Chapter Rose Sunday to Rothschild of R by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Rosetta Stone (The). A stone found in 1799 by M. Boussard, a French officer of engineers, in an excavation made at Fort St. Julien, near Rosetta. It has an inscription in three different languages- the hieroglyphic, the demotic, and the Greek. It was erected B.C. 195, in honour of Ptolemy Epiphanes, because he remitted the dues of the sacerdotal body. The great value of this stone is that it furnished the key whereby the Egyptian hieroglyphics have been deciphered.

Rosicrucians Not rosa crux, rose cross, but ros crux, dew cross. Dew was considered by the ancient chemists as the most powerful solvent of gold: and cross in alchemy is the synonym of light, because any figure of a cross contains the three letters L V X (light). “Lux” is the menstruum of the red dragon (i.e. corporeal light), and this gross light properly digested produces gold, and dew is the digester. Hence the Rosicrucians are those who used dew for digesting lux or light, with the object of finding the philosopher's stone.

“As for the Rosycross philosophers,
Whom you will have to be but sorcerers,
What they pretend to is no more
Than Trismegistus did before,
Pythagoras, old Zoroaster,
And Apollonius their master.”
Butler: Hudibras, pt. ii. 3.

Ross (Celtic). A headland; as Roslin, Culross, Rossberg, Montrose, Roxburg, Ardrossan, etc.
   Ross, from the Welsh rhos (“a moor”); found in Welsh and Cornish names, as Rossal, Rusholme, etc.
   The Man of Ross. A name given to John Kyrle, a native of Whitehouse, in Gloucestershire. He resided the greater part of his life in the village of Ross, Herefordshire, and died 1724.

“Who taught that heaven-directed spire to rise?
`The Man of Ross,' each lisping babe replies.”
Pope: Moral Essays.

Rosse (2 syl.). A famous sword which the dwarf Elberich gave to Otwit, King of Lombardy. It struck so fine a cut that it left no “gap.” It shone like glass, and was adorned with gold. (See Sword and Balmung .)

“This sword to thee I give: it is all bright of hue;
Whatever it may cleave, no gap will there ensue,
From Almari I brought it, and Rosse is its name;
Wherever swords are drawn, 'twill put them all to shame.” The Heldenbuch.

Rossel One of Reynard's sons. The word means “reddish.” (Reynard the Fox.)

Rossignol (French). Rossignol d'Arcadie. A donkey; so called because its bray is quite as remarkable as the nightingale's song, and Arcadia is called the land of asses and fools. (See Fen Nightingale .)

Rostrum A pulpit; properly the beak of a ship. In Rome, the pulpit from which orators addressed the public was ornamented with the rostra or ship-prows taken from the Carthaginians.

Rota or Rota Men. A political club formed in 1651 by Harrington, author of Oceana. Its objects were to introduce rotation in office, and voting by ballot. It met at the Turk's Head, in New Palace Yard, Westminster, where the members drew up a popular form of commonwealth, which will be found in Harrington's Oceana. It was called Rota because a third part of the members were roted out by ballot every year, and were not eligible for re-election for three years.

Rota Aristotelica (Aristotle's wheel). A problem in mechanics founded on the motion of a wheel about its axis. First noticed by Aristotle.

Rota Romana An ecclesiastical court composed of twelve Catholic prelates, to adjudicate when a conflict of rights occurs.