while still sounding not only smoothly lyrical, but spontaneous as well". In such up-tempo numbers as the "Galop infernal", Offenbach makes a virtue of simplicity, often keeping to the same key through most of the number, with largely unvarying instrumentation throughout. Elsewhere in the score Offenbach gives the orchestra greater prominence. In the "duo de la mouche" Jupiter's part, consisting of buzzing like a fly, is accompanied by the first and second violins playing sul ponticello, to produce a similarly buzzing sound. In Le Figaro, Gustave Lafargue remarked that Offenbach's use of a piccolo trill punctuated by a tap on a cymbal in the finale of the first scene was a modern recreation of an effect invented by Gluck in his score of Iphigénie en Aulide. Wilfrid Mellers also remarks on Offenbach's use of the piccolo to enhance Eurydice's couplets with "girlish giggles" on the instrument. Gervase Hughes comments on the elaborate scoring of the "ballet des mouches" [Act 3, 1874 version], and calls it "a tour de force" that could have inspired Tchaikovsky.

Faris comments that in Orphée aux enfers Offenbach shows that he was a master of establishing mood by the use of rhythmic figures. Faris instances three numbers from the second act (1858 version), which all are in the key of A major and use identical notes in almost the same order, "but it would be hard to imagine a more extreme difference in feeling than that between the song of the King of the Boeotians and the Galop". In a 2014 study Heather Hadlock comments that for the former, Offenbach composed "a languid yet restless melody" over a static musette-style drone-bass accompaniment of alternating dominant and tonic harmonies, simultaneously evoking and mocking nostalgia for a lost place and time and "creating a perpetually unresolved tension between pathos and irony". Mellers finds that Styx's aria has "a pathos that touches the heart" – perhaps, he suggests, the only instance of true feeling in the opera.

In 1999 Thomas Schipperges wrote in the International Journal of Musicology that many scholars hold that Offenbach's music defies all musicological methods. He did not agree, and analysed the "Galop infernal", finding it to be sophisticated in many details: "For all its straightforwardness, it reveals a calculated design. The overall 'economy' of the piece serves a deliberate musical dramaturgy." Hadlock observes that although the best-known music in the opera is "driven by the propulsive energies of Rossinian comedy" and the up-tempo galop, such lively numbers go side by side with statelier music in an 18th-century vein: "The score's sophistication results from Offenbach's intertwining of contemporary urban musical language with a restrained and wistful tone that is undermined and ironized without ever being entirely undone".

Orphée aux enfers was the first of Offenbach's major works to have a chorus. In a 2017 study Melissa Cummins comments that although the composer used the chorus extensively as Pluton's minions, bored residents of Olympus, and bacchantes in Hades, they are merely there to fill out the vocal parts in the large ensemble numbers, and "are treated as a nameless, faceless crowd who just happen to be around." In the Olympus scene the chorus has an unusual bocca chiusa section, marked "Bouche fermée", an effect later used by Bizet in Djamileh and Puccini in the "Humming Chorus" in Madama Butterfly.

Editions
The orchestra at the Bouffes-Parisiens was small – probably about thirty players. The 1858 version of Orphée aux enfers is scored for two flutes (the second doubling piccolo), one oboe, two clarinets, one bassoon, two horns, two cornets, one trombone, timpani, percussion (bass drum/cymbals, triangle), and strings. The Offenbach scholar Jean-Christophe Keck speculates that the string sections consisted of at most six first violins, four second violins, three violas, four cellos, and one double bass. The 1874 score calls for considerably greater orchestral forces: Offenbach added additional parts for woodwind, brass and percussion sections. For the premiere of the revised version he engaged an orchestra of sixty players, as well as a military band of a further forty players for the procession of the gods from Olympus at the end of the second act.

The music of the 1874 revision was well received by contemporary reviewers, but some later critics have felt the longer score, with its extended ballet sections, has occasional dull patches. Nonetheless, some of the added numbers, particularly Cupidon's "Couplets des baisers", Mercure's rondo "Eh hop", and the "Policeman's Chorus" have gained favour, and some or all are often added to performances otherwise using the 1858 text.

For more than a century after the composer's death one cause of critical reservations about this and his other works was the persistence of what the musicologist Nigel Simeone has called "botched, butchered and bowdlerised" versions. Since the beginning of the 21st century a project has been under way to release scholarly and reliable scores of Offenbach's operas, under the editorship of Keck. The first to be published, in 2002, was the 1858 version of Orphée aux enfers. The Offenbach Edition Keck has subsequently published the 1874 score, and another drawing on both the 1858 and 1874 versions.

Overture and galop
The best-known and much-recorded Orphée aux enfers overture is not by Offenbach, and is not part of either the 1858 or the 1874 scores. It was arranged by the Austrian musician Carl Binder (1816–1860) for the first production of the opera in Vienna, in 1860. Offenbach's 1858 score has a short orchestral introduction of 104 bars; it begins with a quiet melody for woodwind, followed by the theme of Jupiter's Act 2 minuet, in A♭ major and segues via a mock-pompous fugue in F major into Public Opinion's opening monologue. The overture to the 1874 revision is a 393-bar piece, in which Jupiter's minuet and John Styx's song recur, interspersed with many themes from the score including "J'ai vu le Dieu Bacchus", the couplets "Je suis Vénus", the Rondeau des métamorphoses, the "Partons, partons" section of the Act 2 finale, and the Act 4 galop.

Fifteen years or so after Offenbach's death the galop from Act 2 (or Act 4 in the 1874 version) became one of the world's most famous pieces of music, when the Moulin Rouge and the Folies Bergère adopted it as the regular music for their can-can. Keck has commented that the original "infernal galop" was a considerably more spontaneous and riotous affair than the fin de siècle can-can (Keck likens the original to a modern rave) but the tune is now inseparable in the public mind from high-kicking female can-can dancers.

19th century

From the outset Orphée aux enfers divided critical opinion. Janin's furious condemnation did the work much more good than harm, and was in contrast with the laudatory review of the premiere by Jules Noriac in the Figaro-Programme, which called the work, "unprecedented, splendid, outrageous, gracious, delightful, witty, amusing, successful, perfect, tuneful". Bertrand Jouvin, in Le Figaro, criticised some of the cast but praised the staging – "a fantasy show, which has all the variety, all the surprises of fairy-opera". The Revue et gazette musicale de Paris thought that though it would be wrong to expect too much in a piece of this genre, Orphée aux enfers was one of Offenbach's most outstanding works, with charming couplets for Eurydice, Aristée-Pluton and the King of Boeotia. Le Ménestrel called the cast "thoroughbreds" who did full justice to "all the charming jokes, all the delicious originalities, all the farcical oddities thrown in profusion into Offenbach's music".

Writing of the 1874 revised version, the authors of Les Annales du théâtre et de la musique said, "Orphée aux enfers is above all a good show. The music of Offenbach has retained its youth and spirit. The amusing operetta of yore has become a splendid extravaganza", against which Félix Clément and Pierre Larousse wrote in their Dictionnaire des Opéras (1881) that the piece is "a coarse and grotesque parody" full of "vulgar and indecent scenes" that "give off an unhealthy smell".

The opera was widely seen as containing thinly disguised satire of the régime of Napoleon III, but the early press criticisms of the work focused on its mockery of revered classical authors such as Ovid and the equally sacrosanct music of Gluck's Orfeo. Faris comments that the satire perpetrated by Offenbach and his librettists was cheeky rather than hard-hitting, and Richard Taruskin in his study of 19th-century music observes, "The calculated licentiousness and feigned sacrilege, which successfully baited the stuffier critics, were recognized by all for what they were – a social palliative, the very opposite of social criticism[...] The spectacle of the Olympian gods doing the cancan threatened nobody's dignity." The Emperor greatly enjoyed Orphée aux enfers when he saw it at a command performance in 1860; he told Offenbach he would "never forget that dazzling evening".

20th and 21st centuries
After Offenbach's death his reputation in France suffered a temporary eclipse. In Faris's words, his comic operas were "dismissed as irrelevant and meretricious souvenirs of a discredited Empire". Obituarists in other countries similarly took it for granted that the comic operas, including Orphée, were ephemeral and would be forgotten. By the time of the composer's centenary, in 1919, it had been clear for some years that such predictions had been wrong. Orphée was frequently revived, as were several more of his operas, and criticisms on moral or musical grounds had largely ceased. Gabriel Groviez wrote in The Musical Quarterly:

"The libretto of Orphée overflows with spirit and humour and the score is full of sparkling wit and melodious charm. It is impossible to analyse adequately a piece wherein the sublimest idiocy and the most astonishing fancy clash at every turn.[...] Offenbach never produced a more complete work."

