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PACUVIUS	The Roman tragedian, born about 220 B.C. at Brundisium, son of Ennius' sister, and pupil of the poet. He spent most of his life at Rome, where he gained his livelihood as a dramatic poet and as a painter. In his old age he returned to Brundisium, and died there, at the age of ninety, about 130 B.C. He is the first Roman dramatist who confined himself to the composing of tragedies. Titles and fragments of some thirteen of his imitations of Greek plays are preserved, as well as fragments of a proetexta (q.v.) entitled Paulus, whose hero was probably the victor of Pydna, 'milius Paulus. If this small number justifies any opinion on his poetical activity, he was far less productive than his predecessor Ennius and his successor Accius. Nevertheless, he and Accius were considered the most important tragedians of Rome. In the judgment of literary critics, who followed the traditions of the Ciceronian age, he was preferred to Accius for finish and learning, but Accius excelled him in fire and natural power [Horace, Ep. ii 1, 55, 56; Quintilian, x 1, 97; see Prof. Nettleship, "On Literary Criticism in Latin Antiquity," in Journal of Philology, xviii 263]. His style was praised for its copiousness, dignity, and stateliness, but Cicero [Brutus, 258] declines to give him credit for pure and genuine Latinity. Even in Cicero's time, however, the revival of his plays was often welcomed by Roman audiences.
PAEAN	In Homer [Il. v 401, 899], the physician of the Olympian gods; then an epithet of gods who grant recovery and deliverance, especially of Apollo. The paean, which appears in Homer [Il. i 473, xxii 391], was connected originally with Apollo and his sister Artemis. It was a solemn song for several voices, either praying for the averting of evil and for rescue, or giving thanks for help vouchsafed. The name was, however, also used in an extended sense for invocations to other gods. The p'an was struck up by generals before the battle and by armies on the march against the enemy, as well as after the victory. Similarly it was sounded when the fleet sailed out of harbour. P'ans were sung at entertainments between the meal and the carousal, and eventually also at public funerals.
PAEDAGOGUS	The name among the Greeks for the slave who had the duty of looking after the son of his master whilst in boyhood, instructing him in certain rules of good manners, and attending him whenever he went out, especially to school and to the paloestra and gymnasium. With the Romans in earlier times it was an old slave or freedman who had a similar duty as custos; but after it became the custom to have even children taught to speak Greek, his place was filled by a Greek slave, who bore the Greek name and had the special duty of instructing his pupils in Greek.
PAEDONOMUS	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 At Sparta, the overseer of the education of the young. (See EDUCATION, 1.)
PAEDOTRIBES	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 In Greece, the master who imparted gymnastic instruction in the palaestra. (See EDUCATION, 1.)
PAENULA	A mantle of shaggy frieze or leather, thick and dark-coloured, without sleeves, buttoned or stitched up in front, in the direction of its length. A hood (cucullus) was generally fastened on to it, and drawn over the head. It was chiefly worn by people of low rank and slaves, but also by the higher classes, and even by ladies, in bad weather, on a journey, and in the country.
PAEONIUS	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 See EUTROPIUS.
PAGANALIA	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 In Italy, a movable festival of the old village communities (see PAGUS), celebrated after the winter-sowing in January, on two days separated by an interval of a week. On this occasion a pregnant sow was sacrificed to Tellus or to Ceres, who at a later period was worshipped together with Tellus.
PAGUS	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 In Italy, in ancient times, the pagus was a country district with scattered hamlets (vici). The same name was given to its fortified centre, which protected the sanctuaries of the district and served as a refuge in time of war. The separate districts were members of a larger community. After cities had developed out of the places where the people of these districts assembled, the pagi were either completely merged in their territorium, or continued to exist merely as geographical districts, without importance for administration, or as subordinate village communities. In Rome the earliest population consisted of the montani, the inhabitants of the seven hills of the city, and the pagani, the inhabitants of the level ground of the city. Out of the two Servius Tullius made the four city tribes. The country tribes doubtless arose similarly out of pagi, the names of which were in some cases transferred to them. Like the old division into pagani and montani, the old districts under the authority of magistri long continued to exist for sacred purposes. They had their special guardian deities, temples, and rites, which survived even the introduction of Christianity. To the district festivals belonged especially the Paganalia (q.v.), the Ambarvalia (q.v.), at which the festal procession carefully traversed the old boundaries of the district; and, lastly, the Terminalia (see TERMINUS).
PAINTING
PALAEMON	Quintus Remmius. A Latin grammarian of Vicetia (Vicenza), the son of a female slave. He acquired a learned education whilst accompanying his master's son to school, and, after he had been set free, taught at Rome in the first half of the first century after Christ, under Tiberius and Claudius, with extraordinary success [in spite of his thoroughly disreputable character]. The earlier scholars, and especially Varro, had made the older literature the centre of their linguistic studies. Pal'mon, as head of a new school, devoted himself especially to Vergil, just as Greek literary criticism had concentrated itself on Homer. [He seems to have treated grammar in the practical spirit of a clever schoolmaster, and to have done his best to deride the scientific labours of Varro. His grammar (ars, Juvenal, vii 251) was doubtless much consulted by later grammarians. It is now lost.] The grammar that bears his name is wrongly attributed to him. [See Prof. Nettleship in Journal of Philology, xv 192.]
PALAEMON	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 A Greek sea-god. See MELICERTES.
PALAEPHATUS	A Greek author who followed the Peripatetic philosophy. He composed in the 4th century B.C. a historical and allegorical explanation of Greek myths in several books. Of this work we possess only a short abstract, probably composed in the Byzantine age under the title, On Incredible Tales. In former times it was a favourite school book.
PALAESTRA	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The name given by the Greeks to the place in which the young were instructed in wrestling and boxing under the guidance of a master called a poedotribes. There were a considerable number of such schools at Athens, which had been built, some at public expense, some by private undertaking. In later times they were also connected with the Gymnasia. (See GYMNASIUM and GYMNASTICS.)
PALAMEDES	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The son of Nauplius and brother of CEax, a hero of the post-Homeric cycle of Trojan legend. Odysseus envied his wisdom and ingenuity, and was bent on avenging himself on Palamedes for detecting his feigned madness. Accordingly, he is said to have conspired with Diomedes and drowned him whilst engaged in fishing; or (according to another account) they persuaded him to enter a well, in which treasure was said to be concealed, and then overwhelmed him with stones. According to others, Agamemnon also hated him as head of the peace party among the Greeks. He accordingly got Odysseus and Diomedes to conceal in his tent a letter purporting to be written by Priam, as well as some money, and then accuse him as a traitor; whereupon he was stoned to death by the people. His brother CEax informed his father of the sad event by writing the news on an oar and throwing it into the sea, upon which he took a terrible vengeance on the returning Greeks (see NAUPLIUS, 2). Palamedes was considered by the Greeks as the inventor of the alphabet and of lighthouses; also of measures and weights, and of dice and draughts and the discus.
PALES	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The Italian goddess of shepherds. Her festival, the Palilia or Parilia, held on April 21st, was properly a herdsmen's festival to promote the fruitfulness of the flocks and to purify the sacred groves and fountains from all unintentional injury or pollution caused by the herds. It was deemed the anniversary of the founding of Rome, the former abode of shepherds. Accordingly it was celebrated at Rome, as in the villages, by the whole of the inhabitants, with the ancient rites of a shepherds' festival. It was customary to purify house, steading, and sheep with sulphur, and, as a special means of expiation, to offer incense, together with a mixture of the blood of the October horse (see MARS), the ashes of the unborn calf which was burned at the feast of Tellus, and bean-straw which was obtained from the Vestals. When these solemn purifications were over, the cheerful part of the festival began. Bonfires were made of straw and hay; the shepherds leaped across them thrice; cakes of millet were also offered to the goddess; and the festival was concluded by a feast in the open air. After the 2nd century of our era the festival was combined with that of Dea Roma, and was celebrated as her birthday with festal processions and Circensian games, which continued till the 5th century.
PALICI	Two spirits worshipped in the the neighbourhood of Mount Etna in Sicily, as benevolent deities and protectors of agriculture. They are sometimes described as sons of Adranus, a native hero honoured through the whole of Sicily; sometimes, of Heph'stus and the Nymph 'tna; sometimes, of Zeus and Thalia, a daughter of Heph'stus, who concealed herself in the earth from fear of Hera's jealousy, whereupon two hot sulphur springs burst out of the ground. Beside these springs solemn oaths were taken, especially in legal proceedings, the swearer, who must have previously kept himself from all defilement, touching the brink; if the oath were false, blinding or instantaneous death followed. According to another account, a tablet inscribed with the oath was thrown into the water, and swam on the surface if the oath were true, but sank in the contrary case, while flames devoured the perjurer. The neighbouring sanctuary of the Palici served as an oracle and also as a shelter for fugitive slaves. [Diodorus Siculus, xi 89.]
PALILIA	A feast among the Romans held in honour of the goddess Pales (q.v.).
PALLA	A Roman mantle worn by women, consisting of a square piece of cloth, which matrons wore over the stola, in the same way as the men wore the toga. They let one third fall down in front over the left shoulder, but drew the rest away over the back, and then either brought it forward over the right shoulder, or drew it under the right arm, but in either case threw the end back over the left arm or shoulder (see cut). The palla could also be drawn over the head, just like the toga. Other women, who were not privileged to wear the stola, wore the palla over the tunic, folded together about the body, fastened together on the shoulders with buckles, and open on the right side, or held together in the same way with buckles. It then lay double over the breast and back, but fell down in one thickness to the feet.
PALLADIUM	An old carven image in the citadel at Troy, on which the prosperity of the city depended. It is said to have been three cubits high, with feet shut close together, an upraised spear in its right hand, and in its left either a distaff and spindle, or a shield. Athene was said to have made it as an image of Pallas, daughter of Triton, whom she had slain unawares while playing at wrestling. Legends differ in their account of the manner of its coming to Troy. According to one of them, Pallas gave it as a dowry to Chryse, the bride of Dardanus, and he brought it to Dardania, whence Ilus carried it to Troy; according to another, Zeus caused it to fall down to Ilus (q.v.) from heaven. Since Troy could not be conquered so long as it possessed this image, Diomedes stole it with the help of Odysseus and brought it to Argos. But, according to the Attic story, it was Demophoon (q.v., 2) of Athens who deprived him of it. The palladium preserved in Rome in the temple of Vesta was traced back to 'neas, the assumption being that there had been a second image in Troy besides that stolen by Diomedes. Other Italian towns also boasted of the possession of a palladium.
PALLADIUS	A Latin author, in the 4th century A.D., who, by borrowing from the teaching of his predecessors and by his own experience, composed a work upon husbandry in fourteen books. Of these the first contains general precepts; books ii-xiii give the operations of agriculture in each of the successive months, while the fourteenth treats of the grafting of trees, in eighty-five elegiac couplets. His book, though written in dry and feeble language, was much used in the Middle Ages on account of its practical arrangement.
PALLAS	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 Pallas Athene (see ATHENE).
PALLAS	Son of the Titan Crius, husband of Styx, father of Nike.
PALLAS	Son of Pandion, who robbed his brother of the dominion of Athens, but was, together with his fifty gigantic sons, slain by the youthful Theseus.
PALLIATA	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 A branch of Roman comedy. (See COMEDY, 2.)
PALLIUM	The Roman name for a large Grecian cloak, which was also worn by among the Greeks. It was especially the garb of the philosophers. In Rome it was also worn by courtesans.
PALLOR AND PAVOR	The Roman personifications of terror, and companions of the war-god Mars. As early as the time of king Tullus Hostilius sanctuaries are said to have been erected in their honour. On coins Pallor was represented as a boy with dishevelled hair and perturbed bearing, and Pavor as a man with an expression of horror and with bristling hair.
PALTON	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The lance of the Greek cavalry. (See WEAPONS.) [Also a light spear used by the Persian cavalry (Xen., Cyrop. iv 3, 9; vi 2, 16).]
PALUDAMENTUM	The short, red mantle of Roman generals, fastened on the left shoulder and worn over the armour. They assumed it on the Capitol on their departure to the war, but on their return they exchanged it for the toga, the garb of peace, before their entry into the city. Under the Empire, when the emperor was the commander-in-chief, the purple paludamentum became exclusively a token of imperial power. It only became the usual attire of the emperors in the 3rd century after Christ. Accordingly, after that time entrance on imperial power was termed "assuming the purple."
PAMPHILUS
PAN	[from the same root as the Lat. pastor and panis]. Originally an Arcadian god of hills and woods, the protecting deity of flocks, herdsmen, and hunters; the son either of Hermes and a daughter of Dryops, or of Zeus and the Arcadian Nymph Callisto. The ancients represented him with a puck-nose and bearded, with shaggy hair, two horns, and goat's feet. They imagined him as wandering by day through hill and dale with the Nymphs, guarding the flocks, especially the goats, and chasing wild animals [Homeric Hymn, xix]. In the heat of noonday he sleeps, and is then very sensitive to any disturbance; therefore at this time no shepherd blows his pipe [Theocr. i 16]. In the evening, sitting in front of his grotto,he plays on the syrinx, or Pan's pipe, which he himself invented. He is even said to have formed it from the reed into which a Nymph named Syrinx was changed while fleeing from his love [Ovid,Met. i 705]. There are many other tales of his love adventures with the Nymphs. As he excites the sudden ("panic") terror which attacks the wanderer in forest solitudes, so he was also said to have caused the panic which put to flight the Persians at Marathon; and on this account a grotto in the Acropolis of Athens was dedicated to him, and he was honoured with an annual sacrifice and torch procession [Herod., vi 105]. As a spirit of the woodland, he is also a god of prophecy, and hence there were oracles of Pan Like the similar figures of Silenus and the Satyrs, he was brought into connexion with Dionysus, in whose train he proved himself useful on his Indian expedition by means of the terror he inspired. As one of the gods of nature, he was one of the companions of Cybele; and by reason of his amorousness, he is associated with Aphrodite. In later times, owing to a misinterpretation of his name (as though it stood for pan, "the universe"), he was made a symbol of the universe. His cult was chiefly confined to the country. He was either worshipped with the Nymphs in grottoes, or his image was set up under the trees, where his worshippers brought it simple offerings such as milk, honey, must, rams, or lambs. Mountains, caves, old oaks, and pine trees, and the tortoise, were sacred to him; his attributes are the syrinx, a shepherd's crook, a garland of pine leaves or a twig of the pine tree. The fancy of later times invented as his companions young Pans, or Panisci, a species of imps of the forest, who were fabled to torment mankind by all sorts of apparitions, nightmares, and evil dreams. The Romans identified Pan with the Italian Faunus (q.v.).
PANAETIUS	A Greek philosopher of Rhodes, born about 180 B.C.; the most important representative of Stoicism in his time From Athens, where he had received his education, he went to Rome, about 156 B.C., Being there received into the circle of the younger Scipio and of Laelius, he was able to gain numerous adherents among the Roman nobles by his skill in softening the harshness and subtlety of the Stoic teaching, and in representing it in a refined and polished form. After Scipio's death (129) he returned to Athens, where he died, as the head of the Stoic school, about 111. Only unimportant fragments of his writings remain. The most important of them, the Treatise on Duty, supplied the groundwork of the De Officiis of Cicero.
PANATHENAEA	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The most ancient and most important of Athenian festivals. It was celebrated in honour of Athene, the patron deity of Athens. Claiming to have been founded as early as by Erichthonius, it is said to have been originally named only Athenaea, and to have first received the name of Panathenaea at the time when Theseus united all the inhabitants of Attica into one body. In memory of the union itself was kept the festival of the Synaecia, or Synaecesia, on the 16th of Hecatombaeon (July-August), which may be regarded as a kind of prepatory solemnity to the Panathenaea. There was a festival of the ordinary or lesser Panathenaea celebrated every year, and from the time of Pisistratus, the great Panathenaea held every fifth year, and in the third year of every Olympiad, from the 24th to the 29th of Hecatombaeon. Pisistratus, in the year 566 B.C., added to the original chariot and horse races athletic contests in each of the traditional forms of competition. He, or his son Hipparchus, instituted the regulation, that the collected Homeric poems should be recited at the feast of Rhapsodi. In 446 Pericles introduced musical contests, which took place on the first day of the festival, in the Odeum, which he had built. Competitions of cyclic choruses and other kinds of dances, torch races and trireme races, added to the splendour of the festival. The care and direction of all these contests were committed to ten stewards (athlothetae), who were elected by the people for four years, from one great Panathenaic festival to the next. In the musical contests, the first prize was a golden crown; in the athletic, the prize was a garland of leaves from the sacred olive trees of Athene, together with large and beautiful vases filled with oil from the same trees. Many specimens of these Panathenaic vases have been found [in Italy, Sicily, Greece, and at Cyrene. They have the figure of Athene on one side, and a design indicating the contest for which they are awarded on the other. Most of them belong to the 4th century B.C., 367-318; the "Burgon Vase," in the British Museum, to the 6th century. Cp. Pindar, Nem. x 35]. The tribe whose ships had been victorious received a sum of money, part of which was destined for a sacrifice to Poseidon. The culminating point of the festival was the 28th day of the month, the birthday of the goddess, when the grand procession carried through the city the costly, embroidered, saffron-coloured garment, the peplus (q.v.). This bad been woven in the preceding nine months by Attic maidens and matrons, and embroidered with representations from the battle of the gods and Giants. It was carried through the city, first of all as a sail for a ship moving on wheels, and was then taken to the Acropolis, where it adorned one of the statues of Athene Polias. The procession is represented in a vivid manner in the well-known frieze of the Parthenon. It included the priests and their attendants, leading a long train of animals festally adorned for sacrifice; matrons and maidens bearing in baskets the various sacrificial implements (see CANEPHORI); the most picturesque old men in festal attire, with olive branches in their hands, whence came their name, thallophorae; warriors, with spear and shield, in splendid array; young men in armour; the cavalry under the command of both the hipparchi; the victors in the immediately preceding contests; the festal embassies of other states, especially of the colonies ; and, lastly, the aliens resident in Athens. Of these last, the men bore behind the citizens trays with sacrificial cakes, the women waterpots, and the maidens sunshades and stools for the citizens' wives; while on the freedmen was laid the duty of adorning with oak-leaves the market-places and streets through which the procession moved. The feast ended with the great festal sacrifice of a becatomb of oxen, and with the general banqueting which accompanied it. At the yearly minor Panathenaea, on the 28th and 29th of Hecatombaeon, contests, sacrifices, and a procession took place, but all in a more simple style. In later times the festival was removed to spring, perhaps in consequence of Roman influence, in order to make it correspond to the Quinquatrus of Minerva. [All the ancient authorities are collected by Michaelis, Der Parthenon, pp. 318-333.]
PANDAREOS	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 of Miletus, the son of Meropus, stole from Minos of Crete a living dog made of gold, the work of Hephaestus, which was the guardian of the temple of Zeus, and gave it to Tantalus to keep it safely. When Zeus demanded the dog back, Pandareos fled with his wife Harmothea to Sicily, where both were turned into stones. For his daughter Aedon, see AEDON. Of his two other daughters (Merope and Cleodora or Cameira and Clytea), Homer [Od. xx 66-78] relates that they were brought up by Aphrodite, after their early bereavement, and were endowed by Hera with beauty and wisdom, by Artemis with lofty stature, and by Athene with skill in handiwork; but while their foster-mother went to Olympus to implore Zeus to grant the maidens happy marriages, they were carried off by the Harpies, and delivered to the Erinyes as servants, and thus expiated their father's guilt.
PANDION	Son of Cecrops and Metiadusa, grandson of Erechtheus, king of Athens. Driven into exile by the sons of his brother Metion, he went to Megara, where he married Pylia, the daughter of king Pylas, and inherited the kingdom. His sons, Aegeus, Lycus, Pallas, and Nisus, regained Attica from the Metionidae, and the first three shared it among themselves, while Nisus (q.v.) received Megara.
PANDION	Son of Erichthonius, father of Procne and Erechtheus (q.v.).
PANDOKEION	The Greek name for a kind of private inn which harboured and entertained travellers. (Cp.INNS.)
PANDORA	The woman made out of earth by Hephaestus, and endowed by the gods with perfect charm and beauty, but also with deceit, flattering speech, and cunning thought. (See further underPROMETHEUS.)
PANDROSOS	Daughter of Cecrops of Athens, first priestess of Athene, honoured together with her in a sanctuary of her own, the Pandroseion, on the Acropolis of Athens. (Cp. CECROPS.)
PANEGYRICUS	The name given among the Greeks to a speech delivered before a panegyris; that is, an assembly of the whole nation on the occasion of the celebration of a festival, such as Panathenaea and the four great national games. This oration had reference to the feast itself, or was intended to inspire the assembled multitude with emulation, by praising the great deeds of their ancestors, and also to urge them to unanimous co-operation against their common foes. The most famous compositions of this kind which have been preserved are the Panegyricus and Panathenaicus of Isocrates, [neither of which, however, was actually delivered in public.] In later times eulogies upon individuals were so named. This kind of composition was especially cultivated under the Roman Empire by Greeks and Romans. In Roman literature the most ancient example of this kind which remains is the eulogy of the emperor Trajan, delivered by the younger Pliny in the Senate, 100 A.D., thanking the emperor for conferring on him the consulate, a model which subsequent ages vainly endeavoured to imitate. It forms, together with eleven orations of Mamertinus, Eumenius, Nazarius, Pacatus Drepanius, and other unknown representatives of the Gallic school of rhetoric, from the end of the 3rd and the whole of the 4th centuries A.D., the extant collection of the Panegyrici Latini. Besides these, we possess similar orations by Symmachus, Ausonius, and Ennodius. There are also a considerable number of poetical panegyrics; e.g. one upon Messala, composed in the year 31 B.C., and wrongly attributed to Tibullus; one by an unknown author of the Noronian time upon Calpurnius Piso; and others by Claudian, Sidonius Apollinaris, Merobaudes, Corippus, Priscian, and Venantius Fortunatus (q.v.).
PANTHEON	THE PANTHEON, ROME.(Front elevation.)
PANTOMIMUS	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The representation of a dramatic subject by dancing and rhythmic gesticulation alone, as practised by the Romans. It originated in the custom of the ancient Roman drama, of only allowing an actor on the stage to make the necessary movements of dancing and gesticulation, while another actor sang the recitative to the accompaniment of the flute. This recitative was called canticum, and was a monologue composed in rhythmical form. The illustrative dance was raised to a separate, independent branch of art by Pylades and Bathyllus under Augustus, 22 B.C. There were comic and tragic pantomimes, but the latter variety prevailed on the stage of the Empire. The subjects were chiefly taken from tragedies founded on mythological love stories, and treated so that the chief situations were included in a series of cantica. All of these were represented by a single pantomimus, the dancer, as well as the performer, being designated by that name. He thus had to represent several characters, male and female, in succession, while a chorus, accompanied by flutes and other instruments, sang the corresponding song. The pauses necessary for the change of mask and costume for each successive part were apparently filled up with the recital of music by the chorus, which served to connect the chief scenes with each other. It was only in the latest times of the Empire that women were employed in pantomime. Pantomime, aiming at sensual charm alone, went beyond all bounds of decorum in the representation of delicate subjects. As an understanding of the subtleties of the art required a cultivated taste, pantomime was specially favoured by the higher classes, while the mime, with his buffoonery, was more pleasing to the multitude. On the true dramatic ballet of imperial times, see PYRRHIC.DANCE.
PANYASIS	[quantity doubtful; Avienus, Arat. Phaen. 175, makes it-Panyasis. There was another form Panyassis]. A Greek poet of Halicarnassus, uncle of Herodotus. He was put to death by the tyrant Lygdamis about 454 B.C. for being the leader of the aristocratic party. He composed a poem in fourteen books entitled Heraclea (exploits of Heracles), which was reckoned by later writers among the best epics. The few fragments preserved are in an elegant and graceful style.
PAPINIANUS	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The most important among the Roman jurists; born about 140 A.D., a contemporary and friend of the emperor Septimius Severus, whom he accompanied on his expedition to Britain in the capacity of praefectus praetorio. Severus, on his deathbed at York, left to him the guardianship of his sons Geta and Caracalla; yet the latter caused Papinianus to be put to death in the next year, 212, on the day after the murder of his brother Geta. Of all his works, the thirty-seven books of Quaestiones (legal questions), and the nineteen books of Responsa (legal decisions) were considered the most important. Till the time of Justinian these formed the nucleus of that part of jurisprudence which was connected with the explanation of the original authorities on Roman law. We only possess fragments of them, in the form of numerous excerpts in the "Digest." (See CORPUS JURIS CIVILIS.)
PAPPUS	A Greek mathematician of Alexandria, who lived about the end of the 4th century A.D. We still possess his Mathematical Collections in eight books, consisting of extracts from numerous mathematical writings, of great importance for the history of mathematics.
PARABASIS	A characteristic, but not indispensable, part of the chorus in the Old Attic comedy. About the middle of the piece, when the action of the play had been developed up to a certain point, the chorus, which had up to this time turned towards the actors on the stage, now turned to the audience. This stepping forward towards the audience is itself also termed parabasis. In this position they made an appeal to the public on behalf of the poet, who could thus give expression to his personal views and wishes, and offer advice, as well as explain the purport of his play, etc. This address stood wholly outside the action of the play. When the parabasis was complete, which was seldom the case, it consisted of seven parts, partly spoken by the leader of the chorus, partly sung by the chorus. One of these parts was called the parabasis in a narrower sense, and consisted chiefly of anapaestic tetrameters.
PARALI	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 Lit. "the people of the coastland." (See SOLONIAN CONSTITUTION.)
PARASITE	Denoted originally among the Greeks the priest's assistant, who (like the priest) received his support from the offerings made to the temple, in return for certain services. These services included collecting and keeping the supplies of corn due to the temple, helping at certain sacrifices, and preparing the banquets connected with certain festivals [Athenaeus, p. 234]. The assistants of civil officials, who (like the latter) were maintained at the expense of the State, were also called parasites in many places [ib. 235]. The word received quite another meaning in the middle and later Greek Comedy, where it means the hanger on, who lays himself out for playing the flatterer and buffoon, with a view to getting invited to dinner. The parasite was transferred as a standing character to the Roman imitations of Greek comedy.
PARCAE	The Italian goddesses of Fate. (Cp. MCERAe.
PARENTALIA	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The general festival in honour of deceased relatives, celebrated by the Romans from February 13th to 21st. (See MANES.)
PARIAN CHRONICLE	A marble tablet found at Paros in 1627, now [among the Arundel Marbles in the University Galleries] at Oxford. It is written chiefly in the Attic, but partly in the Ionian dialect, and consists of ninety-three lines, some of which are no longer complete. It originally contained a number of dates of the political, but chiefly of the religious and literary, history of the Greeks, from the Athenian king Cecrops to the Athenian archon Diognetus, 264 B.C.; in its present condition, however, it only goes down to 354 B.C. All the dates are given according to Attic kings and archons, and the historical authorities on which it depends must have been Attic authors. The origin and aim of the tablet are unknown. [It was first published by Selden in 1628; it has since been printed by Boeckh (Corpus Inscr. Groec. ii, no. 2374), who considers that the leading authority followed is Phanias of Eresos, and also by C. Muller, Frag. Hist.
