The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 346

PERSECUTIONS OF THE CHURCH, by which are meant those at the hands of Imperial Rome, are usually reckoned 10 in number, viz., those under Nero in 64, Domitian 95, Trajan 107, Hadrian 125, Marcus Aurelius 165, Severus 202, Maximinus 235, Decius 249, Valeria.n.u.s 257, and Diocletian 303; besides these there were others quite as deadly within the Church itself on the part of orthodox against heterodox, or Catholic against Protestant, and Established against Nonconformist.

PERSEPHONE, in the Greek mythology the daughter of Zeus and Demeter, the Proserpine of the Romans. See PROSERPINE.

PERSEPOLIS, the ancient capital of Persia, represented now by its ruins, which stand 25 m. from the NW. sh.o.r.es of Lake Niris, on the banks of the Murghab River, though in its palmy days it was described as "the Glory of the East."

PERSEUS, in the Greek mythology the son of Zeus and Danae, and the grandson of Acrisius, king of Argos, of whom it was predicted before his birth that he would kill his grandfather, who at his birth enclosed both his mother and him in a chest and cast it into the sea, which bore them to an island where they became slaves of the king, Polydectes, who sought to marry Danae; failing in his suit, and to compel her to submission, he ordered Perseus off to fetch him the head of the Medusa; who, aided by Hermes and Athena, was successful in his mission, cut off the head of the Medusa with the help of a mirror and sickle, brought it away with him in a pouch, and after delivering and marrying Andromeda in his return journey, exposed the head before Polydectes and court at a banquet, which turned them all into stone, whereupon he gave the Gorgon's head to Athena to place on her s.h.i.+eld, and set out for Argos; Acrisius hearing of his approach fled, but was afterwards killed accidentally by his grandson, who in throwing a discus had crushed his foot.

PERSIA (7,000), occupies the tableland 5000 ft. high between the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea on the S., the Caspian Sea and Turkestan on the N., Armenia on the W., and Afghanistan and Beluchistan on the E., and is a country three times as large as France; lofty mountain ranges traverse it from NW. to SE. and gird its northern boundary; the highest peak is Mount Demavend, 18,500 ft., in the Elburz, overlooking the Caspian. Most of the rivers evaporate inland; only one is navigable, the Karun, in the SW.; Lake Urumiyah, in the NW., is the largest, a very salt and shallow sheet of water. The eastern half of the country is largely desert, where the sand is swept about in clouds by the winds. With little rain, the climate is intensely hot in summer and cold in winter. Forests clothe the outer slopes of the mountains, and scanty brushwood the inner plains. Wheat and barley are grown on higher levels, and cotton, sugar, and fruits on the lower, all with the help of Irrigation. Agriculture is the chief industry; there are manufactures of carpets, shawls, and porcelain. The internal trade is carried on by caravans; foreign trade is not extensive, and is chiefly in Russian hands; the exports include opium, carpets, pearls, and turquoises. The capital is Teheran (210), a narrow, crooked, filthy town, at the southern foot of the Elburz. Tabriz (180), in the NW., is the emporium of trade. Ispahan (60), Meshed (60), Barfurush (60), and s.h.i.+raz (30) are the other important towns. The Government is despotic; the emperor is called the Shah. The people are courteous and refined in manner, witty, and fluent in speech; they are of Aryan stock and Mohammedan faith. The original empire of Persia was established by Cyrus 537 B.C. A century later decay set in. Revival under Parthian and Sa.s.sanian dynasties lasted from 138 B.C. till A.D.

639. Persia became then a province of the Arabs. From the 14th century it fell under Mongol sway, and again in the 16th century under Turkish. The present dynasty was founded in 1795. The future of the country is in Russian and British hands.

PERSIAN GULF, a great inland sea lying between Arabia and Persia, and entered from the Indian Ocean through the Gulf of Oman; is 650 m.

long and from 50 to 250 m. broad. The Arabian coast is low and sandy, the Persian high. The chief islands are in the W., where also is the Great Pearl Bank. The only river of importance received is the Shat-el-Arab, which brings down the waters of the Euphrates and the Tigris.

PERSIAN WARS, wars conducted by Persia in the three expeditions against Greece, first in 490 B.C. under Darius, and defeated by the Athenians under Miltiades at Marathon; the second, 480 B.C., under Xerxes, opposed by Leonidas and his 300 Spartans at Thermopylae and defeated by the Athenians under Themistocles at Salamis by sea; and the third, in 479 B.C., under Xerxes, by the Greeks under the Spartan Pausanius at Plataea.

PERSIANS, a name given to sculptured draped male figures used as columns.