Among modern critics, Traubner describes Orphée as "the first great full-length classical French operetta[...] classical (in both senses of the term)", although he regards the 1874 revision as "overblown". Peter Gammond writes that the public appreciated the frivolity of the work while recognising that it is rooted in the best traditions of opéra comique. Among 21st-century writers Bernard Holland has commented that the music is "beautifully made, relentlessly cheerful, reluctantly serious", but does not show as the later Tales of Hoffmann does "what a profoundly gifted composer Offenbach really was"; Andrew Lamb has commented that although Orphée aux enfers has remained Offenbach's best-known work, "a consensus as to the best of his operettas would probably prefer La vie parisienne for its sparkle, La Périchole for its charm and La belle Hélène for its all-round brilliance". Kurt Gänzl writes in The Encyclopedia of the Musical Theatre that compared with earlier efforts, Orphée aux enfers was "something on a different scale[...] a gloriously imaginative parody of classic mythology and of modern events decorated with Offenbach's most laughing bouffe music." In a 2014 study of parody and burlesque in Orphée aux enfers, Hadlock writes:

"With Orphée aux enfers, the genre we now know as operetta gathered its forces and leapt forward, while still retaining the quick, concise style of its one-act predecessors, their absurdist and risqué sensibility, and their economy in creating maximum comic impact with limited resources. At the same time, it reflects Offenbach's desire to establish himself and his company as legitimate heirs of the eighteenth-century French comic tradition of Philidor and Grétry."

France

Between the first run and the first Paris revival, in 1860, the Bouffes-Parisiens company toured the French provinces, where Orphée aux enfers was reported as meeting with "immense" and "incredible" success". Tautin was succeeded as Eurydice by Delphine Ugalde when the production was revived at the Bouffes-Parisiens in 1862 and again in 1867.

The first revival of the 1874 version was at the Théâtre de la Gaîté in 1875 with Marie Blanche Peschard as Eurydice. It was revived again there in January 1878 with Meyronnet (Orphée), Peschard (Eurydice), Christian (Jupiter), Habay (Pluton) and Pierre Grivot as both Mercure and John Styx, For the Exposition Universelle season later that year Offenbach revived the piece again, with Grivot as Orphée, Peschard as Eurydice, the composer's old friend and rival Hervé as Jupiter and Léonce as Pluton. The opera was seen again at the Gaîté in 1887 with Taufenberger (Orphée), Jeanne Granier (Eurydice), Eugène Vauthier (Jupiter) and Alexandre (Pluton). There was a revival at the Éden-Théâtre (1889) with Minart, Granier, Christian and Alexandre.

20th-century revivals in Paris included productions at the Théâtre des Variétés (1902) with Charles Prince (Orphée), Juliette Méaly (Eurydice), Guy (Jupiter) and Albert Brasseur (Pluton), and in 1912 with Paul Bourillon, Méaly, Guy and Prince; the Théâtre Mogador (1931) with Adrien Lamy, Manse Beaujon, Max Dearly and Lucien Muratore; the Opéra-Comique (1970) with Rémy Corazza, Anne-Marie Sanial, Michel Roux and Robert Andreozzi; the Théâtre de la Gaïté-Lyrique (1972) with Jean Giraudeau, Jean Brun, Albert Voli and Sanial; and by the Théâtre français de l'Opérette at the Espace Cardin (1984) with multiple casts including (in alphabetical order) André Dran, Maarten Koningsberger, Martine March, Martine Masquelin, Marcel Quillevere, Ghyslaine Raphanel, Bernard Sinclair and Michel Trempont. In January 1988 the work received its first performances at the Paris Opéra, with Michel Sénéchal (Orphée), Danielle Borst (Eurydice), François Le Roux (Jupiter), and Laurence Dale (Pluton).

In December 1997 a production by Laurent Pelly was seen at the Opéra National de Lyon, where it was filmed for DVD, with Yann Beuron (Orphée), Natalie Dessay (Eurydice), Laurent Naouri (Jupiter) and Jean-Paul Fouchécourt (Pluton) with Marc Minkowski conducting. The production originated in Geneva, where it had been given in September – in a former hydroelectric plant used while the stage area of the Grand Théâtre was being renovated – by a cast headed by Beuron, Annick Massis, Naouri, and Éric Huchet.

Continental Europe
The first production outside France is believed to have been at Breslau in October 1859. In December of the same year the opera opened in Prague. The work was given in German at the Carltheater, Vienna, in March 1860 in a version by Ludwig Kalisch, revised and embellished by Johann Nestroy, who played Jupiter. Making fun of Graeco-Roman mythology had a long tradition in the popular theatre of Vienna, and audiences had no difficulty with the disrespect that had outraged Jules Janin and others in Paris. It was for this production that Carl Binder put together the version of the overture that is now the best known. There were revivals at the same theatre in February and June 1861 (both given in French) and at the Theater an der Wien in January 1867. 1860 saw the work's local premieres in Brussels, Stockholm, Copenhagen and Berlin. Productions followed in Warsaw, St Petersburg, and Budapest, and then Zurich, Madrid, Amsterdam, Milan and Naples.

Gänzl mentions among "countless other productions[...] a large and glitzy German revival under Max Reinhardt" at the Großes Schauspielhaus, Berlin in 1922. A more recent Berlin production was directed by Götz Friedrich in 1983; a video of the production was released. 2019 productions include those directed by Helmut Baumann at the Vienna Volksoper, and by Barrie Kosky at the Haus für Mozart, Salzburg, with a cast headed by Anne Sophie von Otter as L'Opinion publique, a co-production between the Salzburg Festival, Komische Oper Berlin and Deutsche Oper am Rhein.

Britain
The first London production of the work was at Her Majesty's Theatre in December 1865, in an English version by J. R. Planché titled Orpheus in the Haymarket. There were West End productions in the original French in 1869 and 1870 by companies headed by Hortense Schneider. English versions followed by Alfred Thompson (1876) and Henry S. Leigh (1877). An adaptation by Herbert Beerbohm Tree and Alfred Noyes opened at His Majesty's in 1911. The opera was not seen again in London until 1960, when a new adaptation by Geoffrey Dunn opened at Sadler's Wells Theatre; this production by Wendy Toye was frequently revived between 1960 and 1974. An English version by Snoo Wilson for English National Opera (ENO), mounted at the London Coliseum in 1985, was revived there in 1987. A co-production by Opera North and the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company in a version by Jeremy Sams opened in 1992 and was revived several times. In 2019 ENO presented a new production directed by Emma Rice, which opened to unfavourable reviews.

Outside Europe
The first New York production was at the Stadt Theater, in German, in March 1861; the production ran until February 1862. Two more productions were sung in German: December 1863 with Fritze, Knorr, Klein and Frin von Hedemann and December 1866 with Brügmann, Knorr, Klein and Frin Steglich-Fuchs. The opera was produced at the Theatre Français in January 1867 with Elvira Naddie, and at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in April 1868 with Lucille Tostée. In December 1883 it was produced at the Bijou Theatre with Max Freeman, Marie Vanoni, Digby Bell and Harry Pepper. There were productions in Rio de Janeiro in 1865, Buenos Aires in 1866, Mexico City in 1867 and Valparaiso in 1868. The opera was first staged in Australia at the Princess Theatre, Melbourne in March 1872, in Planché's London text, with Alice May as Eurydice.

A spectacular production by Reinhardt was presented in New York in 1926. The New York City Opera staged the work, conducted by Erich Leinsdorf, in 1956, with Sylvia Stahlman as Eurydice and Norman Kelley as Pluto. More recent US productions have included a 1985 version by Santa Fe Opera, and the 1985 ENO version, which was staged in the US by the Houston Grand Opera (co-producers) in 1986, and Los Angeles Opera in 1989.

21st century worldwide
In April 2019 the Operabase website recorded 25 past or scheduled productions of the opera from 2016 onwards, in French or in translation: nine in Germany, four in France, two in Britain, two in Switzerland, two in the US, and productions in Gdańsk, Liège, Ljubljana, Malmö, Prague and Tokyo.

In French
There are three full-length recordings. The first, from 1951 features the Paris Philharmonic Chorus and Orchestra, conducted by René Leibowitz, with Jean Mollien (Orphée), Claudine Collart (Eurydice), Bernard Demigny (Jupiter) and André Dran (Pluton); it uses the 1858 version. A 1978 issue from EMI employs the expanded 1874 version; it features the Chorus and Orchestra of the Toulouse Capitol conducted by Michel Plasson, with Michel Sénéchal (Orphée), Mady Mesplé (Eurydice), Michel Trempont (Jupiter) and Charles Burles (Pluton). A 1997 recording of the 1858 score with some additions from the 1874 revision features the Chorus and Orchestra of the Opéra National de Lyon, conducted by Marc Minkowski, with Yann Beuron (Orphée), Natalie Dessay (Eurydice), Laurent Naouri (Jupiter) and Jean-Paul Fouchécourt (Pluton).

In English
the only recording of the full work made in English is the 1995 D'Oyly Carte production, conducted by John Owen Edwards with David Fieldsend (Orpheus), Mary Hegarty (Eurydice), Richard Suart (Jupiter), and Barry Patterson (Pluto). It uses the 1858 score with some additions from the 1874 revision. The English text is by Jeremy Sams. Extended excerpts were recorded of two earlier productions: Sadler's Wells (1960), conducted by Alexander Faris, with June Bronhill as Eurydice and Eric Shilling as Jupiter; and English National Opera (1985), conducted by Mark Elder, with Stuart Kale (Orpheus), Lillian Watson (Eurydice), Richard Angas (Jupiter) and Émile Belcourt (Pluto).