PARIS	The second son of Priam and Hecuba. His mother having dreamt before this birth that she had brought forth a firebrand, which set all Troy in flames, Priam had the new-born babe exposed on Mount Ida by the advice of his son Aesacus. Here a she-bear suckled the babe for five days; then a shepherd found him, and reared him with his own children. Paris won the name of Alexandros ("protector of men") by his bravery as a shepherd, defending herdsmen and cattle. On Mount Ida he married (Enone, daughter of the river-god Cebren. He decided the strife of the goddesses Hera. Aphrodite, and Athene for the golden apple of Eris (see PELEUS, having been appointed arbiter by Hermes at the command of Zeus. Paris preferred the possession of the fairest woman, promised him by Aphrodite, to power and riches, or wisdom and fame, promised by Hera and Athene respectively. He therefore awarded to Aphrodite the prize of beauty, but drew upon himself and his fatherland the irreconcilable hatred of the goddesses whom he had passed over. When Priam was once celebrating funeral games in memory of his lost son, and commanded the finest bull in all the herds grazing on the mountain to be brought as a prize, Paris came to Troy as its driver. He took part in the contests, and vanquished his brothers, even Hector. Seized with envy, they wished to kill him; but Cassandra recognised him, and he was joyfully received by his parents. In spite of the warning of the forsaken (Enone, who still loved him tenderly, Paris set out on a voyage to Sparta, at the instigation of Aphrodite. Here he carried off Helen, the wife of Menelaus, whom the goddess herself had quickly inspired with love for the handsome stranger. With her he carried away the treasures of his host, and brought her through Egypt and Phoenicia to Troy. In the war that arose from his deed, Paris showed himself, according to Homer, sometimes valiant and courageous, especially as an archer, but chiefly only at the persuasion of others; at other times cowardly and effeminate. The Trojans detested him as the cause of the disastrous war. After he had treacherously slain Achilles (q.v.), he himself was fatally wounded by an arrow of Heracles, while in single combat with Philoctetes. His corpse was dishonoured by Menelaus, but yet was afterwards given to the Trojans for burial. According to another account, when he knew his death was near, he asked to be carried to (Enone. When they had parted, she had bidden him come to her, if he should ever be mortally wounded; but now, mindful of the sorrow she had endured, (Enone rejected him, and he died soon after his return to Troy. When (Enone, repenting of her cruelty, hastened with the remedy, and found him already dead, she hanged herself. In sculpture Paris is represented as a beautiful beardless youth with a Phrygian cap.
PARMA	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The circular leathern shield of the Roman light infantry. (See SHIELD.)
PARMENIDES	A Greek philosopher and poet, born of an illustrious family about 510 B.C., at Elea in Lower Italy. He was held in high esteem by his fellow citizens on account of his excellent legislation, to which they ascribed the prosperity and wealth of the town; and also on account of his exemplary life. A "Parmenidean life" was proverbial among the Greeks [Cebes, tabula, 2]. Little more is known of his biography than that he stopped at Athens on a journey in his sixty-fifth year, and there became acquainted with the youthful Socrates. He is the chief representative of the Eleatic philosophy. Like his great teacher, Xenophanes, he also formulated his philosophical views in a didactic poem, On Nature, the form of which was considered inartistic [Cicero, Acad. ii 74]. According to the proem, which has been preserved (while we only possess fragments of the rest), the work consisted of two divisions. The first treated of the truth, the second of the world of illusion; that is, the world of the senses and the erroneous opinions of mankind founded upon them. In his opinion truth lies in the perception that existence is, and error in the idea that non-existence also can be. Nothing can have real existence but what is conceivable, therefore to be imagined and to be able to exist are the same thing, and there is no development; the essence of what is conceivable is incapable of development, imperishable, immutable, unbounded, and indivisible; what is various and mutable, all development, is a delusive phantom; perception is thought directed to the pure essence of being; the phenomenal world is a delusion, and the opinions formed concerning it can only be improbable.
PARODOS	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 A technical term of the Greek drama, used to denote, (1) the entrance of the chorus upon the orchestra; (2) the song which they sang while entering; (3)the passage by which they entered. (See THEATRE.)
PARRHASIUS	A famous Greek painter of Ephesus, who with Zeuxis was the chief representative of the Ionic school. He lived about 400 B.C. at Athens, where he seems to have received the citizenship. According to the accounts of ancient writers, he first introduced into painting the theory of human proportions, gave to the face delicate shades of expression, and was a master in the careful drawing of contours [Pliny, N. H. xxxv 67, 68]. His skill in indicating varieties of psychological expression could be appreciated in the picture representing the Athenian State or Demos, in which, according to ancient authors, he distinctly pourtrayed all the conflicting qualities of the Athenian national character [ib. 69] Another of his pictures represented two boys, one of whom seemed to personify the pertness, and the other the simplicity, of boyhood [ib. 70]. His inclination to represent excited states of mind is attested by the choice of subjects like the feigned madness of Odysseus [Plutarch, De Audiend. Poet, 3], and the anguish of Philoctetes in Lemnos [Anthol. Gr. ii 348, 5]. His supposed contest with Zeuxis is well known. The grapes painted by Zeuxis deceived the birds, which flew to peck at them; while the curtain painted by Parrhasius deceived Zeuxis himself [Pliny, ib. 65).
PARRICIDE	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 A term used among the Romans for the murder of any relative with whom one is united by bonds of blood or duty, but sometimes also for treason and rebellion against one's country. In earlier times the examination in trials for homicide was conducted by two quoestores parricidii, on whom it was also incumbent to bring the accusation before the comitia for trial. Sulla transferred the decision in all cases of parricide to a standing tribunal (see QUAeSTIO PFRPETUA, which had also to try cases of assassination and poisoning. The punishment for parricide was drowning in a leathern sack (culleus), into which were sewn, besides the criminal, a dog, a cock, a viper, and an ape [Cicero, Rosc. Am. 70; Juvenal viii 214]. The murder of relations in other degrees of relationship was punished by exile (interdictio aquoe et ignis). See EXILIUM.
PARTHENIA	A species of religious songs, sung to the accompaniment of the flute with cheerful, lively movements by choirs of maidens.
PARTHENIUS	A Greek grammarian and poet, of Nicaea in Bithynia, who was brought captive to Rome during the war with Mithridates. After his release, he lived there till the time of Tiberius, esteemed as a scholar and poet, especially as a writer of elegiac poems. He was acquainted with Vergil, whom he taught Greek, and one of his poems is said to have been the model for the Moretum; but he was more closely connected with the elegiac poet, Cornelius Gallus. For Gallus he composed the only work of his which has survived, under the title, Of the Sorrows of Love. This is a collection of thirty-six prose stories of unhappy lovers, compiled from ancient poets, especially from those of the Alexandrine school. Apart from the light it throws on the Alexandrine poets, of whose works it contains fragments, it has a special interest as a precursor of the Greek novel.
PARTHENON	"The maiden's chamber," particularly a temple of Athene Parthenos (the virgin goddess), especially that on the Acropolis of Athens, distinguished by the grandeur of its dimensions, the beauty of its execution, and the splendour of its artistic adornment. [There was an earlier temple of Athene immediately to the south of the Erechtheum (see plan of ACROPOLIS), and the foundations of a new temple were laid after the Persian War, probably in the time of Cimon. This temple was never completed; on the same site there was built a temple of less length, but greater breadth, which is usually called the Parthenon.] It was built at the command of Pericles by the architects Ictinus and Callicrates. It took about five years in building, and was finished in 438 B.C. (fig. 1). Its further adornment with sculptures in the pediments, and with metopes and frieze was completed under the direction of Phidias, who himself took part in the work. The temple, built wholly of Pentelic marble, is 65 feet high. The stylobate, or platform, on which the columns stand (fig. 2, C), is 228 feet in length, and 101 feet in breadth [= 225 x 100 in Attic feet, giving 9 : 4 as the ratio of length to breadth]. Under the stylobate is the crepidoma, or basis proper, formed of three steps (fig. 2, B B B) resting on a massive substructure, 250 feet long and 105 feet broad, and founded on the rock at the highest part of the plateau of the Acropolis (fig. 2, C). The temple is peripteral, its walls being entirely surrounded by a colonnade of forty-six Doric columns, about 35 feet high, eight at each end, and fifteen on each side. The architrave from the first was adorned with 92 metopes sculptured in high relief (see, for the position of the metopes, fig. 2, G). Shields and votive inscriptions were subsequently placed there by Alexander the Great, in 338 B.C. [Plut.,Alex. 16]. The subjects were: on the E. the battle of the gods and giants; on the S., that of the Centaurs and Lapithae (fig. 3); on the W., the victory of the Athenians over the Amazons; and on the N., the destruction of Troy. The sculptures of the eastern pediment (D) represented the birth of the goddess, those of the western the strife of Athene with Poseidon for the possession of Attica. These pediments are 93 feet long, and 11 feet 4 inches high. The cella, or temple proper, is 194 feet long, and 69 1/2 feet wide, with six columns at each end, 33 feet in height. Opposite the outermost columns at each end are antoe, formed by the prolongation of the side walls of the cella (see plan of ACROPOLIS). Along the top of the outer wall of the cella ran a continuous frieze, 524 feet in length, with representations of the Panathenaic procession carved in very low relief (fig. 2, F, and figs. 4 and 5). At the east end of the cella, the pronaos, or portico, leads into the eastern chamber, which was 100 Greek feet in length, and was therefore called the hecatompedos. It was divided longitudinally into three parts by two rows of nine columns each, and above these was a second row of columns forming an upper story. The central space was open to the sky (hypaethral). At its western end, under a protecting canopy, stood the statue of the goddess, wrought in gold and ivory, the masterpiece of Phidias (cp. ATHENE, near the end). The western chamber of the cella was fronted by a portico, and was called by the special name of the Parthenon. [Within this smaller chamber were kept vessels for use in the sacred processions, with various small articles of gold or, silver. Modern writers have hitherto generally identified this small chamber with the opisthodomos (lit. back-chamber), which was used as the treasury, or State bank, of Athens; but it is held by Dorpfeld that this term should be confined to the corresponding chamber of the early temple south of the Erechtheum.] In the Middle Ages the temple was converted into a church, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and then into a mosque, and remained in good preservation till 1687. In that year, during the siege of Athens by the Venetians, the building was blown up by the explosion of a powder magazine that the Turks had stored in it, and, with the exception of the two pediments, was almost completely destroyed. Most of the sculptures preserved from the pediments and metopes, and from the frieze of the temple chamber, are now among the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum.
PARTHENOPAEUS	According to the older tradition, the beautiful son of Talaus, of Argos, and the brother of Adrastus; according to others, the son of Atalanta and Melanion. He was one of the Seven against Thebes, and was killed on the Theban wall during the storming of the city; the piece of rock that laid him low was hurled by Periclymenus. His son by the Nymph Clymene is Promachus, one of the Epigoni.
PASIPHAE	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 Daughter of Helios and Perseis, sister of Aetes and Circe, wife of Minos. She was enamoured of the white bull presented by Poseidon to Minos (q.v.), and thereby became the mother of the monstrous Minotaur. (See MINOTAURUS.)
PASITELES	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 A Greek artist of the 1st century B.C., a native of S. Italy. He was actively engaged at Rome on important works in marble, ivory, silver, and bronze, and was also an author. He originated a new school, which was not immediately connected with any of the existing tendencies of art, but was founded on a careful study of nature and the masterpieces of earlier sculptors. It aimed above all things at correctness of form, combined with elegance of representation and a mastery of technique. [Pasiteles chased in silver a representation of the infant Roscius (Cic., De Div. i 79), and executed an ivory statue of Jupiter for the temple dedicated by Metellus (Pliny, N. H. xxxvi 40). According to his contemporary Varro, he never executed any work without modelling it first (ib. xxxv 156). Among his pupils was Stephanus, who in his turn was the master of Menelaus.] (See SCULPTURE.)
PASSUS
PATER FAMILIAS	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The master of a house among the Romans (see FAMILIA). Pater patrutus, the spokesman of the fetiales (q.v.). Pater matutinus, a special name of Janus (q.v.).
PATERA	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The broad, flat dish or saucer used by the Romans for drinking and for offering libations. (See VESSELS.)
PATRICIANS	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 (See GENS.) In the oldest times of Rome, the actual citizens who constituted the populus Romanus. They were divided into three tribes, --Ramnes, Tities, and Luceres, each consisting of ten curioe. (See CURIA.) The union of these latter formed the national assembly, the comitia curiata. (See COMITIA, 3.) Besides these there were originally only clientes, settlers enjoying no legal rights, with the citizens for their protectors (or patroni). Afterwards, when a new element of the population, endowed with partial citizenship, called the plebs (q.v.), sprang up from the settlement of subjugated Latin tribes, the patricii stood in contrast to them as old citizens possessing full rights. Later, the plebeians received a fuller citizenship through the centurial constitution framed by Servius Tullius (see CENTURIA), while they gained at the same time the right of voting in the comitia centuriata, composed of patricians and plebeians, together with the obligation of serving in the field and paying taxes, hitherto obligatory on the patricians alone. In contrast to the plebeians, the patricians thus formed a hereditary aristocracy, with the exclusive right to hold public offices, whether civil or religious. Nothing short of a decision by the comitia curiata could either remove any one from the patrician body or (on rare occasions) enrol a plebeian among the patricians. The contraction of marriages between patricians and plebeians was not allowed till 445 B.C. A violent struggle arose between the two parties, after the establishment of the Republic in 510 B.C., on the subject of the admission of the plebeians to State offices. This struggle lasted till 300 B.C., and the patricians were, step by step, forced to give up their exclusive right to one office after another. First of all, they had to give up the quaestorship (409), then the consulate (367), the dictatorship (356), the censorship (351), the praetorship (338), and finally the most important priestly offices, the pontificate and the augurship (300). Only politically unimportant offices were left reserved for them, the temporal office of interrex, and the priestly offices of rex sacrorum and the three flamines maiores. The political importance which the patrician comitia curiata possessed, through its right to confirm the decisions of the comitia centuriata, was lost in 286. The comitia tributa, in which the plebs had the preponderance, thus became the most important organ of the democracy. An aristocracy of holders of public offices was thus formed, consisting of the patricians together with the more important plebeian families. The members of such families, whether patrician or plebeian, were called nobiles. The number of patrician families dwindled greatly owing to the civil wars (on their number towards the end of the Republic, see GENS). Caesar and Augustus increased them by introducing plebeian families, and subsequent emperors gave the patriciate as a distinction. Under Constantine the Great, patricius became a personal title, which conferred a rank immediately below the consuls. The external distinctive marks of a patrician were the tunica laticlavia (see TUNICA) and a peculiar sort of shoe (see CALCEUS) adorned with an ivory crescent (lunula).
PATRONUS	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The Roman term for the protector of a single client, or of a whole community (see CLIENTES); the emancipator in relation to his freedman; and the judicial representative of accuser or accused. For the distinction between patronus and advocatus, see the latter.
PAULUS	Julius. A Roman jurist of high repute in the beginning of the 3rd century A.D., contemporary with Papinian and Ulpian. With the former, he was legal assessor to the emperor Septimius Severus. With the latter, he was proefectus proetorio under Alexander Severus, after he had been sent into exile by Heliogabalus. He was most productive as a legal author, but in literary skill and finish stood far below his two contemporaries. The extracts from his numerous monographs or more comprehensive works form a sixth part of the " Digest." Besides these extracts his Sententioe, a very popular compendium of undisputed principles on the most frequent points of law, has been preserved in a shortened form.
PAULUS	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 See FESTUS (1).
PAUSANIAS	The Greek traveller and geographer, a native of Lydia. He explored Greece, Macedonia, Asia, and Africa; and then, in the second half of the 2nd century A.D., settled in Rome, where he composed a Periegesis or Itinerary of Greece in ten books. Book i includes Attica and Megaris; ii, Corinth with Sicyon, Phlius, Argolis, Aegina, and the other neighbouring islands; iii, Laconia; iv, Messenia; v, vi, Elis and Olympia; vii, Achaea; viii, Arcadia; ix, Boeotia: x, Phocis and Locris. The work is founded on notes, taken on the spot, from his own observation and inquiry from the natives of the country, on the subject of the religious cults and the monuments of art and architecture. Together with these there are topographical and historical notices, in working up which Pausanias took into consideration the accounts of other authors, poets as well as prose writers. Although his account is not without numerous inaccuracies, omissions, and mistakes, it is yet of inestimable value for our knowledge of ancient Greece, especially with regard to its mythology and its religious cults, but above all for the history of Greek art. The composition of his work (especially in the earlier books) shows little skill in plan, execution, or style.
PAUSIAS	A Greek painter, a pupil of Pamphilus and a follower of the Sicyonian school. He lived about 360 B.C. at Sicyon, and invented the art of painting vaulted ceilings, and also of foreshortening; he brought encaustic painting to perfection. He painted chiefly children and flowers. One of his most famous pictures was the Flower Girl (Stephanoplocus), representing the flower-girl Glycera, of whom he was enamoured in his youth [Pliny, N. H., xxxv 123-127].
PAUSON	A Greek painter whom Aristotle contrasts with Polygnotus in terms implying that the former was a caricaturist (Poetics 2 Section 2). Elsewhere Aristotle says that young people should not look at the pictures of Pauson, but rather at those of Polygnotus or of any other "ethical" artist (Politics viii 5 Section 7). He is sometimes identified with the Pauson who is mentioned with contempt by Aristophanes (Ach. 854, Thesm. 948, and Plutus, 602).] [J. E. S.]
PAX	The Roman goddess of peace (Cp. EIRENE.)
PECULATUS	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The Roman term for misappropriation of public property, whether by officials (e.g. in the delivery of booty) or by private persons. Such offences, which seldom occurred in the more ancient times of the Republic, were then judged by the national tribunal. In later times they must have become more frequent, since various laws were issued against them, and a special court of justice (see QUAeSTIO) was appointed to try them. Besides the payment of compensation, the condemned person suffered disgrace and banishment (interdictio aquoe et ignis, see EXILIUM), and, in the time of the Empire, transportation.
PECULIUM	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The Romans considered the master of the house (pater familias) the lawful owner of all the earnings of the members of the family under his control, whether bond or free (see FAMILIA). Whatever sum of money he gave to a grown up son or to a slave for his own use, was called the peculium of the latter. This gift could be revoked at pleasure, and could not be disposed of by will. Augustus first granted this right to soldiers, in the case of property won in war (peculium castrense), and Constantine extended it to that gained in a civil office (peculium quasi castrense).
PEDARLI	Those members of the Roman Senate (q.v.) who had occupied no office of State, and hence took a lower rank. They might only share in the voting, but did not enjoy the right of expressing individual opinions.
PEIRENE	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The spring struck out by the winged steed Pegasus on the citadel of Corinth. For another tradition of its origin, see SISYPHUS.
PEIRITHOUS	Son of Dia by her husband Ixion, or (according to another account) by Zeus; prince of the Lapithae, and friend of Theseus. When he was celebrating, on Mount Pelion, his marriage with Hippodamia, daughter of Atrax, one of the Lapithae, there arose the celebrated battle between the Lapithae and the Centaurs, which ended in the defeat of the latter. The Centaurs and the most distinguished Greek heroes had been invited to the wedding; but one of the former, Eurytion, in drunken boldness, attempted to carry off the bride, and, following his example, the other Centaurs fell upon the women of the Lapithae. Since Theseus and one of the Lapithae, Caeneus (q.v.), rescued the bride, Peirithous assisted the former in the abduction of Helen. Accompanied by Theseus, Peirithous descended into the world below, in order to carry off Persephone, and was compelled to pine there in everlasting chains as a punishment, while Theseus (q.v.) was released by Heracles. Peirithous' son Polypoetes marched to Troy with Leonteus, the grandson of Caeneus, and after the fall of Troy is said to have founded with him the city of Aspendus in Pamphylia.
PEISANDROS	A Greek epic poet of Camirus, in Rhodes, about 640 B.C. He wrote a Heraclea in two books, which is numbered among the better class of epic poems. He was the first to equip Hercules with the club and the lion's hide, and he probably also fixed the number of his labours at twelve. Only uninteresting fragments remain.
PEITHO	In Greek mythology the personification of persuasion Like Eros and the Graces, with whom Hesiod mentions her [Works and Days, 73], she usually appears in the train of Aphrodite. She was, indeed, considered the daughter of the goddess, and was honoured together with her, as in Athens. She was also connected with Hermes as the god of eloquence.
PELEIADES	Priestesses at Dodona (q.v.).
PELEUS	Son of Aeacus and of Endeis, and brother of Telamon. He was banished with his brother, on account of the murder of his step-brother Phocus, whom he had slain with the discus out of envy at his strength and skill. His father banished him from Aegina, but he was purified from his murder, and hospitably received by his uncle Eurytion, king of Thessalian Phthia. Eurytion gave to Peleus his daughter Antigone, mother of the beautiful Polydora, and one-third of his land as a dowry. Peleus accompanied Eurytion in the Calydonian Hunt, and killed him unawares with a javelin. Thereupon he fled from Phthia to Iolcus, where, once again, king Acastus cleansed him from the guilt of bloodshed. Because he rejected the proposals of Astydameia, the wife of Acastus, she slandered him to his wife and to her husband, telling the former that Peleus was wooing her daughter Sterope, and the latter that he wished to persuade her to infidelity. Antigone killed herself for sorrow, but Acastus planned revenge. When Peleus, wearied by the chase, had fallen asleep on Pelion, Acastus left him alone, after hiding in a dunghill his irresistible sword, the work of Hephaestus and the gift of the gods. When Peleus awoke and sought his sword, he was attacked by the Centaurs, and only delivered by the presence among them of Chiron, his maternal grandfather. With Chiron's help he recovered his sword, slew Acastus and his wife, and took possession of the throne of Iolcus. The gods decreed him the seagoddess Thetis (q.v.) as his wife. With Chiron's help he overcame her resistance in a grotto by the sea, although she endeavoured to escape by changing into fire, water, beast, or fish. The marriage was celebrated in Chiron's cave on the summit of Pelion, and the immortals appeared and gave Peleus presents: Poseidon, the undying steeds Balius and Xanthus, and all the gods the weapons with which Achilles afterwards fought before Troy; Chiron presented him with a lance made of an ash tree on Mount Pelion. Apollo and the Muses sang of the deeds of Peleus and of his unborn son. But Eris, or Strife, also appeared, uninvited, and threw among the goddesses a golden apple with the inscription, For the Fairest, thus giving the first cause for the Trojan War (q.v.). In this war the only offspring of this marriage, the hero Achilles, is said to have found an untimely end during his father's lifetime. According to a later tradition, unknown to Homer, Thetis forsook her husband, because his presence hindered her from making her son immortal.
PELOPIA	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 Daughter of Thyestes, mother of Aegisthus by her own father. (See AeGISTHUS and ATREUS.)
PELOPS	Son of the Lydian or Phrygian king Tantalus and Dione, daughter of Atlas. When he was a child, his father slew him, cut him to pieces and seethed him, and set him as food before the gods. The gods did not touch the horrible meal; only Demeter, absorbed in grief for her stolen daughter, ate one shoulder. By the command of Zeus, Hermes replaced the pieces in the caldron, and Clotho drew the boy from it in renewed beauty, while Demeter replaced the missing shoulder by one made of ivory. Hence it was that his descendants, the Pelopidae, bore on one shoulder a mark of dazzling whiteness. Pelops, when grown to manhood, went to Pisa in Elis as a wooer of Hippodamia, daughter of king (Enomaus. He won the victory, the bride, and the kingdom, by the help of the winged steeds given him by Poseidon, and by the treachery of Myrtilus, the chariot driver of (Enomaus. When Myrtilus (or Myrsilus), a son of Hermes, claimed the promised reward, half the kingdom, Pelops hurled him from his chariot into the sea. Through his curse and the anger of Hermes, the baneful spell was once more cast upon the house of Pelops. He returned to Pisa, and, after he had made himself master of Olympia, he is said to have restored the games with great splendour, a service for which his memory was afterwards honoured above that of all other heroes. By another act of violence he obtained possession of Arcadia, and extended his power so widely over the peninsula that it was called after his name the Peloponnesus, or "island of Pelops." By Hippodamia he had six sons (cp. ALCATHOUS, ATREUS, PITTHEUS, THYESTES), and two daughters; and by then Nymph Axioche, a son Chrysippus. The latter, his father's favourite, was killed by Atreus and Thyestes, at the instigation of Hippodamia, and his dead body was cast into a well. Peleus discovered the crime, and banished the murderers from the country. Hippodamia thereupon took refuge with her sons at Midea in Argolis. On her death, Peleus buried her bones in the soil of Olympia.
PENATES	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 with Vesta and Lar, the household gods of the Romans; strictly the guardianS of the storeroom (penus), which in old Roman houses stood next the atrium; in later times, near the back of the building (penetralia). They were two in number, and presided over the well-being of the house, their blessing being shown in the fulness of the store-room. This chamber therefore, as being sacred to them, was holy, and not to be entered except by chaste and undefiled persons. The hearth of the house was their altar, and on it were sculptured the figures of the two Penates beside that of the Lar. Often they were represented dancing and raising a drinking-horn, to symbolise a joyful and prosperous life. The offerings to them were made jointly with those to the Lar (see LARES). There were also Penates belonging to the State. These at first had their temple in the quarter Velia, where their statues stood below those of the Dioscuri. Afterwards it was supposed that the original Penates, brought from Samothrace to Troy, and thence conveyed by Aeneas to Lavinium, were identical with certain symbols kept, with the Palladium, in a secret part of the temple of Vesta. The Penates of the Latin League, which were at first regarded as the Trojan Penates, were enshrined in the sanctuary at Lavinium. Annual offerings were brought to them by the Roman priests, and also by consuls, praetors, and dictators on assuming or laying down office, and by generals on their departure for their provinces.
PENELOPE	Daughter of Icarius and the Nymph Periboea, the faithful wife of Odysseus (q.v.) and mother of Telemachus.
PENESTAE	In Thessaly the descendants of the older population subdued by the Thessalians. They managed the property of the owners as serfs bound to the soil, paying a moderate tax, and being also liable to be called out for military service. But their lords could not remove them from the land nor put them to death.
PENTACOSIOMEDIMNI	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The first of the four classes of citizens instituted at Athens by Solon. (See SOLONIAN CONSTITUTION and EISPHORA.)
PENTATHLON	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 In Greek gymnastics a contest compounded of the five events (running, jumping, wrestling, throwing the discus and the javelin). After each separate event the defeated stood out, till finally two contested the victory in the wrestling. (See GYMNASTICS.)
PENTECONTORUS	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 A kind of Greek ship in which there were fifty oarsmen arranged in a single row. (See SHIPS.)
PENTECOSTYS	In the Spartan army, a division of the lochos (q.v.).
PENTHEUS	Son of Echion and Agave, the daughter of Cadmus, whom he succeeded in the sovereignty of Thebes. When Dionysus came to Thebes, and the women celebrated a Bacchic festival for him on Cihaeron, he hastened thither to prevent it, but was taken by his own mother for a wild beast, and torn to pieces by her and the other women [Eur., Bacchoe]. His grandson was Menoeceus, the father of Creon and locaste. See cut under AGAVE.
PEPHREDO	One of the Graiae (q.v.).
PEPLUS	A Greek woman's garment, large, broad, hanging in folds, and usually richly embroidered. It was thrown over the rest of the clothing, and wrapped round the whole of the body.
PERDUELLIO	The Roman term for all acts whereby an individual within the State showed himself an enemy, perduellis, of the established constitution. It included attempts at despotic power, usurpation or abuse of magisterial powers (e.g. the execution of a citizen), violation of the sanctity of the tribuni plebis, etc. In the time of the kings, the king himself tried crimes of the kind, or handed over the decision to two deputies appointed in each instance by himself, duo viri capitales or perduellionis, from whom an appeal lay to the people; after Servius Tullius, to the comitia centuriata. Under the Republic duo viriwere still appointed as presiding judges, till this gradually fell into disuse, and trials of the kind came in general to be dealt with by the popular court. In earlier times the penalty was death by hanging on a tree, by throwing from the Tarpeian Rock, or by beheading; later, banishment, and after the tribunes brought cases of perduelliobefore the omitia tributa, fines as well. From the latter half of the 2nd century B.C. the less important cases began to be treated as offences of maiestas; and by Caesar's Julian law, 46 B.C., all cases of perduellio were included under this name. (See also MAIESTAS.)
