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Isaccea

Isaccea is a small town in Tulcea County, in Northern Dobruja, Romania, on the right bank of the Danube, 35 km north-west of Tulcea. According to the 2021 census, it has a population of 4,408.

The town has been inhabited for thousands of years, as it is one of the few places in all the Lower Danube that can be easily forded and thus be an easy link between the Balkans and the steppes of Southern Ukraine and Russia, north of the Black Sea. The Danube was for a long time the border between the Romans, later Byzantines and the "barbarian" migrating tribes in the north, making Isaccea a border town, conquered and held by dozens of different peoples.

Geography
The town has under its administration 103.97 km2, of which 3.69 km2 are inside the residential areas.

The town is divided into three settlements: Isaccea proper (4,789 inhabitants) and two villages, Revărsarea (563 inhabitants) and Tichilești (10 inhabitants).

The Tulcea – Brăila roadway (DN22/E87) crosses the town.

The town is located in near to the Măcin Mountains and Dobruja Plateau (in the south) and the Danube (in the north). Many lakes could once be found in the town, but some of them were desiccated by the Communist authorities in order to use the terrain for agriculture. This initiative lacked success, since the soil of the area proved to be not very fertile. Some larger lakes still remain: Saun, Telincea, Rotund, Ghiolul Pietrei, Racova. In April 2006, the dyke which protected this terrain failed and the Danube flooded again the areas which used to be wetlands.

Along the Danube there is a floodplain, which gets inundated every spring, bringing fresh water to the lakes and the marshlands. The largest lake in Isaccea is "Lacul Rotund" (literally, Round Lake), having an area of 2.19 km2 and a volume of 2.0 million m3.

Tichilești
Tichilești was founded as a monastery of Tichilești, with time becoming a leper colony. A legend says the monastery was founded by one of the Cantacuzino princesses who was affected by leprosy. Another theory of the history the settlement is that a group of Russian refugees (see Lipovans) settled there and founded the monastery, but soon became outlaws who were eventually caught. In 1918, a part of the lepers moved to Bessarabian town of Izmail. Following a 1926 newspaper article, a hospital was built in 1928 at the monastery. In 1998, there were 39 people in the settlement, and according to the 2002 census, there were 22 people, most of them having an age of more than 60 years. By 2019, there were only 9 people.

Revărsarea
Revărsarea was founded after the 1877 War of Independence, being settled by war veterans and colonists, the village being built in the place of a forest which has been cleared. It had several other names since: Piatra Calcată, Principele Nicolae (named after Prince Nicholas of Romania) and Ștefan Gheorghiu (named after Ștefan Gheorghiu, a trade unionist).

Name
Possibly the earliest mentioning is in De Administrando Imperio (around 950) of Constantine Porphyrogenitus. It talks about six deserted cities between the Dniester and Bulgaria, among them being Saka-katai, katai being most likely a transcription of a Pecheneg word for "city". The name Saka could in turn be derived from Romanian sacă/seacă, meaning "barren", however both the identification of the city with Isaccea and the etymology are mere speculations.

The first clear reference to this name was in the 11th century, when there was a local ruler from Vicina named Σακτζας (Saktzas, probably Saccea / Sakça), for the first time used by Byzantine Anna Comnena in her Alexiad. Nicolae Iorga presumed that the ruler was Romanian, however "-ça" (-cea) could also indicate a Turkic suffix.

The 14th-century Arab geographer Abu'l-Fida mentions the town under the name "Saecdji", which was a territory of the "Al-Ualak" (Wallachs).

The initial "i" in the name was added during the Ottoman domination, due to the same feature of the Turkish language that transformed "Stanbul" to "Istanbul". Some local legends claim that the town was named after a certain Isac Baba, however the other explanation is more likely to be true, as the name of the town initially lacked the "i".

Other historical names include:
 * Noviodunum (Latin); Νοβιόδοῦνος, Noviodounos (Greek) - ancient name of Celtic origin, meaning "New Fort" ("nowyo(s)" means "new", while "dun" is Celtic for "hillfort" or "fortified settlement").
 * Genucla - Dacian name of a possibly nearby settlement, derived from Proto-Indo-European *genu, knee.
 * Oblucița (Romanian); Облучица, Obluchitsa (Bulgarian); Obluczyca (Polish) - Slavic name derived from the word "oblutak", that means a rock that was shaped by water into a rounder form.
 * Vicina - Genoese name of a port built by Genoese traders as an outpost of the Byzantine Empire. Its location is still unknown, but one of the theories is that it was around Isaccea.

Ancient history

The land where the town is now has been inhabited since prehistoric times: the remains of a neolithic settlement, belonging to the Boian-Giulești culture (4100–3700 BC) were found in the northwestern part of the town, in a place known as "Suhat".

The neolithic culture was succeeded by the Getae culture with Hellenistic influences. The Celts expanded their territory from Central Europe, reaching Isaccea in the 3rd century BC (see Gallic invasion of the Balkans) and giving the ancient name of town, "Noviodunum", as well as of other names in this region, such as Aliobrix, on the other side of the Danube and Durostorum further south in Dobruja.

In 514 BC, Darius I of Persia fought here a decisive battle against the Scythians. A trade post was also built in this town by the Greeks. Greek authors such as Ptolemy and Hierocles name it a "polis".

The town was taken by the Romans in 46 AD and became part of the Moesia province. It was fortified and became the most important military and commercial city in the area, becoming a municipium. Its ruins are located 2 km to the east of modern Isaccea on a hill known as Eski-Kale (Turkish for "Old Fortress").

Noviodunum fort was the main base of the lower Danube Roman fleet named Classis Flavia Moesica, then temporarily the headquarters of the Roman Legio V Macedonica (106-167), Legio I Italica (167-) and Legio I Iovia.

Around 170 AD, the Roman settlements in Dobruja were attacked by the Dacian tribe of the Costoboci, who lived in what is now Moldavia, their attack being visible in the archeological remains of Noviodunum. Further attacks continued in the 3rd century, this time by the combined forces of the Dacian tribe of the Carpi and of the Goths, the decisive battle being probably in 247.

The violent invasions of the Carpi, who plundered the cities and enslaved their inhabitants, left behind many archaeological traces, including buried coin hoards and signs of destruction. The fortress of Noviodunum was probably destroyed during the raids of the Goths and Heruli, during the rule of Gallienus (267), buried hoards being found near it, including a larger treasure containing 1071 Roman coins. The raids left Noviodunum, like other urban centres in the area, depopulated, only returning to its original state toward the end of the 3rd century.

During the rule of Constantine I (306-337), the Noviodunum fortress was rebuilt as part of a bigger project of restoring the Empire's borders along the Lower Danube.

By the 4th century, the town also became a Christian centre. The tomb of four Roman Christian martyrs, discovered in September 1971 in nearby Niculiţel, bears the names Zotikos, Attalos, Kamasis and Philippos. They were probably killed in Noviodunum during campaigns of persecutions of early Christians by Diocletian (303-304) and Licinius (319-324), being taken out of the city and buried as martyrs by the local Christians.

In 369 an important battle was fought between the Romans, led by emperor Flavius Valens and the Thervingi led by Athanaric. Valens' army crossed the river at Noviodunum (Isaccea) using a boat bridge and met the Gothic army in Bessarabia. Although Valens obtained a victory for the Romans, they retreated (possibly because of the lateness of the season) and the Goths asked for a peace treaty, which was signed in the middle of the Danube, the Goths taking an oath to never set foot on Roman soil.

After the division of the Roman Empire, it became part of the Byzantine Empire and it was the most important Byzantine naval base on the Danube. Valips, a chieftain of Germanic Rugians (who were allies of the Huns), took Noviodunum sometimes between 434 and 441 and it was included in the Hunnish Empire, the area becoming a fiefdom of the Hunnish leader Hernac after Attila's death.

The Slavs began to settle in early 6th century and possibly the earliest reference to their settlement in the town is Jordanes' book (written in 551) The Origin and Deeds of the Goths, which mentioned Noviodunum as an extremity of the region were the "Sclaveni" lived. The town continued to be under Byzantine rule, but it suffered the raids from other nomadic peoples, such as the Kutrigurs (559) and Avars (561-562). In the mid-6th century, Justinian I built new fortifications and made it an episcopal see.

During the rule of Phocas (602-610), a massive number of Avars and Slavs crossed the Byzantine border and although their presence protected the empire from other nomads, their control became just formal, until in 681, the Byzantines recognised the First Bulgarian Empire and gave up their claims for the Scythia Minor province. For more than 300 years, Isaccea faded from history and there is no historical or archaeological evidence that the place was even inhabited.

Mediaeval history
Around 950, Constantine Porphyrogenitus talks of six desert cities in the area, one being named Saka-katai, which could be the earliest mentioning of the town after it was lost to the migrating people during the Dark Age.

In 971, Isaccea was once again included in the Byzantine Empire and the walls of kastron were reinforced. In 1036, the Pechenegs being driven southward by the Cumans, settled in Scythia Minor, including in this city, fact backed by archeological evidence, such as leaf-shaped pendants, characteristic to them. The Pechenegs traded with the Byzantines, which led to a growth in the economic life of the region, as shown by the number of coins found in Isaccea, reaching 700 coins for the period of 1025–1055. However, the Pechenegs were eventually assimilated and faded from history.

The Byzantines regained control of Isaccea toward the end of the 10th century: a seal of Leo Nicerites, the governor of Paristrion, was found at Isaccea. Around 1100, a double-curtain wall was built in Isaccea. In the mid-12th century, Isaccea was devastated by Cuman attacks and it was completely rebuilt. In the second half of the 12th century it became the most important Byzantine military base in the region, suggested by the number of imperial seals found there: a seal of Isaac II Angelos (1185–1195) and one of John Vatatzes, the head of the Imperial Guard under Manuel I Komnenos (1143–1180).

According to Arab chronicles, the Nogai Tatars settled in the town in the late 13th century. Between 1280 and 1299, the town was Nogai Khan's base of operation in his campaigns against the Bulgarian city of Tarnovo. At the time, the city was a local Muslim centre and the residence of the famous Turkish dervish Sarı Saltuk, who has been associated with Nogai Khan's conversion to Islam.

Arab geographer Abulfeda mentioned the town, placing it in the territory of the "Al-Ualak" (Wallachs), having a population mostly Turkic and being ruled by the Byzantines. A Byzantine despotate existed in Northern Dobruja with Isaccea as its centre, which sometimes between 1332 and 1337 became a vassal of the Golden Horde of Nogais under the name "Saqčï".

The Tatars held an important mint in Isaccea, which minted coins marked with Greek and Arabic letters between the years 1286 and 1351. Various types of silver and copper coins were minted, including coins bearing the mark of the Golden Horde with the names of the khans as well as the names of Nogai Khan and his son Čeke (minted between 1296 and 1301).