In German
There have been three full-length recordings in German. The first, recorded in 1958, features the North German Radio Symphony Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Paul Burkhard, with Heinz Hoppe (Orpheus), Anneliese Rothenberger as Eurydice (Eurydike), Max Hansen as Jupiter and Ferry Gruber as Pluto. Rothenberger repeated her role in a 1978 EMI set, with the Philharmonia Hungarica and Cologne Opera Chorus conducted by Willy Mattes, with Adolf Dellapozza (Orpheus), Benno Kusche (Jupiter) and Gruber (Pluto). A recording based on the 1983 Berlin production by Götz Friedrich features the Orchestra and Chorus of Deutsche Oper Berlin, conducted by Jesús López Cobos, with Donald Grobe (Orpheus), Julia Migenes (Eurydike), Hans Beirer (Jupiter) and George Shirley (Pluto).

Video
Recordings have been released on DVD based on Herbert Wernicke's 1997 production at the Théâtre de la Monnaie, Brussels, with Alexandru Badea (Orpheus), Elizabeth Vidal (Eurydice), Dale Duesing (Jupiter) and Reinaldo Macias (Pluton), and Laurent Pelly's production from the same year, with Natalie Dessay (Eurydice), Yann Beuron (Orphée), Laurent Naouri (Jupiter) and Jean-Paul Fouchécourt (Pluton). A version in English made for the BBC in 1983 has been issued on DVD. It is conducted by Faris and features Alexander Oliver (Orpheus), Lillian Watson (Eurydice), Denis Quilley (Jupiter) and Émile Belcourt (Pluto). The Berlin production by Friedrich was filmed in 1984 and has been released as a DVD; a DVD of the Salzburg Festival production directed by Kosky was published in 2019.

title: Orpheus in the Underworld


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Hagbard Celine

Hagbard Celine is a central protagonist in The Illuminatus! Trilogy series of books by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson named after the legendary Viking hero; Hagbard who died for love. In the Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy written after Illuminatus!, it is stated that "Hagbard Celine" is a pseudonym and that his legal name is Howard Crane. However, the trilogy passes through many different universes.

Character
Hagbard has parallels to Jules Verne's character, Captain Nemo. Both are genius captains aboard a fantastic submarine. Both are rogues who have mostly broken off from society, yet help the oppressed. Some have even theorized that Hagbard Celine is Captain Nemo, though Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas is set in the second half of the nineteenth century. He is also comparable to a degree to Ragnar Danneskjold, a libertarian pirate in Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged, which is spoofed in the chronicles as "Telemachus Sneezed". Like Danneskjold, Hagbard participates in the black market, exploiting and resisting governments, and both characters have Norwegian roots.

Hagbard is a notorious prankster and liar (telling one character not to trust anyone with the initials H.C.). This character trait is displayed throughout Illuminatus!. Celine tends to give misinformation about himself and his intentions and that he faked the death of an actress, implied to be Marilyn Monroe, in order to train her into becoming an embodiment of the goddess Eris. Celine subsequently fell in love with the woman and announces his intention to marry her during the trilogy.

A Discordian anarchist, he fights the Illuminati from a golden submarine, the Leif Ericson (named after the Viking explorer). The submarine was supposedly designed and built by himself, stolen from the United States Navy, or a gift from the Mafia. Despite its size—the equivalent of five city blocks long with a three-story-high conning tower—it has so far remained undetected.

He has a Norwegian mother and a Sicilian father, physically resembling Anthony Quinn. In a section printed in the introductions of volumes I and II of the trilogy, though not reprinted in the single-volume compilation, the narrator mentions that he has a raft of Irish relatives in Ohio named McGee and Marlowe. Wilson also implies in The Historical Illuminatus Chronicles that Hagbard is related to one of the central characters, Sigismundo Celine.

He speaks Norwegian, Italian, English, German, Latin, Greek and Swahili. He graduated from Harvard with a somewhat strange double major in contract law and naval engineering.

A former naturalized United States citizen, Hagbard supposedly relinquished his citizenship after representing a Mohawk reservation in court against the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Hagbard generally told people he was an engineer building a dam during his time with the Mohawk because he was ashamed of being a lawyer.

He later became a citizen of Equatorial Guinea, of which Fernando Poo is a part, having papers referring to this by the time of the Walpurgisnacht rock concert. The appendix to the trilogy mentions that Hagbard builds a starship and leaves to explore Alpha Centauri in the year 1999.

Hagbard designed a supercomputer called the First Universal Cybernetic Kinetic Ultramicro-Programmer. Among other things, he used to calculate the chances of World War III starting, which it does by throwing virtual I Ching sticks.

His manifesto is called Never Whistle While You're Pissing, containing his Definitions and Distinctions, an anarchist interpretation of capitalist concepts.

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

title: Hagbard Celine


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52 Europa

Europa (minor planet designation: 52 Europa) is the 6th-largest asteroid in the asteroid belt, having a diameter of over 300 km, though it is not correspondingly massive. It is not round but is shaped like an ellipsoid of approximately 380×330×250 km. It was discovered on 4 February 1858, by Hermann Goldschmidt from his balcony in Paris. It is named after Europa, one of Zeus's conquests in Greek mythology, a name it shares with Jupiter's moon Europa.

Physical characteristics
Europa is approximately the sixth largest asteroid by volume. Most likely it has a density of around 1.5 g/cm3, typical of C-type asteroids. In 2007, James Baer and Steven R. Chesley estimated Europa to have a mass of $0.67$ kg. A more recent estimate by Baer suggests it has a mass of 3.27 kg.

Europa is a very dark carbonaceous C-type, and is the second largest of this group. Spectroscopic studies have found evidence of olivines and pyroxenes on the surface, and there is some indication that there may be compositional differences between different regions It orbits close to the Hygiea asteroid family, but is not a member.

Lightcurve data for Europa have been particularly tricky to interpret, so much so that for a long time its period of rotation was in dispute (ranging from $319 km$ hours to 11 hours), despite numerous observations. It has now been determined that Europa is a prograde rotator, but the exact direction in which its pole points remains ambiguous. The most detailed analysis indicates that it points either towards about ecliptic coordinates (β, λ) = (70°, 55°) or (40°, 255°) with a 10° uncertainty. This gives an axial tilt of about 14° or 54°, respectively.

In 1988 a search for satellites or dust orbiting this asteroid was performed using the UH88 telescope at the Mauna Kea Observatories, but the effort came up empty.

Observations
It has been found that the reputed cataclysmic variable star CV Aquarii, discovered in 1934, was actually a misidentification of 52 Europa.

title: 52 Europa


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Vesta (mythology)

Vesta is the virgin goddess of the hearth, home, and family in Roman religion. She was rarely depicted in human form, and was more often represented by the fire of her temple in the Forum Romanum. Entry to her temple was permitted only to her priestesses, the Vestal Virgins. Their virginity was deemed essential to Rome's survival; if found guilty of inchastity, they were buried or entombed alive. As Vesta was considered a guardian of the Roman people, her festival, the Vestalia (7–15 June), was regarded as one of the most important Roman holidays. During the Vestalia privileged matrons walked barefoot through the city to the temple, where they presented food-offerings. Such was Vesta's importance to Roman religion that following the rise of Christianity, hers was one of the last non-Christian cults still active, until it was forcibly disbanded by the Christian emperor Theodosius I in AD 391.

The myths depicting Vesta and her priestesses were few; the most notable of them were tales of miraculous impregnation of a virgin priestess by a phallus appearing in the flames of the sacred hearth — the manifestation of the goddess combined with a male supernatural being. In some Roman traditions, Rome's founders Romulus and Remus and the benevolent king Servius Tullius were conceived in this way. Vesta was among the Dii Consentes, twelve of the most honored gods in the Roman pantheon. She was the daughter of Saturn and Ops, and sister of Jupiter, Neptune, Pluto, Juno, and Ceres. Her Greek equivalent is Hestia.

Etymology
Ovid derived Vesta from Latin vi stando – "standing by power". Cicero supposed that the Latin name Vesta derives from its Greek counterpart, Hestia, which Cornutus claimed to have derived from Greek ("standing for ever"). This etymology is offered by Servius as well. Another proposed etymology is that Vesta derives from Latin vestio ("clothe"), as well as from Greek ἑστία (hestia, "hearth" = focus urbis). None, except perhaps the last, are probable.

Georges Dumézil (1898–1986), a French comparative philologist, surmised that the name of the goddess derives from Proto-Indo-European root *h₁eu-, via the derivative form *h₁eu-s- which alternates with *h₁w-es-. The former is found in Greek εὕειν, Latin urit, ustio and Vedic osathi all conveying 'burning' and the second is found in Vesta. (Beekes considers the Greek goddess-name Ἑστία Hestia is probably unrelated.) See also Gallic Celtic visc "fire."

Poultney suggests that Vesta may be related to the Umbrian god Uestisier (gen.)/Vestiçe (dat.) (as if Latin *Vesticius), itself related to Umbrian terms for 'libation' uestisiar (gen.sg.), 'pour a libation' uesticatu (imv.) from *westikia and *westikato:d respectively. Perhaps also related to Oscan Veskeí from the Oscan Tablet also known as the Agnone Dedication.

Origin
According to tradition, worship of Vesta in Italy began in Lavinium, the mother-city of Alba Longa and the first settlement by the Trojan refugees after their flight from Troy's destruction, led there by Aeneas and guided by Venus. It was believed that from Lavinium, the worship of Vesta was transferred to Alba Longa, a belief evident in the custom of Roman magistrates going to Lavinium, when appointed to higher office, and offering sacrifice both to Vesta and the household gods of the Roman state known as Penates, whose images were kept in Vesta's temple. Alongside those household gods was Vesta, whom the Roman poet refers to as Vesta Iliaca ("Vesta of Ilium/Troy"). Vesta's sacred hearth was also named Iliaci foci ("hearth of Ilium/Troy").