PEREGRINUS	The description in Roman law of all foreigners or persons other than citizens sojourning or domiciled within Roman territory. Originally peregrini were entirely without rights, unless they obtained a patronus, except in cases where there was a treaty (foedus) with the State to which they belonged, regulating the legal position of the subjects of the two States respectively. But the increasing intercourse between Rome and other States, and the consequent growth in the number of peregrini in Rome, made it necessary to grant to all foreigners a definite competency to acquire property, enter into obligations, and the like; and for the decision of civil suits between foreigners and citizens, or of foreigners among themselves, a special proetor (q.v.) was appointed. From the public, private, and sacrificial law of Rome they were always excluded. (See also CIVITAS.)
PERGAMENE SCULPTURES
PERIBOEA	Wife of Polybus of Corinth, and foster-mother of (Edipus (q.v.).
PERIBOLUS	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The court of a Greek temple. (See TEMPLES.)
PERICLYMENUS	A Theban, son of Poseidon and Chloris, daughter of the seer Tiresias. In the war of the Seven against Thebes he slew Parthenopaeus, and was in pursuit of Amphiaraus at the moment when the latter sank into the earth.
PERICLYMENUS	Son of Neleus and Chloris, brother of Nestor. He is the chief hero of the defence of Pylos against Heracles, to whom he gave much trouble by his prowess, as well as by his power of transforming himself, like the sea-gods, into every possible shape. This power had been given him by Poseidon, who was reputed to be his father. Finally he succumbed to the arrows of Heracles, and by his death sealed the doom of Pylos.
PERIEGETAE	A term applied by the Greeks to the authors of travellers' guide-books enumerating and describing what was worthy of note, especially buildings or monuments, in the several cities or countries. This kind of literature was especially in vogue from the 3rd century B.C. onwards. Its chief representatives are Polemon of Troas (about 200), whose numerous works are now unfortunately preserved in fragments only; and after him the Athenian Heliodorus, author of a great work on the Acropolis, likewise lost. Larger fragments survive of a handbook to Greece by a certain Heraclides, and of the interesting work on Alexandria by Callixenus of Rhodes. The only complete work of this kind remaining is the valuable description of Greece by Pausanias (2nd century A.D.).
PERIOECI	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The name of those inhabitants of the Spartan State who, unlike the serfs or helots (q.v.), had kept the possession of their lands and personal liberty after the Dorian occupation, but without having the citizenship. They too, like the helots, were at least twice as numerous as the ruling Spartiatae. Their name (lit. dwelling around) indicates that they lived on the plain in the neighbourhood of the chief city which was occupied by the Spartiatae. Probably they were more or less doricised by Dorian colonists sent into their towns, whereof as many as a hundred are mentioned. They were occupied partly in cultivating their farms (which, we learn, were smaller than those of the Spartiatae); partly in manufactures and industry, in which the ruling caste were forbidden to engage; partly in trade. Besides certain taxes, they were bound to military service, either as hoplites or as light-armed troops (as in the case of the Sciritoe or inhabitants of Sciritis, who formed a special body of light infantry, and were reserved for outpost duty when in camp, for advance and rearguard, and in battle for service on the left wing). After the Peloponnesian War they formed the chief strength of the army. (See WARFARE.) In the army they were also eligible as officers of the lower ranks; but from all civil offices they were excluded, as also from the popular assembly. They were completely subject to the orders of the Spartiatae; and when they made themselves troublesome, they could be put to death by the ephors without trial or conviction.
PERIPATETICS	The followers of Aristotle's philosophy. They derived their name from Aristotle's habit of walking with his disciples in the shady avenues of the Athenian Gymnasium called the Lyceum, while he discussed the problems of philosophy. (See also ARISTOTLE and PHILOSOPHY.)
PERIPHETES	Son of Hephaestus; a monster at Epidaurus, who slew the passers by with an iron club (whence he was called corynetes or club-bearer), till he was himself slain by the young Theseus.
PERIPTEROS	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 An epithet describing a temple completely surrounded by a colonnade supporting the entablature. (See TEMPLES.)
PERLACTOS	See THEATRE.
PERO	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The shoe of the ordinary Roman citizen. (See CALCEUS.)
PERSEPHONE	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 Daughter of Zeus and Demeter. As the wife of Hades, she is the dread queen of the world below. Her special name in Attic cult is Core (lit. "the Maiden"). As a maiden while plucking flowers (near Enna in Sicily, according to the story common in later times), she was carried off into the lower world by Hades on his car, with the consent of her father. To appease her mother's wrath, Zeus sent Hermes to bring her back; but, since she had eaten part of a pomegranate given her by Hades (i.e. had already become his wife), she could only spend two-thirds of the year in the upper world with her mother. At the end of that time she had always to return to her husband, and rule as the dark goddess of death; whereas, while with her mother, she was regarded as the virgin daughter, and the helper of the goddess who presides over the fertility of the earth. Hence Persephone is emblematic of vegetable life, that comes and goes with the changing seasons. In spring, when the seeds sprout up from the ground, she rises to her mother; when the harvest is over, and the vegetation dies, and the seed is laid again in the dark grave of earth, she returns to her subterraneous kingdom. From this notion of the seed buried in the dark earth and again rising to light was developed that conception of the myth as an image of immortality which lies at the base of the Eleusinian mysteries. To express her rising and descending, her festivals were celebrated in spring and after the harvest. In spring she was worshipped at the lesser Eleusinia in Attica, and at her flower-festival of the anthesphoria, in the Peloponnesus, but more especially in Sicily. In autumn, there was held in Attica the great Eleusinia; i.e. the wedding-feast on her marriage with the god of the lower world. She was generally worshipped together with her mother; hence they were spoken of as "the two goddesses." In the Eleusinian mysteries she was also connected with Dionysus, who, under the mystic name Iacchus, was regarded as her son, brother, or bridegroom. In later times she was confused with other divinities, especially Hecate, as the goddess of night and of the world of spirits. She was represented either as the young and beautiful daughter of Demeter, with cornucopia, ears of corn, and a cock, the emblem of her rising in spring, or as the grim spouse of Hades, with rich adornments and the symbolic pomegranate. (See cut, and cp.DEMETER, fig.1) The Roman name Proserpina is regarded by some as an altered form of the Greek Persephone; by others as a native name only accidentally similar to the Greek, denoting a goddess who assisted in the germination (proserpere) of the seed, and, owing to the similarity of the two goddesses, transferred to Persephone after the introduction of her cult as the divinity of the lower world. (See HADES; see also LIBITINA.)
PERSES	Son of the Titan Crius, father of Hecate.
PERSES	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 Brother of Aeetes of Colehis. (See MEDEA.)
PERSEUS	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 Son of Zeus and Danae, grandson of Acrisius (q.v.). An oracle had declared that Danae, the daughter of Acrisius, would give birth to a son who would kill his grandfather. Acrisius committed Perseus with his mother to the sea in a wooden box, which was carried by the waves to the isle of Seriphus. Here the honest fisherman Dictys son of Magnes (See AeOLUS, 1) brought it to land with his net, and took care of mother and child. Dictys' brother Polydectes, however, the king of the island, conceived a passion for the fair Danae, and finding the son in the way, betrayed the young Perseus, who was now grown out of boyhood, into promising, on the occasion of a banquet, to do anything for him, even should he order the head of Medusa, and held him to his word. Encouraged and assisted by Athene and Hermes, Perseus reached the Graiae (q.v.), in the farthest part of Libya; and by capturing the single eye and tooth which they possessed in common, compelled them to show him the way to their sisters the Gorgons (q.v.). He also made them equip him for the undertaking with the winged sandals, the magic bag, and the helmet of Hades, which made the wearer invisible. Hermes added to these a sharp sword shaped like a sickle. Thus provided, he flew to the Gorgons on the shores of Oceanus, found them asleep, and, since their glance turned the beholder to stone, with face averted smote and cut off Medusa's head, which Athens showed him in the mirror of her shield, while she guided his hand for the blow. He thrust it quickly into his bag, and flew off through the air, pursued by the other two Gorgons; but, by virtue of his helmet, he escaped them, and came in his flight to Aethiopia. Here he rescued Andromeda (q.v.), and won her as his bride. Returning with her to Seriphus, he avenged his mother for the importunities of Polydectes by turning the king and his friends into stone by the sight of Medusa's head; set Dictys on the throne of the island; gave up the presents of the, Graiae to Hermes, who restored them; and presented the Gorgon's head to Athene, who set it in the middle of her shield or breastplate. Then he returned with his mother and wife to Argos. But before his arrival Acrisius bad gone away to Larissa in Thessaly, and here Perseus unwittingly killed him with a discus at the funeral games held in honour of the king of that country. He duly buried the body of his grandfather, but, being unwilling to succeed to his inheritance, effected an exchange with Megapenthes, his uncle Proetus' son, took Tiryns in exchange for Argos and built Midea and Mycenae. By Andromeda he had one daughter, Gorgophone, and six sons. The eldest, Perses, was regarded as the ancestor of the Persians; Alcaeus, Sthenelus, and Electryon were the fathers respectively of Amphitryon, Eurystheus, and Alcmene, the mother of Heracles. Perseus had a shrine (heroon) on the road between Argos and Mycenae, and was worshipped with divine honours in Seriphus and Athens.
PERSIUS FLACCUS	A Roman satirist; born 34 A.D. at Volaterrae, in Etruria, of a good equestrian family. Losing his father when six years old, at the age of twelve he went to Rome, and enjoyed the instructions of the most eminent teachers, more especially of one for whom he had the greatest reverence, Annaeus Cornutus, who initiated him in the Stoic philosophy, and introduced him to the acquaintance of Lucan. After the first poetic attempts of his youth, which be himself burnt, his energies were directed to satiric verse, under the influence of Lucilius and Horace. On his early death, in 62, the six satires which he left, after some slight revision by Cornutus, were published by his friend, the poet Caesius Bassus. In these Persius deals with the moral corruption of his age, from the standpoint of a Stoic preacher of ethics. Both in thought and expression a tendency to echo Horace is constantly apparent. He composed slowly, and was himself conscious that he had no true poetic faculty.[1] His mode of expression is frequently difficult and involved to the verge of obscurity. The need of explanations was accordingly felt in comparatively early times; but the collection of scholia bearing the name of Cornutus shows hardly any traces of ancient learning.
PERVIGILIUM	A nocturnal festival in honour of a divinity, especially that of the Bona Dea, at which originally only married women were allowed to be present. In imperial times, when the presence of men was permitted, a nocturnal festival to Venus was also instituted. Such a festival, extending over three nights in the spring, is referred to in an anonymous poem called the Pervigilium Veneris, of the 2nd or 3rd century A.D. It consists of ninety-three trochaic septenarii separated into unequal strophae by the recurring refrain, Cras amet qui nunquam amavit, quique amavit cras amet. It celebrates in a lively strain the power of Venus, particularly as displayed in springtime, lauding her as the giver of life to all, and as the ancestress and patroness of Rome.
PETASUS	A flat felt hat, with a broad and round brim, usually worn among the Thessalians. The brim is often parted into four bow-shaped indentations (fig. 2). It is said to have been introduced into Greece along with the chlamys as a distinguishing mark of the ephebi. Hermes is usually represented with the winged petasus. The Romans wore a similar hat in the country, and when travelling; in the city it was generally used only in the theatre, as a protection from the sun.
PETRONIUS ARBITER
PEUTINGER TABLET	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 A chartographic representation of the Roman world; now at Vienna. It is a copy of a map of the 3rd century A.D. (See also ITINERARIA.)
PEZETAERI	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 In the Macedonian army, the free but not noble class of the population, who formed the heavy infantry (hoplitae). (See WARFARE.)
PHAEACES	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 A fabulous people in Homer, to whom Odysseus comes in his wanderings [Od. vi-viii]. They stand as near to the gods as the Giants and Cyclopes, seeing them face to face. Originally settled in Hypereia, they were compelled by the violence of their neighbours the Cyclopes to migrate, under their king Nausithous, son of Poseidon and Periboea, daughter of Eurymedon the last king of the Giants, to the happy island of Scheria, where they built a city. On the arrival of Odysseus their ruler was Alcinous, the wise son of Nausithous; his wife was Arete, his brother's daughter, and besides many sons he was the father of the fair Nausicaa. Odysseus' preserver. Far from the turmoil of the world, the Phaeaces are described as leading a life of undisturbed happiness in the enjoyment of the goods wherewith they are richly blessed; above all Aloinous, who had the fairest of orchards and a most beautiful palace. Their business is solely with the sea, with shipping and the provision of all that belongs to it, Their ships are of wondrous sort. Without steersman or rudder, divining of themselves the wishes and thoughts of all men, and knowing all lands, they traverse the sea swift as a bird or a thought, wrapped in mist and darkness, yet have never suffered wreck or foundering. But when the ship, that brought the sleeping Odysseus in one night to Thrace, came back, Poseidon, of whose envious malice a prophecy had long ago bidden them beware, changed it to a rock in sight of harbour, and the Phaeaces were in fear that the rest of the saying would come true, and mountains rise up all round their city. Though it is obvious that the Phaeaces and their abodes, Hypereia and Scheria, are purely mythical, the kingdom of Alcinous was early identified as Corcyra <Corfu). He had a shrine there, and the harbour was named after him. Near the island was also shown the petrified ship. Hence the later Argonautic legends made even Jason and Medea touch at Corcyra on their flight from Aeetes, and, like Odysseus, find protection and help from Alcinous. (See ARGONAUTS.)
PHAEDRA	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 Daughter of Minos and Pasiphae, wife of Theseus, and mother of Acamas and Demophoon. When her stepson Hippolytus rejected her love, she compassed his death by slandering him to Theseus. Afterwards, in remorse for her gailt, she put an end to her life. (See HIPPOLYTUS.)
PHAEDRUS	A Roman poetical fabulist; by birth a Macedonian of the district of Pieria, he came early to Rome as a slave, and acquired a knowledge of Roman literature while still a boy. If the traditional title of his five books of fables after Aesop is to be trusted (Phaedri, Augusti liberti, fabalae Aesopiae), he was set free by Augustus. To Phaedras belongs the credit of introducing fable-writing into Latin poetical literature; a fact of which he was fully conscious, but which secured him neither relief from his miserable position, nor recognition on the part of the educated public; his patrons seem to have been only freedmen like himself. In fact, he even drew upon himself, by his two first published books, the illwill and persecution of the all-powerful favourite of Tiberius, Sejanus, who suspected in them malicious references to contemporary events. In consequence he did not publish the remaining books till after the fall of Sejanus in 31 A.D., and the death of Tiberius in 37. The five books are preserved, though not in a complete form. Whether the further collection of thirty-two fables transcribed from a MS in the 16th century by Archbishop Nicolo Perotti (Fabillae Perottianae) [and published at Naples in 1809] are a genuine work of Phaedrus, is doubtful. The matter of the fables is only to a small extent borrowed from Aesop. Some include stories from history, partly referring to the present or immediate past. In relation to the Greek originals, the material is not always skilfully used, especially in the "morals." The drawing of the characters is at first very cramped, but is afterwards more broadly treated; the language fluent, and in general correct; the metre too (iambic senarius), used with strictness, though wanting the purity which, in this kind of verse, became general from the time of Catullus. About the 10th century an author calling himself Romulus, drew up a prose version of Phaedrus, which served as a model for the mediaeval collections of fables.
PHAETHON	Son of Helros (who is himself sometimes called Phaethon) and the Sea-nymph Clymene, wife of Merops, king of Aetiopia. When he grew up, he demanded of his father, as a proof of his birth, the privilege of driving the chariot of the sun for a single day . He proved, however, too weak to restrain the horses, who soon ran away with him, and plunged, now close up to heaven, now right down to earth, so that both began to take fire. At last, to save the whole world from destruction, Zeus shattered the young man with his lightning, his corpse falling into the river Eridanus. His sisters, the Heliades Aegle, Phaethusa, and Lampetie, wept for him unceasingly, and were changed into poplars; whence it is that their tears still ooze from those trees, and are hardened by Helios into amber.
PHAININDA	A kind of Greek game of ball (q.v.)
PHALANGITAE	The soldiers of the Macedonian phalanx (q.v.).
PHALANX	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The Greek term for the order of battle in which heavy infantry were drawn up, in an unbroken line, several ranks deep. (See HOPLITAe.) The most famous phalanx was that formed by king Philip, constituting the chief strength of the Macedonian army. It was first 8, afterwards 12-16 deep. In the eight-rank formation, the lances (sarissae) being eighteen feet long, those of all ranks could be presented to the enemy. They were grasped with the right hand at the butt, and, with the left, four feet from the butt end; hence the lances of the first rank projected fourteen feet, while the spear-beads of the last rank were level with, or just in front of, the men in the front rank. In the deeper formation, and after the reduction of the length of the sarissa to fourteen feet, only the first five ranks presented their weapons to the front; the rest held them slanting over the shoulders of their comrades in front. The name phalanx, or taxis, was also applied to the separate regiments of the phalangitae. The line of each such phalanx was divided from front to rear, into four chiliarchies, each chiliarchy into four syntagmata, each syntagma into four tetrarchies. The importance of this formation lay in its power of resistance to hostile onset, and in the weight with which it fell, when impelled against the enemy's lines. Its weaknesses were want of mobility, the impossibility of changing front in face of the enemy, and unsuitability for close, band to hand engagement. The Roman legions also fought in phalanx in the older times before Camillus. Under the emperors the phalanx was used after about the 2nd century A.D., in fighting against barbaric nations.
PHALARIS	The infamous tyrant of Agrigentum, notorious for his cruelty; he died 549 B.C. His name is affixed to 148 Greek letters, in which he appears as a gentle ruler, and a patron of art and poetry; but [as proved in Bentley's Dissertation in 1699], they are really a worthless forgery, probably by a Sophist of the 2nd century A.D.
PHALERAE	The Roman term for bosses of thin bronze or silver, or of gold-leaf impressed in relief. They were loaded at the back with pitch, and fitted to a plate of copper being fastened to it with leather straps. They served sometimes as decorations for the harness on the head or breast of horses, sometimes as signs of military rank, worn across the whole coat of mail. [See cut, underCippus.)
PHANIAS	[Of Eresos in Lesbos, a pupil of Aristotle, and a countryman and friend of Theophrastus. He flourished about 336 B.C. He was a very prolific writer on philosophy, physics, and history. Only fragments of these works remain. He was also the author of a chronicle of his native city, entitled The Prytaneis of Eresos. This is supposed to have been one of the principal authorities followed in the Parian Chronicle (q.v.).] [J. E. S.]
PHANOCLES	A Greek elegiac poet of the Alexandrine period. He celebrated in erotic elegies the loves of beautiful boys. A considerable fragment remaining describes the love of Orpheus for Calais, the beautiful son of Boreas, and his death ensuing there from. The language is simple and spirited, and the versification melodions.
PHARETRA	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The quiver. (See BOWS.)
PHAROS
PHASIS	The term in Attic law for an information against secret crimes, such as contravention of regulations relating to customs, trade, or mining, illegal occupation of common rights, felling or the olive trees sacred to Athene, dishonest administration of wards' estates and sycophantia. The informer received a portion of the fine as reward.
PHEGEUS	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 King of Psophis in Arcadia, son of Alpheus, and brother of Phoroneus. After inducing his sons, Agenor and Pronous (or Arion and Temenus) to kill Alcmaeon, the first husband of his daughter Arsinoe or Alphesiboea (q.v.), he and they were all murdered by the sons of Alcmaeon. (See ACARNAN.)
PHERECRATES	After Cratinus, Eupolis, and Aristophanes, of whom he was an older contemporary, the most eminent writer of the Old Attic comedy. He was famed among the ancients for his wealth of invention and for the purity of his Attic Greek. We have the titles of fifteen of his comedies, and a few fragments of his plays.
PHEREOYDES	Greek philosopher, of the isle of Syros, about 600-550 B.C.; said to have been the first writer of prose. He wrote in the Ionic dialect of the origin of the world and the gods (cosmogonia and theogonia). The poetic element seems to have held a predominant place in his prose. He is also said to have been the first to maintain the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, which his pupil Pythagoras borrowed from him.
PHEREOYDES	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 See LOGOGRAPHI.
PHIALE	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The flat drinking-cup of the Greeks. (See VESSELS.)
PHIDIAS	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The famous Greek artist, born about 500 B.C. at Athens, pupil of Ageladas, and eminent as architect, bronze founder, sculptor, and painter. His great powers were displayed in the buildings erected under the administration of his intimate friend Pericles on the Acropolis at Athens, and at Olympia, where he was commissioned to execute the statue of Zeus for the temple there. Returning to Athens in 432, he was accused, by intriguers against Pericles, of misappropriating the gold supplied him for the drapery of Athene's statue in the Parthenon. From this he could readily clear himself, having so contrived the drapery that it could easily be taken off and weighed [Plut., Pericles 31]. But being afterwards accused of impiety, on the ground that he had introduced portraits of himself and Pericles on the goddess' shield, he was thrown into prison, where he died of an illness in the same year (ib.). Among all his works, the foremost rank was taken, according to the testimony of antiquity, by the statue of Zeus at Olympia, and three statues of Athene on the Acropolis at Athens; viz. the statue in the Parthenon constructed, like the Zeus, of ivory and gold, and two others, Athene Promachus and the "Lemnian Athene," of bronze. These works (for which see ATHENE and<smallCapsZUES</smallCaps) have perished; but of the marble sculptures of the Parthenon (q.v.), which were probably constructed from his designs, and certainly under his direction, the greater part still remains. Most of them are in the British Museum. They fully substantiate the judgment of antiquity, which looked on him as the representative of artistic perfection, as the one man who in his art combined perfect sublimity with perfect beauty. It was said of him that he alone had seen the exact image of the gods and revealed it to men. He fixed for ever the ideal types of Zeus and of Athene, the gods who, in the spiritual dignity of their attributes , are foremost of all the divinities of Greece.
PHIDITIA	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 See SYSSTIA.
PHILEMON	A Greek poetof the New Attic comedy, of Soli in Cilicia, or of Syracuse, born about 362 B.C. He came early to Athens, and first appeared as an author in 330. He must have enjoyed remarkable popularity, for he repeatedly won victories over his younger contemporary and rival Menander, whose delicate wit was apparently less to the taste of the Athenians of the time than Philemon's smart comedy. To later times his successes over Menander were so unintelligible, that they were ascribed to the influence of malice and intrigue. Except a short sojourn in Egypt with king Ptolemy Philadelphus, he passed his life at Athens. He there died, nearly a hundred years old, but with mental vigour unimpaired, in 262, according to the story, at the moment of his being crowned on the stage. Of his uinety-seven works, fifty-seven are known to us by titles and fragments, and two are preserved in the Latin version of Plautus (Mercator and Trinummus).
PHILEMON AND BAUCIS	An old married couple in Phrygia, famed in antiquity for their true love. When Zeus and Harmes were wandering through the country in human form, and found no shelter with the richer inhabitants, the aged pair received them hospitably. The gods therefore while destroying all the rest of the neighbourhood by floods in punishment for the inhospitable treatment they had met with, changed their miserable cottage into a magnificent temple. Here the two hold the priestly office for the rest of their life, and finally, on their prayer that they might not be separated by death, were both at the same moment changed into trees [Ovid, Met. viii 611-724).
PHILETAS	A Greek grammarian and poet, of the island of Cos. He lived in the second half of the 4th century, latterly as tutor to Ptolemy II (Philadelphus) in Alexandria. Besides epics he composed elegies on his beloved Battis, which were highly prized at Alexandria and Rome, and were imitated by Propertius [iv 1, 1]. We possess only scanty fragments of these elegies.
PHILIPPIDES	A Greek writer of the New Comedy, about 300 B.C.; a friend of king Lysimachus of Thrace. He is said to have died of joy at winning a dramatic prize. Of the forty-four plays attributed to him only fragments survive.
PHILISCUS	A Greek tragedian of Corcyra, in the first half of the 3rd century B.C.; he was priest of Dionysus in Alexandria, and, as such, stood at the head of the Dionysiac guild of actors in that city. He was one of the " Pleiad " (q.v.) of Alexandrian tragic poets. [His portrait is preserved in a relief in the Lateran Museum. See out under TRAGEDY (Greek).]
PHILISTUS	A Greek historian, of Syracuse, born about 435 B.C. He encouraged the elder Dionysius, by advice and assistance, in securing and maintaining the position of despot in his native state; but was himself banished by Dionysius in 386, and lived a long while at Adria in Epirus, busied with historical studies. Recalled by Dionysius the younger, he counteracted the salutary influence of Dion and Plato at that tyrant's court, and brought about the banishment of both. As commander of the fleet against Dion and the revolted Syracusans, he lost a naval battle, and in consequence either committed suicide or was cruelly murdered by the angry populace (356). He left an historical work, begun in his exile, called Sicelica, a history of Sicily in thirteen books. Books i-vii dealt with the events of the earliest times to the capture of Agrigentum by the Carthaginians in 406; viii-xi, with the rule of the elder Dionysius; xii and xiii, with that of the younger. The last portion, which remained incomplete owing to his death, was finished by his countryman Athanas. Only unimportant fragments of this have survived. According to the judgment of the ancients, he imitated Thucydides somewhat unsuccessfully, and betrayed in his work the one-sided attitude natural to his political views [Plutarch, Dion 36; Dionysius Halic., Ad Cn. Pompeium, 5].
PHILO	[Philo Byblius, or Herennius Byblius. A Roman grammarian, born at Byblus in Phoenicia. His life extended from about the time of Nero to that of Hadrian. A considerable fragment of his "translation" of the ancient Phoenician writer Sanchuniathon is preserved in the first book of the Praeparatto Evangelica of Eusebius.]
PHILO
PHILO	Of Byzantium; a celebrated mechanician. He wrote, in the 2nd century B.C., a work on mechanics, of which only one book, on the construction of engines of war, and portions of two others, on siege-warfare, are extant.
PHILO	The Jew. Born of a priestly family at Alexandria, about 25 B.C., he carefully studied the different branches of Greek culture, and, in particular, acquired a knowledge of the Platonic philosophy, while in no way abandoning the study of the Scriptures or the creed of his nation. In 39 A.D. he went to Rome as an emissary to the emperor Caligula in the interest of his fellow countrymen, whose religious feelings were offended by a decree ordering them to place the statue of the deified emperor in their synagogues. This embassy, which led to no result, is described by him in a work which is still extant, though in an incomplete form. Philo is the chief representative of the Graeco-Judaic philosophy. He wrote numerous Greek works in a style modelled on that of Plato. These are remarkable for moral earnestness, passionate enthusiasm, and vigour of thought. They include allegorical expositions of portions of the Scriptures, as well as works of ethical, historical, or political purport. Several of his works only survive in Armenian versions. His philosophy, especially his theology, is an endeavour to reconcile Platonism with Judaism.
PHILO
PHILO	[The sculptor; the son of Antipater. He flourished in the time of Alexander the Great. Among his works was the statue of Haephaestion, and that of Zeus Ourios, at the entrance of the Bosporus (Cic., Verr. II iv 129). The dedicatory verses inscribed on the pedestal of the latter are now in the British Museum (quoted on p. 40 of Dem., Adv. Leptinem, ed. Sandys). Pliny (xxxiv 91) mentions him as one of the sculptors who made athletas et armatos et venatores sacrificantesque.]
