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His Brother Alfred: He supported the claims of the English prince, Edward (afterward King Edward the Confessor), and of his brother Alfred, both of whom he sheltered at his court, against Canute II, Danish king of England, and in 1034 prepared an invasion fleet which, however, was scattered by a storm off Jersey. A bold but cruel ruler, he later became the subject of many legends: Giacomo Meyerbeer wrote his opera Robert le Diablc (1831) about him. Robert made a penitential pilgrimage to Palestine in 1035 and died in the East on his way back, perhaps poisoned by his followers.
GUTHRUM, gdo&'room (died 890), was a Danish king of East Anglia, who threatened the English kingdom of Alfred the Great (q.v.). In the latter half of the 9th century the Scandinavian marauders of England's seacoasts no longer contented themselves with raiding but began to conquer kingdoms. Guthrum (or Guthorm) was a leader of the Danes who occupied Reading, on the Thames, in 871 and waged war against ^thelred I, king of Wessex, and his successor-
Alfred. In 873 the Danes invaded Northuml They conquered Mercia the next year, anc 875 settled in the Midlands.
In May 878, Alfred defeated Guthrum Ethandun (Edington, Wiltshire). In complic with the Treaty of Wedmore (878), Guth submitted to Christian baptism, with AL standing as his godfather. Thereafter he pears to have reigned peacefully in East An| although he may have continued marauc across the English Channel.
RHADAMANTHUS, rad-a-man'thus, according to Greek legend, a son of Zeus and Europa, and brother of Minos, king of Crete. According to another tradition, Rhadamanthus laid the foundation of the Cretan code of laws, which his brother Minos completed. From fear of his brother he is said to have fled to Ocaleia in Boeotia, where he married Alcmene. In the belief of the Greeks, a spirit in the lower world continued the business of life; hence Rhadamanthus, after his death, was made a judge in the kingdom of Pluto, or the Islands oi Blessed, on account of the-justice of his life had for his associates Aeacus and Minos, name suggests an Egyptian origin of the myt. |
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