Worship of Vesta, like the worship of many gods, originated in the home, but in Roman historical tradition, it became an established cult of state during the reign of either Romulus, or Numa Pompilius (sources disagree, but most say Numa). The priestesses of Vesta, known as Vestal Virgins, administered her temple and sustained its sacred fire. The existence of Vestal Virgins in Alba Longa is connected with early Roman traditions, for the mother of Romulus' and Remus, Silvia, was a priestess of Vesta, impregnated by either Mars or Hercules.

Roman Empire
Roman tradition required that the leading priest of the Roman state, the pontifex maximus reside in a domus publicus ("publicly owned house"). After assuming the office of pontifex maximus in 12 BC, Augustus gave part of his private house to the Vestals as public property and incorporated a new shrine of Vesta within it. The old shrine remained in the Forum Romanum's temple of Vesta, but Augustus' gift linked the public hearth of the state with the official home of the pontifex maximus and the emperor's Palatine residence. This strengthened the connection between the office of pontifex maximus and the cult of Vesta. Henceforth, the office of pontifex maximus was tied to the title of emperor; Emperors were automatically priests of Vesta, and the pontifices were sometimes referred to as pontifices Vestae ("priests of Vesta"). In 12 BC, 28 April (first of the five day Floralia) was chosen ex senatus consultum to commemorate the new shrine of Vesta in Augustus' home on the Palatine. The latter's hearth was the focus of the Imperial household's traditional religious observances. Various emperors led official revivals and promotions of the Vestals' cult, which in its various locations remained central to Rome's ancient traditional cults into the 4th century. Dedications in the Atrium of Vesta, dating predominantly AD 200 to 300, attest to the service of several Virgines Vestales Maxime. Vesta's worship began to decline with the rise of Christianity. In ca. 379, Gratian stepped down as pontifex maximus; in 382 he confiscated the Atrium Vestae and simultaneously withdrew its public funding. In 391, despite official and public protests, Theodosius I closed the temple, and extinguished the sacred flame. Finally, Coelia Concordia stepped down as the last Vestalis Maxima ("chief Vestal") in 394.

Depictions
Depicted as a good-mannered deity who never involved herself in the quarreling of other gods, Vesta was ambiguous at times due to her contradictory association with the phallus. She is considered the embodiment of the "Phallic Mother" by proponents of 20th Century psychoanalysis: she was not only the most virgin and clean of all the gods, but was addressed as mother and granted fertility. Mythographers tell us that Vesta had no myths save being identified as one of the oldest of the gods who was entitled to preference in veneration and offerings over all other gods. Unlike most gods, Vesta was hardly depicted directly; nonetheless, she was symbolized by her flame, the fire stick, and a ritual phallus (the fascinus).

While Vesta was the flame itself, the symbol of the phallus might relate to Vesta's function in fertility cults, but it maybe also invoked the goddess herself due to its relation to the fire stick used to light the sacred flame. She was sometimes thought of as a personification of the fire stick which was inserted into a hollow piece of wood and rotated – in a phallic manner – to light her flame.

Hearth
Concerning the status of Vesta's hearth, Dionysius of Halicarnassus had this to say: "And they regard the fire as consecrated to Vesta, because that goddess, being the Earth and occupying the central position in the universe, kindles the celestial fires from herself." Ovid agreed, saying: "Vesta is the same as the earth; both have the perennial fire: the Earth and the sacred Fire are both symbolic of home." The sacred flames of the hearth were believed to be indispensable for the preservation and continuity of the Roman State: Cicero states it explicitly. The purity of the flames symbolised the vital force that is the root of the life of the community. It was also because the virgins' ritual concern extended to the agricultural cycle and ensured a good harvest that Vesta enjoyed the title of Mater ("Mother").

The fecundating power of sacred fire is testified to in Plutarch's version of the birth of Romulus and Remus, in the birth of king Servius Tullius, whose mother Ocresia becomes pregnant after sitting upon a phallus that appeared among the ashes of the ara of the god Vulcanus by order of Tanaquil wife of king Tarquinius Priscus, and in the birth of Caeculus, the founder of Praeneste, who had the power to kindle or extinguish fires at will. All these mythical or semi-legendary characters show a mystical mastery of fire. Servius's hair was kindled by his father without hurting him, and even his statue in the temple of Fortuna Primigenia was unharmed by fire after his assassination.

Marriage
Vesta was connected to liminality, and the limen ("threshold") was sacred to her: brides were careful not to step on it, else they commit sacrilege by kicking a sacred object. Servius explains that it would be poor judgement for a virgin bride to kick an object sacred to Vesta, a goddess who holds chastity sacred. On the other hand, it might merely have been because Romans considered it bad luck to trample any object sacred to the gods. In Plautus' Casina, the bride Casina is cautioned to lift her feet carefully over the threshold following her wedding so she would have the upper hand in her marriage. Likewise, Catullus cautions a bride to keep her feet over the threshold "with a good omen". It is possible that the concern that brides not touch the threshold (limen) with their feet may be the source of the tradition of a husband carrying his new bride across the threshold when entering their new home following their marriage.

In Roman belief, Vesta was present in all weddings, and so was Janus: Vesta was the threshold and Janus the doorway. Similarly, Vesta and Janus were invoked in every sacrifice. It has been noted that because they were invoked so often, the evocation of the two came to simply mean, "to pray". In addition, Vesta was present with Janus in all sacrifices as well. It has also been noted that neither of them were consistently illustrated as human. This has been suggested as evidence of their ancient Italic origin, because neither of them was "fully anthropomorphized"

Agriculture
Counted among the agricultural deities, Vesta has been linked to the deities Tellus and Terra in separate accounts. In Antiquitates rerum humanarum et divinarum, Varro links Vesta to Tellus. He says: "They think Tellus... is Vesta, because she is 'vested' in flowers". Verrius Flaccus, however, had identified Vesta with Terra. Ovid hints at Vesta's connection to both of the deities.

Temple
Where the majority of temples would have a statue, that of Vesta had a hearth. The fire was a religious center of Roman worship, the common hearth (focus publicus) of the whole Roman people. The Vestals were obliged to keep the sacred fire alight. If the fire went out, it must be lit from an arbor felix ("auspicious tree", probably an oak). Water was not allowed into the inner aedes nor could it remain longer than strictly necessary in or on the nearby premises. It was carried by the Vestales in vessels called futiles which had a tiny foot that made them unstable.

The temple of Vesta held not only the ignes aeternum ("sacred fire"), but the Palladium of Pallas Athena and the di Penates as well. Both of these items are said to have been brought into Italy by Aeneas. The Palladium of Athena was, in the words of Livy: "fatale pignus imperii Romani" ("[a] pledge of destiny for the Roman empire"). Such was the Palladium's importance that when the Gauls sacked Rome in 390 BC, the Vestals first buried the Palladium before removing themselves to the safety of nearby Caere. Such objects were kept in the penus Vestae (i.e., the sacred repository of the temple of Vesta).

Despite being one of the most spiritual of Roman Shrines, that of Vesta was not a templum in the Roman sense of the word; that is, it was not a building consecrated by the augurs and so it could not be used for meetings by Roman officials. It has also been claimed that the shrine of Vesta in Rome was not a templum because of its round shape. However, a templum was not a building, but rather a sacred space that could contain a building of either rectangular or circular shape. In fact, early templa were often altars that were consecrated and later had buildings erected around them. The temple of Vesta in Rome was an aedes and not a templum most likely because of the character of the cult of Vesta, the exact reason being unknown.

Vestal Virgins
The Vestales were one of the few full-time clergy positions in Roman religion. They were drawn from the patrician class and were required to swear an oath of absolute chastity for 30 years. It was because of this requirement that the Vestales were named the Vestal virgins. They wore a particular style of dress and were not allowed to let the fire go out on pain of a whipping. On becoming a priestess, a Vestal Virgin was legally emancipated from her father's authority. The Vestal Virgins lived together in a house near the Forum (Atrium Vestae), supervised by the Pontifex Maximus. A Vestal who broke her vow of chastity could be tried for incestum and if found guilty, buried alive in the Campus Sceleris ('Field of Wickedness').

The februae (lanas: woolen threads) that were an essential part of the Vestal costume were supplied by the rex sacrorum and flamen dialis. Once a year, the Vestals gave the rex sacrorum a ritualised warning to be vigilant in his duties, using the phrase "Vigilasne rex, vigila!" In Cicero's opinion, the Vestals ensured that Rome kept its contact with the gods.

A peculiar duty of the Vestals was the preparation and conservation of the sacred salamoia muries used for the savouring of the mola salsa, a salted flour mixture to be sprinkled on sacrificial victims (hence the Latin verb immolare, "to put on the mola, to sacrifice"). This dough too was prepared by them on fixed days. Theirs also the task of preparing the suffimen for the Parilia.