PHILOCHORUS	A Greek historian, living at Athens between 306 and 260. As an upholder of national liberty he was among the bitterest opponents of Demetrius Poliorcetes and of his son Antigonus Gonotas, who put him to death after the conquest of Athens. Of his works, the Atthis was a history of Athens from the earliest times to 262 B.C., in seventeen books. It was highly esteemed and often quoted for its wealth of facts and thoroughness of investigation, especially as regards chronology. We still possess a considerable number of fragments.
PHILOCLES	A Greek tragedian, son of Aeschylus'sister. He wrote a hundred plays in the manner of Aeschylus, and won the prize against Sophocles' OEdipus Tyrannus. Only scanty fragments of his plays remain. The drama was also cultivated by his sons Morsimus and Melanthius, by Morsimus' son Astydamas (about 399 B.C.), and again by the sons of the latter, Astydamas and Philocles.
PHILOCTETES	The son of Posas, king of the Malians in OEta. He inherited the bow and arrows of Heracles (q.v.). He was leader of seven ships in the expedition against Troy; but, on the way out, was bitten by a snake at Lemnos, or the small island of Chryse near Lemnos, and, on account of the intolerable stench caused by the wound, was abandoned at Lemnos on the advice of Odysseus. Here in his sickness he dragged out a miserable life till the tenth year of the war. Then, however, on account of Helenus' prophecy that Troy could only be conquered by the arrows of Heracles, Odysseus and Diomedes went to fetch him, and he was healed by Machaon. After he had slain Paris, Troy was conquered. He was one, of the heroes who came safe home again. [The story of Philoctetes was dramatized by Aeschylus and Euripides (B.C. 431), as well as by Sophocles (409). It is also the theme of numerous monuments of ancient art. See Jebb's introduction to Soph. Phil., P. xxxvii.]
PHILODEMUS	A Greek philosopher of the Epicurean school, of Gadara in Palestine. He was a contemporary of Cicero, who praises his learning, and also his taste as a poet [De Finibus ii 119; in Pisonem, 68, 70]. We have thirty-four epigrams by him chiefly on amatory and indelicate subjects: and considerable fragments of a number of prose writings (on music, rhetoric, syllogisms, vices and virtues, piety, anger, etc.), which have come to light among the Herculanean papyri.
PHILOLAUS	A Greek philosopher, a pupil of Pythagoras (q.v.). He was the first to commit to writing the doctrines of the Pythagorean school. He wrote in Doric Greek. Only a few fragments of his writings remain.
PHILOSTRATUS	Philostratus the younger, son of the daughter of (1), of Lemnos. He lived chiefly at Athens, and died at Lemnos, 264 A.D. Following his grandfather's lead, he devoted himself to the rhetorical description of paintings; but fell considerably behind his model both in invention and descriptive power, as is proved by the sixteen extant Imagines, the first book of a larger collection.
PHILOSTRATUS	Flavius Philostratusthe elder, a Greek Sophist, of Lemnos, son of a celebrated Sophist of the same name. He taught first in Athens, then at Rome till the middle of the 3rd century A.D. By order of his great patroness Julia Domna, the learned wife of the emperor Septimius Severus, he wrote (a) the romantic Life of Apollonius of Tyana. Besides this we have by him (b) a work entitled Heroicus, consisting of mythical histories of the heroes of the Trojan War in the form of a dialogue, designed to call back to life the expiring popular religion. (c) Lives of the Sophists, in two books, the first dealing with twenty-six philosophers, the second with thirty-three rhetoricians of earlier as well as later times, a work important for the history of Greek culture, especially during the imperial age. (d) Seventythree letters, partly amatory in subject. (e) A fragment of a work intended to revive interest in the old Gymnastic. Lastly (f), the Imagines in two books, being descriptions of sixty-six paintings on all possible subjects. Of these it is doubtful whether, as he pretends, they really belonged to a gallery at Naples (a statement accepted by Brunn Kunstlergeschichte, ii 178; Jahrb. f. Philol. Supplementband 4, 179 pp. and 1871]; or whether their subjects were invented by himself [as maintained by Friederichs, Die Philostratischen Bilder, 1860; and Matz, De Philostratorum in Describendis Imaginibus Fide, 1867]. Like all his writings, this work is skilful and pleasing in its manner, and the interest of its topic makes it particularly attractive. It is not so much designed to incite to the study of works of art, as to exhibit the art of painting in a totally now field; and herein he is followed both by his grandson and namesake, and by Callistratus (q.v.).
PHILOXENUS	A famous Greek dithyrambic poet, of Cythera. He came as a prisoner of war into the possession of the Athenian musician Melanippides, by whom he was educated and set free. He lived long at Syracuse, at the court of the tyrant Dionysius I, who threw him into the stone-quarries for outspoken criticism on his bad poems. On his escape from Sicily he revenged himself on the tyrant, who was short-sighted or perhaps blind of one eye, by witty raillery in the most famous of is twenty-four dithyrambs, the Cyclops, which describes the love of the one-eyed Polyphemus for the beautiful Nymph Galatea. He died 380 B.C. at Ephesus, after visiting various places in Greece, Italy, and Asia Minor for the public performance of his compositions. These were celebrated among the ancients for originality of expression and rich variety of melody. We have only some considerable fragments of a lyric poem entitled The Banquet, in which the burlesque subject affords a comic contrast to the dignified Doric rhythm.
PHINEUS	Son of Agenor, reigning at Salmydessus in Thrace; he possessed the gift of prophecy. He put away his first wife Cleopatra, daughter of Boreas and Orithyia, who had borne him two sons, and married Idaea, daughter of Dardanus. She inducead him by slanders to destroy the sight of the sons whom he had by his first wife. For this Zeus punished him, giving him the choice of death or blindness. He chose never more to see the sun, whereat Hellios, enraged by the slight, sent the Harpies, who stole or defiled his food, so that he suffered perpetual hunger. From this plague he was not delivered till the landing, of the Argonauts, when Calais and Zetes, the brothers of his first wife, drove off the Harpies from him for ever. In gratitude, Phineus, by virtue of his prophetic powers, instructed the Argonauts as to the rest of their route. His brothers-in-law sent the wicked step-mother back to her home, freed their sister and her sons from the dungeon in which they were pining, and set the sons, who recovered their sight, on their father's throne.
PHINEUS	Son of Belus, and brother of Cepheus. He contested against Perseus the possession of Andromeda (q.v.), who had previously been his betrothed. He was turned into stone by Perseus by means of the head of Medusa.
PHLEGON	A Greek writer, of Tralles in Caria, freedman of the emperor Hadrian. He wrote in the first half of the 2nd century A.D. a work entitled Peri Thaumdsion ("On Wonderful Events "). It is a tasteless composition, but instructive as to the superstitions of antiquity. Also a dry catalogue of persons who attained a great age (De Macrobiis). Of his great chronological work, a catalogue of victors at the Olympian games in 229 Olympiads. (B.C. 776 to A.D. 137) only fragments remain.
PHLEGRA	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The scene of the fight between the gods and the giants. (See GIGANTES.)
PHLEGYAS	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 Son of Ares and Chryse, father of Ixion and Coronis; king of the powerful robber-tribe Phlegyae in the neighbourhood of the Boeotian Orchomenus. To revenge his daughter (see ASCLEPIUS), he set fire to the temple of Apollo at Delphi, and was killed with all his people either by the arrows of the god or by the bolt of Zeus. He had also to atone for his sin in the underworld.
PHOBETOR	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 A dream-god. (See DREAMS.)
PHOCUS	Son of Aeacus and the Nymph Psamathe; slain by his half-brothers Telamon and Peleus, who were therefore sent into banishment by Aeacus.
PHOCYLIDES	A gnomic poet of Miletus, born about 540 B.C. He wrote in hexameters and in elegiac metre. Of his terse and pointed maxims, we have a few remaining. An admonitory poem in 230 hexameters, has his name, is the work of an Alexending. Jewish Christian, who took most of his material from the Old Testament.
PHOEBE	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 A special name of Artemis as moon-goddess. (See SELENE.)
PHOEBUS	A special name for Apollo (q.v.).
PHOENIX	Son of Amyntor and Hippodamia. Being banished by his father out of envy, he fled to Peleus, and was entrusted by him with the education of his son Achilles (q.v.), whom he accompanied to Troy.
PHOLUS	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 A Centaur, inhabiting Mount Pholoe in Arcadia. When Heracles visited him on his expedition against the Erymanthian boar, he opened in his guest's honour a cask of wine belonging to the Centaurs in common, presented by Dionysus. Allured by the strong scent of the wine, the Centaurs rushed up to the cave armed with trunks of trees and masses of rock, and fell upon Heracles. He drove them from the cave with firebrands, and slew some with his poisoned arrows. The rest took to flight (See CHRON). The hospitable Pholus also met his death, having let fall on his foot an arrow, which he took from the body of one of the fallen, the wound proving rapidly fatal.
PHORBAS	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 Son of Lapithes, honoured as a hero by the Rhodians, for having come at the bidding of the oracle to free their island from a plague of serpents. He was placed among the stars as the constellation Ophiuchus (snake-holder). Another legend made him come from Thessaly to Elis, where he assisted king Alector against Pelops, and as a reward received in marriage the king's sister Hyrmine, the mother of Augeas and Aetor (see MOLIONIDAe). Being a mighty boxer, he challenged in his pride the gods themselves, but Apollo overcame and slew him.
PHORCYS	A Greek sea-god, son of Pontus and Gaea, brother of Nereus and Thaumas and of Eurybia and Ceto, by whom he begat the Graiae, the Gorgons, and the dragon Ladon, who guarded the apples of Hesperides. He is also called the father of the Nymph Thoosa, mother of the Hesperides, Sirens, and Scylla.
PHORMINX	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 A Greek stringed instrument. (See CITHARA.)
PHORMIS	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 A Greek poet, writer of Dorian comedy. (See COMEDY.)
PHORONEUS	Son of Inachus and the Oceanymph Melia, founder of the state of Argos. The origin of all culture, civil order, and religious rites in the Peloponnesus was ascribed to him. In particular, he was reputed as the originator of the worship of Hera at Argos, and, like Prometheus elsewhere, as the man who first brought fire from heaven down to earth. Hence he was regarded as a national hero, and offerings were laid on his tomb. His daughter Niobe was said to be the first mortal whom Zeus honoured with his love.
PHOTIUS	A Greek scholar of the Byzantine period, Patriarch of Constantinople A.D. 857-867 and 871-886; died 891. Besides playing a prominent part in the ecclesiastical controversies of his time, he was conspicious for his wide reading of ancient literature. Apart from theological writings, he left two works which are of great service to the student of antiquity. The one, the Bibliotheca, is an account of 280 works, some of which are now lost, some only imperfectly preserved, which he read on his embassy to Assyria, with short notices and criticisms of matter and style, and in some caqes more or less complete abstracts; the other a Lexicon or alphabetical glossary, of special value in connexion with the Greek orators and historians.
PHRATRIA	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 Denoted among the Greeks the subdivision of a phyple (q.v.) embracing a number of families. In Attica the four old Ionic phyloe contained three phratrioe in each, twelve in all; and each phratrioe comprehended thirty families (see GENNETAe). When the old phyloe were suppressed by Clisthenes, the phratrioe remained in existence as religious associations for the observance of the ancient forms of worship, which did not admit of being suppressed. They had, however, no political importance, except that the sons (by birth or adoption) of a citizen had to be enrolled in the register of phratores, or members of the phratria of their natural or adoptive father. This was done by the phratriarchi (presidents) at the chief festival of the phratrioe, the Apaturia (q.v.). Newly married husbands also introduced their wives into the phratria. Each phratria had a separate place of worship (phratrion), with the altars of its deities. Zeus and Athene were common to all, but each phratria worshipped other special deities of its own.
PHRIXUS	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 Son of Athamas and Nephele, threatened with death as a sacrifice through the malice of his stepmother Ino, escaped with his sister Helle on a ram with golden fleece, sent him by Zeus, Hermes, or Nephele. Helle was drowned on the way in the sea which bears her name, the Hellespont; but Phrixus arrived safely in Colchis, where he sacrificed the ram to Zeus as the "aider of flight" (Zeus Phyxios), and presented the golden fleece to king Acetes. Acetes hung it on an oak in the grove of Ares, and gave Phrixus his daughter Chalclope to wife. Phrixus sent his sons Cytissorus and Argus home. The former saved his grandfather Athamas from being sacrificed; the latter built the ship Argo, which was named after him. (See ATHAMASand ARGONAUTS.)
PHRYNICHUS	A Greek Sophist, who lived in the second half of the 3rd century A.D. in Bithynia; author of a Selection of Attic Verbs and Nouns, compiled with great strictness in the exclusion of all but the best Attic forms. We have also notable excerpts from a work of his in thirty-seven books, dedicated to the emperor Commodus, and entitled the Sophistic Armoury (Parasceue). It was founded on the most comprehensive learning, and designed to supply the orator with everything necessary for good and pure expression. The arrangement is alphabetical, and it includes examples from the best authors, the different styles being carefully distinguished.
PHRYNICHUS	A Greek poet of Athens; one of the less important writers of the Old Attic Comedy, and a frequent butt of the other comic poets. In B.C. 405, however, his Muses took the second prize after Aristophanes' Frogs. We have only short fragments of about ten of his plays.
PHRYNICHUS	A Greek tragic poet, of Athens, an older contemporary of Aeschylus. He won his first victory as early as 511 B.C. He rendered a great service to the development of the drama by introducing an actor distinct from the leader of the chorus, and so laying the foundation for the dialogue. But the dialogue was still quite subordinate to the lyrics of the chorus. In this department he won extraordinary celebrity by the grace and melody of his verses, which continued to be sung at Athens long after. Besides mythical subjects, he dealt with events of contemporary history, e.g. the conquest of Miletus by the Persians. At the representation of that event the audience burst into tears, and the poet was fined 1,000 drachmae for recalling the disasters of his country, all further performance of the piece being prohibited [Herod., vi 21]. Again, in his Phoenissoe (so named after the chorus of Sidonian women) he dealt with the battle of Salamis. This play, which was put on the stage by Themistocles in 478, was the model of Aeschylus' Persoe. Phrynichus, like Aeschylus, is said to have died in Sicily. We only possess the titles of nine of his plays and a few fragments.
PHYLARCHUS	A Greek historian, born probably at Naucratis in Egypt about 210 B.C., lived long at Sicyon, afterwards in Athens; author of a great historical work in 28 books, dealing with the fifty years from the invasion of the Peloponnesus by Pyrrhus to the death of Cleomenes, king of Sparta (272-221). His enthusiastic admiration of that monarch appears to be the cause of the severe judgment passed on Phylarchus by Polybius [ii 56], who represents the prejudiced Achaean view. His style was lively and attractive, but unduly sensational. His work was much used by Trogus Pompeius and by Plutarch [in his lives of Cleomenes and Aratus]. Only a few fragments remain.
PHYLARCHUS	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The Athenian term for (a) the president of a phyle (q.v.)); (b) one of the ten subordinate officers commanding the citizen cavalry. (See HIPPEIS.)
PHYLE	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The Greek term for a division of a nation, connected together by (supposed) descent from a common ancestor of the stock. Thus the population of Attica, even before Solon, was divided into four phyloe tracing their origin from four legendary sons of Ion, and called Geleontes, Hopletes, Aegicores, and Argades. Probably the division was local, the names referring to the peculiarity or main occupation of the members of each division; for Hopletes appears to mean warriors, Aegicores, goatherds, and Argades, agriculturalists. The meaning of Geleontes (or Teleontes), however, is quite uncertain. Each phyle was presided over by a phylobasileus (king of the phyle) and divided into three phratrioe (brotherhoods, see PHRATRIA), each phratria being subdivided into thirty families. Each family contained about thirty households, and was named after a supposed common progenitor, in whose honour the households celebrated a common cult. Similarly the phratrioe and phyloe were united by the worship of special protecting deities. These old Ionic phyloe were suppressed by Clisthenes, who divided the people into ten entirely different phyloe, named after ancient heroes (Erechtheis, Aegeis, Pandionis, Leontis, Acamantis, Aeneis, Cecropis, Hippothontis, Aiantis, Antiochis). They were subdivided into fifty naucrarice and one hundred demi (q.v.). In 307 B.C., in honour of Demetrius Poliorcetes and his father Autigonus, the phyloe were increased by two, called Demetrias and Antigonis, which names were afterwards changed, in honour of Ptolemy Philadelphus of Egypt and Attalus I of Pergamon, into Ptolemais and Attalis. In later times, another, Adrianis, was added in honour of the emperor Hadrian. Besides priests for the cult of their eponymous hero, the phyloe had presidents, called phylarchi, and treasurers (tamioe). The assemblies were always held in Athens, and were concerned, not only with the special affairs of the phyle, but also with State business especially the notification of the persons liable to State burdens (See LEITOURGIA.) The ten phyloe of Clisthenes served also as a foundation for the organization of the army. The forces were raised when required from the muster-roll of the phyloe, and divided accordingly into ten battalions, which were themselves also called phyloe. The Dorian stock was generally divided into three phyloe: Hylleis, Dymanes, and Pamphyli, purporting to be named after Hyllos, son of Heracles, and Dyman and Pamphylus, sons of king Aegimius. When families not of Dorian origin formed part of the forces of the State, they constituted an additional phyle. In the purely Dorian state of Sparta the three phyloe were divided into thirty oboe, answering to the families at Athens.
PHYLLIS	Daughter of the Thracian king Sithon. From despair at the delay of her betrothed Demophoon (q.v., 2) in coming to wed her, she put an end to her life, and was changed into an almond tree. [Ovid, Heroides, 2.]
PHYSICIANS
PHYTALUS	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 A hero of Eleusis; he received from Demeter the fig tree, as a reward for hospitable entertainment (Pausanias, i 37, section 2]. His descendants, the Phytalidoe, by ancient custom, performed the purification for blood-shedding in Attica, according to the legend, because they had absolved Theseus under similar circumstances [Plutarch, Thes. 12, 22]. (See THESEUS.)
PICUMNUS	An old Italian god of agriculture, credited with the invention of the use of manure. He was said to be the husband of Pomona. His brother Pilumnus was honoured by bakers as the inventor of the pestle (pilum) for crushing corn; and the two together were protecting deities to women in child-bed and to new-born infants. Hence, in the country, festal couches were set for them in the atrium when children were safely brought to birth. According to another ancient view, there were three divinities protecting mother and child, who prevented the mischievous intrusion of Silvanus into the house. These powers (representing the triumph of civilization over the wild forest life) were impersonated by three men, who went round the house in the night, and knocked on the threshold of the front and back doors, first with a hatchet and then with a pestle, and lastly swept them with a broom. The names of these deities were Intercidona, god of the hewing of timbers, Pilumnus, of the crushing of corn into meal by the pestle, and Deverra, of the sweeping together of grain [Varro, quoted by Augustine, De Civitate Dei, vi 9]. Picumnus, as appears in the name, is identical with Picus (q.v.).
PIETAS	The Roman goddess of domestic affection. In Rome she had a special temple, vowed at the battle of Thermopylae in 191 B.C. by Acilius Glabrio, and consecrated by his son in 181. The popular legend was, that it was erected as a memorial to a daughter, who had supported with the milk from her breast the life of her mother (or father) when condemned to death by starvation [Valerius Max., v 4 Section 7]. On coins the goddess appears as a matron strawing incense on an altar; her symbol is the stork.
PIGRES	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 A Greek poet, author of the Batrachomyomachia. (See HOMER, ad fin.)
PILENTUM	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 A sort of spring-cart, used chiefly by women. (See CHARIOTS.)
PILLEUS	A round felt cap with little or no brim lying close to the temples. It was the mark of fishermen, sailors, and artisans; hence Castor and Pollux, Odysseus, Charon, Hephaestus, and Daedalus are representedwith it. The upper classes wore it only in the country or when travelling; but it was worn in Rome by the whole people at the Saturnalia, and by freedmen as a sign of their new position. It was placed on the head of slaves when sold, as a sign that the vender undertook no responsibility. (See cuts, and cp.ODYSSEUS, fig. 1, and coin under BRUTUS.)
PILUM	The javelin of the Roman legionaries (about six feet long), which was hurled at the enemy's ranks at the beginning of the engagement, before proceeding to the use of the sword. It consisted of a wooden shaft three feet long, easily grasped in the hand, and an iron head of the same length, culminating in a barbed point, and provided with a socket to which the shaft was attached by iron rivets. Marius had the heads constructed of soft weak iron, the point only being steeled. In this way, if the point stuck in the shield of an enemy, the iron was bent by the weight of the shaft, rendering the weapon useless and difficult to draw out, while it made the shield unmanageable so long as it remained in it [Plutarch, Marius, 25]. When well thrown, the pilum would penetrate both shield and armour. (See cut.)
PILUMNUS	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 One of the three deities conceived by the Italian tribes to protect women in childbed, and their offspring, from the mischief of the forest god Silvanus. (See PICUMNUS.)
PINDAR	The greatest of the Greek lyric poets, born about 622 B.C. at Cynoscephalae, near Thebes; son of the fluteplayer Dalphantus of the ancient and noble family of the Aegidae. His instruction in music, begun by his father, was continued by the musician and dithyrambic poet Lasus of Hermione and the two Boetian poetesses Myrtis and Corinna. He subsequently enjoyed the instructions of the eminent musicians Agathocles and Apollodorus at Athens. He lived chiefly at Thebes, but was renowned and honoured far and wide, among free communities as well as by tyrants and monarchs, not only for his skill in his art, but also for his profound piety. As a special favourite. of Apollo, he was given a seat in the temple at Delphi, and was regularly invited to the divine banquet called the Theoxenia. When he was condemned to a fine by his fellow citizens for glorifying the hostile city of Athens, the Athenians recouped him and accorded him the honour of proxenia, and afterwards erected a bronze statue in his honour. He was on the most intimate terms with Amyntas of Macedon, the Aleuadae in Thessaly and Arcesilaus of Cyrene, but more especially with Theron of Agrigentum and with Hieron of Syracuse at whose court he lived 476-472. He died a peaceful death 422, aged eighty, in the theatre at Argos. It is well known that, in the destruction of Thebes, Alexander the Great spared Pindar's house and descendants alone (Dion Chrysostom, Or. ii, p. 25 M; cp. Milton's third English sonnet]. As a poet, Pindar was remarkably prolific. His works, divided by the Alexandrian scholars into seventeen books, included hymns, paens, prosodia, parthenia, encomia, solia, threni, and epinicia [cp. Horace, Odes iv 2]. Of most of his poetry we have only fragments, but the four books of epinicia are nearly complete. These were songs celebrating the victors in the great national games, and sung by a chorus, sometimes at the scene of the victory, sometimes at the feast on the victor's return home. They contain fourteen Olympian, twelve Pythian, eleven Nemean, and eight Isthmian odes. Pindar's poetry is characterized by magnificence and sublimity of thought, expression, and metrical form. It is permeated by deep and warm religious sentiments resting on the popular creed, still unimpugned by sophistic teaching, and only ennobled by the impress of the poet's personality. He does not celebrate the victors by particular description; he takes his main ideas from the circumstances of the victor's home or personal position, or from the nature of the contest, and works them into a plot always artistic, though often obscured by the interlacing of the strands of thought and by the myths which are interwoven in appropriate detail. Harmony in thought, expression, and metre make the shortest and longest of his poems equally complete in themselves as works of art. Pindar's poetic language is the Ionic Homeric dialect, intermingled with Aeolic and especially with Doric forms. By some mistake his name (Pindarus Thebanus) became attached to an abstract of Homer's Iliad written in Latin hexameters for the use of schools in the 1st century A.D., and much used in the Middle Ages.
PIOUS	An Italian god of agriculture, and especially of manure, hence called son of Stercutus ("the dunger," i.e. Saturn). He also appears as a forest-god with prophetic powers, and as father of Faunus [Vergil, Aen. vii 48]. In Latin legend he plays a prominent part as a warlike hero, the earliest king of Latium, of great wealth, who was finally changed into a woodpecker, picus (ib. 187-190). [According to Ovid, Met. xiv 320-396] this was because he spurned the love of Circe and was faithful to the beautiful Nymph Canens. Probably Picus was originally the woodpecker, the symbol of Mars as giver of fertility and warlike prowess, and from this symbol there was developed a separate deity.
PIRAEICUS
PISCINA	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 A pool or basin of water in Roman bath-rooms. (See BATHS.)
PISTOR	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The Roman baker. (See BAKERS AND BAKING.)
PITHAEGIA	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The first day of the festival of the Anthesteria. (See DIONYSIA.)
PITHOS	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 A Greek wine-jar of earthenware, with a wide mouth and a close-fitting lid. (See VESSELS.)
PITTHEUS	King of Troezen, father of Aethra, the mother of Threseus (q.v.).
PITYOCAMPTES	a name applied to the robber Sinis (q.v.).