In the late 14th century it was ruled by Mircea cel Bătrân of Wallachia, being held until one year before his death. In 1417, the town was conquered, together with other fortresses on the Danube, by the Ottomans, who built a fort defended by a garrison as part of the Danubian frontier established by Mehmed I.

The town was regained by Vlad Țepeș in 1462 during his campaigns against the Ottoman Empire, massacring the local Muslim Bulgarian, Tatar and Turkish population (who were expected to side with the Turks), killing 1350 people in Isaccea and Novoselo, out of more than 23,000 people in all Bulgaria. In a letter to Matthias Corvinus, dated February 11, 1462, he stated:

I have killed men and women, old and young, who lived at Oblucitza [old name of Isaccea] and Novoselo, where the Danube flows into the sea, up to Rahova, which is located near Chilia, from the lower Danube up to such places as Samovit and Ghighen. We killed 23,884 Turks and Bulgars without counting those whom we burned in homes or whose heads were not cut by our soldiers....Thus your highness must know that I have broken the peace with him [the sultan].

In 1484, it was taken again by the Ottomans under Mehmed II, being included in the Silistra (Özi) Province, which comprised Dobruja, much of present-day Bulgaria, and later also Budjak and Yedisan.

Țepeș's massacre and destruction completely changed the ethnic composition and the appearance of Isaccea, which remaining throughout the 16th century a small, largely Christian, village. Bayazid II's conquest of Kilia and Akkerman removed the danger from the north, as did Mehmed II's victories against Wallachia remove the threat from the west, and as such, the Sultan saw no reason to rebuild the fortress of Isaccea, nor the settlement of a garrison.

In 1574, Voivode Ioan Vodă cel Cumplit of Moldavia sent Pârcălab Ieremia Golia with an army to Oblucița (Isaccea) to prevent the Ottoman army from fording the river. However, Golia betrayed Ioan for a sum of 30 gold bags, thus leading to the defeat of the Moldavian army and the execution of Ioan.

By the beginning of the 16th century, a new danger arose for the Ottoman border on the Lower Danube: the Cossacks from Ukraine, who, in 1603 crossed the Ottoman border, reached Oblucița and set the town on fire. Sultan Osman II began a series of campaigns against the Cossacks and, as part of his fortification of the border, in 1620, a new fort was built in Isaccea, but in a different place.

On 6 October 1598, Mihai Viteazul defeated the Ottoman army at Oblucița, recapturing the town. The following year, in March 1599, the Ottoman army took back the town and started conducting incursions into Wallachia, with Mihai's response being to go beyond the Danube and attack the town of Oblucița. After Mihai's death in 1601, the town was regained by the Ottomans.

In December 1673, at the Ottoman Army camp in Isaccea, Dumitrașcu Cantacuzino was chosen Prince of Moldavia.

Modern history
During the wars between the Russian Empire and the Ottoman Empire of the 18th and 19th centuries, Isaccea was occupied by each side for several times, being several times set on fire and almost completely destroyed and left abandoned by both sides.

During the Prut River Campaign (1711), the Russians tried to block the Ottomans crossing of the Danube at Isaccea, but failing to do so, the two armies clashed at Stănilești, on the Prut River.

Isaccea was besieged three times in the 1770s: in 1770, 1771 and 1779: in 1771, it was conquered by the Russians in the wake of the Battle of Kagul, the Russians destroying the fortifications and the mosques. Unlike many other settlements in the region, it was not razed, but after ten years of devastating war, only 150 houses were still standing.

Near Isaccea, the Russian flotilla commanded by José de Ribas clashed with and captured the Ottoman flotilla during the Russo-Turkish War (1787–1792). The Ottoman defenders of Isaccea fled, destroying the fortifications left behind. After a while, the Ottomans regained it, being recaptured by Lieutenant-General Galitzine in March 1791.

During the Russo-Turkish War (1828–1829), the Russian Army crossed the Danube at Isaccea, but the Ottoman garrison of the Isaccea fortress surrendered without resistance. A local legend explains the existence of a mound near the old bridge this way: during the Russo-Turkish wars an Ottoman general accused of treason was buried alive (horse included), each of his soldiers being forced to bring a fez full of dirt and throw it over the general.

In 1853, during the Crimean War, it was besieged again by the Russians, before the war theatre moved to Crimea. In December of that year, The Times of London noted that "Isaktchi" had a fortified castle and a garrison of 1500 men, but that it was simply a "port of observation" on the river.

After the war, a European Danube Commission was established, which decided to clear the silt at the mouths of the Danube, between Isaccea and the Black Sea; however, the increased trade on the Danube affected Isaccea but little.

At the beginning of the Russo-Turkish War, 1877–1878, the Russians were able to take advantage of Romania's railways and mass a great number of troops in Galați. 4000 Russian troops crossed the Danube 14 km south of Măcin and were victorious on June 22, 1877, against the Ottoman garrison. The Russian victories intimidated the Ottoman commander of the Isaccea garrison and the Ottoman troops withdrew from the town, leaving the whole northern part of Dobruja to the Russian armies. Many of the Muslims in the towns of this area fled from the early days of the conflict as the Russian-Romanian army advanced. The city was captured without battle on June 26, 1877, by the 14th Army under the leadership of Major-General Yanov.

Following the Russian-Romanian victory in the war against the Ottoman Empire, Russia took back from Romania the Southern Bessarabia region and as compensation, the newly independent state of Romania received the region of Dobruja, including the town of Isaccea.

In 1915, Nicolae Iorga described Isaccea as "a gathering of small and humble houses spread over a hill slope".

During World War I, Dobruja was in the areas of operation of a force formed by the Russian and Romanian armies. The first Russian unit crossed the Danube at Isaccea on the day when war was declared (August 27, 1916) and began their deployment toward Bulgaria, an ally of the Central Powers.

Following the failure of the Flămânda Offensive, the Russians began retreating, soon as north as Isaccea. The town was defended by the Romanian and Russian troops against the German offensive, but it was lost on December 24, 1916. Following its defeat, Romania signed the Treaty of Bucharest, by the term of which, Romania ceded the southern part of Dobruja to Bulgaria, while the rest (including Isaccea), was ceded to the Central Powers. The Treaty was voided by the terms of the Armistice of November 11, 1918 and Isaccea was thus returned to Romania.

In February 2022, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, thousands of Ukrainians crossed by ferry into Romania at Isaccea in search of refuge.

Demographics
The majority of the population is formed by Orthodox Christian Romanians, but there is also a 4% minority of Muslim Turks. In 1516, it was a purely Christian village, with 163 households; in 1518, there were 256 Christian houses. By the end of the 16th century, the town grew to 332 Christian households and 25 Muslim households, of which half were new converts.

Ethnic structure
In 1828, there were 363 Romanians, 183 Turks, 163 Cossacks, 29 Greeks, 20 Jews and 3 Armenians.

According to the 2011 Romanian census, the ethnic structure of the population of Isaccea was the following:

Government
The city government is headed by a mayor (primar), while the decisions are approved and discussed by the local council (consiliu local) made up of 15 elected councillors. From 1996 to 2012, the mayor of Isaccea was Ilie Petre, from the Democratic Liberal Party, who was re-elected for a fourth term in the 2008 local elections, winning in the second round by earning 61.46% of votes against Anastase Moraru, a candidate of the Social Democratic Party. At the 2012 local elections, Moraru defeated Ilie. Moraru was re-elected in 2016 and 2020.

Since September 2020, the local council members belong to the following parties:

 * Social Democratic Party: 5
 * PRO Romania: 4
 * National Liberal Party: 4
 * USR PLUS: 2

Economy
The town has long been a station in the trade between the eastern Mediterranean and the continental eastern Europe. The Greeks built their first trade post around 2700 years ago and trade continued after the Roman and later Byzantine and Ottoman takeovers. In the 16th century, the town was located on the Moldavian-Ottoman border and its bazaar was one of the four most important trading posts in the Dobruja, with tradesmen coming from distant places, such as Chios or Ragusa. The main traded goods were cattle, sheep, wine, cloth and wood. The town lost its influence in the 19th century, as the sea and river transport was mostly replaced by train and later road transport and as the Danube traffic navigates on the Danube-Black Sea Canal.

Much of the local economy is based on agriculture, especially animal husbandry and fishing. The town's farms have a number of 2595 sheep, 728 cows, 510 pigs, 240 horses and 16,000 birds. Industry is based on extraction of rock from a nearby quarry and woodworking, a tobacco processing factory and a winery.

Since 2004, the town is also home for a beluga reproduction research station, financed by the Romanian state. The world's first in vitro fertilisation research station for the beluga, it is fish farm, but also raises beluga to be freed into the Danube, freeing around 3000 belugas.

The town is also a port on the Danube, having two mooring places for ships. It is mostly used for loading cereals and stone onto cargo ship.

Isaccea is the entry point in Romania of the Isaccea-Negru Vodă gas pipeline (built between 2000 and 2002 to replace a smaller pipeline built in the 1980s) linking Ukraine and Bulgaria, bringing natural gas from Russia to Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey. It has a diameter of 1200 mm and a capacity of 28 billion m3/year. The town is also the entry point of the 400 kV Isaccea-Vulcăneşti electrical transmission line, through which Romania imports electricity from the Russian-owned Cuciurgan powerplant in the Transnistria region of Moldova.

A sewage treatment plant is going to be built in Isaccea by 2012, funded 80.2% from the Cohesion Funds from the European Union.

Local attractions

 * The 2000-year-old ruins of the Roman fortress of Noviodunum
 * The Isaccea Mosque, a 17th-century Ottoman mosque, that has a 25-meter high minaret
 * The 18th century "Saint George" Orthodox Church
 * Isaac Baba's grave, believed by the local Muslims to be the founder of the town.
 * The Cocoș Monastery, located 6 km south of the town centre

Natives

 * Paul Barbă Neagră (1929–2009), film director
 * George Curcă (born 1981), footballer

title: Isaccea


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Canoga

Canoga may refer to:

Games

 * Canoga, a nickname for a card game called Shut the Box

Places

 * Canoga, New York, a hamlet located in Seneca County, New York
 * Canoga Park, California, a neighborhood located in Los Angeles, California

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

title: Canoga


text:
Talk:Julius Caesar Scaliger

Biography assessment rating comment
WikiProject Biography Assessment Drives

The 1911 bio surely warrants at least a B.