Festivals
Domestic and family life in general were represented by the festival of the goddess of the house and of the spirits of the storechamber – Vesta and the Penates – on Vestalia (7 – 15 June). On the first day of festivities the penus Vestae (sanctum sanctorum of her temple which was usually curtained off) was opened, for the only time during the year, at which women offered sacrifices. As long as the curtain remained open, mothers could come, barefoot and disheveled, to leave offerings to the goddess in exchange for a blessing to them and their family. The animal consecrated to Vesta, the donkey, was crowned with garlands of flowers and bits of bread on 9 June. The final day (15 June) was Q(uando) S(tercum) D(elatum) F(as) ["when dung may be removed lawfully"] – the penus Vestae was solemnly closed; the Flaminica Dialis observed mourning, and the temple was subjected to a purification called stercoratio: the filth was swept from the temple and carried next by the route called clivus Capitolinus and then into the Tiber.

In the military Feriale Duranum (AD 224) the first day of Vestalia is Vesta apperit[ur] and the last day is Vesta cluditur. This year records a supplicatio dedicated to Vesta for 9 June, and records of the Arval Brethren on this day observe a blood sacrifice to her as well. Found in the Codex-Calendar of 354, 13 February had become the holiday Virgo Vestalis parentat, a public holiday which by then had replaced the older parentalia where the sacrifice of cattle over flames is now dedicated to Vesta. This also marks the first participation of the Vestal Virgins in rites associated with the Manes.

Mythography
Vesta had no official mythology, and she existed as an abstract goddess of the hearth and of chastity. Only in the account of Ovid at Cybele's party does Vesta appear directly in a myth.

Birth of Romulus and Remus
Plutarch, in his Life of Romulus, told a variation of Romulus' birth citing a compilation of Italian history by a Promathion. In this version, while Tarchetius was king of Alba Longa, a phantom phallus appeared in his hearth. The king visited an oracle of Tethys in Etrusca, who told him that a virgin must have intercourse with this phallus. Tarchetius instructed one of his daughters to do so, but she refused sending a handmaiden in her place. Angered, the king contemplated her execution; however, Vesta appeared to him in his sleep and forbade it. When the handmaid gave birth to twins by the phantom, Tarchetius handed them over to his subordinate, Teratius, with orders to destroy them. Teratius instead carried them to the shore of the river Tiber and laid them there. Then a she-wolf came to them and breastfed them, birds brought them food and fed them, before an amazed cow-herder came and took the children home with him. Thus they were saved, and when they were grown up, they set upon Tarchetius and overcame him. Plutarch concludes with a contrast between Promathion's version of Romulus' birth and that of the more credible Fabius Pictor which he describes in a detailed narrative and lends support to.

Conception of Servius Tullius
Dionysius of Halicarnassus recounts a local story regarding the birth of king Servius Tullius. In it, a phallus rose from the hearth of Vesta in Numa's palace, and Ocresia was the first to see it. She immediately informed the king and queen. King Tarquinius, upon hearing this, was astonished; but Tanaquil, whose knowledge of divination was well-known, told him it was a blessing that a birth by the hearth's phallus and a mortal woman would produce superior offspring. The king then chose Ocresia to have intercourse with it, for she had seen it first. During which either Vulcan, or the tutelary deity of the house, appeared to her. After disappearing, she conceived and delivered Tullius. This story of his birth could be based on his name as Servius would euphemistically mean "son of servant", because his mother was a handmaiden.

Impropriety of Priapus
In book 6 of Ovid's Fasti: Cybele invited all the gods, satyrs, rural divinities, and nymphs to a feast, though Silenus came uninvited with his donkey. At some point during the feast, Vesta lay at rest, and Priapus spotted her. As he approached her in order to violate her, the ass brought by Silenus let out a timely bray, whereupon Vesta awoke and Priapus barely escaped the outraged gods. Mentioned in book 1 of the Fasti is a similar instance of Priapus' impropriety involving Lotis and Priapus. The Vesta-Priapus account is not as well developed as that involving Lotis, and critics suggest the account of Vesta and Priapus only exists to create a cult drama. Ovid says the donkey was adorned with necklaces of bread-bits in memory of the event. Elsewhere, he says donkeys were honored on 9 June during the Vestalia in thanks for the services they provided in the bakeries.

Vesta outside Rome
Vesta's cult is attested at Bovillae, Lavinium and Tibur. The Alban Vestals at Bovillae (Albanae Longanae Bovillenses) were supposedly a continuation of the original Alban Vestals, and Lavinium had the Vestals of the Laurentes Lavinates, both orders rooted in ancient traditions that were thought to predate Rome's foundation. In a later period, Tibur's vestals are attested epigraphically. Vestals might have been present at the sanctuary of Diana Nemorensis near Aricia.

Ancient

 * Gaius Valerius Catullus in Carmina
 * Marcus Tullius Cicero in Pro Fonteio
 * Dionysius of Halicarnassus in Romaike Archaiologia
 * Gaius Acilius in Annales Aciliani
 * Aulus Gellius in Noctes Atticae
 * Maurus Servius Honoratus in In Vergilii Aeneidem commentarii
 * Maurus Servius Honoratus in Eclogues
 * Publius Ovidius Naso in Amores
 * Publius Ovidius Naso in Fasti
 * Gaius Petronius Arbiter in Satyricon
 * Titus Maccius Plautus in Casina
 * Gaius Plinius Secundus in Naturalis Historia
 * Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus in Life of Numa
 * Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus in Life of Romulus

title: Vesta (mythology)


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User talk:Mutante

Hi, Mutante! You'll probably want to read the Welcome, newcomers page. A couple of pointers: Enjoy! -- April
 * Don't delete an existing page (unless it's poor/useless article) to replace it with your own. Make a new article with a unique name, or add a note on the bottom, or discuss it on a talk page.
 * Put the title of an article in bold type, use complete sentences, and remember that a line break in the edit window doesn't mean much.
 * Try doing a search on terms such as Illuminatus trilogy to see if such a thing already exists, so you can link to an existing article. Remember that capitalization matters.

AfD nomination of FUCKUP
I have nominated FUCKUP, an article you created, for deletion. I do not feel that this article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and have explained why at Articles for deletion/FUCKUP. Your opinions on the matter are welcome at that same discussion page; also, you are welcome to edit the article to address these concerns. Thank you for your time. Do you want to opt out of receiving this notice? FrankTobia (talk) 23:44, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

regression test
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fnord

edit test
test

title: User talk:Mutante


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4769 Castalia

4769 Castalia (prov. designation: ) is a near-Earth object and potentially hazardous asteroid of the Apollo group, approximately 1.4 km in diameter and was the first asteroid to be modeled by radar imaging. It was discovered on 9 August 1989, by American astronomer Eleanor Helin (Caltech) on photographic plates taken at Palomar Observatory in California. It is named after Castalia, a nymph in Greek mythology. It is also a Mars- and Venus-crosser asteroid.

General information
On 25 August 1989 Castalia passed 0.0269378 AU (within eleven lunar distances) of Earth, allowing it to be observed with radar from the Arecibo Observatory by Scott Hudson (Washington State University) and Steven J. Ostro (JPL). The data allowed Hudson et al. to produce a three-dimensional model of the object. During the 1989 passage Castalia peaked at an apparent magnitude of 12.

Castalia has a peanut shape, suggesting two approximately 800-meter-diameter pieces held together by their weak mutual gravity. Since then radar observations of other asteroids have found other contact binaries.

Castalia is a potentially hazardous asteroid (PHA) because its minimum orbit intersection distance (MOID) is less than 0.05 AU and its diameter is greater than 150 meters. The Earth-MOID is 0.0204 AU. Its orbit is well-determined for the next several hundred years.

title: 4769 Castalia


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964

Year 964 (CMLXIV) was a leap year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.

Byzantine Empire

 * Arab–Byzantine War: Emperor Nikephoros II continues the reconquest of south-eastern Anatolia (modern Turkey). He recaptures Cyprus, and reorganizes the conquered lands into new themes. In the summer, they take the fortress cities of Anazarbus and Adana. Byzantine troops under General John Tzimiskes besiege Mopsuestia, but with the coming of winter he is forced to retreat to Caesarea.
 * October 24–25 – Siege of Rometta: Nikephoros II sends an expedition to Sicily. The Byzantine army (40,000 men) is sent to break the Muslim siege at Rometta, and to regain Sicily for the Byzantine Empire. For two days a battle takes place in the area between the beach and the besieged citadel of Rometta. The Saracens (under Al-Hasan ibn Ammar) manage to defeat the Byzantine relief force.

Europe

 * Spring – King Adalbert II returns to the mainland of Italy, and occupies the environs of Spoleto. Emperor Otto I ('the Great') leaves Rome with his army, and lays siege to the fortress city of Spoleto.
 * Otto I proceeds on campaign in Italy, remaining in the environs of Lucca. In the fall he leaves plague-wracked Tuscany, and is forced to retreat to Liguria. His rearguard is attacked by Adalbert II.

Religion

 * February – Pope John XII returns with his supporters to Rome. He convenes a synod that deposes Antipope Leo VIII who finds refuge at the court of Otto I. John dispatches a delegation under Otgar, bishop of Speyer, to negotiate an agreement.
 * May 14 – Pope John XII dies (rumoured to be by apoplexy, or at the hands of a cuckolded husband, during an illicit sexual liaison) after a 9-year reign. The Romans elect Benedict V, who is acclaimed by the city militia. He begins his pontificate as the 131st pope of the Catholic Church.
 * June 23 – Benedict V is deposed and ecclesiastically degraded after Otto I besieges Rome. He starves the Romans into submission and restores Leo VIII to the papal throne.