PLATO	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 who shares with Aristotle the first place among the philosophers of antiquity, was born at Athens 428 B.C. (according to the story, on the 21st of May, the birthday of Apollo). His father, Ariston, traced his descent from king Codrus; his mother, Perictione, belonged to the same family as Solon. Originally called after his grandfather Aristocles, he afterwards obtained the name of Plato (said to have been given by Socrates) either from the breadth of his shoulders or from the ample flow of his speech. His youth falls in the time of the Peloponnesian War, when Athens, though already entering on the decline of its political greatness,was still distinguished by the greatest activity in all intellectual paths. He had an education befitting his rank and including, according to Athenian custom, both gymnastic and musical culture; but from the first he consistently held aloof from public life, in spite of the numerous advantages which his birth and connexions would have insured him in such a career. Critias, for instance, who was afterwards the leader of the Thirty, was his mother's cousin. After at first devoting himself to poetical studies, and himself composing poetry, he soon took up philosophy. In this subject he is said to have received the instructions of Cratylus, a follower of Heraclitus. At the age of twenty he entered the circle of Socrates' disciples, and soon took a prominent position among them. In 399, after Socrates' death (at which he was prevented by illness from being present) he went to Megara, to his old fellow disciple Euclides, and thence is said to have travelled to Cyrene and Egypt. He certainly spent some time in Magna Graecia with the Pythagoreans, Archytas of Tarentum and Timaeus of Locri, and thence visited Syracuse on the invitation of the elder Dionysius his strong independence, however, and his intimate friendship with Dionysius' brother-in-law , the noble Dion, soon drew upon him the mistrust of the tyrant. The story relates that he was sold as a slave, into Aegina by order of Dionysius, and ransomed by a friend. Returning to Athens about 388, he established in a garden near the Academy (a gymnasium so named after the hero Academus), in the north-west part of the city, a philosophical school, over which he presided for forty years. Here he lived unmarried, taking no part in the affairs of State, but devoting his energies exclusively to the pursuit of knowledge, interrupted only by two journeys to Sicily. The first of these he undertook in 367, on the accession of the younger Dionysius, in order, in conjunction with Dion, to win the young ruler to the cause of philosophy and induce him to convert the tyranny into a constitutionally organized monarchy. This attempt completely failed; and the only result was the banishment of Dion. His second jonmey was in 362. His object was to reconcile Dionysius with Dion, but in this he was equally unsuccessful; in fact, his own life was in danger, and he was only saved by the intercession of Archytas of Tarentum. However, the accounts of these last two journeys are little to be depended upon. Besides the narrower circle of his immediate pupils-among whom the most celebrated are Aristotle, Speusippus, his sister's son, and Xenocrates,-the Academy was also frequented by a large number of educated men, and even women. It is said that Plato's advice in political matters was asked, not only by statesmen at home, but even by foreign States. His teaching was given partly in the shape of informal conversation, partly in consecutive and systematic lectures on philosophical subjects. Even to his old age his activity was unwearied; and he was carried off by an easy death (it is said, while actually engaged in composition), in the eighty-first year of his life (348). He was buried in the neighbourhood of the Academy, where his tomb still existed in the 2nd century A.D. His plot of land remained nearly a thousand years in the possession of the Platonic school. As works of Plato, thirty-six writings in fifty-six books (the thirteen letters being reckoned as one), have been handed down to us. These were divided by Thrasyllus, a Neo-Pythagorean of the time of Tiberius, into nine tetralogies, as follows; (1) Euthyphro, Apology of Socrates, Crito, Phaedo.(2) Cratylus, Theaetetus, Sophistes, Politicus. (3) Parmenides, Philebus, Symposium, Phaeedrus. (4) Alcibiades I and II, Hipparchus, Anterastae. (5) Theages, Charmides, Laches, Lysis. (6) Euthydemus, Protagoras, Gorgias, Meno. (7) Hippias I and II, Ion, Menexemus. (8) Clitopho, Republic (ten books), Timaeus, Critias. (9) Minos, Laws (twelve books), Epinomis, Letters. Besides these, eight other writings bear his name; but these were marked as spurious even in ancient times. Of the genuine writings of Plato none have been lost, owing to the fact that the study of them was kept up without a break through all the intervening centuries; but a number of the above-mentioned are of more or less doubtful authenticity, though there is not in all cases sufficient evidence to prove their spuriousness. Besides the Letters and the Epinomis (an appendix to the Laws composed by Plato's pupil Philippus of Opus), the writings of the fourth tetralogy as well as the Theages, the Minos., and the Clitopho, are reckoned as undoubtedly spurious. Of questionable genuineness also is a series of epigrams which has been handed down under Plato's name. Many attempts have been made to arrange the Platonic writings in the order of time, but unanimity on the subject has never been attained. An old, though disputed, tradition reckons the Phaedrus as the first, while the Laws, which is said to have been published by the aforesaid Philippus after the author's death, are generally acknowledged to be the last; the Republic also belongs, at any rate, to the later writings. The writings of Plato are among the greatest productions, not only of Greek literature, but of the literature of the world. They are equally admirable in matter and in form, combining, as they do, fulness and depth of thought with the highest mastery of style, while at the same time they are penetrated by the noblest spirit. The form is throughout that of dialogue; and in the dialogues Plato himself never appears as a speaker, but he makes his master, Socrates, the interpreter of his views. The dramatic setting and execution, the delineation of the characters, the language, perfectly adjusted to the personality of the speakers and to the circumstances supposed, -- now faithfully reproducing the simple manner of expression usual in conversation, now giving clear expression to the thought with all the incision of dialectics, now rising to poetic elevation,--all show the most consummate art and make it doubtful, whether in Plato we should rather admire the artist and the poet, or the philosopher. On his teaching and his school, see PHILOSOPHY.
PLAUTUS	The greatest of the Roman comic poets, born 254 B.C. at Sarsina in Umbria, of humble extraction. Having earned some money by finding employment at Rome among workmen engaged by persons who gave theatrical representations, he set up a business outside the city; but in this undertaking he lost his property. Returning to Rome, he fell into such poverty that he was obliged to take service with a miller, and earn wages by turning a handmill. It was here that he began to write comedies in verse, and in later times three pieces were still known, which he was said to have composed while thus employed. He continued actively writing to an extreme old age, and died in 184 B.C. His productivity must have been altogether extraordinary, even if a considerable portion of the 130 pieces which were known by the ancients under his name, were not really his work; for not only were the pieces of a certain Plautius reckoned as his, on account of the similarity of name, but numerous comedies by forgotten poets, who worked in his style, were generally ascribed to him as the most popular of poets. Not only was he a favourite with the public and long remained so (even in Cicero's time pieces by him were put upon the Stage) but he also early attracted the interest of scholars, to whom he offered a rich material for study in the departments of philology, criticism, and the history of literature. Special and peculiar attention was paid to him by Varro, who composed several works about him and established the claims of 21 comedies as undisputedly genuine. Of these "Varronian plays" we still possess 20 more or less complete, and of the last, the Vidularia , considerable fragments. These extant plays (in addition to which there are a number of fragments of lost plays), are the oldest complete monuments of Roman literature. They have not come down to us quite in their original form, but bear manifold traces of having undergone revision on the occasion of representations after the poet's death, especially in the latter half of the 2nd century B.C. This is particularly the case with the prologues, which are prefixed to most of the pieces. The plays have been handed down in the following order: Amphitruo, Asinaria (comedy of asses), Aulularia (comedy of a pot), Captivi (the prisoners), Curculio, Casina, Cistellaria (comedy of a chest), Epidicus, Bacchides, Mostellaria (comedy of ghosts), Menaechmi, Miles gloriosus (the braggart), Mercators (trader), Pseudolus, Paenulus(the Carthaginian), Persa(the Persian), Rudens (the cable), Stichus, Trinunmus (the three coins), Truculentus (the grumbler), Vidularia (Comedy of a trank) The titles refer sometimes to characters, sometimes to the action of the piece. If several of them are comparatively weak in plot and character-drawing, still not a few belong to the first rank. Such are the Aulularia, Menaechmi (the former the model of Moliere's Avare, the latter of Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors), Captivi, Bacchides, Mostellaria Miles gloriosus, Pseudolus, Rudens, and Trinummus. The Amphitruo is remarkable as an instance of comic treatment of a mythical subject. The Miles is one of the oldest pieces; the Stichus was brought out in 200, the Pseudolus in 192, the Trinummus about 190; the Truculentus also dates from the extreme old age of the poet. Though Plautus followed Greek models, such as Philemon, Diphilus, and Menander, he did not simply translate his originals, but worked them up with great freedom and nationalised them by additions of his own. He is a master in the use of language, metre, and material, and possesses an inexhaustible and pungent, if often coarse, wit. That he understood how to handle serious and moral subjects is proved by the Captivi and Tinummus. He must be reckoned among the greatest geniuses of his nation.--The name of the Aulularia of Plautus was once erroneously given to a play with the alternative title of the Querolus, a wretched production of the 4th Century A.D.
PLEBISCITUM	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The Roman name for a decree of the comitia tributa. For more See COMITIA (3).
PLEIAS	The name given by the Alexandrine critics to a group of seven tragic poets, who wrote at Alexandria under Ptolemy Philadelphus in the first half of the 3rd century B.C. Their names were: - Alexander Aetolus, Philiscus, Sositheus, Homerus, Aeantides, Sosiphanes, and Lycophron.
PLELADES OR PLEIADES	The seven daughters of Atlas and the Ocean-nymph Plelone, born on the Arcadian mountain Cyllene, sisters of the Hyades. The eldest and most beautiful, Maia, became the mother of Hermes by Zeus; Electra and Tayggete, of Dardanus and Lacedaemon by the same; Alcyone, of Hyrieus by Poseidon; Celaeno of Lycus and Nycteus by the same; Sterope or Asterope, of (Enomaus by Ares; Merope (i.e. the mortal), of Glaucus by Sisyphus. Out of grief, either for the fate of Atlas or for the death of their sisters, they killed themselves and were placed among the constellations. According to another legend, they were pursued for five years by the Giant hunter Orion (q.v.), until Zeus turned the distressed Nymphs and their pursuer into neighbouring stars. As the constellation of the seven stars, they made known by their rising (in the middle of May) the approach of harvest, and by their setting (at the end of October) the time for the new sowing. Their rising and setting were also looked upon as the sign of the opening and closing of the sailing season. One of the seven stars is invisible; this was explained to be Merope, who bid herself out of the shame at her marriage with a mortal. The constellation of the Pleiades seems also to have been compared to a flight of doves (Gr. peleides). Hence the Pleiades were supposed to be meant in the story told by Homer of the ambrosia brought to Zeus by the doves,-one of which is always lost at the Planetae rocks, but is regularly replaced by a new one [Od. xii 62]. Among the Romans, the constellation was called Vergiliae, the stars of spring.
PLEMOCHOE	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 Literally, "an earthen vessel for water"; hence the name plemochoae given to the last day of the Eleusinian festival, when this kind of vessel was used for pouringout water. (See ELEUSINIA.)
PLETHRON
PLETHRON	A measure of length among the Greeks = 1/6 of a stadium = 100 Greek feet=little more than 101 EDglish feet, or 33 yds. 2 ft.
PLINY
PLINY	The elder, Gaius Plinius Secundus. A Roman representative of encyclopaedic learning, born 23 A.D., at Novum Comum (Como), in Upper Italy. Although throughout his life he was almost uninterruptedly occupied in the service of the State, yet at the same time he carried on the most widely extended scientific studies. To these he most laboriously devoted all his leisure hours, and thus gained for himself the reputation of the most learned man of his age. Under Claudius he served as commander of a troop of cavalry (praefectus alae) in Germany; under Vespasian, with whom he was in the highest favour, he held several times the office of imperial governor in the provinces, and superintended the imperial finances in Italy. Finally, under Titus, he was in command of the fleet stationed at Misenum, when in 79, at the celebrated eruption of Vesuvius, his zeal for research led him to his death. For a detailed account of this event, as well as of his literary labours, we have to thank his nephew, the younger Pliny [Ep. iii 5 vi 16]. Besides writings upon military, grammatical, rhetorical, and biographical subjects, he composed two greater historical works: a history of the Germanic wars in twenty books, and a history of his own time in thirty-one books. His last work was the Natural History (Nataralis Historia), in thirty-seven books, which has been preserved to us. This was dedicated to Titus, and was published in 77; but he was indefatigably engaged in amplifying it up to the time of his death. This Encyclopaedia is compiled from 20,000 notices, which he had extracted from about 2,000 writings by 474 authors. Book i gives a list of contents and the names of the authors used. ii is on astronomy and physics. iii-vi, a general sketch of geography and ethnography, mainly a list of names. vii-xix, natural history proper (vii, anthropology; viii-xi, zoology of land and water animals, birds, and insects; xii-xix, botany). xx-xxxii, the pharmacology of the vegetable, kingdom (xx-xxvii) and of the animal kingdom (xxviii-xxxii). xxxiii-xxxvii, mineralogy and the use of minerals in medicine and in painting, sculpture, and the engraving of gems, besides valuable notices upon the history of art. A kind of comparative geography forms the conclusion. Considering the extent and varied character of the undertaking, the haste with which the work was done, the defective technical knowledge and small critical ability of the author, it cannot be surprising that it includes a large number of mistakes and misunderstandings, and that its contents are of very unequal value, details that are strange and wonderful, rather than really important, having often unduly attracted the writer's attention. Nevertheless, the work is a mine of inestimable value in the information it gives us respecting the science and art of the ancient world; and it is also a splendid monument of human industry. Even the unevenness of the style is explained by the mosaic-like character of the work. At one time it is dry and bald in expression; at another, rhetorically coloured and impassioned, especially in the carefully elaborated introductions to the several books. On account of its bulk, the work was in early times epitomized for more convenient use. An epitome of the geographical part of Pliny's Encyclopaedia, belonging to the time of Hadrian, and enlarged by additions from Pomponius Mela, and other authors, forms the foundation of the works of Solinus and Martianus Capella. Similarly the Medicina Plinii is an epitome prepared in the 4th century for the use of travellers.
PLOSTELLUM PAENICUM	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 A threshing-machine used by the Romans. (See THRESHING.)
PLOTINUS	A Greek philosopher, born 205 A.D., at Lycopolis in Egypt. In the 28th year of his life he applied himself to philosophy, and attended the lectures of the most celebrated men of that time in Alexandria. But none of these was able to satisfy him, until in Ammonius Saccas, the founder of Neo-Platonism, he discovered the teacher whom he had sought. With him he stayed for eleven years; then, in 243, he joined the expedition of the emperor Gordian against the Persians, in order to learn the Persian philosophy. In this object he failed, owing to the unsuccessful issue of the undertaking; he was even obliged to flee for his life to Antioch. In 244 he went to Rome, where he worked till 269 with great success, and gained the emperor Gallienus himself and his wife Salonina as converts to his teaching, so that he even dared to conceive the idea of founding an ideal city in Campania, with the approval and support of the emperor: this city was to be called Platonopolis, and its inhabitants were to live according to the laws of Plato. Gallienus was not disinclined to enter into the plan; however, it was wrecked by the opposition of the imperial counsellors. Plotinus died in 270, on the "late of a friend in Campania. With the 50th year of his age he had begun to reduce his teaching to a written form: the fifty-four treatises, which have been preserved to us, were published after his death by his pupil and biographer Porphyry, who revised their style and arranged them in order; they were published in six Enneads (sets of nine books). Plotinus was the first to give a systematic development to the Neo-Platonic doctrine, or, at least, the first to put it forth in writing, not indeed with the charm of the Platonic dialogues, still less with their dialectic force, but nevertheless with depth of thought and in pithy, though at times careless and incorrect, language. It is true that there appears even in him a mystical tendency, especially in his doctrine of the ecstatic elevation of the soul to the divine being, to which he himself (according to the testimony of Porphyry) attained on four occasions; but he is still completely free from the phantastic and superstitious character of the later Neo-Platonism.
PLOUGH	This well-known agricultural implement, according to the story generally current in Greece, was an invention of Demeter, the goddess of agriculture, who taught its use to Triptolemus (q.v.). Originally it was constructed of a strong, hook-shaped piece of timber, whereof the longer end (Gr. histoboeus; Lat. buris) served at once as plough-tail and pole, while the other acted as sharebeam (Gr. elyma; Lat. dentale). This was fitted the the share (Gr. hynis; Lat. vomer), and behind with the upright plough-tail (Gr. echetle; Lat. stiva). At the end of the pole was affixed the yoke, in which the oxen or mules by which it was to be drawn were harnessed (see cuts). Besides the natural hook-shaped plough, we have, as early as Hesiod (8th century B.C.), a notice of the artificially constructed instrument, in which the main parts, the pole, the share-beam, and the plough-stock (gyes) connecting them, were of different sorts of wood [Works and Days, 425-434]. Roman ploughs had also two earth-boards (aures), which served to smooth the furrow [Vergil, Georgic i 172]. The plaustraratrum (wagon-plough) used in Upper Italy was a different kind. In this the plough-stock rested on two low wheels, the pole being let into the axle. [In Pliny, N. H. xviii 172, the MSS have plaumorati d, altered by Hardouin into plaustraratri. Neither word is found elsewhere.]
PLUTARCH	A Greek writer of biographies and miscellaneous works, who was born at Chaeronea in Baetia, about 50 A.D. He came of a distinguished and wealthy family, and enjoyed a careful education. His philosophical training he received at Athens, especially in the school of the Peripatetic Ammonius (of Lamptrae in Attica, who is identified with Ammonius] the Egyptian. After this he made several journeys and stayed a considerable time in Rome, where he gave public lectures on philosophy, was in friendly intercourse with persons of distinction, and conducted the education of the future emperor Hadrian. From Trajan he received consular rank, and by Hadrian he was in his old age named procurator of Greece. He died about 120 in his native town, in which he held the office of archon and of priest of the Pythian Apollo. His fame as an author is founded principally upon his Parallel Lives . These he probably prepared in Rome under the reign of Trajan, but completed and published late in life at Chaeronea. The biographies are divided into connected pairs, each pair placing a Greek and a Roman in juxtaposition, and generally ending with a comparative view of the two; of these we still possess forty-six: Theseus and Romillus, Lycurgus and Numa, Solon and Valerius Publicola, Themistocles and Camillus, Pericles and Fabius Maximus, Alcibiades and Coriolanus, Timoleon and Aemilius Paulus, Pelopidas and Marcellus, Aristides and the elder Cato, Philopaemen and Flamininus, Pyrrhus and Marius, Lysander and Sulla, Cimon and Lucullus, Nicias and Crassus, Eumenes and Sertorius, Agesilaus and Pompeius, Alexander and Caesar, Phocion and the younger Cato, Agis and Cleomenes and the two Gracchi, Demosthenes and Cicero, Demetrius Poliorcetes and Antonius, Dion and Brutus . To these are added the four specially elaborated lives of Artaxerxis Mnenon, Aratus, Galba, and Otho; a number of other biographies are lost. Plutarch's object was, not to write history, but out of more or less important single traits to form distinct sketches of character. The sketches show indeed a certain uniformity, in as much as Plutarch has a propensity to pourtray the persons represented either as models of virtue in general, or as slaves of some passion in particular; but the lives are throughout attractive, owing to the liveliness and warmth of the portraiture, the moral earnestness with which they are penetrated, and the enthusiasm which they display for everything noble and great. For these reasons they have always had a wide circle of readers. More than this, their historical value is not to be meanly estimated, in spite of the lack of criticism in the use of the authorities and the manifold inaccuracies and mistakes, which, in the Roman lives, were in part the result of a defective knowledge of the Latin language. There are a large number of valuable pieces of information in which they fill up numerous gaps in the historical narratives that have been handed down to us. Besides this work, eighty-three writings of various kinds (some of them only fragments and epitomes of larger treatises) are preserved under the name of Plutarch. These are improperly classed together under the title Moralia (ethical writings); for this designation is only applicable to a part of them. The form or these works is as diverse as their tenour and scope: some are treatises and reports of discourses; a large number is composed in the form of Platonic or Aristotelian dialogues; others again are learned collections and notices put together without any special plan of arrangement. A considerable portion of them are of disputable authenticity or have been proved to be spurious. About half are of philosophical and ethical tenour, and have for the most part a popular and practical tendency, some of them being of great value for the history of philosophy, such as the work on the opinions of the philosophers (De Placitis Philosophorum) in five books. Others belong to the domain of religion and worship, such as the works on Isis and Osiris, on the Oracles of the Pythia Priestess, and on the Decay of the Oracles; others to that of the natural sciences, while others again are treatises on history and antiquities, or on the history of literature, such as the Greek and Roman Questions, and the Lives of the Ten Orators. [This last is undoubtedly spurious.) One of most instructive and entertaining of all his works is the Table-talk (Questiones Conviviales) in nine books, which deal inter alia, with a series of questions of history, archaeology, mythology, and physics. But even with these works his literary productiveness was not exhausted; for, besides these, twenty-four lost writings are known to us by their titles and by fragments. In his language he aims at attaining the pure Attic style, without, however, being able altogether to avoid the deviations from that standard which were generally prevalent in his time.
PLUTEUS	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 A pent-house or mantlet used by the Romans in sieges. (For more see SIEGE.)
PLUTEUS	The backboard of a bed, or the raised end of a couch.
PLUTEUS	A dwarf wall or parapet.
PLUTEUS	A bookshelf, bookcase, or desk.]
PLUTO	In Greek mythology, the prince of the underworld Hades (q.v.).
PLUTUS	The Greek personification of riches; born in Crete as the son of Demeter and her beloved Iasion or Iasius, whom Zeus out of jealousy killed with lightning. He was supposed to have been blinded by Zeus, because he distributes his gifts without choice. In Thebes and Athens he was represented as a child on the arm of Tyche and of Eirene (q.v., with cut).
PLYNTERIA	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 A festival at Athens in honour of Athene, goddess of the city. (For more see CALLYNTERIA.)
PNYX	A place at Athens (no longer to be identified with certainty), in which the wqsemblies of the people were held.
PODALIRIUS	Son of Asclepius and Epione. Like his brother Machaon (q.v.), leech to the Greeks before Troy, and a brave warrior besides.
PODARCES	The name of Priam (q.v.) in his youth.
PODARCES	Brother of Proteslaus (q.v.), and after his death commander of his troops.
PODARGE	One of the Harpies (q.v.).
POEAS	King of the Malians at the foot of (Eta. He set light to the pyre of Heracles, in return for which the hero gave him his bow and his poisoned arrows. His son was Philoctetes (q.v.).
POLEMARCH	The third among the Athenian archons (q.v.).
POLEMON	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The Pergetes, the most celebrated of that class of writers (see PERIEGETES). Born in the district of Troas, he afterwards settled at Athens, where he was presented with the citizenship, about 200 B.C. He there worked up the material which he had collected from inscriptions, dedications, and public monuments of all kinds, into a number of works (inter alia, on Athens, and on the holy road from Athens to Eleusis), which in succeeding times were much quoted and highly valued as a mine of archaeological facts, and of important points connected with the history of art. The fragments which are preserved enable us to recognise him as a well-read author.
POLETAE	A financial board at Athens, composed of ten members chosen yearly from the tribes by lot. Their chief duties were the leasing of the public taxes and the selling of confiscated goods. [Aristotle, On the Constitution of Athens, 47.]
POLIAS	A Special name of Athene (q.v.) in many Greek cities, but particularly at Athens.
POLLUX	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 See Dioscuri.
POLLUX	Julius Pollux. A Greek rhetorician, a native of Naucratis in Egypt, in the latter half of the 2nd century A.D.., tutor of the emperor Commodus, from whom he received an appointment as a public teacher in Athens. His contemporaries, such as Lucian, ridiculed him for his small capacity. [Lucian is supposed to have attacked him in his Rhetorum Praeceptor, his Lexiphanes, and his De Saltatione, chap. 33.] We possess from his hand a dictionary in ten books dedicated to his pupil. This is arranged, not in the order of the alphabet, but according to subjects. In spite of all its confusion, and its want of critical acumen, it throws much light on the language, literature, and antiquities of Greece.
POLYAENUS	A Greek writer, born in Macedonia, lived in the middle of the 2nd century A.D., as a rhetorician and advocate at Rome, under Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus. When the latter was setting out for the war against the Parthians in 162, Polyaenus, beings prevented by his age from taking part in the campaign, addressed to him a collection of military stratagems compiled from old writers, under the title Strategica, or Strategemata, in eight books. In spite of many serious errors, this laborious and copious collection is not withoutvalue for purposes of historical research.
POLYBIUS	One of the most important Greek historians, born about 204 B.C.. at Megalopolis; the son of Lycortas, general of the Achaean League in 185-4 and after 183. Through his father, and his father's friend Philopaemen, he early acquired a deep insight into military and political affairs, and was afterwards entrusted with high federal offices, such as the commandership of the cavalry, the highest position next to the federal generalship. In this capacity he directed his efforts towards maintaining the independence of the Achaean League. As chief representative of the policy of neutrality during the war of the Romans against Perseus of Macedonia, he attracted the suspicion of the Romans, and was one of the 1,000 noble Achaeaus who in 166 were transported to Rome as hostages, and detained there for seventeen years. In Rome, by virtue of his high culture, he was admitted to the most distinguished houses, in particular to that of Aemillus Paulus, the conqueror in the Macedonian War, who entrusted him with the education of his sons, Fabius and the younger Scipio. He was on terms of the most cordial friendship with the latter, whose counsellor he became. Through Scipio's intercession in 160, Polybius obtained leave to return to his home with those of the Achaeans who still survived. But, in the very next year, he went with his friend to Africa, and was present at the capture of Carthage, 146 B.C. After the destruction of Corinth in the same year, he returned to his native land, and made use of his credit with the Romans to lighten, as far as he could, the lot of his unfortunate countrymen. When Greece was converted into a Roman province, he was entrusted with the difficult task of organizing the new form of government in the Greek towns, and in this office gained for himself the highest recognition both from the conquerors and from the conquered, the latter rewarding his services by setting up statues to him, and by other marks of honour. (Polybius, Epitome, xl 10; Pausanias, viii 9, 30, 37, 44, 48. The pedestal of such a statue has been discovered at Olympia.) The succeeding years he seems to have spent in Rome, engaged on the completion of his historical work, and occasionally undertaking long journeys through the Mediterranean countries in the interests of his history, more particularly with a view to obtaining actual ocular knowledge of historical sites. After the death of his patron, he returned to Greece, and died in 122, at the age of eighty-two, in consequence of a fall from his horse. During his long sojourn in Rome, his study of the history and constitution of Rome, as well as his personal experiences, inspired him with the conviction, that the Roman people owed the magnificent development of their power, not to fortune, but to their own fitness, and to the excellence of their political and military institutions, as compared with those of other States, and that therefore their rapid rise to world-wide dominion had been in some measure an historical necessity. In order to enlighten his countrymen on this point, and thereby to supply them with a certain consolation for their fate, he composed his Universal History of the period between 220 and 146 B.C., in forty books. Of these the first two are in the form of an Introduction, and give a compendium of events in Italy, Africa, and Greece, from the destruction of Rome by the Gauls to the first Punic War, thus recording the rise of the Roman supremacy. The first main division (books iii-xxx) contained in synchronistic arrangement the occurrences from 220 to 168; that is, of the time in which Rome was founding its world-wide dominion through the Hannibalic, Macedonian, Syrian, and Spanish wars. The second (books xxxi-xl) described vthe maintenance and consolidation of this dominion against the attempts to overthrow it in the years 168-146. Of this work only books i-v have been preserved in a complete form; of the rest we possess merely fragments and epitomes. This is especially to be regretted in those parts in which Polybius narrates events which came within his own experience. He is the first representative of that particular type of historical composition, which does not merely recount the several facts and phenomena in chronological order, but goes back to the causes of events, and sets forth their results. His work rests upon a knowledge of the art of war and of politics, such as few ancient historians possessed; upon a careful examination of tradition, conducted with keen criticism; partly also upon what he had himself seen, and upon the communications of eye-witnesses and actors in the events. It sets forth the course of occurrences with clearness, penetration, sound judgment, and love of truth, and, among the circumstances affecting the result, lays especial stress on the geographical conditions. It belongs therefore to the greatest productions of ancient historical writing, though, in respect to language and style, it does not attain the standard of Attic prose. The language is often wanting in purity, and the style stiff and inharmonious.
POLYBUS	King of Corinth, foster-father of (Edipus (q.v.).
POLYCHROMY	The ancient practice of colouriug pieces of sculpture, as well as certain portions of the exterior and interior of buildings. (See SCULPTURE</smallCaps, at end.)
POLYCLITUS
POLYDECTES	Son of Magnes, king of the island of Seriphus; attempted to compel Danae to marry him, but was turned into a stone by her son Perseus (q.v. ) by the sight of the head of Medusa.
POLYDEUCES	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 See DIOSCURI.
POLYDORUS	A Greek sculptor, of the school of Rhodes, author (in conjunction with Agesander and Athenodorus) of the celebrated group of Laocoon (q.v.).
POLYDORUS	Youngest son of Priam and of Laothoe, his father's favourite son. He was killed while yet a boy by Achilles. The tragedians make him the son of Priam and Hecuba, who, before the fall of Troy, committed him with many treasures to the care of their guest-friend, the Thracian king Polymestor (or Polymnestor). After the capture of Troy Polymestor puts the boy to death, in order to get possession of the gold, and throws the body into the sea. The waves cast it up on the Trojan shore, and here Hecuba finds it, just as Polyxena is on the point of being sacrificed. Out of revenge she, with the help of the captive Trojan women, kills the two children of the murderer, and blinds Polymestor himself. According to another version, Ilione, Priam's daughter and Polymestor's wife, brings up the brother, who has been committed to her charge, as her own son, while she gives up her child Delphilus (or Delpylus) instead of Polydorus. The Greeks, who wish to exterminate the race of Priam, win over Polymestor by promising him the hand of Electra and a large present of money in return for the murder of Polydorns. Polymestor then murders his own son, and is blinded and killed by Ilione.
POLYDORUS	Son of Cadmus and Harmonia, father of Labdacus, and great-grandfather of CEdipfis.
POLYGNOTUS
POLYHYMNIA	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The Muse of serious songs of adoration. (See MUSES.)