Want to help write or improve biographies? Check out WikiProject Biography Tips for writing better articles. -- Yamara 05:24, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Discussion
Useful entry, helpful for finding out more. It is just a shame that the Wiki has to resort to 1911 encyclo entry, but still that's better than nothing !!!Norwikian 14:42, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Surely the text can be edited, though, to make it more neutral! This article repeatedly claims that Scaliger is arrogant, that he 'completely missed the point' of texts he commented on, etc. Skyscrapersandwiches (talk) 22:58, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Name
Would his name not more correctly be spelled Jules-César Scaliger, in the original French? Should this article be moved, perhaps? -- Ec5618 10:54, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Redirect. So that personne gets left behind. --Wetman 04:48, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
 * By the way: modern French is not necessarily the same as the original 15/16th century French, and the written language of the time – especially in Scaliger's learned circles – was very much Latin. 151.177.62.193 (talk) 20:05, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Regarding older French spelling of Scaliger's name: Moreri's Grand Dictionnaire Historique (1683) refers to Scaliger so: "SCALIGER ou Jule-Cesar de l'Escale". But see VIAF for variations accepted by bibliographic authorities for modern cataloging. English-language authorities seem to prefer "Giulio Cesare Scaligero" while French authorities seem to like "Jules César Scaliger" (without a hyphen). On the title pages of two early 17th-century Latin editions of his work, his name appears as "Julii Cæsaris Scaligeri". Thus, if anything, given that this is the English language edition of Wikipedia, we should use the name "Giulio Cesare Scaligero". However, since most people search for this writer as "Scaliger", I do not think the current title of this article leads anyone astray. Perhaps the VIAF alternatives could be supplied as part of the article. Belastro (talk) 02:29, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, things like fixed spelling and canonic choice of dialect in modern languages (as opposed to Latin) are an anachronism in these times and long after.
 * To avoid misunderstanding: "Julii Cæsaris Scaligeri" is genitive. 151.177.62.193 (talk) 18:41, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

Anecdote
In the introduction to the eighth edition of his book The Pursuits of Literature, Thomas James Mathias relates an anecdote about Scaliger and Erasmus. Apparently, Erasmus thought Scaliger's then-anonymous oration against Ciceronianus had been written by Hieronimus Aleander.

I just thought it was interesting, and wonder if anyone thinks it could or should be included in the article. Cadwaladr (talk) 23:18, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Discription of platinum
A piece of work is interpreted to contain a hint on a new metal from south America. This might have been Platinum.

Revision
I have revised the article, simplifying the style (which clearly owes a lot to the 1911 Britannica entry) and removing subjective elements.Colin Ryan (talk) 12:28, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Removed paragraph on naming of Julian Period for him.
I removed the paragraph about the naming of the Julian Period for Julius Caesar Scaliger. It wasn't. Many references say that the Julian in "Julian Period" is named after Joseph Scaliger's father Julius Scaliger. For example, The World Almanac for 1990 says "The Julian period was devised in 1582 by Joseph Scaliger and named after his father Julius (not after the Julian Calendar)" (Hoffman 1990:269). However, those references are wrong. In the introduction to Book V of his Opus de Emendatione Temporum, Joseph Scaliger wrote, "Iulianam vocauimus, quia ad annum Iulianum accommodata, & quidem a Kalendis Ianuarij" which translates roughly to "We have called it Julian merely because it is fitted to the Julian year, and from the first of January". (Scaligeri 1629:361).

The Julian Period is also not the same as the Julian Day Number, although they are related. The Julian Day Number was invented by Herschel in 1849. So the mention of POSIX time isn't at all like the Julian Period. That had to go too.

While adding text would require secondary references, removing text that is wrong does not. Grr (talk) 20:35, 16 November 2019 (UTC)

Birthplace
"He was born ... at the Rocca di Riva, on Lake Garda." - This is part of his fake biography, in which he traces his line to the House of della Scala. He was actually born in Padua, where his father was born and married. See Lilian Armstrong, Benedetto Bordon, "Miniator", and Cartography in Early Sixteenth-Century Venice, Imago Mundi: International Journal for the History of Cartography, Volume 48, pp. 65-92, Imago Mundi, Ltd, London (1996) - Eroica (talk) 10:05, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:Julius Caesar Scaliger


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Edinburgh Festival Fringe

The Edinburgh Festival Fringe (also referred to as the Edinburgh Fringe, the Fringe or the Edinburgh Fringe Festival) is the world's largest performance arts festival, which in 2018 spanned 25 days and featured more than 59,600 performances of 3,841 different shows across 322 venues. Established in 1947 as an unofficial offshoot to (and on the "fringe" of) the Edinburgh International Festival, it takes place in Edinburgh every August. The Edinburgh Festival Fringe has become a world-leading celebration of arts and culture, surpassed only by the Olympics and the World Cup in terms of global ticketed events.

It is an open-access (or "unjuried") performing arts festival, meaning that there is no selection committee, and anyone may participate, with any type of performance. The official Fringe Programme categorises shows into sections for theatre, comedy, dance, physical theatre, circus, cabaret, children's shows, musicals, opera, music, spoken word, exhibitions, and events. Comedy is the largest section, making up over one-third of the programme, and the one that in modern times has the highest public profile, due in part to the Edinburgh Comedy Awards.

The Festival is supported by the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society, which publishes the programme, sells tickets to all events from a central physical box office and website, and offers year-round advice and support to performers. The Society's permanent location is at the Fringe Shop on the Royal Mile, and in August they also manage Fringe Central, a separate collection of spaces dedicated to providing support for Fringe participants during their time at the festival.

The Fringe board of directors is drawn from members of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society, many of whom are Fringe participants themselves – performers or venue operators. Elections are held once a year, in August, and board members serve a term of four years. The Board appoints the Fringe Society's Chief Executive (formerly known as the Fringe Administrator or Director). The Chief Executive operates under the chair.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge, whose show Fleabag was performed at the Fringe in 2013 before it was adapted for television, was named the first-ever President of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society in 2021.

The planned 2020 Fringe Festival was suspended along with all of the city's other major summer festivals. This came as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak in the early months of the year, with concerns of spreading the virus any further. However, one live show was performed at the 2020 Festival and this was Nathan Cassidy with his stand-up show 'Observational'.

The 2021 festival took place during 6–30 August 2021, though it was much reduced in size, with 528 shows in person and 414 online. The 2022 festival took place from 5–29 August 2022 and marked a return to pre-pandemic levels, with 3,334 shows. Fifty were livestreamed, by NextUp Comedy, for the first time ever since the founding of The Fringe, in an effort to stay true to The Fringe Society's 2022 vision of equality and inclusiveness.

The 2024 festival is scheduled from 2–26 August 2024, including a total of 3,317 productions across 262 venues, a total of 51,446 individual performances.

Early years
The Fringe started life when eight theatre companies turned up uninvited to the inaugural Edinburgh International Festival in 1947. With the International Festival using the city's major venues, these companies took over smaller, alternative venues for their productions. Seven performed in Edinburgh, and one undertook a version of the medieval morality play "Everyman" in Dunfermline Abbey, about 20 miles north, across the River Forth in Fife. These groups aimed to take advantage of the large assembled theatre crowds to showcase their own alternative theatre. Although at the time it was not recognised as such, this was the first Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

This meant that two defining features of the future Fringe were established at the very beginning – the lack of official invitations to perform and the use of unconventional venues. Originally, these groups referred to themselves as the "Festival Adjuncts" and were also referred to as the "semi-official" festival. It was not until the following year, 1948, that Robert Kemp, a Scottish playwright and journalist, is credited with coining the title "Fringe" when he wrote during the second Edinburgh International Festival:

Round the fringe of official Festival drama, there seems to be more private enterprise than before ... I am afraid some of us are not going to be at home during the evenings!

The word "fringe" had in fact been used in a review of Everyman in 1947, when a critic remarked it was a shame the show was so far out "on the fringe of the Festival". In 1950, it was still being referred to in similar terms, with a small 'f':

On the fringe of the official Festival there are many praiseworthy "extras," including presentations by the Scottish Community Drama Association and Edinburgh University Dramatic Society – Dundee Courier, 24 August 1950

Since it was not yet fully developed, much of the early years of the Fringe has gone unrecorded, except through anecdote. It did not benefit from any official organisation until 1951, when students of the University of Edinburgh set up a drop-in centre in the YMCA, where cheap food and a bed for the night were made available to participating groups.

Late-night revues, which would become a feature of Fringes, began to appear in the early 1950s. The first one was the New Drama Group's After The Show, a series of sketches taking place after Donald Pleasence's Ebb Tide, in 1952. Among the talent to appear in early Fringe revues were Ned Sherrin in 1955, and Ken Loach and Dudley Moore with the Oxford Theatre Group in 1958. Due to many reviewers only being able to attend Fringe events late night after the official festival was finished, the Fringe came to be seen as being about revues.

It was a few years before an official programme for the Fringe was created. John Menzies compiled a list of shows under the title "Other Events" in their omnibus festival brochure, but it was printer C. J. Cousland who was the first to publish a listings guide, in 1954. This was funded by participating companies and was entitled "Additional Entertainments", since the name "Fringe" was still not yet in regular usage.

By that year, the Fringe was attracting around a dozen companies, and a meeting was held to discuss creating "a small organisation to act as a brain for the Fringe", or what The Scotsman called an "official unofficial festival". A first attempt was made to provide a central booking service in 1955 by students from the university, although it lost money, which was blamed on those who had not taken part.

In 1956, the famous actor Donald Wolfit performed the solo show The Strong Are Lonely. This was not part of the International Festival, yet nor was it in the Fringe Programme, leading him to question the value of the "Fringe": "Away with the Fringe. To an artist in the theatre there is no such thing as a fringe of art."

Formal organisation progressed in 1959, with the formation of the Festival Fringe Society. The push for such an organisation was led by Michael Imison, director of Oxford Theatre Group. A constitution was drawn up, in which the policy of not vetting or censoring shows was set out, and the Society produced the first guide to Fringe shows. Nineteen companies participated in the Fringe in that year. By that time it provided a "complete... counter-festival programme" although efforts were still being made to gain publicity through the International Festival programme. The YMCA became established as the first central Fringe ticket office.

Not long afterwards came the first complaints that the Fringe had become too big. Director Gerard Slevin claimed in 1961 that "it would be much better if only ten halls were licensed".

1960s and 1970s
In the 1960s and 1970s, the Fringe began to establish its reputation for size and variety and the tension between it and the more formal International Festival became of mutual benefit.

The artistic credentials of the Fringe were established by the creators of the Traverse Theatre, John Calder, Jim Haynes and Richard Demarco, in 1963. While their original objective was to maintain something of the Festival atmosphere in Edinburgh all year round, the Traverse Theatre quickly and regularly presented cutting-edge drama to an international audience at both the Edinburgh International Festival and the Fringe during August. It set a standard to which other companies on the Fringe aspired. The Traverse is occasionally referred to as "The Fringe venue that got away", reflecting its current status as a permanent and integral part of the Edinburgh arts scene.

