The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 363

PUY, LE (20), a picturesque town, 70 m. SW. of Lyons, a bishop's seat, with a 10th-century cathedral; is the centre of a great lace manufacture.

PUY-DU-DoME (564), a department in Central France, in the upper valley of the Allier, on the slopes of the Auvergne Mountains. The soil is poor, but agriculture and cattle-breeding are the chief industries; in the mountains coal and lead are found, and there are many mineral springs; there are paper and oil manufactures. The princ.i.p.al town is Clermont-Ferrand (45), where Peter the Hermit preached the first crusade.

PYGMALION, king of Cyprus, is said to have fallen in love with an ivory statue of a maiden he had himself made, and to have prayed Aphrodite to breathe life into it. The request being granted, he married the maiden and became by her the father of Paphus.

PYGMIES, a fabulous people, their height 13 inches, mentioned by Homer as dwelling on the sh.o.r.es of the ocean and attacked by cranes in spring-time, the theme of numerous stories.

PYM, JOHN, Puritan statesman, born in Somersets.h.i.+re, educated at Oxford; bred to law, entered Parliament in 1621, opposed the arbitrary measures of the king, took a prominent part in the impeachment of Buckingham; at the opening of the Long Parliament procured the impeachment of the Earl of Strafford, and conducted the proceedings against him; he was one of the five members illegally arrested by Charles I., and was brought back again in triumph to Westminster; was appointed Lieutenant of the Ordnance, and a month after died (1584-1643).

PYRAMIDS, ancient structures of stone or sometimes brick, resting generally on square bases and tapering upwards with triangular sides, found in different parts of the world, but chiefly in Egypt, where they exist to the number of 70 or 80, and of which the most celebrated are those of Ghizeh, 10 m. W. of Cairo, three in number, viz., the Great Pyramid of Cheop, 449 ft. high, and the sides at base 746 ft. long, that named Chefren, nearly the same size, and that of Mykerinos, not half the height of the other two, but excelling them in beauty of execution. The original object of these structures has been matter of debate, but there seems to be now no doubt that they are sepulchral monuments of kings of Egypt from the first to the twelfth dynasty of them.

PYRAMUS AND THISBE, two lovers who lived in adjoining houses in Babylon, and who used to converse with each other through a hole in the wall, because their parents would not allow them open intimacy, but who arranged to meet one evening at the tomb of Nisus. The maiden appearing at the spot and being confronted by a lioness who had just killed an ox, took to flight and left her garment behind her, which the lioness had soiled with blood. Pyramus arriving after this saw only the b.l.o.o.d.y garment on the spot and immediately killed himself, concluding she had been murdered, while she on return finding him lying in his blood, threw herself upon his dead body and was found a corpse at his side in the morning.

PYRENE, a crystalline substance obtained from coal tar, fats, &c.

PYRENEES, a broad chain of lofty mountains running from the Bay of Biscay, 276 m. eastwards, to the Mediterranean, form the boundary between France and Spain. They are highest in the centre, Mount Maladetta reaching 11,168 ft. The snow-line is about 8000 or 9000 ft., and there are glaciers on the French side. Valleys run up either side, ending in precipitous "pot-holes," with great regularity. The pa.s.ses are very dangerous from wind and snow storms. The streams to the N. feed the Adour and Garonne; those to the S., the Ebro and Douro. Vegetation in the W. is European, in the E. sub-tropical. Minerals are few, though both iron and coal are worked. The basis of the system is granite with limestone strata superimposed.

PYROXYLINE, an explosive substance obtained by steeping vegetable fibre in nitro-sulphuric acid and drying after it is washed.

PYRRHA, in Greek mythology the wife of DEUCALION (q. v.).

PYRRHIC DANCE, the chief war-dance of the Greeks, of quick, light movement to the music of flutes; was of Cretan or Spartan origin. It was subsequently danced for display by the Athenian youths and by women to entertain company, and in the Roman empire was a favourite item in the public games.

PYRRHO, the father of the Greek sceptics, born in Elis, a contemporary of Aristotle; his doctrine was, that as we cannot know things as they are, only as they seem to be, we must be content to suspend our judgment on such matters and maintain a perfect imperturbability of soul if we would live to any good.

PYRRHONISM, philosophic scepticism. See PYRRHO.

PYRRHUS, king of Epirus, and kinsman of Alexander the Great; essayed to emulate the Macedonian by conquering the western World, and in 280 B.C.

invaded Italy with a huge army, directed to a.s.sist the Italian Greeks against Rome; in the decisive battles of that year and the next, he won "Pyrrhic victories" over the Romans, losing so many men that he could not pursue his advantage; 278 to 276 he spent helping the Greek colonies in Sicily against Carthage; his success was not uniform, and a Carthaginian fleet inflicted a serious defeat on his fleet returning to Italy; in 274 he was thoroughly vanquished by the Romans, and retired to Epirus; subsequent wars against Sparta and Argos were marked by disaster; in the latter he was killed by a tile thrown by a woman (318-272 B.C.).

