an opera which obtained a wide popularity, and Leonora (1804), based on the same story as Beethoven’s Fidelio. In 1807 Napoleon while in Dresden took a fancy to him, and took him with him to Warsaw and Paris at a salary of 28,000 francs. In 1812 he succeeded Spontini as conductor of the Italian opera in Paris. This post he retained at the Restoration, receiving also the posts of chamber composer to the king and conductor of the private orchestra of the duke of Orleans. In 1823 he retired from the Italian opera in favour of Rossini. In 1831 he was elected a member of the Academy, and in 1832 was appointed conductor of his orchestra by King Louis Philippe. He died on the 3rd of May 1839.
Paer wrote in all 43 operas, in the Italian style of Paesiello and Cimarosa. His other works, which include nine religious compositions, thirteen cantatas, and a short list of orchestral and chamber pieces, are of little importance; in any case the superficial quality of his compositions was such as to secure him popularity while he lived and after his death oblivion.
See R. Eitner, Quellen-Lexikon (Leipzig, 1902), vii. 277, sqq., where a list of his works is given.
PAESTUM (Gr. Ποσειδωνία; mod. Pesto), an ancient Greek city in Lucania, near the sea, with a railway station 24 m. S.E. of Salerno, 5 m. S. of the river Silarus (Salso). It is said by Strabo (v. 251) to have been founded by Troezenian and Achaean colonists from the still older colony of Sybaris, on the Gulf of Tarentum; this probably happened not later than about 600 B.C. Herodotus (i. 167) speaks of it as being already a flourishing city in about 540 B.C., when the neighbouring city of Velia was founded. For many years the city maintained its independence, though surrounded by the hostile native inhabitants of Lucania. Autonomous coins were struck, of which many specimens now exist (see Numismatics). After long struggles the city fell into the hands of the Lucanians (who nevertheless did not expel the Greek colonists) and in 273 B.C. it became a Latin colony under the Roman rule, the name being changed to the Latin form Paestum. It successfully resisted the attacks of Hannibal; and it is noteworthy that it continued to strike copper coins even under Augustus and Tiberius. The neighbourhood was then healthy, highly cultivated, and celebrated for its flowers; the “twice blooming roses of Paestum” are mentioned by Virgil (Geor. iv. 118), Ovid (Met. xv. 70S), Martial (iv. 41, 10; vi. 80, 6), and other Latin poets. Its present deserted and malarious state is probably owing to the silting up of the mouth of the Silarus, which has overflowed its bed, and converted the plain into unproductive marshy ground. Herds of buffaloes, and the few peasants who watch them, are now the only occupants of this once thickly populated and garden-like region. In 871 Paestum was sacked and partly destroyed by Saracen invaders; in the nth century it was further dismantled by Robert Guiscard, and in the 16th century was finally deserted.
The ruins of Posidonia are among the most interesting of the Hellenic world. The earliest temple in Paestum, the so-called Basilica, must in point of style be associated with the temples D and F at Selinus, and is therefore to be dated about 570–554 B.C.[1] It is a building of unique plan, with nine columns in the front and eighteen at the sides, 434 ft. in diameter. A line of columns runs down the centre of the cella. The columns have marked entasis, and the flutings end in a semicircle, above which is generally a torus (always present in the so-called temple of Ceres). The capitals are remarkable, inasmuch as the necking immediately below the echinus is decorated with a band of leaves, the arrangement of which varies in different cases. The columns and the architraves upon them are well preserved, but there is nothing above the frieze existing, and the cella wall has entirely disappeared. Next in point of date comes the so-called temple of Ceres, a hexastyle peripteros, which may be dated after 540 B.C. The columns are all standing, and the west and part of the east pediment are still in situ; but of the cella, again, nothing is left. The capitals are like those of the Basilica, but the details are differently worked out. In front of this temple stood a sacrificial altar as long as the temple itself.
The most famous of the temples of Paestum, the so-called temple of Neptune, comes next in point of date (about 420 B.C.). It is a hexastyle peripteros with fourteen columns on each side, and is remarkably well-preserved, both pediments and the epistyle at the sides being still in situ. No traces of the decoration of the pediments and metopes have been preserved. The cella, the outer walls of which have to a great extent disappeared, has two internal rows of seven columns 423 ft. in diameter, upon which rests a simple epistyle, supporting a row of smaller columns, so that the interior of the cella was in two storeys.
The Temple of Peace is a building of the Roman period of the 2nd century B.C., with six Doric columns on the front, eight on the sides and none at the back; it was excavated in 1830 and is now entirely covered up. Traces of a Roman theatre and amphitheatre (?) have also been found. The circuit of the town walls, well built of squared blocks of travertine, and 16 ft. thick, of the Greek period, is almost entire; they are about 3 m. in circumference, enclosing an irregular, roughly rectangular area. There were four gates, that on the east with a single arched opening being well-preserved. Outside the north gate is a street of tombs, in some of which were found arms, vases and fine mural paintings (now in the Naples Museum).
The following table gives the chief dimensions of the four temples described above in feet:—
| Length with- out steps. |
Breadth with- out steps. |
Length of cella. |
Breadth of cella. |
Diameter of columns. |
Height of columns. |
Number of columns. | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basilica (so-called). | 178 | 8034 | 13734 | 4412 | 434 | 21 | 50 |
| Temple of Ceres (so-called). | 108 | 4734 | 7812 | 2512 | 612 | 1913 | 34 |
| Temple of Neptune (so-called). | 197 | 80 | 14934 | 4412 | 423 | 28 | 36 |
| Temple of Peace (so-called). | 84 | 4412 | 4812 | 2814 | 3 | ? | 20 |
(T. As.)
PAEZ, JOSÉ ANTONIO (1790–1873), Venezuelan president, was born of Indian parents near Acarigua in the province of
Barinas on the 13th of June 1790. He came to the front in the
war of independence against Spain, and his military career, which
began about 1810, was distinguished by the defeat of the Spanish
forces at Mata de la Miel (1815), at Montecal and throughout
the province of Apure (1816), and at Puerto Cabello (1823). In
1820 he furthered the secession of Venezuela from the republic
of Colombia, and he became its first president (1830–1834).
He was again president in 1839–1843, and dictator in 1846; but
soon afterwards headed a revolution against his successor and
was thrown into prison. In 1850 he was released and left the
country, but in 1858 he returned, and in 1860 was made
minister to the United States. A year afterwards he again
returned and made himself dictator, but in 1863 was overthrown
and exiled. He died in New York on the 6th of May 1873.
His autobiography was published at New York in 1867–1869, and his son Ramon Paez wrote Public Life of J. A. Paez (1864). An Apoteosis by Guzman Blanco was published at Paris in 1889.
PAEZ, PEDRO (1564–1622), Jesuit missionary to Abyssinia, was born at Olmedo in Old Castile in 1564. Having entered the Society of Jesus, he was set apart for foreign mission service, and sent to Goa in 1588. Within a year he and a fellow missionary were dispatched from that place to Abyssinia to act as spiritual directors to the Portuguese residents. On his way thither, he fell into the hands of pirates at Dhofar and was sent to Sanaa, capital of the Yemen, where he was detained
- ↑ The dating adopted in the present article, which is in absolute contradiction to that given in the previous edition of this work, is that given by R. Koldewey and O. Puchstein, Die griechischen Tempel in Unteritalien und Sicilien (Berlin, 1899), 11–35.