The Pleasance, a venue since the first year of the Fringe, was also important in setting the artistic tone. Christopher Richardson, founder of the Pleasance Theatre Trust, became a major Fringe figure.

John Cairney is credited with pioneering the one-man Fringe show with his show based on Robert Burns, There Was A Man, in 1965, although Elspeth Douglas Reid had done her One Woman Theatre as early as 1955. American Nancy Cole played Gertrude Stein in 1969 and continued to do so until 1985. Over the first two decades of the Fringe, each performing group used its own performing space, or venue. However, by the late 1960s, the concept of sharing a venue became popular, principally as a means of cutting costs. It soon became common for halls to host up to six or seven different shows per day. The obvious next step was to partition a venue into two or more performing spaces; the majority of today's major venues fit into this category.

For many years, the Fringe Club (variously in the High Street from 1971 and at Teviot Row House from 1981) provided nightly showcases of Fringe fare to allow audiences to sample shows. In its earlier years the club also provided a significant space for after-hours socialising at a time when Edinburgh's strict licensing laws meant a 10pm pub closing time. For a time, the main ticket office was in the University Chaplaincy Centre, and then in the Royal Mile Centre on the High Street. Although the Fringe was now associated with the High Street, areas like the New Town, West End and Morningside were also prominent in this period.

Problems then began to arise as the Fringe became too big for students and volunteers to deal with. Eventually in 1969, the Fringe Society became a constituted body, and in 1970 it employed its first administrator, John Milligan. He started work in January 1971, originally on a part-time basis, but it became clear after a few weeks that the role would have to be permanent. Milligan was responsible for a number of innovations which remain in place today, such as the numbering system for venues and the Fringe map in the brochure, and he was also credited with establishing the co-operative spirit of the Fringe. He left in 1976.

Between 1976 and 1981, under the direction of Alistair Moffat, the number of companies performing rose from 182 to 494, and new venues such as St Columba's in Newington came on board. Moffat also expanded the street performance aspect and brought in sponsorship deals, particularly local breweries. In this way, the Fringe ascended to its current position as the largest arts festival in the world. This was a deliberate policy by Moffat, who found it difficult to promote the Fringe on merit given the Society's position of neutrality. Increasing show numbers was therefore a way of attracting more attention. At this point, the Fringe operated on only two full-time members of staff. In 1977, the office moved to a converted shop and basement at 170 High Street.

The International Festival, now under the direction of John Drummond, became more accommodating towards the Fringe in the late 1970s and some successful Fringe performers transferred to perform works at the Festival. These included Richard Crane and Faynia Williams, who in 1981 produced a sell-out version of The Brothers Karamazov for the Festival, after having been successful in the Fringe during the '70s.

1980s

The early 1980s saw the arrival of the "super-venue" – locations that contained multiple performing spaces. By 1981 when William Burdett-Coutts set up the Assembly Theatre in the empty Georgian building Assembly Rooms on George Street (formerly the EIF Festival Club), the investment in staging, lighting and sound meant that the original amateur or student theatricals were left behind. In the same year, the YMCA in South St Andrew Street, which had been an important venue since the early days, closed. However, the subsequent rise in prominence of the Assembly Rooms meant there was now a balance in the Fringe between the Old Town and the New Town, with Princes Street in the middle.

Fringe Sunday started in the High Street in 1981 and moved, through pressure of popularity, to Holyrood Park in 1983. Fringe Sunday was held on the second Sunday of the Fringe when companies performed for free. Having outgrown even Holyrood Park, this showcase took place on The Meadows and continued until 2008.

1981 was a watershed for comedy at the Fringe too. It was the first year of the Perrier Awards, which ran until 2005 and are now known as the Edinburgh Comedy Awards. The alternative comedy scene was also beginning to take shape. Previously, comedy at the Fringe had taken the form of student revues. Now stand-up was becoming a feature. According to Alexei Sayle, "The Fringe then was entirely University revues and plays; there was not a single piece of stand-up comedy until me and Tony [Allen] arrived." Comedy began an ascent which would see it become the biggest section of the programme by 2008.

Moffat resigned as the Fringe Society Administrator in 1981 and was succeeded by Michael Dale, who changed the programme layout and helped the Fringe consolidate.

The following year, 1982, The Circuit became a prominent venue. Run by the Actors Touring Company, it had operated in the south side of the city in 1980 and 1981, but in 1982 expanded into a piece of empty ground popularly known as "The Hole in The Ground" near the Usher Hall. This was once the site of a church building (Poole's Synod Hall), which was converted to a cinema, and where the Saltire complex was subsequently built in the early 1990s. The new Traverse Theatre opened here in 1993. It had a 700-seat marquee auditorium, which hosted, among other things, opera, even though the organisers had been told it was no such place for the artform. The venue also took over the nearby Heriot-Watt Students' Association and the Little Lyceum. In total, it hosted 38 companies. The next year it became a "tented village", with several smaller tents. Malcolm Hardee made his debut here as part of The Greatest Show On Legs. In 1982 the enterprise lost £28,000, and in 1983 there were further criticisms related to over-charging, over-crowding and inadequate facilities. The Circuit was not repeated, but it had demonstrated the potential for temporary venues at the Fringe, which are now a familiar sight.

Even with the rise of super venues, there was still theatre done on a shoestring, but several cultural entrepreneurs had raised the stakes to the point where a venue like Aurora (St Stephen's Church, Stockbridge) could hold its head up in any major world festival. However, in 1982, 24% of the Fringe was housed in The Circuit/Assembly, both of which were being commercially marketed, and this attracted complaints, including from Traverse Theatre founder, Richard Demarco, who felt the Fringe should not have allowed either venue. By 1988, there was, according to former Fringe Administrator Michael Dale, a feeling that "smaller venues may lose out, but this case may be overstated... The episode of the super-venues, the Assembly Rooms in particular, has some way to go yet".

Student shows continued to thrive with the National Student Theatre Company, National Youth Music Theatre, Cambridge Mummers, Oxford Theatre Group and Bradford University producing well-received new work. Among professional companies, the Almeida Theatre, ATC, Cheek By Jowl, Cherub, Cliff Hanger, Entertainment Machine, Hull Truck, Kick Theatre, Lumiere and Son, Medieval Players and Trickster were regulars.

In 1983, the Fringe joined with the International Festival, Edinburgh Tattoo and the Film Festival to promote Edinburgh as 'The Festival City' for the first time.

Moffatt believed the growth of the Fringe would stop due to a lack of venues, but just as that limit seemed to be being reached, groups began to find more efficient ways of sharing spaces. Venues could be fully utilised from 10am to 2am, with up to seven different groups throughout the day. The sharing led to the rise of bigger, more centralised venues. Rents increased too, with a venue like Heriot-Watt Students' Union doubling their rent in three years.

In 1986, promoter Karen Koren established The Gilded Balloon as a comedy venue in the former J. & R. Allan's department store on Cowgate. A 3am late licence made it a home for late-night socialising for comedians, and the raucous late-night show Late 'n' Live was started there. In 1988, the Society moved from 170 High Street to expanded headquarters at 158–166 High Street on the Royal Mile, with an extension leading back towards the former Wireworks Building. The basement became the new ticket office. Its current headquarters are at 180 High Street.

1990s and 2000s
Acts included The Jim Rose Circus, who performed in 2008, and Tokyo Shock Boys who performed in 1994.

The Fringe Club ceased operation in 2004, but various venues still provide "the Best of the Fest" and similar.

A computerised booking system was first installed in the early 1990s, allowing tickets to be bought at a number of locations around the city. The internet began to have an impact in 2000 with the launch of the Fringe's official website, which sold more than half a million tickets online by 2005. The following year, a Half Price Ticket Tent, run in association with Metro newspaper, started offering special ticket prices for different shows each day. This sold 45,000 tickets in its first year.

In 2008, the Fringe faced its biggest crisis so far when the computerised ticketing system failed. The events surrounding the failed box office software led to the resignation of Fringe Director Jon Morgan after only one full year in post. The resultant financial loss suffered by the Fringe Society was estimated at £300,000, which it was forced to meet from its reserves, although other sources report this at £900,000. These events attracted much comment from the UK and world media. More debts emerged as the year went on, and an independent report criticised the Board and the current and previous Fringe Directors for a failure of management and an inability to provide the basic service.

The Board eventually decided that the post of "Director" (instituted in 1992 in lieu of "Fringe Administrator") would be abolished and replaced by a Chief Executive, to reinforce the Fringe head's basic administrative function. A report into the failure was commissioned from accountancy firm Scott-Moncrieff. Several venues now use their own ticketing systems; this is partly due to issues of commissions and how ticket revenue is distributed, but was reinforced by this 2008 failure of the main box office.

The same year, other incidents conspired to add to the negative publicity. Fringe Sunday – a vast free showcase of events held on The Meadows – was cancelled when a sponsor could not be secured. The "Big Four" venues - Assembly, Gilded Balloon, The Pleasance and Underbelly - also decided to market themselves as Edinburgh Comedy Festival, which drew criticism from some quarters.

After an interim period, during which Tim Hawkins, formerly general manager of Brighton Komedia took charge, the established Edinburgh Book Festival and Fringe manager Kath Mainland was appointed in February 2009 to stabilise the situation, becoming the Fringe's first Chief Executive.

Comedy finally surpassed theatre as the biggest section of the programme in 2008, with 660 comedy entries to 599.

In 2009, theSpaceUK launched their multi-space complex at the Royal College of Surgeons. In 2011, a new all-year-round multi-arts festival venue, containing ten performance spaces, opened in the former Royal (Dick) Veterinary School under the name Summerhall.

In 2018, an initiative called Fringe of Colour was founded by Jess Brough in response to what they termed the "overwhelming whiteness" of the Edinburgh Festivals.

The Fringe today
In 2016, Shona McCarthy, who had led Derry's term as UK City of Culture, took over from Kath Mainland as Chief Executive. Along with the other Edinburgh festivals, the Fringe could not go ahead as planned in 2020 due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The Fringe returned in 2021 with fewer shows and restrictions due to COVID-19 pandemic.

Venues

Fringe venues come in all shapes and sizes, with use being made of nearly any viable space that is available, from regular theatres (e.g. the Traverse or Bedlam Theatre), function rooms (e.g. the Assembly Rooms), churches and church halls (e.g. the Quaker Meeting House, Paradise in Augustines ), lecture theatres (including the notable George Square Theatre), conference centres, other university rooms and spaces, bars and pubs, temporary structures (The Famous Spiegeltent and the Udderbelly), schools, a public toilet, the back of a taxi, a double-decker bus and even in the audience's own homes.