PYRRHUS, called also NEOPTOLEMUS, son of Achilles; was one of the heroes concealed in the wooden horse by means of which Troy was entered, slew Priam by the altar of Zeus, and sacrificed Polyxena to the manes of his father. Andromache, the widow of Hector, fell to him on the division of the captives after the fall of Troy, and became his wife.

PYTHAGORAS, a celebrated Greek philosopher and founder of a school named after him Pythagoreans, born at Samos, and who seems to have flourished between 540 and 500 B.C.; after travels in many lands settled at Crotona in Magna Graecia, where he founded a fraternity, the members of which bound themselves in closest ties of friends.h.i.+p to purity of life and to active co-operation in disseminating and encouraging a kindred spirit in the community around them, the final aim of it being the establishment of a model social organisation. He left no writings behind him, and we know of his philosophy chiefly from the philosophy of his disciples.

PYTHAGOREANS, the school of philosophy founded by Pythagoras, "the fundamental thought of which," according to SCHWEGLER, "was that of proportion and harmony, and this idea is to them as well the principle of practical life, as the supreme law of the universe." It was a kind of "arithmetical mysticism, and the leading thought was that law, order, and agreement obtain in the affairs of Nature, and that these relations are capable of being expressed in number and in measure." The whole tendency of the Pythagoreans, in a practical aspect, was ascetic, and aimed only at a rigid castigation of the moral principle in order thereby to ensure the emanc.i.p.ation of the soul from its mortal prison-house and its transmigration into a n.o.bler form. It is with the doctrine of the transmigration of souls that the Pythagorean philosophy is specially a.s.sociated.

PYTHEAS, a celebrated Greek navigator of Ma.s.silia, in Gaul, probably lived in the time of Alexander the Great; in his first voyage visited Britain and Thule, and in his second coasted along the western sh.o.r.e of Europe from Cadiz to the Elbe.

PYTHIAN GAMES, celebrated from very early times till the 4th century A.D. every four years, near Delphi, in honour of Apollo, who was said to have inst.i.tuted them to commemorate his victory over the Python; originally were contests in singing only, but after the middle of the 6th century B.C. they included instrumental music, contests in poetry and art, athletic exercises, and horse-racing.

PYTHON, in the Greek mythology a serpent or dragon produced from the mud left on the earth after the deluge of Deucalion, a brood of sheer chaos and the dark, who lived in a cave of Parna.s.sus, and was slain by Apollo, who founded the Pythian Games in commemoration of his victory, and was in consequence called Pythius.

PYTHONESS, the priestess of APOLLO AT DELPHI (q. v.), so called from the PYTHON (q. v.), the dragon slain by the G.o.d.

PYX, the name of a cup-shaped, gold-lined vessel, with lid, used in the Roman Catholic churches for containing the eucharistic elements after their consecration either for adoration in the churches or for conveying to sick-rooms. Pyx means "box." Hence TRIAL OF THE PYX is the annual test of the British coinage, for which purpose one coin in every 15 lbs.

of gold and one in every 60 lbs. of silver coined is set aside in a pyx or box.

Q

QUADRAGESIMA (i. e. fortieth), a name given to Lent because it lasts forty days, and a.s.signed also to the first Sunday in Lent, the three Sundays which precede it being called respectively Septuagesima, s.e.xagesima, and Quinquagesima.

QUADRANT, an instrument for taking alt.i.tudes, consisting of the graduated arc of a circle of ninety degrees.

QUADRATIC EQUATION, an equation involving the square of the unknown quant.i.ty.

QUADRIGA, a two-wheeled chariot drawn by four horses abreast, used in the ancient chariot races.

QUADRILATERAL, THE, the name given to a combination of four fortresses, or the s.p.a.ce enclosed by them, in North Italy, at Mantua, Legnago, Verona, and Peschiera.

QUADROON, the name given to a person quarter-blooded, in particular the offspring of a mulatto and a white person.

QUADRUPLE ALLIANCE, an alliance formed in 1719 between England, France, Austria, and Holland to secure the thrones of France and England to the reigning families, and to defeat the schemes of Alberoni to the aggrandis.e.m.e.nt of Spain.

QUaeSTORS, the name given in Roman history to the officers entrusted with the care of the public treasury, originally two in number, one of them to see to the corn supply in Rome, but eventually, as the empire extended, increased, till in Caesar's time they amounted to forty. Under the kings they were the public prosecutors in cases of murder.