PERSIANS, THE, belonged to the Aryan race, hence Iran, the original name of their country; they were related rather to the Western than the Eastern world, and it is from them that continuous history takes its start; they first recognised an ethereal essence, which they called Light, as the principle of all good, and man as related to it in such a way that, by the wors.h.i.+p of it, he became a.s.similated to it himself.

Among them first the individual subject stood face to face with a universal object, and claimed a kins.h.i.+p with it as the light of life. The epoch thus created was the emanc.i.p.ation of the human being from dependent childhood to self-dependent manhood, and it const.i.tuted the first epoch in the self-conscious history, which is the history proper, of the human race. The idea the Persians formed of the principle of good came far short of the reality indeed, but they first saw that it was of purely illuminating quality and universal, and that the destiny of man was to relate himself to it, to know, wors.h.i.+p, and obey it. With the ethereal principle of good they a.s.sociated an equally ethereal principle of evil, and, as they identified the one with light, they identified the other with darkness. Man they regarded as related to both, and his destiny to adore the one and disown the other as master. As the light had no portion in the darkness, and the darkness no portion in the light, the religion arose which pervades that of the Bible, which requires the children of the former to separate from those of the latter.

PERSIFLAGE, a French term for a light, quizzing mockery, or scoffing, specially on serious subjects, out of a cool, callous contempt for them.

PERSIGNY, FIALIN, DUC DE, a French statesman, a supporter all along of Louis Napoleon, abetting him in all his efforts to attain the throne of France, from the affair of Strasburg in 1836 to the _coup d'etat_ of December 1851, and becoming in the end Minister of the Interior under him; had to leave France at his fall (1806-1872).

PERSIUS, the last king of Macedonia; was conquered by Paulus aemilius, and died captive at Rome 167 B.C.

PERSIUS, Roman satirist, born in Etruria, was a pupil and friend of Cornutus the Stoic; a man much esteemed, who died young, only 28; wrote six short satires in the purity of a white-souled manhood, of much native vigour, though not equal to those of Horace and Juvenal, and that have commanded the regard of all scholars down to the present time; they have often been translated (34-62).

PERTH (30), the county-town of Perths.h.i.+re, on the Tay, 22 m. W. of Dundee: is a beautifully situated town, with fine buildings, the only old one being the restored St. John's Church. Its industries are dyeing and ink-making. At Scone, 2 m. distant, the kings of Scotland were crowned; and the murder of James I., the Gowrie conspiracy, and the battle of Tippermuir are but a few of its many historical a.s.sociations.

"The Five Articles of Perth," adopted by a General a.s.sembly held there in 1618, did much to precipitate the conflict between the Royal power and the Scottish Church; they enjoined kneeling at the Lord's Supper, observance of Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, and Pentecost, confirmation, and the private administration of the sacraments.

PERTH (8), the capital of West Australia, on the Swan River.

PERTHs.h.i.+RE (122), the most beautiful and varied county in Scotland, occupies the whole of the Tay Valley and part of the Forth, and is bounded by nine other counties. The N. and W. are mountainous, with many rivers and lakes, and much of the finest scenery in Scotland; the Trossachs and Loch Katrine are world famed. In the E. is extensive woodland and the Ca.r.s.e of Gowrie, one of the most fertile of Scottish plains. Ben Lawers is the highest mountain, Loch Tay the largest lake.

Much of the soil is good only for sheep farms, deer forests, and grouse moors; the county is visited annually by thousands of tourists and sportsmen.

PERTINAX, HELVIUS, Roman emperor in succession to Commodus; rose from the ranks by his military services to the imperial dignity, which he was pressed to accept against his will, and was a.s.sa.s.sinated by the Praetorian Guards less than three months after, in consequence of the reforms he projected in order to restore the ancient discipline of the army (126-193).

PERTURBATIONS, name given to irregularities or slight deviations in the movement of a heavenly body, due chiefly to the neighbourhood of another point in its...o...b..t.

PERU (3,000), a country in the W. of South America, twice the size of Austro-Hungary, lies between Brazil and Bolivia and the Pacific, with Ecuador on the N. and Chile on the S.; it consists of a seaboard plain, hot and rainless, but intersected by rich river courses, in which sugar, cotton, and coffee are grown; the Andes chains, snow-tipped and presenting every kind of climate and variety of vegetation on their slopes and in their valleys, rich in minerals and yielding chiefly great quant.i.ties of silver; and the Montana, the eastward slopes of the Andes, clad with valuable forests where the cinchona is cultivated, and the upland basins of the Ucayale River and the Upper Amazon, very fertile, with great coffee and cacao plantations and abundant rain; the chief articles of export are silver, nitre, guano, sugar, and wool. Lima (200), the capital, is 8 m. inland from its port Callao (35); has an old cathedral, and is the chief centre of commerce; its princ.i.p.al merchants are Germans. The government is republican; the ruling cla.s.ses are of Spanish descent, but half of the population are Inca Indians and a quarter are half-castes. From the 12th to the 16th centuries the Incas enjoyed a high state of civilisation and an extensive empire administered on socialistic principles; they attained great skill in the industries and arts. The Spanish conqueror Pizarro, landing in 1532, overthrew the empire and established the colony; after three centuries of oppression Peru threw off the Spanish yoke in 1824. The history of the republic has been one of continual restlessness, and a war with Chile 1879-84 ended in complete disaster; recovery is slowly progressing.