The groups that operate the venues are also diverse: some are commercial and others not-for-profit; some operate year-round, while others exist only to run venues at the Fringe. Some are local, others are based in London and elsewhere and transfer to Edinburgh for August.

From the performers' perspective, the decision on where to perform is typically based on a mixture of cost, location (close proximity to the main Fringe hubs around the university is seen as an advantage), and the philosophy of the venue – some of whom specialise in amateur, school or college productions, some of whom are semi or wholly professional.

In 2019 there were more than 3,800 shows registered in the programme taking place in 322 different venues.

The main venue operators can broadly be split into four groups:
 * The Big Four – Assembly, Gilded Balloon, The Pleasance, Underbelly. The term 'Big Four' being an adopted label. These are in some cases the most long-standing venues (Underbelly being a relative newcomer, having been founded in 1996). They each operate multi-room venue complexes, often across multiple sites. They tend to specialise in comedy, and in 2008, they briefly and controversially tried to re-brand themselves as Edinburgh Comedy Festival.
 * Modern Fringe – Besides the Big Four (A term less used at the modern fringe), there are a number of operators running multi-room venues, and again sometimes operating across more than one site. These include theSpaceUK, C venues, Greenside Venues, Sweet Venues, Just the Tonic, ZOO venues, PQA Venues, Monkey Barrel and Paradise Green. They may specialise in certain genres or run a programme across all genres (theSpaceUK, C venues, Zoo Venues and Greenside Venues). Although focusing on new writing rather than comedy, one is larger, theSpaceUK hosted over 400 shows at the 2019 Fringe, making it the largest operator by number of shows at the modern fringe.
 * Free venues – Some promoters use a different financial model. Instead of charging performers to hire the room, and audiences to attend, they make their spaces available for free, with audiences making a donation at the end of the show if they have enjoyed it. These promoters tend to operate out of pubs and clubs – the rooms being made free to use as a way of boosting bar takings. The original Free Fringe was set up by comedian Peter Buckley Hill in response to the increasing costs to performers of appearing at the Fringe. The other main free promoter is Alex Petty's Laughing Horse Free Festival. Although the term "Free Fringe" originally referred to Buckley Hill's operation, it is now often used as shorthand for any free venue.
 * Pay What You Want – In 2013 comedian Bob Slayer introduced a new model to the Fringe, at his Heroes of Fringe venues, where punters could 'Buy a ticket in advance to guarantee a seat or Pay What You Want (PWYW) on exit'. The model is a mixture of Paid and Free and enables performers to find a paying audience without risking large marketing spend. Phil Kay, Tom Binns and Miss Behave were among the first established acts to embrace this model along with Adrienne Truscott who won the Edinburgh Comedy Awards Panel Prize with a PWYW show. Adam Hess was nominated for best newcomer in 2015. Other promoters such as Just the Tonic, The Pleasance and C Venues have since introduced the model to some of their venues. In 2016, Gilded Balloon adopted PWYW for the Counting House, which had previously been a Free Festival venue, and has since returned to that model.

There also continue to be single, independent venues, sometimes only hosting one show, sometimes only for a limited period.

During the Fringe the pedestrianised area of the High Street around St Giles' Cathedral and the Fringe Office becomes the focal point for theatre companies to hand out flyers, perform scenes from their shows, and attempt to sell tickets. These performances run alongside the Fringe Street Events which feature more than 200 street performers and thousands of buskers on the High Street and Mound Precinct. Many shows are "2 for 1" on the first Monday and Tuesday of the festival and different venues operate independent ticket offers throughout the festival.

Notable shows
Many notable original shows originated at the Fringe and it has helped establish the careers of many writers and performers, including Rowan Atkinson, Steven Berkoff, Jo Brand, Billy Connolly, Ben Elton, Eddie Izzard, Stephen Fry, Stewart Lee, Tim Minchin, and Tadeusz Kantor.

In 1960, Alan Bennett, Dudley Moore, Peter Cook and Jonathan Miller performed at the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Beyond the Fringe, introducing a new wave of British satire and heralding a change in attitudes towards politicians and the establishment. Ironically, this show was put together by the Edinburgh International Festival as a rebuff to the emerging Fringe. But its title alone helped publicise "the Fringe", especially when it went on to London's West End and New York's Broadway for the next 12 months.

Tom Stoppard's play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead was first performed in its full version at the 1966 Fringe. Noted actor Derek Jacobi starred in a sixth-form production of Hamlet, which was very well regarded.

During the 1980s, the Fringe attracted a number of major touring companies. Joint Stock Theatre Company, a leading innovative touring company at that time, brought two productions to the Fringe – The Great Celestial Cow by Sue Townsend and Fire in the Lake by Karim Alrawi.

In 1986, the Fringe saw the break-out performance of Craig Ferguson as "Bing Hitler", a "parody of all the über-patriotic native folk singers who seemed to infect every public performance in Scotland".

In the 21st century, shows that have debuted at the Fringe and then gone on to wider fame (or notoriety) include Stomp (theatrical show), Black Watch by the National Theatre of Scotland, and Jerry Springer: The Opera.

2003 saw a production of 12 Angry Men staged at the Assembly Rooms using established comedians in the roles of the twelve jurors. Directed and produced by Guy Masterson, it starred Owen O'Neill in the role made famous by Henry Fonda, Juror number eight. Stephen Frost, Phil Nichol and Bill Bailey also featured.

A 2004 version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was beset by problems, including the lead actor Christian Slater contracting chicken pox and the original director, Guy Masterson, quitting the project before it opened. Masterson was replaced by Terry Johnson.

In 2005, a production of Neil Simon's The Odd Couple starring Bill Bailey and Alan Davies also directed by Guy Masterson was staged at the Assembly Hall, the meeting place on the Mound of the Church of Scotland. This had been taken over by Assembly Theatre and transformed into an 840-seat theatre.

The Tattoo set-up at Edinburgh Castle served as the 6,000-seat venue for a one-off performance by Ricky Gervais of his stand-up show Fame in 2007. Gervais was accused of greed and taking audiences away from smaller shows. Gervais donated the profits from the show to Macmillan Cancer Support.

Fleabag, which Phoebe Waller-Bridge first performed as a solo show at Underbelly in 2013, later became a TV series. Phoebe Waller-Bridge was later announced as President of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society in 2021.

In 2015, the Sherman/Nicholls original musical production of Love Birds made its premiere at The Pleasance.

Hannah Gadsby's show Nanette won the 2017 Edinburgh Comedy Award and was credited with challenging stand-up comedy convention. It subsequently developed a worldwide audience via Netflix.

In 2017, Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss's Six the Musical debuted at the Fringe, ahead of a national tour. The show would later go to the West End, then Broadway in 2020.

Veteran performers
Arthur Smith, Paul Merton, Barry Cryer and Richard Herring are among the comedians who have performed at more Edinburgh Fringe festivals than anyone else. Arthur Smith has performed regularly at the Festival for over 40 years (since 1977), Paul Merton has been performing regularly at the festival since 1985. Barry Cryer performed at about 25 Edinburgh Fringes (since the 90s) and Richard Herring has performed at 25 Fringes (since 1987). Nicholas Parsons attended the very first Fringe as a 23-year-old in 1947 and hosted his long-standing Happy Hour show until his death, aged 96.

Officials and administrators
The first chair of the board of directors was Lord Grant, a High Court judge, who gave way in 1970 to the actor Andrew Cruickshank. He was succeeded in 1983 by Jonathan Miller, and then by Elizabeth Smith, Baroness Smith (widow of former Labour Leader John Smith). The current chair is Benny Higgins, who succeeded Professor Sir Timothy O'Shea in 2021.

The first full-time Fringe chief was John Milligan, who had worked for the Arts Council and been a researcher with BBC Scotland. He left in 1976 to run the Craigmillar Festival, and was succeeded by Alistair Moffat, who had been involved in running the first St Andrews Festival in 1971 and had organised a small festival in his hometown of Kelso in 1972.

Moffat left in 1981 to become Head of Arts at Scottish Television. He was replaced by Michael Dale, who had worked with Moffat at the St Andrews Festival and was recommended to apply by him. He had worked at the Cambridge Arts Theatre and Young Vic.

Dale departed in 1986 to become Head of Events for the Glasgow Garden Festival and was succeeded by his deputy, Mhairi Mackenzie-Robinson, who left in 1993 to pursue a career in business. Hilary Strong served in the position until 1999, when she then became director of the Greenwich Theatre. She was followed by Paul Gudgin (2000–2007), Jon Morgan (2007–2008) and Kath Mainland (2008–2016). In November 2015, Mainland announced her decision to step down as Chief Executive to take on the role of executive director of the Melbourne Festival, and in early 2016 it was announced that her successor would be Shona McCarthy, who had headed up the 2013 Derry-Londonderry UK City of Culture. She took up the position in March 2016.

Promoters and artistic directors
The Fringe has made the careers of many on the artistic and organisational side of the Fringe. William Burdett-Coutt, Karen Koren, Anthony Alderson and Charlie Wood and Ed Bartlam, the directors of the so-called "Big Four" venues have become well known on the cultural scene.

Ethos
The Fringe is an open access festival. The role of the Fringe Society is solely to facilitate the festival, concentrating mainly on the challenging logistics of organising such a large event. Alistair Moffat (Fringe administrator 1976–1981) summarised the role of the Society when he said, "As a direct result of the wishes of the participants, the Society had been set up to help the performers that come to Edinburgh and to promote them collectively to the public. It did not come together so that groups could be invited, or in some way artistically vetted. What was performed and how it was done was left entirely to each Fringe group". This approach is now sometimes referred to as an unjuried festival, open access arts festival or a ''fringe festival. ''

Over the years, this approach has led to adverse criticism about the quality of the Fringe. Much of this criticism comes from individual arts critics in national newspapers, hard-line aficionados of the Edinburgh International Festival, and occasionally from the Edinburgh International Festival itself.

The Fringe's own position on this debate may be summed up by Michael Dale (Fringe Administrator 1982–1986) in his book Sore Throats & Overdrafts, "No-one can say what the quality will be like overall. It does not much matter, actually, for that is not the point of the Fringe ... The Fringe is a forum for ideas and achievement unique in the UK, and in the whole world ... Where else could all this be attempted, let alone work?". Views from the middle ground of this perennial debate point out that the Fringe is not complete artistic anarchy. Some venues do influence or decide on the content of their programme, such as the Traverse and Aurora Nova, who used to run their own venue but are now just a production group.

The Fringe itself at times sprouts a fringe. While the festival is unjuried, participating in the Fringe requires registration, payment of a registration fee, and use of a Fringe venue. For example, the 2008 registration fee was £289.05. Some outdoor spaces also require registration, notably the Royal Mile. Thus some artists perform outside the auspices of the Fringe, either individually or as part of a festival or in association with a venue, either outdoors or in non-Fringe venues.