POLYIDUS	Son of Coeranus, grandson of Abas, great-grandson of Melampus, father of Euchenor, Astycratia, and Manto; like his ancestor, a celebrated seer, who flourished, according to different accounts, either at Corinth or Argos or Megara. To his son he prophesied his death before Troy; and the son of Minos, Glaucus (q.v., 2), he raised from the dead. At Megara he cleansed Alcathous from the murder of his son Callipolis, and erected the temple of Dionysus.
POLYMESTOR	A Thracian king. He murdered Polydorus, the son of Priam, who had been entrusted to his protection, and was blinded by Hecuba and the captive Trojan women. (Cp.POLYDORUS.)
POLYNICES	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 Son of (Epidus and Iocaste, was driven out of Thebes by his brother Eteocles (see CEDIPUS), and fled to Adrastus (q.v.) of Argos, who gave him his daughter Argia in marriage, and brought about the expedition of the Seven against Thebes in order to restore him. He fell in single combat with Eteocles. His body, which had been thrown to the birds, was buried by his sister Antigone (q.v.). His son was Thersander (q.v.).
POLYPHEMUS	Son of Poseidon and the Nymph Thoosa; the one-eyed Cyclops, who held Odysseus prisoner in his cave and ate several of the companions, until the hero made him drunk and blinded him. Later legends made him the lover of the beautiful Nymph Galatea.
POLYXENA	Daughter of Priam and Hecuba, the betrothed of Achilles, who, at his wedding with her in the temple of the Thymbraean Apollo, was killed by Paris. After the fall of Troy the shade of Achilles demanded the expiation of his death with her blood, and she was sacrificed on his funeral pyre.
POMERIUM	A name given by the Romans to the space, originally along the city-wall within and without, which was left vacant and reckoned holy. This space was marked off by stones, and in respect to the auspices formed the limit between city and country. [See Livy, i 44, and Cicero, De Natura Deorum ii 11, ed. J. B. Mayor.) The old Pomerium remained unchanged until the time of Sulla; after him it was again extended by Caesar, Augustus, Claudius, Nero, Vespasian and Titus, Hadrian, and probably also Trajan and Aurelian. An extension of the Pomerium was only admissible on the ground of an extensionof the legal boundaries of the Empire. [Tacitus, Ann. xii 23.]
POMONA	The Latin goddess of fruit trees, who in Rome bad a flamen of her own (Pomonalis). Like Vertumnus, who was regarded as her husband, she was particularly honoured in the country. Art represents her as a fair damsel, with fruits in her bosom, and the pruning-knife in her hand.
POMPELUS TROGUS	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 A contemporary of Livy, author of the first Roman general history. He was of Gaulish origin; his grandfather received the Roman citizenship from Pompeius in the Sertorian War, and his father served under Caesar, and discharged at the same time the offices of a secretary, an ambassador, and a keeper of the seals. His extensive work in 44 books was drawn from Greek sources, and was entitled Historioe Philippicoe, because the history of the various peoples was grouped round the Macedonian e founded by Philip; it began with Ninus, and reached down to his own time. With the historical narrative there were interwoven interesting descriptions relating to geography, ethnography, and natural science; and indeed he is said to have also composed zoological and botanical works. Of the histories we now possess only lists of the contents of the several books (called the prologi) and the epitome of Justin. (See JUSTINUS.)
POMPONIUS	Sextus Pomponius. A distinguished jurist of the first half of the 2nd century A.D. He composed, among other works, a history of law and jurisprudence down to the time of Hadrian, which is frequently quoted in the Digest.
POMPONIUS	Pomponius Mela. A native of Tingentera in Spain. He composed a description of the world in three books (De Choarographia), the earliest work of this kind which we possess, and the only special work on the subject, which Roman literature has to show. According to a notice in the book [iii 49], it was written either in 40 A.D., when Caligula triumphed over the Britons, or in 44, when Claudius did the same. The author's information does not rest upon personal inspection, but it is drawn from good, though mostly antiquated, Greek sources. Writing in a brief and concise style, he describes in the form of a coasting-voyage, with North Africa for its starting-point, the various countries of the then known world in geographical order, until he comes back by way of Western Africa to the point from which he set out. His language bears the rhetorical character of his time.
POMPONIUS	Pomponius Porphyrio. Roman grammarian, who lived in the first half of the 2nd century A.D., and composed a commentary on Horace, a fragmentary abridgment of which is still preserved.
POMPONIUS	Titus Pomponius Atticus. SeeATTICUS.
POMPONIUS
POMPONIUS
PONTIFEX	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 A member of the highest priestly college in Rome, to which belonged the superintendence over all sacred observances, whether performed by the State or by private persons. The meaning of the name is uncertain; the interpretation which follows most obviously from the form of the word, that of "bridge-builder," referred in particular to the sacred bridge on piles (pons sublicius) over the Tiber, is open to many objections. 1 The foundation of the college is ascribed to Numa; at first it probably consisted of six patrician members, with the addition of the king, whose place, after the abolition of the Monarchy, was transferred to the pontifex maximus (high-pontiff); from 300 B.C. it was composed of nine members (4 patrician and 6 plebeian), from the time of Sulla of fifteen (7 patrician and 8 plebeian); Caesar added another member; and the emperors also raised the number at their pleasure. The office was for life, us was also that of the president. While, in the time of the Monarchy, the pontiffs were probably named by the king, under the Republic the college for a long time filled up its own numbers by co-optation, and also appointed the high-pontiff from among its members. From somewhere about 250 B.C. the election of the latter took place in the comitia of the tribes under the presidency of a pontiff, and, from 103 B.C., the other members were also elected in the comitia out of a fixed number of candidates presented by the college. Under the Empire a preliminary election was held by the Senate, and merely confirmed by the comitia. Besides the pontiffs proper, there were also included in the college the rex sacrorum, the three higher flamens and the three pontifices minores, who assisted the pontiffs in transactions relating to sacrifices and in their official business, besides sharing in the deliberations and the banquets of the whole college: these ranked according to length of service. In the earlier time an advanced age, with freedom from secular offices, was necessary for eligibility to the pontificate; the high-pontiff, among other restrictions, was not allowed to leave Italy, was obliged to have a wife without reproach, and might not enter upon a second marriage or see a dead body, much less touch one. As regards his position, he was, as spiritual successor of the king, the sole holder and exerciser of the pontifical power; and his official dwelling was in the king's house, the regia of Numa adjoining the Forum, the seat of the oldest State worship. The college existed by his side only as a deliberative and executive body of personal assistants. He appointed to the most important priestly offices of the State, those of flamen, of vestal, and of rex sacrorum; he made public the authoritative decisions of the college. In matters which came within the limits of his official action, he had the right of taking: auspices, of holding assemblies of the people, and of publishing edicts. He also exercised a certain jurisdiction over the persons subject to his high-priestly power, especially the flamens and Vestals, over whom his authority was that of an actual father. Owing to the great importance of the office, the emperors from the time of Augustus undertook it themselves, and retained it, even in Christian times, until the year 382. As regards the functions of the college, besides performing a number of special sacrifices in the service of the household gods, they exercised (as already mentioned) a superintendence over the whole domain of the religious services recognised by the State, public and private. In all doubts which arose concerning the religious obligations of the State towards the gods, or concerning the form of any religious offices which were to be undertaken, their opinion was asked by the Senate and by the other secular bodies, who were obliged unhesitatingly to follow it. In the various religious transactions, expiatory offerings, vows, dedications, consecrations, solemn appropriations, undertaken on behalf of the State, their assistance was invited by the official bodies, in order that they might provide for the correct performance, especially by dictating the prayers. The knowledge of the various rites was handed down by the libri pontificii, which were preserved in the official dwelling of the high-pontiff and kept secret. These included the forms of prayer, the rules of ritual for the performance of ceremonial observances, the acta pontificum, i.e. the records relating to the official actions of the college, and the commentarii pontificum, i.e. the collection of opinions delivered, to which they were as a rule obliged to have recourse when giving new ones. An important and indeed universal influence was exercised by the pontiffs, not only on religious, but also on civic life, by means of the regulation of the calendar, which was assigned to them as possessing technical knowledge of the subject; and by means of their superintendence over the observance of the holidays. Owing to the character of the Roman reckoning of the year, it was necessary from time to time to intercalate certain days, with a view to bringing the calendar into agreement with the actual seasons to which the festivals were originally attached; and special technical knowledge was needed, in order to be sure on what day the festivals fell. This technical knowledge was kept secret by the pontiffs as being a means of power. It was for the month actually current that they gave information to the people as to the distribution of the days, the festivals falling within the month, and the lawful and unlawful days (fasti and nefasti, q.v. for civil and legal transactions. In 304 B.C. the calendar of the months was made public by Gnaeus Flavius; but the pontiffs still retained the right of regulating the year by intercalations, and thereby the power of furthering or hindering the aims of parties and individuals by arbitrary insertion of intercalary months. This they kept until the final regulation of the year introduced by Caesar as high-pontiff in 46 B.C. Closely connected with the superintendence of the calendar was the keeping of the lists of the yearly magistrates, especially of the consuls, since it was by their names that the years were dated, as well as the keeping of the yearly chronicle. (See ANNALS.) As experts in the law of ritual, the pontiffs had the superintendence over many transactions of private life, so far as ceremonial questions were connected with them, such as the conclusion of marriages, adoption by means of arrogation, and burial. Even upon the civil law they had originally great influence, inasmuch as they alone were in traditional possession of the solemn legal formuloe, known as the legis actiones, which were necessary for every legal transaction, including lawsuits. They even gave legal opinions, which obtained recognition in the courts as customary law, by the side of the written law, and grew into a second authoritative source of Roman law. Until the establishment of the praetorship (866 <smalCaps>B.C.), a member of the college was appointed every year to impart information to private persons concerning the legal forms connected with the formulating of plaints and other legal business. The legis actiones were made public for the first time by the above-mentioned Flavius at the same time as the calendar. (See JURISPRUDENCE.)
PONTIUS	A special name of the sea-god Glaucus (q.v.).
PONTUS	The sea, son of Gaea, and, by her again, father of Nereus, Thaumas, Phoreys, Ceto, and Euryba.
POPINAE	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 Roman cook-shops. (See INNS.)
POPLIFUGIA	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The festival of the flight of the people. (See CAPROTINA.)
PORFIRIUS OPTATIANUS	A Latin poet he composed, about 330 A.D., a series of poems in praise of Constantine, constructed in a highly artificial manner. [All the lines in each poem contain exactly the same number of letters.] By this composition he obtained his recall from banishment and won the favour of the emperor. The commendatory letter of Constantine, as well as the thanks of the poet, have come down to us with the poem.
PORPHYRION	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 One of the Giants. (See GIGANTES.)
PORPHYRION	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 See POMPONIUS (6).
PORPHYRY	A Greek scholar and philosopher; in the latter capacity a votary of Neoplatonism. He was born 233 A.D. at Batamea in Syria, and received his education at Tyre, and afterwards studied grammar, rhetoric, and philosophy at Athens with Longinus, who instead of his Syrian name Malehus ("king"), gave him the Greek name Porphyrios ("clad in royal purple"). The fame of the Neoplatonist Plotinus drew him in 263 to Rome, where, after some initial opposition, he for six years enthusiastically devoted himself to the study of the Neoplatonic philosophy. Being attacked by a dangerous Mucholy, the result of overwork, he went, on the advice of Plotinus, to Sicily, whence after five years he returned to Rome, strengthened in mind and body. Here, until his death (304), he taught philosophy in the spirit of Plotinus, especially by bringing the teaching of his master within the reach of general knowledge by his clear and attractive exposition. His most important scholar was Iamblichus. A man of varied culture, Porphyry was particularly prolific as an author in the domain of philosophy, grammar, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, and music; however, most of his works, including the most important, are lost, among them a treatise against the Christians in fifteen books, which was publicly burned under Theodosius II (435). We have to lament the loss of his history of Greek philosophy before Plato in four books, of which we now possess only the (certainly uncritical) Life of Pythagords, and that not complete. Besides this there are preserved a Life of Plotinus ; a Compendium of the System of Plotinus, in the form of aphorisms; a work on abstaining from animal food (De Abstinentia) in four books, from the Pythagorean point of view, valuable for its fulness of information on philosophy, and on the religions, forms of ritual, and customs of various peoples; an Introduction to the Categories of Aristotle, and a commentary on the same, in the form of questions and answers; a compendium of his own practical philosophy in the form of a Letter to Marcella, a widow without property, and with seven children, whom Plotinus married in his old age on account of her enthusiasm for philosophy; Scholia on Homer, discussions on a number of Homeric questions, an allegorical interpretation of the Homeric story of the grotto of the Nymphs in the Odyssey; and a Commentary on the Harmonics of Ptolemy.
PORTICUS	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The Roman name for a colonnade. (See STOA.)
PORTORIUM	The custom levied by the Romans upon imports and exports; it was introduced as early as the time of the kings, and was generally leased to publicani (q.v.). In 60 B.C. it was abolished for Italy, but was re-introduced by Caesar for foreign goods, and after that time always continued to exist. Free and allied cities were, in earlier times, allowed to levy the customs for their own territory, but from these Romans were to be exempt. Under the emperors customs were levied not only at the frontier of the Empire, but also at the frontiers of the several provinces or of combinations of provinces united in one excise-district. Besides this the percentage levied on the purchasing price of articles was different in different districts. The export of many articles was forbidden, especially of corn, oil, wine, salt, iron, and gold.
PORTUNUS	The Roman god of harbours. 1 Like Janus, the god of coming in and going out, he was represented with a key, and was perhaps only a personification of one attribute of Janus. He bad a special flamen in Rome (Portunalis), and at the harbour on the Tiber he had a temple, where a festival, the Portunalia, was held in his honour every year on August 17th. In later times he was identified with the Greek Palaemon.
POSEIDIPPUS	One of the most eminent poets of the New Comedy, a native of Cassandrea in Macedonia. He began to exhibit for the first time in the third year after the death of Menander, or in B.C.289. Of his pieces, as many as forty are mentioned by name, but only fragments of them are preserved. It was probably in imitation of one of these that the Menaechmi of Plautus was written.
POSEIDON
POSEIDONIUS
POSSESSIO	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The Roman term for the de facto possession of an article without actual proprietary right (dominium). The name was given in particular to those lands, properly belonging to the State, which were taken into by what was called occupatio. For more see AGER PUBLICUS.
POSTAL SERVICE	Under the Roman Empire a postal service proper was first formed in the time of Augustus. This, however, was not intended for the use of the public, but served only for the conveyance of magistrates and of government despatches; just as the great network of roads, with which the Romans covered the whole empire, was laid down, not for the purposes of traffic, but in the first instance for the transport of the armies and of the materials of war. Under the Republic the correspondence of officials was carried as a rule by special messengers; the conveyance of the officials themselves was laid upon the provincials, who were bound to provide relays of horses and supplies. Augustus instituted a State post (cursus publicus) with a military organization, which conveyed the official despatches from station to station by means of couriers. For the conveyance of the magistrates stations were instituted, with changes of horses (mutationes) and with night-quarters (mansiones). Private persons were allowed to use the State posts only by special permission on the part of the governors, afterwards of the emperor, and upon definite orders given [diplomata: Pliny, Ep. x, the last two letters]. The cost of the posting-houses was made a charge upon the several localities, though occasionally the emperors undertook the provision of draught-animals and carriages. Besides the horse they rode, the couriers had a spare horse to carry, the letter bags. Passengers were conveyed in carriages called redae, drawn by horses and mules; while goods were forwarded on vans, which were drawn by oxen. Besides this, vessels were stationed at various points on the rivers to carry letters, passengers, and goods, just as there was postal communication over sea, especially from Ostia, the port of Rome, outwards, to the islands and chief ports of the Mediterranean.
POTHOS	The Greek personification of amorous longing, an attendant of Eros (q.v.).
POTTERY	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The simplest, and at the same time one of the oldest, branches of the primeval art of working in clay is the manufacture of bricks and tiles, the invention of which (at Athens) was ascribed by the Greeks to the mythical personages Euryalus and Hyperbius [Pliny, H. N. vii 194]. So far as bricks were used at all, their use was generally confined to private buildings; and Greeks and Romans for ages employed only unbaked or sun-dried bricks. Bricks baked in the kiln came into use at a later date. The first to employ them extensively were the Romans, probably at the period when the population of the city rendered it necessary to build houses of several stories, which demanded a more solid material. In imperial times such bricks were the common material for private and public buildings. The walls were built of them, and then overlaid with stucco or marble. Building with baked bricks extended from Rome into Greece, and, generally speaking, wherever the Romans carried their arms, they introduced their exceptional aptitude for making excellent bricks. Bricks which presented flat surfaces, to be used for walls or pavements, were made of the most various dimensions, but were for the mostpart thinner than ours. Besides these, there were also rounded bricks for bujlding dwarf column, and for the construction of circular walls. For roofs flat tiles were chiefly used (Lat. tegula), which were provided with a raised rim on both of their longer sides, and were so formed that the upper fitted into the lower. Concave tiles also were used (Lat. imbrex) of the form of a half cylinder, which covered the adjoining edges of the flat tiles. The lowest row was commonly finished off with ornamental moulding. From the same material as bricks were also made pipes for conveying water, for sewers, and for warm air; the section in the first two cases was round, in the last, square. Pottery in its proper sense, the manufacture of utensils, is very old. The potter's wheel was known even before Homer's time [IL. xviii 600]. Its invention was variously ascribed to the Corinthian Hyperbius [Pliny vii 198] and to the Athenian Talus, nephew of Daedalus. Corinth and Athens, where the neighbouring promontory of Colias furnished an inexhaustible supply of fine potter's clay, were, in fact, the headquarters of the manufacture of Greek pottery. Next came Aegina, Samos, Lacedaemon, and other places in Greece itself, which always remained the principal seat of this manufacture, especially in the form of vases of painted clay. These were exported in large numbers to the countries on the Mediterranean and Black Seas. The high estimation in which Greek, and especially Attic, pottery was held is proved by the numerous vases which have been discovered in tombs, chiefly in Italy. More-over they represent almost every period. The excellence of the workmanship lies in the material, which is very fine, and prepared with the utmost care; also in the execution and in the baking. Its thinness, as well as the hardness of its sides, even in vessels of large dimensions, astonishes experts in such matters. The shapes are mostly produced by the potter's wheel, but also by hand in the case of vessels too large to be conveniently placed on the wheel; for example, the largest wine-jars. [The prehistoric pottery from Mycenaene, the Troad, and other Hellenic sites, was-also made by hand.] Whereas small vessels were made of a single piece, in the case of large ones the body, handles, feet, and neck, were fashioned separately, and then united. They were first dried in the sun, then twice baked, before and after the painting. The colours are No less admirable than the workmanship. The clay shows a beautiful bright reddish yellow, which is produced by the addition of colouring matter, and is also further intensified by a thin coating of glaze. The black colour, which often verges upon green, and is of a brilliant lustre, is then applied. Either (1) the design stands out black against the bright background or (2) the figures appear in red on a black ground, the former being the earlier method. Other colours, especially white or dark-red, were applied after the black glaze had been burnt into the clay by the second baking, and served as a less lasting adornment. In later times yellow, green, blue, brown, and gold were also used. [In the case of vases with black figures, the vase was first turned on the wheel, and in order to give it a surface of deeper red: clay finely ground and mixed with water to the consistency of cream, technically known as "slip," was applied by a brush or other wise while it was still revolving. The outline of the design was next roughly sketched, either witho . nt or in light-red ochre with a brush. The vase was then dried in the sun, and again put on the wheel, and the glaze, finely powdered and mixed with water was applied to it with a brush as it revolved. The vase was then in some cases fired for the first time in the kiln in order to provide a smooth, almost non-absorbent surface for the use of the painter. The painter then put on the black enamel figures and ornaments with a brush. After the firing of the enamel, the details were drawn in by incised lines, cutting through the enamel down to the clay body of the vase. In vases with red figures instead of the figures being painted in black, the ground is covered with black enamel and the figures left, showing the glazed red "slip" which covers the whole vase. This method produced a great artistic advance in the beauty of the figures, the details and inner lines of which could be executed with freedom and ease by brush-marked lines, instead of by the laborious process of cutting incised lines through the very hard black enamel (Prof. Middleton on "Pottery" in Encyc. Brit. xix 608, 609).] Lastly, the form deserves all praise. The vases of the best period present the most tasteful elegance of form, that is at once fine and strong, and the most delicate proportion of the various parts to each other and to the whole, without interfering with their practical utility (see cuts under VASES and VESSELS). It was not until the times when taste had begun to degenerate that the fashion was introduced of giving to clay ware, by means of moulds, all kinds of grotesque forms of men and beasts, and of furnishing them with plastic (as well as painted) ornamentation. [The technique of ancient pottery is illustrated by figs. 1 and 2. The first represents a youth seated in front of an oven, from the top of which he takes with two sticks a small, two-handled vase which has been newly glazed. The second shows the potter giving the last polish to a finished vase, while two other vessels are standing to dry on an oven, the door of which is closed (Guhl and Koner's Life of the Greeks and Romans, p. 141, Eng. ed.). Among the votive tablets in the Louvre there are two from Corinth, The first of these represents an early Greek type of kiln, which is domed over, and has a space for the fuel on one side, and a door in the side of the upper chamber, through which the pottery could be put in and withdrawn. The second shows a potter applying painted bands while the vessel revolves on the wheel (Prof. Middleton, l.c., figs. 3 and 20). See also VASES.] The ROMANS, with whom, as early as the time of the second king, Numa, a guild (collegium) of potters existed, neither had vessels of painted clay amongst their household goods, nor did they employ it for the ornamentation of their graves. In earlier times at least, they used only coarse and entirely unornamented ware. They imported artistically executed vases from their neighbours, the Etruscans. In the last hundred years of the Republic, as well as in the first hundred years after Christ, the chief place for the manufacture of the red crockery generally used in households was Arretium (Arezzo) [Pliny, xxxv 160; Martial, i 54, 6, xiv 98; Dennis, Etruria, ii 335]. The ware of this place was distinguished by a coral-red colour, and was generally furnished with glaze and delicate reliefs; in fact, ornamentation in relief was widely employed in later Roman pottery. Very much valued was the domestic ware, called vasa Samia, which was an imitation of the earlier pottery brought from the island of Samos. It was formed of fine, red-coloured clay, baked very hard, of thin make, and very delicate workmanship. It was glazed and generally adorned with reliefs, and served especially for the table use of respectable people who could not afford silver. While this fine ware was made by hand, the manufacture of ordinary pottery as well as of bricks and pipes, especially under the Empire, formed an important industry among capitalists, who, on finding good clay on their estates, built potteries and tileworks, and either worked them on their own account through slaves or had them carried on by lessees. The emperor himself, after the time of Tiberius, and the members of the imperial family, especially the females, pursued a similar trade, as is shown by the trade-mark which, according to Roman custom, was borne by clay manufactures. The production of large statues of clay, apart from the purpose of modelling, belongs amongst the Greeks to the early times. It continued much longer amongst the Italians, especially amongst the Etruscans, who furnished the temple at Rome with clay images of the gods before the victorious campaigns in the East brought marble and bronze productions of Greek art to Rome. On the other hand, throughout the whole of antiquity, the manufacture of small clay figures of very various kinds, for the decoration of dwellings and graves, and for playthings for children, etc., was most extensively practised. They were generally made in moulds, and after baking were decorated with a coating of colour. The excellence which Greek art attained in this department, as in others, is shown by the "figurines" discovered at Tanagra in and after 1874, specimens of which are given in figs. 3, 4. Very important too was the manufacture of clay reliefs, partly with figured representation and partly with arabesque patterns, for the embellishment of columns, windows, cornices, and also of tombstones and sarcophagi. (See Dumont and Chaplain, Ceramiques, 1888: Kekule, Thonfiguren aus Tanagra, 1878, Die antiken Terracotten, 1880, and Die Terracotten von Sicilien, 1884; Henzey, Catalogue des figurines antiques de terre cuite du Musee du Louvre, 1882, id. 60 plates, 1883; and the popular work by Pottier, Les Statuettes de Terre Cuite dans L'Antiquite, 1880.)
PRAECO	The Latin term for a public crier, such as those who were employed in private life, especially at auctions. Their profession was eminently lucrative, but was not considered at all respectable. Similarly those employed by the State ranked as the most insignificant of its paid servants (see APPARITOR). Their duties were to summon the meetings of the people and the Senate, to command silence, to proclaim aloud the proposals under consideration, to announce the result of the individual votes, and also the final result; in legal proceedings, to cite the parties to the case, their counsel, and witnesses, to announce the close of the proceedings, and the jury's dismissal; to invite the people to funeral feasts and to games, and to assist at public auctions and other sales, etc., etc. Consuls, praetors, and censors had three decuries of such attendants; quaestors, and probably also tribunes and aediles, one. They also attended on extraordinary magistrates and on governors of provinces.
PRAEFECTURA	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 An Italian township possessing no jurisdiction of its own, but having a prefect to administer justice (praefectus iure dicundo) sent to it every year, generally on the nomination of the praetor urbanus. When all Italian towns received full citizen rights, 90 B.C., these towns among the rest became munipia (see MUNICIPIUM ), and retained the old name merely as a tradition.
PRAEFECTUS	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The title given by the Romans to officials of many kinds, who were all however appointed, not elected. Thus, under the Republic, praefecti iure dicundo was the name of those who were appointed by the praetor to administer justice in those Italian communities which were called praefecturae (q.v.); even later these townships retained the name for the judges elected by themselves. In the republican armies the six Roman officers appointed by the consuls to command the contingents sent by the Italian allies to the consular armies were called praefecti socium (officers in command of the allies), while their cohorts were led by native praefecti cohortium. In the times of the Empire these titles were borne by the commanders of the auxiliary cohorts, while the officers of the cavalry divisions were praefecti equitum. Military engineering was tinder the direction of a praefectus fabrum (pioneers); the several fleets of the Empire under a praefectus classis (see SHIPS). Praefectus castrorum (camp-commander) was the name, under the Empire, of the commander in the permanent camps of the legions, usually a centurion who had completed his term of service. His chief functions were, in time of peace, to superintend garrison-service (i.e. to distribute the watches and other duties); in war, the arrangement and supervision of the camp, the transportation of the baggage, and the construction of roads, bridges, and entrenchments. This title of praefectus was also given to the knight who commanded the legions stationed in Egypt; while an imperial governor called praefectus Aegypti, administered that country, which was treated as an imperial domain, and outside the general provincial administration. At a later time each legion had upon its staff of officers its own commander of the camp, styled praefectus Legiones, to whom in 3 A.D. even the command of the legion was transferred. Praefectus vigilum was the commander of the cohorts organized by Augustus to make Rome secure by night. A very high and influential office under the Empire was thatof the praefectus praetorio, the commander of the imperial guard (see PRAeTORIANI). Originally a purely military office, it acquired in process of time an ever-increasing importance. It had attached to it the control of affairs in the emperor's absence, criminal jurisdiction over Italians outside Rome, and the like. Sometimes ambitious men contrived to employ this position to obtain for themselves the real power in the State, and raised whom they pleased to the imperial throne, sometimes ascending it themselves. After the praetorians were disbanded by Constantine in 324, the four who were then praefecti praetorio were made governors of the four praefecturae into which that emperor divided his dominions. Another important office under the Empire was that of the praefectus urbi (city prefect). Such an office had existed in the time of the kings and in the early years of the Republic, to supply the place of the king or the consuls when absent. When the latter came to be represented by the praetors, it was only during the feriae Latinae (at which festival all magistrates were present) that a praefectus urbi Latinarum was appointed. Augustus revived it in its old form. On several occasions he appointed a praefectus urbi during his absence from the city. The city prefecture first became a standing office for the maintenance of public order in Rome after Tiberius. Subsequently the praefectus urbi (whose authority extended a hundred miles from Rome, and who had three city cohorts to assist him) exercised, together with the police authority enforced at an earlier period by the aediles, a correlated criminal jurisdiction, which in course of time expanded so much that the city prefecture became the highest criminal authority at Rome. After the transfer of the seat of empire to Byzantium, the praeefectus urbi united in himself the military, administrative, and judicial powers in what was once the capital, and was now formed into a separate district for purposes of administration. One of the most important offices under the Empire was that of the praefectus annonae (corn-supply, see ANNONA), whose duty it was to provide Rome with the necessary corn, and whose countless subalterns were distributed over the whole Empire. For the praefectus aerarii (State chest) see AeRARIUM.