Science

 * Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi, a Persian astronomer, writes the Book of Fixed Stars

Births

 * Bertha of Burgundy, Frankish queen consort (d. 1010)
 * Heonae, Korean queen consort and regent (d. 1029)
 * Liu Wenzhi, official of the Song Dynasty (d. 1028)

Deaths

 * May 14 – John XII, pope of the Catholic Church
 * July 3 – Henry I, Frankish nobleman and archbishop
 * November 5 – Fan Zhi, chancellor of the Song Dynasty
 * December 8 – Zhou (the Elder), Chinese queen consort
 * Al-Hasan ibn Ali al-Kalbi, Fatimid nobleman and emir
 * Fujiwara no Anshi, empress consort of Japan (b. 927)
 * Godfrey I, count and vice-duke of Lower Lorraine
 * Khosrov of Andzev, Armenian monk and poet
 * Toichleach ua Gadhra, king of Gailenga (Ireland)

title: 964


text:
Europa (consort of Zeus)

In Greek mythology, Europa (Εὐρώπη, Eurṓpē, ) was a Phoenician princess from Tyre and the mother of King Minos of Crete. The continent of Europe is named after her. The story of her abduction by Zeus in the form of a bull was a Cretan story; as classicist Károly Kerényi points out, "most of the love-stories concerning Zeus originated from more ancient tales describing his marriages with goddesses. This can especially be said of the story of Europa."

Europa's earliest literary reference is in the Iliad, which is commonly dated to the 8th century BC. Another early reference to her is in a fragment of the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, discovered at Oxyrhynchus. The earliest vase-painting securely identifiable as Europa dates from the mid-7th century BC.

Etymology
Greek Εὐρώπη (Eurṓpē) may have been formed from εὐρύς (eurus),  "wide, broad" and ὤψ/ὠπ-/ὀπτ- (ōps/ōp-/opt-)  "eye, face, countenance". Broad has been an epithet of Earth herself in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion.

The weakness of an etymology with εὐρύς (eurus), is 1. that the -u stem of εὐρύς disappears in Εὐρώπη Europa and 2. the expected form εὐρυώπη euruopē that retains the -u stem in fact exists.

It is common in ancient Greek mythology and geography to identify lands or rivers with female figures. Thus, Europa is first used in a geographic context in the Homeric Hymn to Delian Apollo, in reference to the western shore of the Aegean Sea. As a name for a part of the known world, it is first used in the 6th century BC by Anaximander and Hecataeus.

An alternative suggestion due to Ernest Klein and Giovanni Semerano (1966) attempted to connect a Semitic term for "west", Akkadian erebu meaning "to go down, set" (in reference to the sun), Phoenician  'ereb "evening; west", which would parallel occident (the resemblance to Erebus, from PIE *h1regʷos, "darkness", is accidental, however). Barry (1999) adduces the word Ereb on an Assyrian stele with the meaning of "night", "[the country of] sunset", in opposition to Asu "[the country of] sunrise", i.e. Asia (Anatolia coming equally from Ἀνατολή, "(sun)rise", "east"). This proposal is mostly considered unlikely or untenable.

Family
Sources differ in details regarding Europa's family, but agree that she is Phoenician, and from an Argive lineage that ultimately descended from the princess Io, the mythical nymph beloved of Zeus, who was transformed into a heifer. She is generally said to be the daughter of Agenor, the Phoenician King of Tyre; the Syracusan poet Moschus makes her mother Queen Telephassa ("far-shining") but elsewhere her mother is Argiope ("silver-faced"). Other sources, such as the Iliad, claim that she is the daughter of Agenor's son, the "sun-red" Phoenix. It is generally agreed that she had two brothers, Cadmus, who brought the alphabet to mainland Greece, and Cilix who gave his name to Cilicia in Asia Minor, with the author of Bibliotheke including Phoenix as a third. So some interpret this as her brother Phoenix (when he is assumed to be son of Agenor) gave his siblings' name to his three children and this Europa (by this case, niece of former) is also loved by Zeus, but because of the same name, gave some confusions to others. After arriving in Crete, Europa had three sons fathered by Zeus: Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Sarpedon, the first two becoming judges of the Underworld, alongside Aeacus of Aegina, when they died. In Crete she married Asterion also rendered Asterius and became mother (or step-mother) of his daughter Crete. Pausanias wrote that the poet Praxilla makes Carnus a son of Europa.

Mythology

The Dictionary of Classical Mythology explains that Zeus was enamoured of Europa and decided to seduce or rape her, the two being near-equivalent in Greek myth. He transformed himself into a tame white bull and mixed in with her father's herds. While Europa and her helpers were gathering flowers, she saw the bull, caressed his flanks, and eventually got onto his back. Zeus took that opportunity and ran to the sea and swam, with her on his back, to the island of Crete. He then revealed his true identity, and Europa became the first queen of Crete. Zeus gave her a necklace made by Hephaestus and three additional gifts: the bronze automaton guard Talos, the hound Laelaps who never failed to catch his quarry, and a javelin that never missed. Zeus later re-created the shape of the white bull in the stars, which is now known as the constellation Taurus. It should not be confused with the Cretan Bull that fathered the Minotaur and was captured by Heracles. Roman mythology adopted the tale of the Raptus, also known as "The Abduction of Europa" and "The Seduction of Europa", substituting the god Jupiter for Zeus.

The myth of Europa and Zeus may have its origin in a sacred union between the Phoenician deities `Aštar and `Aštart (Astarte), in bovine form. Having given birth to three sons by Zeus, Europa married a king Asterios, this being also the name of the Minotaur and an epithet of Zeus, likely derived from the name `Aštar.

According to Herodotus' rationalizing approach, Europa was kidnapped by Greeks (probably Cretans), who were seeking to avenge the kidnapping of Io, a princess from Argos. His variant story may have been an attempt to rationalize the earlier myth; or the present myth may be a garbled version of facts—the abduction of a Phoenician aristocrat—later enunciated without gloss by Herodotus.

Astarte and Europa
In the territory of Phoenician Sidon, Lucian of Samosata (2nd century AD) was informed that the temple of Astarte, whom Lucian equated with the moon goddess, was sacred to Europa:

 * There is likewise in Phœnicia a temple of great size owned by the Sidonians. They call it the temple of Astarte. I hold this Astarte to be no other than the moon-goddess. But according to the story of one of the priests this temple is sacred to Europa, the sister of Cadmus. She was the daughter of Agenor, and on her disappearance from Earth the Phœnicians honoured her with a temple and told a sacred legend about her; how that Zeus was enamoured of her for her beauty, and changing his form into that of a bull carried her off into Crete. This legend I heard from other Phœnicians as well; and the coinage current among the Sidonians bears upon it the effigy of Europa sitting upon a bull, none other than Zeus. Thus they do not agree that the temple in question is sacred to Europa.

The paradox, as it seemed to Lucian, would be solved if Europa is Astarte in her guise as the full, "broad-faced" moon.

Interpretation
There were two competing myths relating how Europa came into the Hellenic world, but they agreed that she came to Crete (Kríti), where the sacred bull was paramount. In the more familiar telling she was seduced by the god Zeus in the form of a bull, who breathed from his mouth a saffron crocus and carried her away to Crete on his back—to be welcomed by Asterion, but according to the more literal, euhemerist version that begins the account of Persian-Hellene confrontations of Herodotus, she was kidnapped by Cretans, who likewise were said to have taken her to Crete. The mythical Europa cannot be separated from the mythology of the sacred bull, which had been worshipped in the Levant. In 2012, an archaeological mission of the British Museum led by Lebanese archaeologist, Claude Doumet-Serhal, discovered at the site of the old American school in Sidon, Lebanon currency that depicts Europa riding the bull with her veil flying all over like a bow, further proof of Europa's Phoenician origin.

Europa does not seem to have been venerated directly in cult anywhere in classical Greece, but at Lebadaea in Boeotia, Pausanias noted in the 2nd century AD that Europa was the epithet of Demeter—"Demeter whom they surname Europa and say was the nurse of Trophonios"—among the Olympians who were addressed by seekers at the cave sanctuary of Trophonios of Orchomenus, to whom a chthonic cult and oracle were dedicated: "the grove of Trophonios by the river Herkyna ... there is also a sanctuary of Demeter Europa ... the nurse of Trophonios."

The festival of Hellotia in Crete was celebrated in honour of Europa.

In art and literature

Europa provided the substance of a brief Hellenistic epic written in the mid-2nd century BCE by Moschus, a bucolic poet and friend of the Alexandrian grammarian Aristarchus of Samothrace, born at Syracuse.

In Metamorphoses Book II, the poet Ovid wrote the following depiction of Jupiter's seduction: His picturesque details belong to anecdote and fable: in all the depictions, whether she straddles the bull, as in archaic vase-paintings or the ruined metope fragment from Sikyon, or sits gracefully sidesaddle as in a mosaic from North Africa, there is no trace of fear. Often Europa steadies herself by touching one of the bull's horns, acquiescing.

Her tale is also mentioned in Nathaniel Hawthorne's Tanglewood Tales. Though his story titled "Dragon's teeth" is largely about Cadmus, it begins with an elaborate albeit toned down version of Europa's abduction by the beautiful bull.