Started by Deborah Pearson in 2007, and continuing in 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011, under the co-directorship of Andy Field and Pearson, a primary "Fringe of the Fringe" festival was held, at The Forest, with support from 2008 to 2010 by the Battersea Arts Centre (BAC) and support from several organisations including the Jerwood Foundation and Queen's University in Canada. Its aim was to encourage experimentation by reducing costs to performers – not charging for space, and providing accommodation. The same applied to audiences: all shows being "pay what you can".

In 2022, the festival's 75th anniversary year, the Fringe Society consulted with stakeholders from across the festival – from artists to venues, residents to government bodies – to create a shared vision and set of values. The vision was “to give anyone a stage and everyone a seat”. Rooted in equality and inclusiveness, it was designed inspire all Fringe stakeholders to pull in the same direction.

Three values were also established to guide the behaviours and decisions of everyone involved with the Fringe. The Fringe Society said they would “live by them, champion them and uphold them where necessary”. The three values are:

•          Celebrate performing arts

•          Be open to all

•          Look out for each other.

Influence
The concept of fringe theatre has been copied around the world. The largest and most celebrated of these spawned festivals are Adelaide Fringe (established 1960 and second biggest in the world), National Arts Festival in Machanda, formerly Grahamstown, South Africa (1973), and Edmonton International Fringe Festival (1982). The number of such events continues to grow, particularly in the US and Canada. (In the case of Edinburgh, the Fringe is an addition to the Festival proper, being officially known as the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Where there is no pre-existing Festival to be added to, such as New York International Fringe Festival (est. 1997), the word comes before the word "festival".)

In August 2016, the Adelaide Fringe began an official partnership with Edinburgh Fringe.

In the field of drama, the Edinburgh Fringe has premièred several plays and musicals, most notably Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard (1966), Moscow Stations (1994), which starred Tom Courtenay, and most recently Six the Musical by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss (2017). Over the years, it has attracted a number of companies that have made repeated visits to the Fringe, and in doing so helped to set high artistic standards. They have included: the London Club Theatre Group (1950s), 7:84 Scotland (1970s), the Children's Music Theatre, later the National Youth Music Theatre under Jeremy James Taylor, the National Student Theatre Company (from the 1970s), Communicado (1980s and 1990s), Red Shift (1990s), Grid Iron and Fitchburg State University. The Fringe is also the staging ground of the American High School Theatre Festival.

In the field of comedy, the Fringe has provided a platform that has allowed the careers of many performers to bloom. In the 1960s, various members of the Monty Python team appeared in student productions, as subsequently did Rowan Atkinson, Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie and Emma Thompson, the latter three with the 1981 Cambridge Footlights. Atkinson was at Oxford. Notable companies in the 1980s have included Complicite and the National Theatre of Brent. More recent comedy performers to have been "discovered" include Rory Bremner, Fascinating Aïda, Reduced Shakespeare Company, Steve Coogan, Jenny Eclair, The League of Gentlemen, Flight of the Conchords, Al Murray and Rich Hall.

Many performers have spoken highly of the Fringe, and the effect it has had on their career. Magician Paul Daniels first appeared at the Fringe in the twilight of his career in 2013, and commented: "I've become Edinburgh's publicity agent. I tell everybody, 'You've got to be in it.

Subject matter
The freedom to put on any show has led periodically to controversy when individual tastes in sexual explicitness or religion have been contravened. This has brought some into conflict with local city councillors. There have been occasional performing groups that have deliberately tried to provoke controversy as a means of advertising their shows, and this has led to censorship of sexual explicitness in such shows. Organisers continued to defend the festival's role as an open platform when they contacted controversial YouTuber Mark Meechan to request that he clarify the fact that he had not been banned, which ran contrary to the punch line of one of his jokes.

Ticket prices
In the mid-1990s, only the occasional top show charged £10 per seat, while the average price was £5–£7; in 2006, prices were frequently over £10, and reached £20 for the first time in 2006, for a one-hour show. Reasons people put forward for the increases include: increasing costs of hiring large venues, theatre licences and related costs—and the price of accommodation, which is expensive for performers as well as for audiences.

In the early 21st century, two organisations — The Free Fringe and The Laughing Horse Free Edinburgh Fringe Festival — introduced free entry shows that collect donations at the end of each performance. 22 shows came under this banner in 2005, growing rapidly to over 600 in 2011. There was also the "pay what you can" model of the Forest Fringe, and "Pay What You Want" as introduced by Bob Slayer's Heroes of Fringe discussed above.

Costs to performers
Putting on a show at the Fringe with the big venues can be costly to performers, due to registration fees, venue hire, cost of accommodation, and travel to Edinburgh. In recent years venue costs and the need for expensive marketing have been increasingly challenged by Free and other Independent venues. There is a change happening at the Fringe and performers can increasingly negotiate with the big venues. The festival is also a networking opportunity, training ground or springboard for future career advancement, and exciting and fun for performers as well as spectators.

Costs to venues
Putting on shows is costly to venues as well, due to theatre licence fees which by 2009 had risen 800% in the preceding three years, and were eight times as high as fees in English cities, starting at £824 for a venue of up to 200 people and rising to £2,472 for a venue of up to 5,000 people. These fees have been cited as punitive to smaller venues and site-specific performances by such figures as Julian Caddy, which in 2009 featured site-specific shows in such venues as Inchcolm island and a swimming pool at the Apex International Hotel.

Pay-To-Play
In 2012, there was criticism of the increasing commercialism of the Pay-To-Play fringe venues who charge acts to perform in advance of the Fringe. In many cases venue costs such as: venue rents / guarantees, compulsory marketing and various deductions mean that performers are being charged more than they can make back in ticket sales.

Stewart Lee stated in The Guardian: "For decades, the Fringe has been a utopia for artists and performers – but now profit-obsessed promoters are tearing it to pieces." Heroes of Fringe (Previously called The Alternative Fringe) was set up by Bob Slayer as a statement against Pay-To-Play venues.

Some Fringe commentators agree that the Fringe will have to change and that the independent promoters are leading that change.

Domination by comedy
The comedy section has grown over recent decades to become the biggest section of the programme. The 2008 Fringe marked the first time that comedy has made up the largest category of entertainment. This has led to criticism that it has changed the nature of the Fringe, and separated it from its roots. Richard DeMarco has complained of "an infestation of stand-up comics... an epidemic for which there is no cure", which "overwhelms the possibility of serious theatre". Others have commented that a large proportion of newer audiences are drawn almost exclusively to stand-up comics (particularly to television comedy stars in famous venues), and that they are starting to regard non-comedy events as "peripheral".

Work and pay conditions
In July 2017, a campaign was set up to raise awareness of and challenge alleged poor working conditions during the Fringe. The campaign received support from the City of Edinburgh Council and Unite the Union, among others. In February 2019, Shona McCarthy, chief executive of the Fringe Society, stated that "producers and promoters were being unfairly vilified [by the campaign]".

Sources of reviews
For many groups at the Fringe, the ultimate goal is a favourable review—which, apart from the welcome kudos, may help minimise financial losses from putting on the show.

Edinburgh based newspaper The Scotsman has been integral to the Fringe since the start, and has become known for its comprehensive festival coverage in August. Originally, it aimed to review every show on the Fringe. Now they are more selective, as there are simply too many shows to cover, although they do see almost every new play being staged as part of the Fringe's theatre programme, because of their Fringe First awards. For many years, the Scotsman's Arts Editor, Allen Wright was a familiar figure at the Fringe and today, the young critics' award is named in his honour.

Other Scottish media outlets that provide coverage include: The Herald, Scotland on Sunday, Sunday Herald and the Scottish edition of Metro. Scottish arts and entertainment magazines The List, The Skinny and Fest Magazine also provide extensive coverage.

From the 1990s onwards, Fringe-specific publications emerged. ThreeWeeks was founded in 1996, and Fest followed a few years later. After the turn of the millennium, these were joined by online publications, some of which specialised in the Fringe, some of which had a broader remit. These include Chortle (2000), Broadway Baby (2004), Fringe Review (2006), Fringe Guru (2007) and The Wee Review (2008 as TV Bomb). The latter two merged in 2019.

The now defunct Festival Media Network was founded in 2010 to act as a trade organisation for these independent media. Its members were Broadway Baby, Festival Previews, Fringe Guru, Fringe Review, Hairline, iFringe, ThreeWeeks, The Podcast Network, and WhatsOnStage.

In 2012, the most prolific reviewers were Broadway Baby which published over 1900 reviews, ThreeWeeks, which published 1000 reviews during August, and The Scotsman with 826 reviews. The List published 480 reviews. By 2019, The Scotsman was once again the most prolific reviewer, followed by The Wee Review.

Most of the London-based broadsheets also review, in particular The Guardian and The Independent, while arts industry weekly The Stage publish a large number of Edinburgh reviews, especially of the drama programme.

Since 2010, the British Comedy Guide has collated comedy reviews from as many publications as possible. In 2018, it gathered over 4,700 reviews from 135 publications, up from 4,300 from 83 different publications in 2014.

Awards
There are a growing number of awards for Fringe shows, particularly in the field of drama:
 * The Scotsman introduced the prestigious Fringe First awards in 1973. These awards were established by Scotsman arts editor Allen Wright to encourage new theatre writing, and are given only to new plays (or new translations), and several are awarded for each of the three weeks of the Fringe – usually by a celebrity at a prestigious ceremony.
 * Herald Angels and Archangels are awarded by the team of arts writers of The Herald to performers or shows deemed worthy of recognition. Similar to Fringe Firsts, they are given each week of the Fringe.
 * The Stage has awarded the Stage Awards for Acting Excellence since 1995. Around a dozen awards are given out each year, including a Special Award, given for the first time in 2014. Winners of the Special Award to date include Chris Goode (2014) and Pip Utton (2015).
 * Total Theatre has presented its Total Theatre Awards for excellence in the field of physical and visual theatre since 1997. The categories under which these awards are given vary from year to year. A notable addition in 2007 was the inclusion of a Wild Card award chosen by the festival-going public.
 * Amnesty International introduced the Amnesty Freedom of Expression Award in 2002.
 * The Carol Tambor Best of Edinburgh Award for best drama was introduced in 2004. To be eligible for this award a show must have received a four or five star rating in The Scotsman and must not have previously played in New York, as the prize is to put the show on in New York.
 * The ThreeWeeks Editors' Awards was introduced in 2005 and are given to the ten things that have most excited the ThreeWeeks editors each year.
 * The Bobby was launched by Broadway Baby in 2011 and are given to the best shows of the festival as decided by the Broadway Baby judging panel. In 2012 a second type of Bobby was launched called the Technical Bobby, awarded for technical achievement at the Fringe, such as lighting or set design.
 * The Edinburgh Musical Theatre Awards were introduced in 2007 by Musical Theatre Matters, to encourage the writing and production of new musicals on the Fringe.
 * The Perrier Awards for Comedy came into existence in 1981 when the award was won by the Cambridge Footlights. (Two further award categories have since been added.) Perrier, the mineral water manufacturer ended its long association in 2006 and was succeeded by the Scottish-based company Intelligent Finance. In 2009 IF also withdrew and could not be replaced for 2010, so the awards were temporarily being funded by promoter Nica Burns and rebranded as the Edinburgh Comedy awards, or "Eddies".
 * The Malcolm Hardee Awards have three categories - Comic Originality, Cunning Stunt and Act Most Likely To Make A Million Quid They were presented originally for ten years, 2008–2017 and again from 2019, when they were taken over by the British Comedy Guide. An initial one-off Malcolm Hardee Award had been made at the Fringe in 2005, the year of Hardee's death, to American musical comic Reggie Watts.
 * Each year since 2009, the Funniest Joke of the Fringe is awarded, along with a list of the top 10. This award is currently sponsored by the TV channel Dave.