PRAETEXTA OR PRAETEXTATA	A class of Roman tragedies, which found its materials, not in the Greek myths, but, in the absence of native legendary heroes, in ancient and contemporary Roman history. The name was derived from the fact that the heroes wore the national dress, the toga praetexta, the official garb, edged with purple, of the Roman magistrates. Naevius introduced them, and, following his example, the chief representatives of tragic art under the Republic, Ennius, Pacuvius, and Accius, composed, in addition to tragedies imitated from Greek originals, independent plays of this kind, which were however cast in the form they had borrowed from the Greeks. We also hear of some plays of this class written by poets of imperial times. The solitary example preserved to us is the tragedy of Octavia, wrongly ascribed to Seneca (q.v.), which perhaps may date from 1 A.D. (Cp. TOGATA.)
PRAETOR	Originally a title of the Roman consuls, but afterwards used to denote that magistrate to whom the administration of justice in Rome was transferred when the consulship, to which this power had hitherto been attached, was thrown open to the commons in 366 B.C. At first reserved for the patricians, it became a plebeian office as early as 337. The praetor was elected in the comitia centuriata, with one of the consuls presiding, on the same day and with the same auspices as the consuls, who entered on their office simultaneously with him. On account of the increase in legal business, a second praetor was appointed in 242, to whom was transferred the hearing of cases between citizens and foreigners (inter cives et peregrinos), and between foreigners (inter peregrinos), while the other decided between citizens. The latter, who ranked first, was called praetor urbanus (city praetor); the former, praetor inter peregrinos, and (after the time or Vespasian) praetor peregrinus. The praetors had their respective departments determined by lot after their election. While the praetor peregrinus might have a military command also entrusted to him, the city praetor, on account of the importance of his office, might not be absent from Rome, strictly speaking, for longer than ten days. He represented his absent colleague, and also the consuls in their absence, presiding, as the highest magistrate present, at the public games, watching over the safety of Rome, summoning the comitia centuriata, holding the military levies, and the like. As early as 227 the number was further increased by two. To these was entrusted the administration of Sicily and Sardinia. Two others were added in 197 to administer the two provinces of Spain. In 149, on the establishment of the questiones perpetuae (q.v.) a standing criminal court for certain stated offenders, the rule was introduced that the entire body of praetors should stay in Rome during their year of office; the praetors urbanus and inter peregrinos having jurisdiction in civil cases, as hitherto, while the others presided in the quoestiones, and had to instruct the jurors as to the case before the court, and to carry out the sentence passed. After the completion of their year of office, they all proceeded as proprcetors or proconsuls to the prcetorian provinces assigmed them by lot. In consequence of the multiplication of the quoestiones and of the provinces, the number of paetors was raised by Sulla to eight, by Caesar to ten, fourteen, and sixteen. Under the Empire the praetorship lost its former importance, the civil jurisdiction of the proetor urbanus and peregrinus being in part transferred to the proefectus urbi and proefectus proetorio, while the criminal jurisdiction of the others ceased with the gradual decay of the quoestiones, and the prestors only retained particular departments of their judicial power and general administration. Their most important function was the management of the games, some of which had aleady, in republican times, been assigned to the proetor urbanus. When their year's office had expired, they went as proconsuls to the senatorial provinces. Their election was transferred to the Senate by Tiberius. Under the Republic, the statutory age for the office was forty; under the Empire, thirty. The praetor's insignia were, the toga proetexta, the sella curulis, and, in the provinces, six lictors; in Rome, probably two. Like the consul, he had the honour of a triumph open to him.
PRAETORIUM	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The headquarters in the Roman camp; a wide space, on which stood the general's tent, the altar of the camp, the augurale, and the tribunal (see CASTRA). In the provinces this name was given to the official residence of the governor.
PRAEVARICATIO	The Latin term for the improper conduct of a case on the part of a prosecutor in favour of the defendant, or on the part of a patronus to the detriment of his client. The penalty was forfeiture of the right to prosecute, and to act as an advocate. If the acquittal of the defendant was demonstrably due to proevaricatio, the case might be undertaken anew by a second prosecutor.
PRANDIUM	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The second morning meal of the Romans. (See MEALS.)
PRATINAS	[The quantity of the second syllable is uncertain, probably long. Fick, Gr. Personen-namen, p. xxxv, deriving it from pratos, Doric for protos, makes it a collateral form for protinos-protionos.] A Greek dramatist, of Phlius, who lived about 496 B.C. at Athens. He was a contemporary and rival of Aeschylus, and is believed to have invented the satyric drama. At any rate, he was a very , prolific writer in this department of literature. He also wrote tragedies, dithyrambs, and hyporchemata, of which we possess a fairly long and highly original fragment [preserved by Athenaeus, xiv 617). His son Aristias was also a dramatic poet.
PRAXILLA	Of Sicyon; a Greek poetess, about 450 B.C., composed hymns and dithyrambs, but was especially famous for her scolia. We only possess insignificant fragments of her poems.
PRAXITELES
PRIAM	Son of Laomedon and Strymo, brother of Tithonus and Hesione, the last king of Troy. Originally his name was Podarces (the swift-footed); the name Priamus, which is interpreted to mean "ransomed," is supposed to have been given to him after the first sacking of Troy by Heracles. Heracles allowed Hesione to select one of the prisoners, and when she decided in favour of her sole surviving brother, she was permitted to ransom him with her veil. Legends represented him as rich alike in treasures and in children. He had fifty sons and fifty daughters by different wives; by his second wife, Hecuba (Gr. Hekabe) alone, nineteen sons; among them Hector, Paris, Deiphobus, Helenus, Polydorus, Troilus; by his first, Arisbe, Aesacus. Among his daughters were Creusa, the wife of Aeneas, Cassandra, and Polyxena. In his young days he was a migbty warrior, as in the conflict with the Amazons; but at the outbreak of the Trojan War, he was so old and feeble that he took no part in the combat, and only twice left the city to conclude the compact for the duel between Paris and Menelaus, and to beg the dead body of Hector from Achilles. He met his death in the sack of the city by the band of Neoptolemus, at his family altar, whither he bad fled with Hecuba and his daughter.
PRIAPEIA	A collection of some eighty elegant but indecent Latin poems in various metres on the subject of Priapus. Judging from their execution, they may be referred to the time of Augustus, and may probably be traced to the circle of Messala, who, like other distinguished men of that age, occupied himself with trivial amusements of this kind.
PRIAPUS	According to the usual account, son of Dionysus and Aphrodite, a god of the fruitfulness of the field and of the herds. Horticulture, vine-growing, goat and sheep-breeding, bee-keeping, and even fishing, were supposed to be under his protection. The original seat of his worship lay in the towns of Asia Minor, situated on the Hellespont, especially Lampsacus. From here it afterwards spread over Greece and Italy. His statues were usually placed in gardens, generally in the form of rude hermoe cut out of wood, stained with vermilion, with a club and sickle and a phallic symbol of the creative and fructifying powers of nature. The sacrifices offered to him included asses, as well as the first-fruits of the garden and the field.
PRIESTS	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 Roman. At Rome, the State religion was under the management of a number of priesthoods, which, by the order of the State, performed the regularly prescribed sacred rites or those specially decreed by the State on their recommendation. In the time of the kings the superintendence of the entire ritual belonged to the kings, among whom Numa, as the founder of an organized worship of the gods, holds a prominent place. The most important priesthoods which originated in the time of the kings were the Flamines, the Augures, the Vestales, the Salii, the Fetiales, the Pontifices, the Luperci, the Fratres Arvales, and the Curiones. Besides these, in course of time there arose the Rex Sacrorum to offer certain sacrifices originally offered by the king, the custodians of the Sibylline oracles, the Epulones to discharge a part of the pontifical duties, the priests of the new cults gradually introduced, and lastly the priests of the deified emperors, e.g. the Sodales Augustales. A number of State cults were handed over to individual clans (gentes) and associations. (See SODALITAS.) After the establishment of the Republic, a distinguished position was attained by the college of the pontifices, who, like the king in earlier times, superintended the entire ritual. They were the technical advisers of the Senate on any new questions that arose in regard to it. Next to them in importance were the augurs and the custodians of the Sibylline oracles. These priesthoods, together with that of the epulones, were styled the four great colleges (quattuor summa collegia), and an equal honour was afterwards given to that of the sodales Augustales. The appointment of the priests, for whom the same qualifications were required as among the Greeks, proceeded in various ways, by nomination, co-optation, and election. They entered on office by inauguration, an act in which the chief pontiff, acting through the augurs, inquired of the god concerned whether the new priest was acceptable to him. His reception into the college was accompanied by a banquet given by the new priest, which became proverbial for its luxury. When officially engaged all State priests (apart from their peculiar insignia ) wore the proetexta, the purple-edged robe of Roman magistrates. They also enjoyed the distinction of a seat of honour at festivals and games, and exemption from military service, from the duties of citizens, and from taxation. The great priesthoods were posts of honour, and, like the political offices, were without remuneration. On the other hand, some priests and riestesses (e.g. the Vestal Virgins and the augurs), besides the use of the sacred or public lands belonging to their temples, received a regular annual salary. The cost of the establishment was defrayed from several sources. The priests had under their management a fund which was maintained from landed property and current receipts (including fees for admission to the temple and for the offering of the sacrifice). They also had a claim to certain parts of the victim, and other perquisites; besides this, they all, especially the curiones (see CURIA), and those associations to which State cults were entrusted, received the necessary money from the public chest. The cost of repairing the temples and of all sacrifices and festivals especially ordered by the State was defrayed from the same source. Similarly the State provided the priests either with public slaves or with free and salaried servants, to wait upon them. (For a particular kind of priests' assistants, See CAMILLI.) All State temples did not have particular priests assigned them; temples without priests of their own were under the superintendence of a sacristan (oedituus); and it was usually only once in the year that sacrifice was offered at the great festival of such temples by a State priest specially appointed for the purpose. No priest could be called to account by any civil magistrate except the censor. The pontifex maximus had the power of punishing the other priests. The position of a priest of a cult not recognised by the State, but merely tolerated, was naturally different. With regard to their maintenance, they were themselves, like the sanctuaries they superintended, supported by the contributions of the votaries of their own cult.
PRIESTS
PRINCEPS	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The Latin word for "a chief," "a leader," "the foremost person." Thus, in the Roman constitution, princeps Senutus is the senator who was placed first on the roll of the Senate drawn up by the censors. When the Senate was voting, if no consuls-designate were present, he was asked for his opinion by the presiding magistrate before any one else. Just as under the Republic the leading men in the State were called principes, Augustus, the founder of the Monarchy, took with general consent the title of princeps. This was quite in harmony with the old constitution, and at the same time recognised his equality with the other citizens. For the same reason his successor, Tiberius, set special store on the title of princeps. As the monarchical power became consolidated, and the old republican ideas disappeared, the consciousness of the original meaning of the title disappered with them. Princeps came to be equivalent to imperator; but it never became an official title like Imperator, Caesar, Augustus. Like the Senate, the knights had a princeps, the princeps iuventutis (the youth). This title was borne by the knight whose name appeared first in the censor's list of that body. By way of compliment to the knights, Augustus caused his grandsons, Gaius and Lucius Caesar, to be styled principes iuventutis. Ever after, the emperor's youthful sons were regularly entitled principes iuventutis until their entrance on a magistracy. At the time of Rome's complete decay this title was not unfrequently borne by those associated with the emperors in the government. On the meaning of principes in military language, see LEGION.
PRISCIAN	A physician, who lived in the 5th century, named Theodorus Priscianus, has left us a Medicina Prcesentanea (a book of rapid curatives) in five books.
PRISCIAN	A Latin grammarian of Caesarea in Mauritania; who lived, at the beginning of the 6th century A.D., as a teacher of the Latin language in Constantinople. He there compiled, in addition to a number of smaller grammatical works, his Institutiones Grammaticoe in 18 books, the fullest and completest systematic Latin grammar which has come down to us. This work, which is of great importance owing to its ample quotations from ancient literaturet was for a long time, in the Middle Ages, the school book in ordinary use, and formed the foundation for the earlier treatises on Latin Grammar in modern times. We also possess an insipid panegyrical poem written by Priscian on the emperor Anastasius, and a translation of the Cosmography of the geographer Dionysius, in hexameter verse.
PROBOLE	A motion for a judicial prosecution. In Attic legal procedure it was a particular kind of public indictment. In the first assembly of every prytany, on the archon's inquiring whether the people were satisfied with the conduct of the magistrates, any citizen might accuse a magistrate of official misconduct. If the assembly considered there was foundation for the charge, the magistrate was temporarily suspended or even absolutely deposed from his office, and a judicial prosecution was instituted. Even against a private citizen, especially for doing an injury to magistrates, or to sacred persons or things, for interrupting a festival, embezzling public money, or instituting a, vexatious prosecution, a complaint could be brought before the people in order to see whether they considered the case suitable for a judicial trial. [The most celebrated example of this procedure is the case of Demosthenes against Meidias for assaulting him in the discharge of public functions at the Dionysia.] However, this neither bound the man who laid the plaint to bring forward an actual indictment, nor the jury to follow in the formal trial the preliminary verdict of the people, although it would always influence them.
PROBUS	A famous Roman scholar and critic, born at Berytus in Syria. He flourished in the second half of the 1st century A.D. He devoted almost all attention to the archaic and classical literature of Rome, which had been previously neglected, and to the critical revision of the most important Roman poets, as Lucretius, Vergil, and Horace, after the manner of the Alexandrine scholars. Some of his criticisms on Vergil may possibly be preserved to us in a commentary to the Eclogues and Georgics, which bears his name. From a commentary, or criticism, on Persius we have his biography of that poet; and from his work De Notis we have an extract containing the abbreviations used for legal terms. Other grammatical writings bearing his name are the work of a grammarian of the 4th century.
PROCLUS	The most important representative of the later Neo-Platonic school, born 412 A.D. at Byzantium. He received his first instruction at Xanthus in Lycia, and betook himself to Alexandria to complete his education. There he attached himself chiefly to Heron the mathematician, and to the Aristotelian Olympiodorus. Before the age of twenty, he removed to Athens to attend the lectures of the most celebrated Platonists of the time, Syrianus and Plutarchus. On the death of the latter he became head of the Platonic school until his own death in 485. His disciples were very numerous; and his learning and zeal for the education of the young, combined with his beneficence, his virtuous and strictly ascetic life, and his steadfastness in the faith of his fathers, gained him the enthusiastic devotion of his followers. We possess an account of his life, full of admiration for his character, by his pupil and successor, Marinus. The efforts of Ploclus, were directed to the support of paganism in its struggle with the now victorious Christianity, by reducing to a system all the philosophic and religious traditions of antiquity. His literary activity was very great, and extended over almost every department of knowledge; but Platonic philosophy was the centre of the whole. His philosophical works, now extant, are a commentary on a few dialogues of Plato (mainly on the Timaeus), also his chief work on the theology of Plato, as well as summary of the theology of Plotinus, with writings treating several branches of philosophy from his own point of view. Some of his minor works have only reached us in a Latin translation. As specimens of his mathematical and astronomical works, we have a commentary on the first book of Euclid, a sketch of the astronomical teaching of Hipparchus, Ptolemy, and others, a slight treatise on the heavens, etc. One of his grammatical writings survives in his commentary on Hesiod's Works and Days. Lastly, we have two epigrams by him, and six hymns. It is doubtful whether the Grammatical Chrestomathy, extracts from which, preserved by Photius, are the only source of our knowledge of the Greek cyclic poets, was really written by him, and not rather by a grammarian of the same name in the 2nd century A.D.
PROCNE	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 A daughter of the Athenian king Pandion and Zeuxippe, sister of Philomela. She was given in marriage by her father to the Thracian prince Tereus, in Daulis near Parnassus, in return for assistance given him in war. Tereus became by her the father of lt~s. Pretending that his wife Procne was dead, Tereus fetched her sister Philomela from Athens, Find ravished her on the wav. He then cut,out her tongue that she might be unable to inform against him, and concealed her in a grove on Parnassus; but the unfortunate girl contrived to inform her sister of what had happened by a robe into which she ingeniously wove, the story of her fate. Taking the opportunity of a feast of Dionysus in Parnassus, Procne went in quest of her sister, and agreed with her on a bloody revenge. They slew the boy Itys, and served him up to his father to eat. When Tereus learnt the outrage, and was on the point of slaying the sisters, the gods changed him into a hoopoe or hawk, Procne into a nightingale, and Philomela into a swallow, or (according to another version) Procne into a swallow, and Philomela into a nightingale. (See AEDON)/.
PROCONSUL	The name at Rome for the officer to whom the consular power was entrusted for a specified district outside the city. The regular method of appointing the proconsul was to prolong the official power of the retiring consul (prorogatio imperii) on the conclusion of his year of office. In exceptional cases, however, others were appointed proconsuls, generally those who bad already held the office of consul. This was especially done to increase the number of generals in command. The proconsuls were appointed for a definite or indefinite period; as a rule for a year, reckoned from the day on which they entered their province. This period might be prolonged by a new prorogation. In any case the proconsul continued in office till the appearance of his successor. With the growth of the provinces, the consuls as well as the praetors were employed to administer them, as proconsuls, on the expiry of their office. After Sulla this became the rule; indeed, the Senate decided which provinces were to be consular and which praetorian. The regulation, in 53 B.C., that past consuls should not govern a province till five years after their consulship broke down the immediate connexion between the consulship and succession to a province, and the proconsuls thereby became in a more distinctive sense governors of provinces. After Augustus the title was given to governors of senatorial provinces, whether they had held the consulship before or not. As soon as the proconsul had been invested with his official power (imperium), he had to leave Rome forthwith, for there his imperium became extinct. Like the consuls, he had twelve lictors with bundles of rods and axes, whom he was bound to dismiss on re-entering Rome. In the province he combined military and judicial power over the subject peoples and the Roman citizens alike-only that in the case of the latter, on a capital charge, he had to allow them an appeal to Rome. To administer justice, he travelled in the winter from town to town. In the case of war he might order out the Roman citizens as well as the provincials. His power was absolutely unlimited, so that he might be guilty of the greatest oppression and extortion, and was only liable to prosecution for these offences on the expiry of his office. He might advance a claim for a triumph, or an ovatio (q.v.), for military services. When the senatorial provinces came generally to have no army, under the Empire, the duties of the proconsuls became limited to administration, political and judicial.
PROCOPIUS	A Greek historian of Caesarea in Palestine, a rhetorician and advocate by profession. In and after 526 A.D. he attended the general Belisarius as private secretary and adviser in nearly all his campaigns. He was afterwards made a senator, and in 562, when prefect of Constantinople, was deposed from his office by a conspiracy, and shortly afterwards died suddenly, more than seventy years old. He has left us a history of his own times down to 554 in eight books, dealing especially with the wars of Justinian against the Persians, Vandals, and East Goths; a panegyric on the buildings of Justinian; and theAnecdota or secret history, supplementing the first-mentioned work. It discloses the scandals of the court of the day, and, on account of its contents, was not published until after the death of the author. His information is partly derived from the oral testimony of others, but he prefers to record his own experiences. This, and his fresh treatment of his subject, together with his pure and, on the whole, simple style, make him one of the most eminent authors of his age.
PROCULUS	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 A Roman jurist, founder of the school called after him the Proculiani. (See ANTISTIUS LABEO and JURISPRUDENCE.)
PROCURATOR	under the Roman Republic, meant the fully accredited agent of a private citizen. Under the Empire, the title was given to those who, as household officers of the emperor, were considered administrators of the imperial purse. The fiscal administration of the imperial provinces was in the hands of a procurator of equestrian rank, under whom were freedmen of the emperor's, bearing the same title, and attending to particular departments of the administration. In the senatorial provinces, also, there was an imperial procurator, independent of the governor, to manage the domains and to collect the revenues belonging to the fiscus. Further,there were particular provinces which, before they were administered as actual provinces, were governed as domains by an administrator appointed by the emperor and personally responsible to him. He likewise was styled procurator, and in general had a position similar to that of the other governors. Such a procurator was Pontius Pilate in Judaea, which for a long time was under a procurator. The imperial chief treasury was administered by a procurator a rationibus, also called procurator fisci, at first an imperial freedman, but after the 2nd century a knight. To administer the imperial privy purse, into which flowed the revenues from the crown lands and the private fortune of the emperor, there were special procurators.
PRODICUS
PRODIGIUM	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The Latin term for an unnatural or, at any rate, unusual and inexplicable phenomenon, which was always treated as requiring expiation (procuratio). This was only done on behalf of the State, if the phenomenon had been observed on ground belonging to the State. The Senate, acting on the advice of the pontiffs, ordained either particular sacrifices, to specified deities, or a nine days' sacrifice, or a public intercession, and left the execution of the ordinance to the consuls. If a prodigium caused so much alarm that the usual means of expiation seemed insufficient, the Senate had recourse to the Sibylline books, or the Etruscan haruspices. (See HARUSPEX) For the prodigium of a thunderbolt, See PUTEAL.
PROEDRIA	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The right of occupying the front row of seats next the orchestra, at the dramatic performances in the Greek theatre. This distinction was enjoyed by the priests, the chief magistrates, distinguished citizens, the descendants of those who had fallen in battle for their country, and members of foreign states whom it was desired to honour, especially ambassadors. The term also denotes the presidency at the Council (See BOULE), and in the assemblies of the people. [In the 5th century B.C. the prytanes, under their epistates, presided over the Council and the assemblies of the people; in the 4th, the proedri were instituted. The latter were appointed on each occasion from nine of the tribes, and the presidential duties were transferred to them and their epistates (a member of the tenth tribe). See Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, 44, pp. 163-4, ed. Sandys.]
PROETUS	Son of Abas of Argos, and twin brother of Acrisius. Expelled from his home by his brother, he fled to the king of the Lycians, Iobates, who gave him in marriage his daughter Anteia (in the tragedians, Stenoboea), and compelled Acrisius to resign in his favour the sovereignty of Tiryns. Here the Cyclopes built him a town of impregnable strength. His daughters were punished with madness either for their opposition to the worship of Dionysus or (according to another account) for their disrespect for Hera. This madness spread to the other women of the land, and was only cured by the interposition of Melampus (q.v.). His son Megapenthes exchanged with Perseus the rule of Tiryns for that of Argos. (Cp. BELLEROPHON.)
PROLETARLI	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The name in the Roman centuriate system (See CENTURIA) of those citizens who were placed in the lowest of the five property-classes, and who were exempt from military service and tribute. They took their name from the fact that they only benefited the State by their children (proles). Another name for them is capite censi, i.e. those who were classed in the list of citizens at the census solely in regard to their status as citizens (caput). Afterwards, the richer among them were taken to serve in the wars: these were then called proletarii; and those without any property at all, capite censi. In and after the time of Marius, when the levy of troops was no longer founded on the census, the Roman armies were recruited by preference from the last class.
PROMACHUS	An epithet of Athene (q.v.).
PROMACHUS	Son of Parthenopaeus and the Nymph Clymene, one of the Epigoni ( q.v.).
PROMETHEUS	Son of the Titan Iapetus and the Ocean-nymph Clymene, brother of Atlas, Menoetius, and Epimetheus, father of Deucalion (q.v.). The most ancient account of him, as given by Hesiod [Theog. 521-616) is as follows. When the gods, after their conquest of the Titans, were negotiating with mankind about the honour to be paid them, Prometheus was charged with the duty of dividing a victim offered in sacrifice to the gods. He endeavoured to impose upon Zeus by dividing it in such a way as cleverly to conceal the half which consisted of flesh and the edible vitals under the skin of the animal, and to lay thereon the worst part, the stomach, while he heaped the bones together and covered them with fat.
PRONAOS	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 In a Greek temple, the entrance hall to the temple proper, or naos. (See TEMPLE.)
PROPERTIUS	A Roman elegiac poet born at Asisium (Assisi), in Umbria. [Prop. v 1, 121-6 and 65-6; i 22, 9. The date of his birth is uncertain. He was somewhat older than Ovid and was probably born about 50 B.C.] He lost his parents at an early age; and, through the general confiscation of land in 42, was deprived of the greater part of his paternal estate. Still, he possessed enough to live a careless poet's life at Rome, whither he had proceeded soon after coming of age [about 34 B.C.]. He there associated with his patron Maecenas and with brother poets such as Vergil and Ovid. To complete his studies he afterwards went to Athens. When he was still quite young, the poet's spirit woke within him, and expanded through his attachment to the beautiful and witty Hostia. Uncler the name Cynthia, she henceforth was the subject of his love-poems. For five years [B.C. 28-23] this attachment lasted, though often disturbed by the jealousy of the sensitive poet and the capriciousness of his mistress. When it had come to an end, and even after Cynthia's death (probably before B.C. 18), the poet could not forget his old passion. He himself died young. He often expresses forebodings of an early death; there is no indication in his poems that any of them were written later than 16 B.C.. They have come down to us in four books, but some scholars are of opinion that the poet himself had divided them into five, and that the original second and third books have been united, perhaps through the oversight of friends at the publication of the last. Propertius himself seems to have only published the first. In the first four books amatory poems preponderate. The fifth book, the confused order of which may well be referred to the poet's untimely death, deals mainly with subjects taken from Roman legends and history, in the same way as Ovid subsequently treated them in the Fasti. Propertius possesses a poetical genius with which his talent is unable to keep pace. Endowed with a nature susceptible of passion as deep as it was strong, as ardent as it was easily evoked, and possessed of a rich fancy, he strives to express the fulness of his thoughts and feelings in a manner modelled closely on that of his Greek masters; and yet in his struggle with linguistic and metrical form, he fails to attain the agreeable in every instance. His expression is often peculiarly harsh and difficult, and his meaning is frequently obscured by far-fetched allusions to unfamiliar legends, or actual transcripts of them. Herein he follows the example of his models, the Alexandrine poets, Callimachus and Philetas. Nevertheless he is a great poet and none of his countrymen [except Catullusl have depicted the fire of passion so truly and so vividly as he.
PROPRAEETOR	The name among the Romans of a past praetor who on the expiration of his office, proceeded to administer (generally for a year) the praetorian province assigned him by lot at the beginning of his office. Occasionally this title was also borne by those who, without having been praetors immediately before, were invested with praetorian powers; in particular, by the quaestors left behind by the governors in the provinces. Apart from the fact that the propraetor had only six lictors, he bad essentially the same position in the province as the proconsul (q.v.). Under the Empire this title was also given to the governors of the imperial provinces, as distinguished from the proconsuls, the governors of the senatorial provinces.
PROPYLAEA
PROROGATIO	The Roman term for the extension either of a man's year of office (prorogatio Magistratus), or of a supreme command (prorogatio imperii), or of a provincial administration (prorogatio provinciae).
PROSODIUM	A kind of song generally sung to the accompaniment of the flute at festal processions to the temple or the altar, chiefly in the worship of Apollo. It had a rhythm corresponding to the measure of the march.