The tale also features as the subject of a poem and film in the Enderby (fictional character) sequence of novels by Anthony Burgess. She is remembered in De Mulieribus Claris, a collection of biographies of historical and mythological women by the Florentine author Giovanni Boccaccio, composed in 136162. It is notable as the first collection devoted exclusively to biographies of women in Western literature.

Continent
The name Europe, as a geographical term, was used by Ancient Greek geographers such as Strabo to refer to part of Thrace below the Balkan mountains. Later, under the Roman Empire the name was given to a Thracian province. Thrace or Thraike in Greek mythology, was the sister of a water nymph named Europa. Europa was also a surname given to the earth mother goddess Demeter.

It is derived from the Greek word Eurōpē (Εὐρώπη) in all Romance languages, Germanic languages, Slavic languages, Baltic languages, Celtic languages, Iranian languages, Uralic languages (Hungarian Európa, Finnish Eurooppa, Estonian Euroopa). Jürgen Fischer, in Oriens-Occidens-Europa summarized how the name came into use, supplanting the oriens–occidens dichotomy of the later Roman Empire, which was expressive of a divided empire, Latin in the West, Greek in the East.

In the 8th century, ecclesiastical uses of "Europa" for the imperium of Charlemagne provide the source for the modern geographical term. The first use of the term Europenses, to describe peoples of the Christian, western portion of the continent, appeared in the Hispanic Latin Chronicle of 754, sometimes attributed to an author called Isidore Pacensis in reference to the Battle of Tours fought against Muslim forces.

The European Union has also used Europa as a symbol of pan-Europeanism, notably by naming its web portal after her and depicting her on the Greek €2 coin and on several gold and silver commemorative coins (e.g. the Belgian €10 European Expansion coin). Her name appeared on postage stamps celebrating the Council of Europe, which were first issued in 1956. The second series of euro banknotes is known as the Europa Series and bears her likeness in the watermark and hologram.

Chemical element
The metal europium, a rare-earth element, was named in 1901 after the continent.

Moon of Jupiter
The invention of the telescope revealed that the planet Jupiter, clearly visible to the naked eye and known to humanity since prehistoric times, has an attendant family of moons. These were named for male and female lovers of the god and other mythological persons associated with him. The smallest of Jupiter's Galilean moons was named after Europa.

title: Europa (consort of Zeus)


text:
965

Year 965 (CMLXV) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.

Byzantine Empire

 * Arab–Byzantine War: Emperor Nikephoros II conquers the fortress cities of Tarsus and Mopsuestia. The Muslim residents abandon the defense and flee into Syria. Nikephoros completes the conquest of Cilicia; Muslim raids into Anatolia (modern Turkey) permanently cease. Byzantine troops under General Niketas Chalkoutzes occupy Cyprus, liberating the Greek population from Muslim domination.
 * Battle of the Straits: The Byzantine attempt to recover Sicily fails, when the Byzantine fleet is annihilated by the Fatimids. The last Byzantine stronghold on the island, Rometta, surrenders. The population is massacred, and the survivors are sold into slavery. Caliph Al-Mu'izz li-Din Allah completes the conquest of Sicily, and establishes naval superiority in the Western Mediterranean.

Europe

 * Spring – King Lothair III exploits the succession crisis in Flanders and captures many cities, but is eventually repulsed by the supporters of Arnulf II — the son of Baldwin III and former co-ruler of Flanders. Lothair attempts to increase his influence in Lotharingia, once held by the Carolingian dynasty. Emperor Otto I (the Great) encourages resistance to Lothair's overtures.
 * Boleslaus I (the Cruel), duke of Bohemia, expands his territory into the Polish territories of Upper Silesia and Lesser Poland. By occupying the city of Kraków, he controls important trade routes from Prague to Kiev and Lviv. Prince Mieszko I of Poland makes an alliance with Boleslaus and marries his daughter Dobrawa.
 * The Khazar fortress city of Sarkel, located on the Lower Don River, is captured by Kievan Rus' under Grand Prince Sviatoslav I. The city is renamed Belaya Vezha (White Fortress) and settled by Slavs.

China

 * July 12 – Emperor Meng Chang of Later Shu dies after a 30-year reign. His kingdom is invaded and incorporated into the expanding Song dynasty.

Literature

 * September 23 – Al-Mutanabbi, an Abbasid poet, returns from 5 years in Mesopotamia. He has lived at Shiraz under the protection of the Buyid emir 'Adud al-Dawla, but bandits kill him near An Numaniyah (modern Iran).

Religion

 * March 1 – Pope Leo VIII dies after a 13-month reign. He is succeeded by John XIII as the 133rd pope of the Catholic Church.

Births

 * Dudo of Saint-Quentin, Norman historian (approximate date)
 * Frederick of Luxembourg, count of Moselgau (d. 1019)
 * Gerberga of Burgundy, duchess consort of Swabia (or 966)
 * Godfrey II, count and duke of Lower Lorraine (d. 1023)
 * Hárek of Tjøtta, Norwegian chieftain (approximate date)
 * Hugh I, count of Empúries and Peralada (approximate date)
 * Ibn al-Haytham, Arab astronomer and physicist (d. 1040)
 * Leo of Vercelli, German bishop (approximate date)
 * Sharif al-Murtaza, Buyid Shia scholar (d. 1044)
 * Theodoric I, duke of Upper Lorraine (approximate date)

Deaths

 * February 22 – Otto, duke of Burgundy (b. 944)
 * March 1 – Leo VIII, pope of the Catholic Church
 * March 28 – Arnulf I, count of Flanders
 * May 20 – Gero (the Great), Frankish nobleman
 * June 25 – Guy, margrave of Ivrea (b. 940)
 * July 4 – Benedict V, pope of the Catholic Church
 * July 12 – Meng Chang, emperor of Later Shu (b. 919)
 * September 23 – Al-Mutanabbi, Abbasid poet (b. 915)
 * October 11 – Bruno I, archbishop of Cologne (b. 925)
 * Al-Husayn ibn Ali al-Maghribi, Abbasid statesman
 * Guo Chong, Chinese general (approximate date)
 * Hedwig of Saxony, Frankish duchess and regent
 * Li, empress dowager of Later Shu (Ten Kingdoms)
 * Li Hao, Chinese chancellor (approximate date)
 * Moses ben Hanoch, Jewish rabbi (approximate date)
 * Joseph Bringas, Byzantine eunuch and official
 * Wu Cheng, Chinese chancellor (b. 893)
 * Zhong, empress consort of Southern Tang

title: 965


text:
3753 Cruithne

3753 Cruithne is a Q-type, Aten asteroid in orbit around the Sun in 1:1 orbital resonance with Earth, making it a co-orbital object. It is an asteroid that, relative to Earth, orbits the Sun in a bean-shaped orbit that effectively describes a horseshoe, and that can change into a quasi-satellite orbit. Cruithne does not orbit Earth and at times it is on the other side of the Sun, placing Cruithne well outside of Earth's Hill sphere. Its orbit takes it near the orbit of Mercury and outside the orbit of Mars. Cruithne orbits the Sun in about one Earth year, but it takes 770 years for the series to complete a horseshoe-shaped movement around Earth.

The name Cruithne is from Irish and refers to the early Picts (Old Irish: Cruthin) in the Annals of Ulster and their eponymous king ("Cruidne, son of Cinge") in the Pictish Chronicle.

Discovery
Cruithne was discovered on 10 October 1986 by Duncan Waldron on a photographic plate taken with the UK Schmidt Telescope at Siding Spring Observatory, Coonabarabran, Australia. A 1983 precovery (1983 UH) is credited to Giovanni de Sanctis and Richard M. West of the European Southern Observatory in Chile.

It was not until 1997 that its unusual orbit was determined by Paul Wiegert and Kimmo Innanen, working at York University in Toronto, and Seppo Mikkola, working at the University of Turku in Finland.

Dimensions and orbit
Cruithne is approximately 5 km in diameter, and its closest approach to Earth is 12 e6km, approximately thirty times the separation between Earth and the Moon. From 1994 through 2015, Cruithne made its annual closest approach to Earth every November.

Although Cruithne's orbit is not thought to be stable over the long term, calculations by Wiegert and Innanen showed that it has probably been synchronized with Earth's orbit for a long time. There is no danger of a collision with Earth for millions of years, if ever. Its orbital path and Earth's do not cross, and its orbital plane is currently tilted to that of Earth by 19.8°. Cruithne, having a maximum near-Earth magnitude of +15.8, is fainter than Pluto and would require at least a 12.5 in reflecting telescope to be seen.

Cruithne is in a normal elliptic orbit around the Sun. Its period of revolution around the Sun, approximately 364 days in the early 21st century, is almost equal to that of Earth. Because of this, Cruithne and Earth appear to "follow" each other in their paths around the Sun. This is why Cruithne is sometimes called "Earth's second moon". However, it does not orbit Earth and is not a moon. In 2058, Cruithne will come within 0.09 AU (13.6 e6km) of Mars.

Due to a high orbital eccentricity, Cruithne's distance from the Sun and orbital speed vary a lot more than Earth's, so from Earth's point of view Cruithne actually follows a kidney-bean-shaped horseshoe orbit ahead of Earth, taking slightly less than one year to complete a circuit of the "bean". Because it takes slightly less than a year, Earth "falls behind" the bean a little more each year, and so, from the point of view of an observer on Earth, the circuit is not quite closed, but rather like a spiral loop that moves slowly away from Earth.