Statistics
The first Fringe featured eight companies performing in five venues. By 1959, there were 19 companies; by 1969, 57; by 1979, 324. In 1981, there were 494, and the growth of the festival began to slow. But by 1999, there were over 600 companies giving 15,000 performances and in 2010, 1,900 giving 40,000.

Statistics for 2011 Edinburgh Festival Fringe concluded that it was the largest on record: there were over 40,000 performances of over 2,500 different shows in 258 venues. Ticket sales amounted to around 1.8 million. There are now 12 full-time members of staff.

Of the shows, theatre had been the largest genre in terms of number of shows until 2008, when it was overtaken by comedy, which has been the major growth area over the last 20 years. At the 2015 Fringe comedy was the biggest artform by number of shows, followed by theatre. The exact breakdown was: 34% comedy, 27% theatre, 14% music, 5% children's shows, 4% each cabaret/variety, dance/circus/physical theatre, spoken word, events, 3% musicals/opera, 2% exhibitions.

The 2015 Fringe issued an estimated 2,298,090 tickets for 50,459 performances of 3,314 shows in 313 venues over 25 days; the 2016 Fringe issued an estimated 2,475,143 tickets for 50,266 performances of 3,269 shows; and the 2017 Fringe 2,696,884 tickets for 53,232 performances of 3,398 shows.

In addition to ticketed, programmed events, the Fringe Street Events is run each day of the festival, primarily on the Royal Mile and at the Mound Precinct.

title: Edinburgh Festival Fringe


text:
Daniel Jones (composer)

Daniel Jenkyn Jones (7 December 1912 – 23 April 1993) was a Welsh composer of classical music, who worked in Britain. He used both serial and tonal techniques. He is best known for his quartets and thirteen symphonies (some composed in his own system of 'Complex Metres') and for his song settings for Dylan Thomas's play Under Milk Wood.

Biography
Jones was born in Pembroke in south Wales. His father, Jenkyn Jones, was a composer and his mother a singer, and by the time he was nine years old the young Daniel had himself written several piano sonatas.

He attended the Bishop Gore School in Swansea (1924–1931), where his enthusiasm for literature led to a close friendship with the poet Dylan Thomas, and to his going on to study English literature at Swansea University. At this period Jones and Thomas were part of the informal group of aspiring artists who would meet at the Kardomah cafe in Castle Street, Swansea. Other members of the group were the poet Vernon Watkins and the painter Alfred Janes. In 1935 Jones left Swansea to study music at the Royal Academy of Music in London (1935–1938), where his teachers included Sir Henry Wood and Harry Farjeon. Winning the Mendelssohn Scholarship in 1935 allowed him to study in Czechoslovakia, France, the Netherlands and Germany, and to develop his skills as a linguist.

In 1937 Jones married Penelope Eunice Bedford, with whom he had three daughters. In the years leading up to the Second World War he composed his first large-scale orchestral works, Symphonic Prologue and Five Pieces for Orchestra, and developed his own compositional system of 'Complex Metres'.

During the war, as a captain in the Intelligence Corps (1940–1946), he used his linguistic abilities at Bletchley Park codes centre as a cryptographer and a decoder of Russian, Romanian and Japanese texts. In 1944 Jones married his second wife, Irene Goodchild, with whom he had one son and one daughter.

After the war, Jones won increasing recognition as an innovative composer. In 1950 his Symphonic Prologue won the first prize of the Royal Philharmonic Society, and thereafter most of his compositions were written to commission – from the Festival of Britain, the Swansea Festival, the Royal National Eisteddfod, the BBC, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the Llandaff Festival. Between 1945 and 1985 he composed his series of twelve symphonies, each centred on one semi-tone of the chromatic scale, and in 1992 his unnumbered Symphony in Memoriam John Fussell (his friend, the Director of the Swansea Festival). By 1993 he had composed eight string quartets, as well as works in many other genres, including the cantata, The Country Beyond the Stars, a setting of Henry Vaughan's poem.

Jones enjoyed long friendships with several artists, among them Vernon Watkins, Ceri Richards and Grace Williams, and, most closely, Dylan Thomas. As well as composing song-settings for Thomas's Under Milk Wood (1954) and dedicating his fourth symphony (1954) to Thomas's memory, he edited collections of Thomas's poetry and prose, and in 1977 published the memoir, My Friend Dylan Thomas.

In 1968 Jones was awarded an OBE.

He died in 1993 at his home, high up on the Gower Peninsula, 55 Southward Lane, Newton, Swansea, where he had composed "in a room looking down on Oystermouth Castle and out over Swansea Bay".

His archive is held at the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth. An oil portrait of Jones by Alfred Janes is held by the National Museum Cardiff; a photographic portrait by Bernard Mitchell (1967) is held by the National Portrait Gallery, London.

In 2008 the actor Adrian Metcalf and composer Rob Marshall drew on the compositions and writings of Jones and Thomas in their tribute, "Warmley" (named after Daniel Jones's boyhood home).

Composition
By 1936, Jones had devised his own compositional system of Complex Metres, which was fully developed in his Sonata for Three Non-Chromatic Kettle-Drums (1947). In 1950, he described this system: "The unifying element of fixed pattern is present, but the pattern itself is asymmetrical, therefore with a powerful means of satisfying structural requirements there would seem to be possible both a greater variety and a greater subtlety in the rhythm-metre relationship". Jones's system was adapted in Germany by the composer Boris Blacher. For Jones himself his complex structures had always to be allied with emotive intention. As is the case with other composers who used both serial techniques and tonality, Jones's music may for a time have seemed too advanced for traditionalists and too old-fashioned for the avant-garde.

Orchestral

 * Symphonic Prologue (1938)
 * Five Pieces for Orchestra (1939)
 * Comedy Overture (1943)
 * Cloud Messenger, tone poem (1944)
 * Symphony No. 1 (1944–45)
 * Miscellany, 20 pieces for small orchestra (1947)
 * The Flute Player, tone poem
 * Symphony No. 2 (1950)
 * Concert Overture No. 2 (1951)
 * Symphony No. 3 (1951)
 * Symphony No. 4, In memoriam Dylan Thomas (1954)
 * Ieuenctid, overture (1956)
 * Symphony No. 5 (1958)
 * Symphony No. 6 (1964)
 * Capriccio for Flute, Harp and Strings (1965)
 * Severn Bridge Variation (composite work with others) (1966)
 * Violin Concerto (1966)
 * Investiture Processional Music (1969)
 * Symphony No. 7 (1971)
 * Sinfonietta No. 1 (1972)
 * Symphony No. 8 (1972)
 * Symphony No. 9 (1974)
 * Dance Fantasy (1976)
 * Symphony No. 10 (1980)
 * Oboe Concerto (1982)
 * Symphony No. 11, In memoriam G F Tyler (1983)
 * Symphony No. 12 (1985)
 * Cello Concerto (1986)
 * Sinfonietta No. 2 (1992)
 * Symphony No. 13, In memoriam John Fussell (1992)

Chamber

 * String Quartet No. 1 (1946)
 * Suite for viola and cello (1949)
 * String Quartet No. 2 (1957)
 * String Trio (1970)
 * String Quartet No. 3 (1975)
 * String Quartet No. 4 (1978)
 * String Quartet No. 5 (1980)
 * String Quartet No. 6 (1982)
 * String Quartet No. 7 (1987)
 * Sonata for Four Trombones (1988)
 * Divertimento for wind quintet (1990)
 * String Quartet No. 8 (1993; unfinished, performing edition by Malcolm Binney & Giles Easterbrook)

Instrumental

 * Solo cello sonata (1946)
 * Sonata for Three Non-Chromatic Kettledrums (1947)
 * Bagatelles for piano (1955)
 * Cello Sonata (1972)
 * Toccata and Fugue for organ (1974)

Dramatic

 * Under Milk Wood, incidental music for Dylan Thomas (1954)
 * The Knife, opera (1961)

Choral

 * The Country Beyond the Stars, cantata after Henry Vaughan (1958)
 * St Peter, oratorio (1962)
 * Orestes, opera (1967)
 * Come, my Way, my Truth, my Life, cantata for tenor, SATB chorus and orchestra (1987)

Discography

 * Daniel Jones, Complete string quartets (Chandos CHAN 9535)
 * Daniel Jones, Dance Fantasy [and works by A. Hoddinott and W. Mathias] (Lyrita SRCD 334).
 * Daniel Jones, Symphonies 1, 10 (recorded by BBC, issued on Lyrita SRCD 358)
 * Daniel Jones, Symphonies 2, 11 (recorded by BBC, issued on Lyrita SRCD 364)
 * Daniel Jones, Symphonies 3, 5 (recorded by BBC, issued on Lyrita SRCD 390).
 * Daniel Jones, Symphonies 4, 7, 8 (remastered on Lyrita SRCD 329)
 * Daniel Jones, Symphonies 6, 9, and The Country Beyond the Stars (remastered on Lyrita SRCD 326)
 * Daniel Jones, Symphonies 12, 13, cantata Come, my Way, my Truth, my Life (recorded by BBC, issued on Lyrita SRCD 391).

title: Daniel Jones (composer)


text:
Simian immunodeficiency virus

Simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) is a species of retrovirus that cause persistent infections in at least 45 species of non-human primates. Based on analysis of strains found in four species of monkeys from Bioko Island, which was isolated from the mainland by rising sea levels about 11,000 years ago, it has been concluded that SIV has been present in monkeys and apes for at least 32,000 years, and probably much longer.