PROSTYLOS	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 Literally, "with columns in front," an epithet of a temple (naos) with the columns in front of its portico standing completely free from the front wall of the temple itself. (See TEMPLE, fig. 2.)
PROTAGONISTES	In the Greek drama, the actor who played the leading part.
PROTAGORAS	A Greek Sophist of Abdera, born about 480 B.C. He passed some forty years in travelling through the different towns of Greece as a teacher, but stayed chiefly at Athens. There he was highly honoured on account of his learning, especially by Pericles, until he was expelled for atheistical statements in a treatise On the Gods, and his works were publicly burnt. He died at the age of 70. His teaching was chiefly directed to the exposition of grammar and rhetoric. In his philosophical views he followed Heraclitus, transferring the teaching of the latter, on the eternal flux of matter to human knowledge, which, as he thought, was merely a subjective and relative, not an objective and absolute truth. This is the point of his celebrated proposition, "Man is the measure of all things: of those which are, that they are ; of those which are not, that they are not" [Plato, Thecetetus, 152; Diogenes Laertins, ix 51.]
PROTENS	According to Homer [Od. iv 354-569] an old man of the sea, a subject of Poseidon, who tended the seals which are the flocks of Amphitrite. Like all marine deities, he possessed the gift of prophecy and the power of assuming any shape he pleased. He used to sleep at mid-day on the island of Pharos, near Egypt. When Menelaus, on his return from Troy, was detained by contrary winds on the island, he surprised Proteus, by the advice of his daughter Idothea, and, in spite of all his transformations, held him fast until he told him the means for returning home. According to later legends [Herodotus, ii 112, 118; Euripides, Helen], Proteus was a son of Poseidon, and was an Egyptian king living on the island of Pharos, to whom Hermes conducted Helen when she was carried off by Paris, while only a phantom followed Paris to Troy. Menelaus, as he returned from Troy, received his wife again from him.
PROTESILAUS	Son of Iphiclus, king of Phylace, in Thessaly. He was the first to leap on to the soil of Troy at the landing of the Greeks, although he know that the first who set foot on Trojan ground must die. He was forthwith killed by Hector. His men were then led by his younger brother, Podarces. His wife, Laodameia, daughter of Acastus, obtained from the gods the boon that Protesilaus, to whom she had only been married for one day, might return to earth for three hours. When he died again, she joined him in death. According to another legend, she had a wax image of him made, to which she paid divine honours; and, when her father burnt it on a funeral pile, she threw herself on the flames in despair, and died.
PROTOGENES	A celebrated Greek painter of Caunus in Caria, who lived for the most part at Rhodes, in the time of Alexander the Great and his first successors. He died 300 B.C. His poverty seems to have prevented him from attending the school of any of the celebrated masters of his age, for no one is named as his instructor. He long remained poor until the unselfish admiration which his contemporary and brother painter Apelles showed for his works raised him in riper years to great celebrity. His works, owing to the excessive care he bestowed on them, were few in number; but their perfect execution led to their being ranked by the unanimous voice of antiquity among the highest productions of art. His most celebrated works were a Resting Satyr, and also a painting representing the Rhodian hero Ialysus. On the latter he spent seven or, according to others, as many as eleven years. To insure its permanence he covered it with four distinct coats of paint, so that when the upper coating perished the lower might takes its place [Pliny, N.H., xxxv 101-105].
PROVINCIA	a sphere of duty, especially that assigned to consul or praetor, within which he exercised his inipgrium.</sense>
PROVINCIA	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 A territory acquired by the Romans outside the limits of Italy, subject to the payment of taxes and administered by a governor. Under the Republic, the organiza- tion of a conquered lands a province was managed by the conquering general, with the advice of a commission of ten senators, who were nominated by the Senate and received their instructions from that body. The previous administration was altered as little as possible, so far as it was not in conflict with the interests of Rome. The lex provincioe thus established fixed for the future the form of government. The first provinces were Sicily (from 241 B.C) and Sardinia with Corsica (from 231). Their number rose under the Republic to fifteen, i.e. (besides the two already mentioned), the two provinces of Spain (Ulterior and Citerior), Illyria, Macedonia, Achaia, Asia Minor, the two Gauls (Transalpina and Cisalpina), Bithynia, Cyrene and Crete, Cilicia, Syria. Their governors were either propraetors (at first praetors) or proconsuls. The Senate decided which provinces were to be consular, which praetorian; and the consuls and praetors had their respective provinces assigned to them by lot. In the case of the consuls this was done immediately after their election; in the case of the praetors, after their actual accession to office. When their year's office was completed, they proceeded as proclonsuls and propraetors to their provinces, and stayed there a year until they were relieved by their successors, unless, as frequently happened, it proved necessary to prolong their imperium.</sense> It was towards the end of the Republic (52 B.C.), that it became a rule that no consul or praetor should be allowed to be governor of a province until five years after he had ceased to hold his office. The Senate also settled for every governor his supply of money, troops, ships, and subordinates. These last included one or more legati, a quoestor, and a numerous staff. In the governor's hands was concentrated the entire administrative power over the province. He commanded the garrison troops, he had the right of raising a levy of Roman citizens and provincials alike, and of making requisitions to obtain the means for war. He also possessed jurisdiction in criminal and civil cases, in the former, with power of life and death, except that Roman citizens had right of appeal (provocatio). While it was carefully prescribed how much the governors could require from the provincials for the support of their person and attendants, their powers made it possible for them to enrich themselves by all manner of extortion, and this became the rule to a most extraordinary extent. Against such oppression the provincials had no protection, so long as the governor's office lasted. It was only on its termination that they could in earlier times lay a complaint before the Senate, which seldom led to anything; while, after 149 B.C., they had open to them the procedure of bringing a charge of extortion, which was attended with great difficulty and expense. (See REPETUNDARUM CRIMEN.) These extortions were repeated anew year after year, together with the exorbitant demands of the tax-collectors (see PUBLICANI); and the governors, when invoked against them, in spite of their authority, rarely ventured to interpose, from fear of the equestrian plutocracy. The result was, that, at the end of the Republic, the provinces were in absolute poverty. A real improvement in their condition was brought about by the regulations enforced under the Empire, when some provinces attained a high pitch of prosperity. In 27 B.C. Augustus divided the then existing provinces into imperial and senatorial. He entrusted ten, in a state of complete tranquillity, to the Senate; viz. Africa, Asia Minor, Achaia, Illyria or Dalmatia, Macedonia, Sicily, Crete with Cyrene, Bithynia, Sardinia, and South Spain. He took into his own hands the twelve which still required military occupation. These were: North Spain, Lusitania, the four provinces of Gaul (Narbonensis, Lugdunensis or Celtica, Aquitania, and Belgica), Upper and Lower Germany, Syria, Cilicia, Cyprus, and Egypt. Changes were made in this partition later on; but the provinces acquired after 27 B.C. fell to the emperor. For the senatorial provinces the governors were appointed on the whole in the ancient manner, i.e. by the lot, and for one year; but with this difference, that five, and afterwards ten to thirteen, years had to elapse after the consulship or praetorship before past consuls or past praetors proceeded to their provinces. The former received the provinces which were from the very first called consular, viz. Asia and Africa, the latter the others, which were praetorian; but both sets of governors alike were styled proconsuls, and were attended by the same retinue as heretofore. The imperial provinces, which became three times as numerous by the time of Trajan, were governed by the emperor himself through deputies whose continuance in office depended on the will of the emperor who appointed them. These deputies, according to the importance of the province, were either of consular or praetorian rank, legati Augusti pro proetore (see LEGATI), or procuratores (q.v.). Egypt alone, which was governed as an imperial domain, was under a proefectus(q.v.). The financial administration of the senatorial provinces was managed by quaestors; that of the imperial, by procurators, who also collected in the senatorial provinces the revenues directly due to the emperor. Augustus established a fixed stipend for all officers outside Rome, and thus afforded a real relief to the oppressed provincials. Considerable alleviation was also secured for them by the limitation to the employment of State tax-collectors. The same result was promoted by the longer continuance of the administration in the imperial provinces, and the greater facilities granted for bringing an indictment, by means of a regular procedure before the Senate. Moreover the emperor, after the proconsular power over all provinces had been conferred on Augustus, 23 B.C., ranked as the highest authority over all the governors, and heard complaints as well as appeals.
PROVOCATIO	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The Roman term for the appeal from the verdict of the magistrate to the decision of the people. Under the kings the court of appeal was the comitia curiata; after Servius Tullius, the comitia centuriata. While, under the arbitrary rule of the kings, the right of appeal was allowed, on the establishment of the Republic, in 509 B.C., this was imposed on the consuls as a duty, and was repeatedly enjoined by special enactments in all cases where it was a question of life and death, or of corporal punishment. The appeal was only valid within the city, and the pomerium, but not in the camp. Moreover, no one could appeal against the dictator. When afterwards (454 B.C.), besides the consuls, the tribunes and aediles acquired the right of imposing a fine (multa, q.v.), a maximum limit was fixed for it, and if that was exceeded, there was an appeal to the comitia tributa. As this appeal was expected in all legitimate cases, trials of this kind were held immediately before the comitia concerned with such appeals; and after the verdict had been pronounced by the magistrate presiding, it was either confirmed or reversed by the votes of the people. About 195 B.C. the right of appeal was extended over the whole of Italy and the provinces. After permanent courts for certain offences had been established, the quoestiones perpetuoe (SeeQUAeSTIO), the jurisdiction of the people, and with it the appeal thereto, became more and more limited. For the provocatio under the Empire, See APPELLATIO.
PROXENUS	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The Greek term for the representative of a State who was appointed, from the citizens of another State, to attend to the interests of its citizens there resident, as often as they needed legal protection and assistance. In the interests of foreigners, many States appointed such representatives from among their own citizens. Their position may be compared with that of our consuls. The proxenus received many distinctions and honours from the State which he represented. To be nominated proxenus was in some cases only an honorary distinction, which the State conferred on such foreigners as resided in it as aliens (See METOECI), and were therefore unable to do any service abroad for the citizens of the State in which they resided. This distinction insured many privileges, such as freedom from taxation and from public burdens which otherwise fell on the resident aliens, and, in general, exemption from tolls and taxes; also the right to acquire property in land, free admission to the Senate and to the assemblies of the people, etc. [See Monceaux, Les Proxenies Grecques, 1886.]
PRUDENTIUS CLEMENS	The most important among the Christian Latin poets, born 348 A.D., of a respectable family in Spain. After a rhetorical and legal education, he first practised as an advocate, discharged the duties of a civil and criminal judge in Spain, held a high military appointment at court, and in later years retired to a monastery, where he devoted himself to writing sacred poems, and died about 410 A.D. He published a collection of his sacred poems in 405 A.D. They are composed with rhetorical skill, in epic and lyric metres (in the latter of which Horace in his model); and they include subjects of the most varied kind: Hymns for daily prayer (Cathemerinon liber); a martyrology (Peri Stephanon); a conflict between the virtues and the vices for the soul of man, etc.
PRYTANEA	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The term in Athenian law for a sum of money paid by both parties at the commencement of a private suit, to defray the expense of the action. In actions for sums between 100 and 1,000 drachmoe it was three drachmoe; for larger sums, thirty. The defeated party had to refund this sum to the successful litigant. (See JUDICIAL PROCEDURE, I.)
PRYTANEIA	Any public office held by rotation for given periods; e.g. in Herodotus, vi 110, the chief command for the day, held by each of the ten generals in turn.
PRYTANEIA	The period of thirty-five or thirty-six days, i.e. about one-tenth of the year, during which each of the ten phyloe presided in turn over the Council and ecclesia. The order was determined by lot. The presiding tribe was represented by its epistates, who was appointed by lot to preside for the day, and could not hold this office more than once in each year (Aristotle, On Constitution of Athens, 44).]
PRYTANEIS	The name in various Greek free States for the highest officials. In many States, especially in early times, one, two, or five prytaneis ruled with almost kingly power. At Athens prytanis was the name for the member of a body of officials who presided over that body when it had any public business to transact. This title was also given to the presidents of the naucrarioe, (q.v.), and Council [who, with their epistates at their head, presided over the Council and ecclesia during the 5th Century B.C. In the 4th century the presidential duties were transferred to the proedri and their epistates. (See Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, 44, pp. 163-4, ed. Sandys.)]
PRYTANEUM	In many Gree towns, a public building consecrated to Hestia (q.v.), and containing the State hearth. At Athens, it was here that the State offered hospitable entertainment as a public compliment to foreign ambassadors, to Athenian envoys on their return from the successful discharge of their mission, also to citizens who had done good service to the State, especially to distinguished generals, and victors in the great Panhellenic games, and sometimes even to their descendants. In the case of those who were Athenian citizens, this privilege was usually granted for life.
PSAMATHE	A daughter of a king of Argos, mother of Linus (q.v.) by Apollo.
PSEPHISMA	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The Greek, and especially the Athenian, term for a resolution of the people arrived at by voting. (See ECCLESIA, 1.)
PSEUDODIPTEROS	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 An epithet describing a temple which is surrounded on all four sides by only a single, row of columns, placed at intervals which correspond to the position of the outer row of columns in a dipteral temple. (See TEMPLES, fig. 6.)
PSEUDOPERIPTEROS	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 An epithet of a temple in which the side columns were "engaged" in the wall of the cella, instead of standing out at a distance from it. (See TEMPLES.)
PSYCHE	In Greek mythology, the personification of the human soul as the being beloved by tros (Amor). She is represented as a butterfly, or as a young maiden with butterfly's wings, sometimes as pursued by Eros in various ways, or revenging herself on him, or united with him in the tenderest love. Apuleius (q.v.), in his tale of the Golden Ass [Met. iv 28-vi 24], has availed himself of this representation. He makes them the hero and heroine of an old popular tradition, in which a loving couple, after a sorrowful separation, are restored to one another for ever. The love-god causes the charming Psyche, the youngest of the three daughters of a king, to be carried off by Zephyrus to a secluded spot, where he visits her at night alone, without being seen or recognised by her. Persuaded by her sisters, she transgresses his command, and wishes to see him, when the god immediately vanishes. Amid innumerable troubles and appalling trials she seeks her lover, till at length, purified by the sufferings she has endured, she finds him again, and is united to him for ever. In the myth, as told by Apuleius, her daughter is called Voluptas.
PSYCHOMANTEION	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 A Greek term for an oracle of the dead. (See ORACLES.)
PSYCHOPOMPOS	The guider of souls, another name for Hermes.>
PTERELAUS	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 King of the Taphii and Teleboae in Acarnania. He was killed by his daughter Comaetho, who pulled out the golden hair, on the possession of which depended the immortality accorded him by Poseidon. (See AMPHITRYON.)
PTOLEMAEUS	Claudius Ptolemoeus. A famous Greek mathematician, astronomer, and geographer. He came from Ptolemais Hermeion [ruins at modern Menschie] in Upper Egypt, and lived and worked in the 2nd century A.D. The most important of his writings which have been preserved are:
PTOLEMAEUS	Ptolemy I, called Soter ("saviour" or "preserver"), son of Lagus, born 366 B.C.; general of Alexander the Great, after whose death (323) he received Egypt as his province. He took the royal title in 306. In the last years of his rule he founded the famous Museum and the great Library of Alexandria, and attracted thither all the foremost poets and scholars of the time. He died in 283. While he was on the throne, he wrote a history of Alexander the Great, which was noteworthy for its accuracy, more especially in military detail, and for its avoidance of exaggeration. Among the works on Alexander it took the first place. Only comparatively short fragments of it have been preserved. Next to Aristobulus, he is the principal authority for Arrian's Anabasis.
PUBLICANI	The Romans gave this name to those who did business with the State by becoming contractors for public buildings and for supplies, and to farmers of public lands, especially those who farmed the public taxes (vectigalia) for a certain time, on payment of a fixed sum. In Rome, as indeed throughout the ancient world (cp.TELONAe), the collection of taxes was made not by paid officials, but by farmers of taxes, who belonged to the equestrian order, as the senators were excluded from such business. The farmers of taxes, by the immense profits which they made, became a politically powerful class of capitalists. As the various taxes in the different provinces were let out as a whole by the censors, joint-stock companies were formed, societates publicanorum, whose members received a proportionate return for their invested capital. One member, the manceps, made a tender at the public auction, concluded the contract with the censors, and gave the necessary security. The duration of the contract was a lustrum, i.e. the period between one censorship and another, in imperial times always five years; it began on the 15th of March. The general superintendence was given to a magister societatis in Rome, who vacated office every year; the management of details was in the hands of numerous officials. According to the amount of the taxes farmed, the publicani received special names. The highest class, decumani, were the farmers of the decuma, the tenth part of the produce of the agricultural lands which had been taken from the old possessors. The pecuari or scripturarii, were the farmers of the scriptura, the tax levied for the use of the State pastures. The conductores portoriorum were the farmers of the portoria, the import and export dues, etc. In order to make the greatest possible gain, the publicani were guilty of the most grievous oppression of the provincials, whose only hope of relief lay in the governor, who was rarely able to help them for fear of these influential societies. Under the Empire the position of the provincials was improved; for the emperor, as the governor-in-chief of all the provinces, heard the final appeal in the case of any grievances. In imperial times, the decumani ceased to exist, and the letting out of taxes was entrusted to the official boards specially concerned with them.
PUBLILIUS SYRUS	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 A Roman writer of mimes (See MIME), a younger contemporary and rival of Laberius; he flourished about 43 B.C. Probably born at Antioch in Syria, he came to Rome in early youth as a slave. On account of his wit he was liberated by his master, and received a careful education. As a writer of mimes and as an improviser, he was exceedingly popular, and, after the death of Laberius, held sole sway on the stage. His mimes contained, in addition to the farcical humour of this sort of writing, a great number of short, witty sayings. These were so much admired that they were excerpted at an early date, and used in schools, while the pieces themselves were soon forgotten. In the Middle Ages these sayings were popular under the name of Seneca. We have an alphabetical collection of nearly two hundred of these apophthegms, bearing the title, Publilii Syri Mimi Sententioe [e.g. "Necesse est multos timeat, quem multi timent"; "Beneficium accipere, libertatem est venders"; and (the motto of the Edinburgh Review) "Iudex damnatur cum nocens absolvitur"].
PUDICITIA	The Roman goddess of modesty and chastity. She was at first worshipped in a chapel in Rome exclusively by the patrician matrons. When, in 296 B.C., the patrician Verginia was excluded from this worship by her marriage with the plebeian consul Volumnius, she erected in her own house a chapel to the goddess, so that the plebeian matrons might worship there. Afterwards this cult died out with the decay of morals. In imperial times altars were erected to Pudicitia in honour of the empresses. The goddess was her right hand in her garment.
PULPITUM	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The stage of the Roman theatre. (See THEATRE.)
PURPURA
PUTEAL	The Latin term for a circular stone inclosure, consisting of a dwarf wall, surrounding either (1) the mouth of a well, or (2) a spot struck by lightning. Italian superstition demanded that every flash of lightning which struck and was buried in the earth should have, as it were, a grave and a propitiatory offering, as in the case of a human being. According to the place where the flash fell, this offering was made, either by the State or by private individuals, in the earlier times according to the directions of the pontifces, at a later date after consultation with the Etruscan haruspices. The earth which was touched by the divine fire was carefully collected [Lucan i 606], and inclosed in a coffin constructed out of four side-pieces and without any bottom (this was the burying of the lightning). Then round the coffin a shaft, consisting of four walls and open at the top, was built up to the surface of the ground. A place which had thus been consecrated by the offering which the haruspices made of a sheep two years old (bidens) was specially called a bidental, and was not allowed to be desecrated. According to the pontifical rite introduced by Numa, the propitiatory offering consisted of onions, hair, and sardels. If a human being had been struck by lightning, his body was not burnt, but buried on the spot [Pliny, N. H. ii 145]. Such a spot was called a bidental, and a propitiatory offering was made on his behalf [Festus, p. 27 ; Nonius, pp. 53, 26]. [The puteal, with bay wreaths, lyres, and a pair of pincers, may be seen on coins of the gens Scribonia (see cut). The ancient puteal in the Forum, near the Arcus Fabianus, was repaired by Scribonius Libo, whence it was called the Puteal Libonis or Puteal Scribonianum. In its neighbourhood he erected a tribunal for the praetor, which led to its becoming the resort of litigants, money-lenders, etc. (Hor., Sat. ii 6,35, Ep. i 19, 8; Cic., Pro Sestio 18).]
PUTEUS	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The fountain in a Roman house. (See HOUSE.)
PYANEPSIA	A festival celebrated at Athens on the seventh day of Pyanepsion, the end of October, in honour of the departing god of summer, Apollo. The festival received its name from the cooked beans which were offered to the god as firstfruits of autumn. Another firstfruit offering of this festival was the Eiresione, a branch of olive or bay, bound with purple and white wool, and hung about with all sorts of autumn fruits, pastry, and small vessels full of honey, wine, and oil. This branch was borne by a boy whose parents were both alive; a song, which bore the same name Eiresione, was sung, while he was escorted by a procession to the temple of the god, where the wreath was deposited as a votive offering. Other branches were hung at the doors of the houses. In later times this festival was also kept as a mark of gratitude for the safe return of Theseus from Crete, which was supposed to have taken place on this day; and the cooking of the beans was regarded as commemorating the cooking of the scanty remains of the provisions of his ships. [In the ancient calendar of the Attic festivals built into the wall of the metropolitan church at Athens, the festival of the Pyanepsia is represented by a youth carrying the Eiresione. See cut in Miss Harrison's Mythology, etc., of Athens, p. 168; ib. cxxxv.] Besides Apollo, the Horoe were worshipped at the Pyanepsia with offerings and invocations, as the goddesses of the blessings of the year.
PYGMALLION	In Greek mythology a king of Cyprus, who became so enamoured of the statue of a maiden which be himself was carving in ivory that he implored Aphrodite to endue it with life. When the goddess granted his prayer, he married the maiden, and she bore to him a son named Paphos [Ovid, Met. x 243].
PYGMALLION	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 See DIDO.
PYGME	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 Boxing. (See GYMNASTICS.)
PYLADES	Son of Strophius, king of Phanote near Parnassus, and of Anaxibia, a sister of Agamemnon; famous on accouni, of his faithful friendship with Orestes (q.v. ). He was the husband of Electra.
PYRIPHLEGETHON	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 A river of the nether world. (See HADES, REALM OF. )
PYRRHA	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 Daughter of Epimetheus, wife of Deucalion, with whom she alone escaped the flood which bears his name. (See DEUCALION)
PYRRHIC DANCE	A mimic war-dance among the Greeks, representing attack and defence in battle. It originated with the Dorians in Crete, who traced it back to the Curetes, and in Sparta, where it was traced to the Dioscuri. In Sparta where boys of five years old were trained for it, it formed a chief part of the festival of the Gymnopoedia. The war-dance performed at Athens at the Panathenaic festival celebrated Athene as the victor over the Giants. In the Roman imperial times the Pyrrhic dance was a kind of dramatic ballet, which was performed by dancers, male and female, and represented (like the Roman pantomime) mythological subjects, taken frequently from the legend of Dionysus, such as the march of the god against the Indians, the doom of Pentheus, but also from other sources, such as the judgment of Paris and the fate of Icarus. For these performances the emperors frequently brought to Rome from Asia, the home of this dance, boys and girls of noble birth; but there wore also dancers, male and female, who were brought up to it as a regular trade. At times the Pyrrhic dance was performed in the amphitheatre by criminals especially trained for this purpose.
PYRRHON	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 A Greek philosopher of Elis, who flourished about 365-275 B.C.; the founder of Scepticism. (See PHILOSOPHY.)
PYTHAGORAS
PYTHAGORAS	The Greek philosopher; born on the island of Samos about 580 B.C., son of Mnesarchus. He is said to have been the first man who called himself a "philosopher," or lover of wisdom. The certain facts about his life are extraordinarily few, since in the course of time his life became obscured by a web of legend and tradition, as is shown by the biographies of the Neoplatonists Iamblichus and Porphyrius. As the story goes, he was a disciple of Pherecydes of Syros, and spent a large part of his earlier life on journeys, during which he studied the civilization and the mystic lore of the East, and especially the wisdom of the Egyptians. When, on his return to Samos, he found his country under the yoke of the tyrant Polycrates, he migrated to Lower Italy, and settled in 529 at Croton, Here, in order to bring about a political and social regeneration of the Lower Italian towns, which had been ruined by the strife of parties, he founded a society, whose members were pledged to a pure and devout life, to the closest friendship with each other, to united action in upholding morals and chastity, as well as order and harmony in the common weal. The aristocratic tendency of this society caused a rising of the popular party in Croton, in which Pythagoras, with 300 of his adherents is supposed to have perished; according to other accounts, he marched with a few followers to Metapontum, where he died soon afterwards (504). Pythagoras has left nothing of his teaching in a written form. The Golden Sayings which bear his name are certainly not genuine, though they may have originated at an early date. They consist of seventy-one maxims written in hexameters, with little to commend them as poetry. It follows then that there is as much uncertainty about the system of Pythagoras as about his life, for it is impossible to ascertain which of the precepts of the Pythagorean school are due to himself, and which are later additions by his disciples, We can only ascribe to him with certainty the doctrine (1) of the transmigration of souls, and (2) of number as the principle of the harmony of the universe and of moral life; and, further, certain religious and moral precepts. The first disciple of Pythagoras who described his philosophical system in writing was Philolaus, either of Croton or Tarentum, a contemporary of Socrates (about 430 B.C.). Of this document, which was written in the Doric dialect, we possess only a few fragments. Archytas of Tarentum was another important follower of this school. He was a friend of Plato, and was distinguished as a general, statesman, and mathematician. He flourished about 400-365, but the fragments which bear his name are not genuine. The same may be said of the writings attributed to Occllus Lucanus and to Timoeus of Locri, Concerning the Nature of the Universe and Concerning theSoul, and of the seven letters of Theano, the supposed wife of Pythagoras, Concerning the Education of Children, Jealousy, The Management of the Household, etc.
PYTHIA	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The prophetess of Apollo at Delphi. (See DELPHIC ORACLE.)
PYTHIA	The Pythian games. Next to the Olympic games, the most important of the four Greek national festivals. From 586 B.C. they were held on the Crissaean plain below Delphi. They took place once in four years, in the third year of each Olympiad, in the Delphic month Bucatius (the middle of August). Before this time (586 B.C.) there used to take place at Delphi itself, once in eight years, a great festival in honour of Apollo, in which the minstrels vied with one another in singing, to the accompaniment of the cithara, a paean in praise of the god, under the direction of the Delphic priests. After the first Sacred War, when the Crissaean plain became the property of the priesthood, the Amphictyons introduced festivals once in four years, at which gymnastic contests and foot-races took place, as well as the customary musical contest. This contest also was further developed. Besides minstrels who sang with the cithara, players on the flute, and singers to accompaniment of the flute, took part in it (the last-named, however, for a short time only). The gymnastic and athletic contests, which were nearly the same as those held at Olympia, yielded in significance to the musical ceremonies, and of these the Pythian nomos was the most important. It was a composition for the flute, worked out on a prescribed scheme, and celebrating the battle of Apollo with the dragon Python, and his triumph. At first the prize for the victor was of some substantial value, but at the second festival it took the form of a wreath from the sacred bay tree in the Vale of Tempe. The victor also received, as in the other contests, a palm-branch. The judges were chosen by the Amphictyons. The Pythian, like the Olympic games, were probably not discontinued till about 394 A.D.
PYTHON	Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 A monstrous serpent produced by Gaea, which haunted the caves of Parnassus. It was slain by Apollo with his first arrows. (See APOLLO and DELPHIC ORACLE.)
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