alban

alternative albane

1. archaicuncountablechemistryA white crystalline resinous substance extracted from gutta-percha by the action of alcohol or ether.

1. A male given name from Latin.

   Act II, Scene I Forsooth, a blind man at Saint Alban's shrine Within this half hour hath receiv'd his sight

2. Saint Alban, a Christian martyr executed in Verulamium (St Albans) in the 3rd or 4th century.

   The first Christian martyr in Britain was called Alban.

   1905, Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall, Our Island Story, page 26

1. historicalnot comparablePertaining to the ancient Latin city of Alba Longa.

   But beside this, there existed at Lavinium another tradition, which inverts the order of things by stating that Lavinium was an Alban colony, founded by six hundred Alban families.

   1847, Leonhard Schmitz, A History of Rome: From the Earliest Times to the Death of Commodus, A.D. 192, Harper & brothers, page 14

   2 more examples

   Now the Alban dynasti bore the name of Silvii or Wood, and it can hardly be without significance that in the vision of the historic glories of Rome revealed to Aeneas in the underworld, Virgil, an antiquary as well as a poet, should represent all the line of Silvii as crowned with oak.

   1922, Sir James George Frazer, AThe Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, Forgotten Books, page 152

   Reminded of the Alban king’s descent from Silvius, the son of Aeneas, Vergil’s reader must judge the crime of Mettus and his gruesome punishment with greater horror and revulsion.

   1998, Robert Alan Gurval, Actium and Augustus: The Politics and Emotions of Civil War, University of Michigan Press, page 223

2. historicalnot comparablePertaining to Alba, or the area now covered by Scotland.

   At some point during the Picto-Gaelic fusion, St Andrew was adopted as patron of the Alban kingdom.

   2011, Norman Davies, Vanished Kingdoms, Penguin, published 2012, page 66