ASYLUM, a place of refuge. The derivation is of interest. In classical Greek, a can or To ouXov was the right of seizing the ship or cargo of a foreign merchant to cover losses incurred through him, and so came generally to mean the right of seizure or reprisal. The a is privative : To aovXov means "the right of sanctuary." In ancient Greece an asylum was an "inviolable" refuge for persons in search of protection. All Greek temples and altars were inviolable, that is, it was a religious crime to remove by force any person or thing once under the protection of a deity. But this protecting right of a deity was recognized by common consent only in the case of a small number of temples. The right of sanctuary appears to have become limited to a few temples in consequence of abuses of it. Asylums in this sense were peculiar to the Greeks. The asylum of Romulus (Livy i. 8) cannot be con sidered as such. Under Roman dominion the rights of existing Greek sanctuaries were at first confirmed, but their number was considerably reduced by Tiberius. Under the empire the statues of the emperors and the eagles of the legions were made refuges against acts of violence. Generally speaking, the classes of persons who claimed the rights of asylum were slaves who had been mal treated by their masters, soldiers defeated and pursued by the enemy, and criminals who feared a trial or who had escaped before sentence was passed. (See classical dictionaries s.v.) With the establishment of Christianity, the custom of asylum or sanctuary (q.v.) became attached to the church or churchyard. In modern times the word asylum has come to mean an institution providing shelter or refuge for any class of afflicted or destitute persons, such as the blind, deaf and dumb, etc., but more par ticularly the insane. (See INSANITY.)