Cosmo de Medici recalled from banishment, and rise of that family at Florence 1434 The famous pragmatic sanction settled in France 1439 Printing discovered at Mentz, and improved gradually in 22 years 1440 Constantine, one of the sons of Manuel, ascends the throne after his brother John 1448 Mahomet II. emperor of the Turks besieges and takes Constantinople on the 29th of May. Fall of the eastern empire. The captivity of the Greeks, and the extinction of the imperial families of the Commeni and Palæologi. About this time the House of York in England began to aspire to the crown, and, by their ambitious views, to deluge the whole kingdom in blood. The learned men of the 15th century were Chaucer, Leonard Aretin, John Huss, Jerome of Prague, Poggio, Flavius Blondus, Theodore Gaza, Frank Philelphus, Georgius Trapezuntius, Gemistus Pletho, Laurentius Valla, Ulugh Beigh, John Guttemberg, John Faustus, Peter Schoeffer, Wesselus, Peurbachius, Æneas Sylvius, Bessarion, Thomas à Kempis, Argyropulus, Regiomontanus, Platina, Agricola, Pontanus, Ficinus, Lascaris, Tiphernas, Annius of Viterbo, Merula, Savonarola, Picus, Politian, Hermolaus, Grocyn, Mantuanus, John Colet, Reuchlin, Lynacre, Alexander ab Alexandro, Demetrius Chalcondyles, &c. 1453 A CLASSICAL DICTIONARY, ETC., ETC. A =ABA= and =Abæ=, a town of Phocis, famous for an oracle of Apollo, surnamed Abæus. The inhabitants, called Abantes, were of Thracian origin. After the ruin of their country by Xerxes, they migrated to Eubœa, which from them was called Abantis. Some of them passed afterwards from Eubœa into Ionia. _Herodotus_, bk. 8, ch. 33.―― _Pausanias_, bk. 10, ch. 55.――――A city of Caria.――――Another of Arabia Felix.――――A mountain near Smyrna. _Pliny_, bk. 5, ch. 24.―― _Strabo_, bk. 10. =Abacēne=, a country of Sicily near Messana. _Diodorus_, bk. 14. =Abălus=, an island in the German ocean, where, as the ancients supposed, the amber dropped from the trees. If a man was drowned there, and his body never appeared above the water, propitiatory sacrifices were offered to his manes during a hundred years. _Pliny_, bk. 37, ch. 2. =Abāna=, a place of Capua. _Cicero_, _De Lege Agraria contra Rullum_. =Abantes=, a warlike people of Peloponnesus, who built a town in Phocis called Aba, after their leader Abas, whence also their name originated. They afterwards went to Eubœa. _See:_ Abantis. _Herodotus_, bk. 1, ch. 146. =Abantias= and =Abantiădes=, a patronymic given to the descendants of Abas king of Argos, such as Acrisius, Danae, Perseus, Atalanta, &c. _Ovid._