After many years, Earth will have fallen so far behind that Cruithne will then actually be "catching up" on Earth from "behind". When it eventually does catch up, Cruithne will make a series of annual close approaches to Earth and gravitationally exchange orbital energy with Earth; this will alter Cruithne's orbit by a little over half a million kilometres—while Earth's orbit is altered by about 1.3 cm—so that its period of revolution around the Sun will then become slightly more than a year. The kidney bean will then start to migrate away from Earth again in the opposite direction—instead of Earth "falling behind" the bean, it is "pulling away from" the bean. The next such series of close approaches will be centred on the year 2292—in July of that year, Cruithne will approach Earth to about 12.5 e6km.

After 380 to 390 years or so, the kidney-bean-shaped orbit approaches Earth again from the other side, and Earth, once more, alters the orbit of Cruithne so that its period of revolution around the Sun is again slightly less than a year (this last happened with a series of close approaches centred on 1902, and will next happen with a series centered on 2676). The pattern then repeats itself.

Similar minor planets
More near-resonant near-Earth objects (NEOs) have since been discovered. These include 54509 YORP,, , and which exist in resonant orbits similar to Cruithne's.  is the first identified Earth trojan (out of only two known ).

Other examples of natural bodies known to be in horseshoe orbits (with respect to each other) include Janus and Epimetheus, natural satellites of Saturn. The orbits these two moons follow around Saturn are much simpler than the one Cruithne follows, but operate along the same general principles.

Mars has four known co-orbital asteroids (5261 Eureka,, , and , all at the Lagrangian points), and Jupiter has many (an estimated one million greater than 1 km in diameter, the Jovian trojans); there are also other small co-orbital moons in the Saturnian system: Telesto and Calypso with Tethys, and Helene and Polydeuces with Dione. However, none of these follow horseshoe orbits.

In popular culture
Cruithne plays a major role in Stephen Baxter's novel Manifold: Time, which was nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award for best science fiction in 2000.

Cruithne is mentioned on the QI season 1 episode "Astronomy", in which it is described as a second moon of Earth. In a later episode, it was added that, if using the same definition, Earth has over 18,000 "mini-moons".

In Astonishing X-Men, Cruithne is the site of a secret lab assaulted by Abigail Brand and her S.W.O.R.D. team. It contains many Brood before Brand destroys it.

In the Insignia trilogy, 3753 Cruithne has been moved into an orbit around Earth to serve as a training ground for the Intrasolar Forces. In the third novel, Catalyst, it is intentionally directed at Earth. While it is destroyed before impact, its fragments rain down on Earth's surface, killing nearly 800 million people across the world.

title: 3753 Cruithne


text:
4179 Toutatis

4179 Toutatis (provisional designation ) is an elongated, stony asteroid and slow rotator, classified as a near-Earth object and potentially hazardous asteroid of the Apollo asteroid group, approximately 2.5 kilometers in diameter. Discovered by French astronomer Christian Pollas at Caussols in 1989, the asteroid was named after Toutatis from Celtic mythology.

Toutatis is also a Mars-crosser asteroid with a chaotic orbit produced by a 3:1 resonance with the planet Jupiter, a 1:4 resonance with the planet Earth, and frequent close approaches to the terrestrial planets, including Earth. In December 2012, Toutatis passed within about 18 lunar distances of Earth. The Chinese lunar probe Chang'e 2 flew by the asteroid at a distance of 3.2 kilometers and a relative velocity of 10.73 km/s. Toutatis approached Earth again in 2016, but will not make another notably close approach until 2069.

Properties
Toutatis was first sighted on 10 February 1934, as object 1934 CT, but lost soon afterwards. It remained a lost asteroid for several decades until it was rediscovered on 4 January 1989 by French astronomer Christian Pollas, and was named after the Celtic god of tribal protection Toutatis (Teutates). The name of this god is very familiar in France due to the catchphrase Par Toutatis! by the Gauls in the comics Asterix.

The spectral properties suggest that this is an S-type, or stony asteroid, consisting primarily of silicates. It has a moderate Bond albedo of 0.13. Radar imagery shows that Toutatis is a highly irregular body consisting of two distinct lobes, with maximum widths of about 4.6 km and 2.4 km, respectively. It is hypothesized that Toutatis formed from two originally separate bodies which coalesced at some point (a contact binary), with the resultant asteroid being compared to a rubble pile.

Its rotation combines two separate periodic motions into a non-periodic result; to someone on the surface of Toutatis, the Sun would seem to rise and set in apparently random locations and at random times at the asteroid's horizon. It has a rotation period around its long axis (Pψ) of 5.38 days. This long axis is precessing with a period (Pφ) of 7.38 days. The asteroid may have lost most of its original angular momentum and entered into this tumbling motion as a result of the YORP effect.

Orbit
With a semimajor axis of 2.5294 AU, or roughly 2.5 times the distance between Earth and the Sun, Toutatis has a 3:1 orbital resonance with Jupiter and a near-1:4 resonance with Earth making it a member of the Alinda asteroid group. It thus completes one orbit around the Sun for every 4.02 annual orbits of Earth. The gravitational perturbations caused by frequent close approaches to the terrestrial planets lead to chaotic behavior in the orbit of Toutatis, making precise long-term predictions of its location progressively inaccurate over time. Estimates in 1993 put the Lyapunov time horizon for predictability at around 50 years, after which the uncertainty region becomes larger with each close approach to a planet. Without the perturbations from the terrestrial planets the Lyapunov time would be close to 10,000 years. The initial observations that showed its chaotic behavior were made by Wiśniewski.

The low inclination (0.47°) of the orbit allows frequent transits, where the inner planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars can appear to cross the Sun as seen from the perspective of Toutatis. Earth did this in January 2009, July 2012, July 2016 and 2020.

Close approaches and collision risk
Toutatis makes frequent close approaches to Earth, with a currently minimum possible distance (Earth MOID) of just 0.006 AU (2.3 times as far as the Moon). The approach on 29 September 2004 was particularly close, at 0.0104 AU (within 4 lunar distances) from Earth, presenting a good opportunity for observation, with Toutatis having an apparent magnitude of 8.8 at its brightest. A close approach of 0.0502 AU happened on 9 November 2008. The most recent close approach was on 12 December 2012, at a distance of 0.046 AU, with a magnitude of 10.7. At magnitude 10.7, Toutatis was not visible to the naked eye, but just visible to experienced observers using high-end binoculars. During the 2012 encounter Toutatis was recovered on 21 May 2012, by the Siding Spring Survey at apparent magnitude 18.9. A close approach will be 5 November 2069, at 0.01985 AU.

Given that Toutatis makes many close approaches to Earth, such as in 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, and 2016, it is listed as a potentially hazardous object. With an uncertainty parameter of 0, the orbit of Toutatis is very well determined for the next few hundred years. The probability of the orbit intersecting Earth is essentially zero for at least the next six centuries. The likelihood of collision in the distant future is considered to be very small. As a planet-crossing asteroid, Toutatis is likely to be ejected from the inner Solar System within a few million years. In 2004 a chain e-mail falsely claimed that Toutatis had a 63% chance of impacting Earth then. In fact, Toutatis passed by at 1.5 million kilometres, or about four Earth–Moon distances, as predicted.

In 2006 Toutatis came closer than 2 AU to Jupiter; its orbit lies inside of Jupiter's. In the 2100s, it will approach Jupiter many times at a similar distance.

Physical characteristics
Large amounts of data of Toutatis were obtained during Chang'e 2's flyby. Toutatis is not a monolith, but most likely a coalescence of shattered fragments. This bifurcated asteroid is shown to be mainly consisting of a head (small lobe) and a body (large lobe). The two major parts are not round in shape, and their surfaces have a number of large facets. In comparison with radar models, the proximate observations from Chang'e 2's flyby have revealed several remarkable discoveries concerning Toutatis, among which the presence of the giant basin at the big end appears to be one of the most compelling geological features, and the sharply perpendicular silhouette in the neck region that connects the head and body is also quite novel. A large number of boulders and several short linear structures are also apparent on the surface.

Giant basin
The giant basin at the big end of Toutatis has a diameter of ~805 m, suggesting that one or more impactors may have collided with it there. The most significant feature is the ridge around the largest basin. The wall of this basin has a relatively high density of lineaments, some of which seem to be concentric to the basin. These ridges are indicative of an internal structure of small bodies and most of the ridges near the largest basin at the big end are most likely related to the huge stress energy during impact.

Observation
Toutatis has been observed with radar imaging from the Arecibo Observatory and the Goldstone Solar System Radar during the asteroid's prior Earth flybys in 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, and 2008. It was also observed with radar during the December 2012 flyby and observed more distant flyby with radar in December 2016. After 2016, Toutatis will not pass close to Earth again until 2069.

Resolution of the radar images is as fine as 3.75 m per pixel, providing data to model Toutatis's shape and spin state.

Exploration

The Chinese lunar probe Chang'e 2 departed from the Sun–Earth L2 point in April 2012 and made a flyby of Toutatis on 13 December 2012, with closest approach being 3.2 kilometers and a relative velocity of 10.73 km/s, when Toutatis was near its closest approach to Earth. It took several pictures of the asteroid, revealing it to be a dusty red/orange color.

title: 4179 Toutatis