Virus strains from three of these primate species, SIVsmm in sooty mangabeys, SIVgor in gorillas and SIVcpz in chimpanzees, are believed to have crossed the species barrier into humans, resulting in HIV-2 and HIV-1 respectively, the two HIV viruses. The most likely route of transmission of HIV-1 to humans involves contact with the blood of chimps and gorillas that are often hunted for bushmeat in Africa. Four subtypes of HIV-1 (M, N, O, and P) likely arose through four separate transmissions of SIV to humans, and the resulting HIV-1 group M strain most commonly infects people worldwide. Therefore, it is theorized that SIV may have previously crossed the species barrier into human hosts multiple times throughout history, but it was not until recently, after the advent of modern transportation and global commuterism, that it finally took hold, spreading beyond localized decimations of a few individuals or single small tribal populations.

Unlike HIV-1 and HIV-2 infections in humans, SIV infections in their natural simian non-human hosts appear in many cases to be non-pathogenic due to evolutionary adaptation of the hosts to the virus. Extensive studies in sooty mangabeys have established that SIVsmm infection does not cause any disease in these primates, despite high levels of circulating virus. Regulation of the activity CCR5 coreceptor is one of the natural strategies to avoid disease in some natural host species of SIV.

Unlike SIVsmm infection in sooty mangabeys, a recent study of SIVcpz in wild living chimpanzees suggests that infected chimpanzees experience an AIDS-like illness similar to HIV-1 infected humans. The later stages of SIV infection develop into sAIDS, much like how HIV infection develops into AIDS.

Taxonomy
The simian (monkey-hosted) immunodeficiency viruses are a species of retrovirus in the Primate group of genus Lentivirus along with the human viruses HIV-1 and HIV-2 that cause AIDS, and a few other viruses that infect other primates. Related viruses in other groups in the genus infect other mammals like sheep and goats, horses, cattle, cats and a few others. The genus is one of 6 genera in subfamily orthoretrovirinae which together with genus Spumavirus form family retroviridae of all RNA retroviruses (RNA viruses which use a DNA intermediate).

The ICTVdB code of SIV is 61.0.6.5.003. Although HIV-1 and HIV-2 cladistically fall into SIV, ICTV considers them distinct species from ordinary, non-human-infecting SIV.

Strains
While human immunodeficiency virus has a limited number of subtypes, SIV is now known to infect a few dozen species of non-human primates, and distinct strains are often associated with each species, or with a set of closely related species. The thus far categorized ~40 strains are divided into 5 distinct groups and one subgroup:
 * i) HIV-1, SIVcpz (chimpanzee), SIVgor (gorilla), SIVrcm (red-capped mangabey), SIVagi (agile mangabey), SIVmnd 2 (mandrill), SIVdrl (drill monkey)
 * ii) HIV-2, SIVsmm (sooty mangabey), SIVmac (rhesus macaque), SIVmne (pig-tailed macaque), SIVstm (stump-tailed macaque)
 * iii) SIVagm[generic] (African green monkeys): SIVsab, SIVver, SIVgri (grivet monkey), SIVtan (tantalus monkey)
 * iv) SIVmnd 1 (mandrill), SIVlho (L'hoest's monkey), SIVsun (sun-tailed monkey), SIVprg (Preuss's guenon), SIVwrc (western red colobus), SIVolc (olive colobus), SIVkrc (Kibale red colobus), SIVtrc (Tshuapa red colobus)
 * v) SIVsyk (Sykes' monkey), SIVdeb (De Brazza's monkey), SIVden (Dent's mona monkey), SIVwol (Wolf's mona monkey), SIVgsn/SIVmon/SIVmus 1/SIVmus 2 clade, SIVtal (northern talapoin), SIVasc (red-tailed guenon), SIVbkm (black mangabey), SIVreg[formerly SIVery] (red-eared guenon), SIVblu (blue monkey)
 * vi) SIVcol (colobus guereza), SIVkcol 1 (black-and-white colobus), SIVkcol 2, SIVblc (formerly SIVbcm) (black colobus),

In addition to the subgroups defined for extent SIVs, two endogenous SIVs are found in prosimian lemurs. These paleo-SIVs form a basal branch relative to extant SIVs.

History
Immunodeficiency resembling human AIDS was reported in captive monkeys in the United States beginning in 1983. SIV was isolated in 1985 from some of these animals, captive rhesus macaques suffering from simian AIDS (SAIDS). The discovery of SIV was made shortly after HIV-1 had been isolated as the cause of AIDS and led to the discovery of HIV-2 strains in West Africa. HIV-2 was more similar to the then-known SIV strains than to HIV-1, suggesting for the first time the simian origin of HIV. Further studies indicated that HIV-2 is derived from the SIVsmm strain found in sooty mangabeys, whereas HIV-1, the predominant virus found in humans, is derived from SIV strains infecting chimpanzees (SIVcpz).

Chimpanzees are not believed to be the original hosts of an independent lineage of SIV, but rather that SIVcpz is a relatively recent acquisition resulting from a recombination of SIVgsn (greater spot-nosed monkeys) and SIVrcm (red-capped mangabeys) within the host chimpanzee. It is known that chimpanzees hunt and consume these monkeys for food. In 2010, researchers reported that SIV had infected monkeys in Bioko for at least 32,000 years. Based on molecular clock analyses of sequences, it was previously thought by many that SIV infection in monkeys had happened over the past few hundred years. Scientists estimated that it would take a similar amount of time before humans would adapt naturally to HIV infection in the way monkeys in Africa have adapted to SIV and not suffer any harm from the infection.

In 2008, discovery of an endogenous lentivirus in a prosimian (proto-monkey) primate, the gray mouse lemur native to Madagascar, pushed the origin of SIV-like lentivirus infections in primates back to at least 14 Ma, the last time there was intermingling of mammals between the island of Madagascar and the African mainland, if the infection is attributed to horizontal transmission between homologous hosts. If the virus and host were coevolved, rather than acquired, that potentially pushes the date of the endogenous event back to approx. 85 Ma, the split between the lemur-like and monkey-like primate lineages. That date barely antedates the emergence of the primates 87.7 Ma.

Structure and genome
The SIV virion is a spherical to pleomorphic glycoprotein envelope 110-120 nm enclosing a 110x50nm truncated cone or wedge-shaped (occasionally rod) capsid containing a dimeric pair of positive-sense single-stranded RNA genome.

Genome

 * coding regions

Proteome

 * genes: env, gag, pol, tat, rev, nef, vpr, vif, vpu/vpx
 * Structural proteins (envelope): SU, TM,(gag): MA, CA, NC
 * Enzymes: RT, PR, IN
 * Gene regulators: Tat, Rev
 * Accessory proteins: Nef, Vpr, Vpx, Vif

Tropism
Differences in species specificity of SIV and related retroviruses may be partly explained by variants of the protein TRIM5α in humans and non-human primate species. This intracellular protein recognizes the capsid of various retroviruses and blocks their reproduction. Other proteins such as APOBEC3G/3F that exerts antiretroviral immune activity, may also be important in restricting cross-species transmission.

Replication
+ssRNA → -ssDNA → dsDNA → +ssRNA (viral genome) → +ssmRNA → viral protein
 * Attachment
 * Penetration
 * Uncoating
 * Replication
 * reverse transcription
 * integration
 * latency
 * cleavage
 * protein synthesis
 * Assembly

 * Budding
 * Maturation

Quasispecies
The speed and transcription inaccuracies of RNA viruses give rise to antigenically distinct varieties in a single host animal. These quasispecies do not necessarily give rise to population-wide new organisms. The rate of proliferation of quasispecies has significant implication for host immune control, and therefore virulence of the organism.

Pathogenesis
SIV pathogenesis encompasses both pathogenic and non-pathogenic SIV infections. SIV infection of non-human primates (NHPs) invariably results in persistent infection, but rarely acute disease. Pathogenic infection is typified by Rhesus macaques infected with SIV strains derived from sooty mangabeys. Disease progression to AIDS occurs within a period of months to years, depending upon the SIV strain used. Non-pathogenic infection is typified by African NHPs naturally infected with SIV. These animals rarely progress to AIDS despite maintaining viral loads that are equivalent to SIV viral loads in pathogenic infections. It is postulated that AIDS-like disease in African NHPs represents horizontal transmission of the virus from one or more homologous species in the recent evolutionary past, before equilibrium of co-adaptation has occurred.

SIV/HIV infection similarities and differences
The similarities of the two types of virus infections:
 * high level of virus replication during primary infection (0–180 days)
 * high level of CD4+ T-cell loss (0–180 days)
 * restricted role of humoral immune response

The differences (what happens in nonhuman primates):
 * lower level of CCR5+ T-cells
 * stable level of viral replication (180 days-years)
 * restoration of CD4+ T-cells
 * early cytokine production (0–10 days after infection)
 * normal level of immune activation
 * high level of functional immune cells
 * establishment of anti-inflammatory milieu

Epidemiology
Beatrice Hahn of the University of Pennsylvania and a team of researchers in 2009 found that chimpanzees do die from simian AIDS in the wild and that the AIDS outbreak in Africa has contributed to the decline of chimpanzee populations. Testing wild chimpanzees, researchers detected organ and tissue damage similar to late-stage human AIDS. The infected chimpanzees had a 10 to 16 times greater risk of dying than uninfected ones; infected females were less likely to give birth, could pass the virus to their infants, and had a higher infant mortality rate than uninfected females. Bonobos appear to avoid simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) and its effects, though it is not known why.

African green monkeys (also called vervets, genus Chlorocebus) in African populations are heavily infected with SIVagm, while the virus is absent in the founder isolate vervet populations in the Caribbean. The prevalence of SIV infection in African populations ranges 78-90% in adult females and 36-57% in adult males, while SIV infection is rare in immature individuals. SIV infected vervets in the wild do not develop chronic immune activation or microbial translocation (assessed by sCD14 as a surrogate biomarker). During natural SIV infection, the gut microbiome showed a significant increase in microbial diversity, a decrease in Proteobacteria/Succinivibrio and an increase of Veillonella, and a decrease in genes involved in pathways of microbial invasion, and partial reversibility of acute infection-related shifts in microbial abundance. The pattern of natural selection in the monkey genome in genes involved in HIV responses and those regulated in response to experimental SIV infection in monkeys, but not macaques, suggests a natural adaptation to SIV in Chlorocebus monkeys in Africa.

Vaccine research
In 2012, researchers reported that initial infection of rhesus monkeys by neutralization-resistant SIV strains could be partially prevented through use of an anti-SIVSME543 vaccine obligately including Env protein antigens.

In 2013, a study by a group of authors reported on successful testing of a vaccine containing SIV protein-expressing rhesus cytomegalovirus vector. Approximately 50% of vaccinated rhesus macaques manifested durable, aviraemic control of infection with the highly pathogenic strain SIVmac239.

title: Simian immunodeficiency virus