PERUGIA (17), Italian walled city on the right bank of the Tiber, 127 m. by rail N. of Rome, with a cathedral of the 15th century, some noteworthy churches, a Gothic munic.i.p.al palace, picture gallery, university, and library; is rich in art treasures and antiquarian remains; it has silk and woollen industries; it was anciently called Perusia, and one of the cities of ancient Etruria, and in its day has experienced very varied fortunes; it was the centre of the Umbrian school of painting.

PERUGINO, his proper name VANNUCCI, Italian painter, born near Perugia, whence his name; studied with Leonardo da Vinci at Florence, where he chiefly resided; was one of the teachers of Raphael, painted religious subjects, did frescoes for churches that have nearly all perished, a "Christ giving the Keys to Peter" being the best extant; Ruskin contrasts his work with Turner's; "in Turner's distinctive work,"

he says, "colour is scarcely acknowledged unless under influence of suns.h.i.+ne ... wherever the sun is not, there is melancholy and evil," but "in Perugino's distinctive work"--to whom he therefore gives "the captain's place over all"--"there is simply _no_ darkness, _no_ wrong.

Every colour is lovely and every s.p.a.ce is light; the world, the universe, is divine; all sadness is a part of harmony, and all gloom a part of light" (1446-1524).

PESCHIERA, one of the fortresses of the QUADRILATERAL (q. v.), on an island in the Mincio, 14 m. W. of Verona.

PESHAWAR or PESHAWUR (84), a town on the Indian frontier, and centre of trade with Afghanistan, is 10 m. from the entrance of the Khyber Pa.s.s, on the Kabul River, and though ill-fortified is a bulwark of the empire, being provided with a large garrison of infantry and artillery.

PEs.h.i.+TO (i. e. simple), a version of the Bible in Syriac, executed not later than the middle of the 2nd century for Judaic Christians in the Syrian Church, the version of the Old Testament being executed direct from the Hebrew and that of the New being the first translation of the Greek of it into a foreign tongue, and both of value in questions affecting exegesis and the original text; the New Testament version contains all the books now included except the Apocalypse, Jude, 2 Peter, and 2 and 3 John.

PESSIMISM, a name given now to a habit of feeling, now to a system of opinion; as the former it denotes a tendency to dwell on the dark or gloomy side of things, culminating in a sense of their vanity and nothingness, while in the latter it is applied to all systems of opinion which lay the finger on some black spot in the structure of the life of the world or of the universe, which so long as it remains is thought to render it unworthy of existence.

PESTALOZZI, JOHANN HEINRICH, a celebrated educationist, born at Zurich; founder of a natural system of education, beginning with childhood, and who, however unsuccessful in the working of it himself from his want of administrative faculty, persuaded others by his writings to adopt it, especially in Germany, and to adopt it both enthusiastically and successfully; his method, which he derived from Rousseau, was based on the study of human nature as we find it born in the child, and it aimed at the harmonious development of all its innate capabilities, beginning with the most rudimentary (1745-1827).

PESTH or BUDAPEST (492), on the left bank of the Danube, forming one munic.i.p.ality with Buda on the right, is the capital of Hungary, and 173 m. by rail E. of Vienna; Pesth is built on a plain, joined to Buda by three bridges, the last on the Danube, and is a thriving modern city, with picture galleries, parliament house, library, university, science schools, many baths, and public gardens; it makes machinery, agricultural implements, cutlery, flour, &c., and does a great trade in corn, wool, hides, wines, and bacon.

PETALISM, banishment in Sparta similar to ostracism in Athens, procured by writing the name on an olive leaf.

PETARD, a cone-shaped explosive machine for bursting open gates, barriers, &c., made of iron and filled with powder and ball.

PETASUS, the winged-cap of the G.o.d Mercury.

PETCHORA, the largest river in Northern Russia, rises in the Ural Mountains and flows N. through Vologda and Archangel, then westward and N. again, entering the Arctic Ocean by a large, island-studded estuary, after a course of 1000 m. through sombre forests and wild, sombre scenery.