Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/341

P A R P A R 319 as a curiosity. His early love poems or elegies, however, and some slight miscellaneous work of his more mature years, show, with something of the artificiality of the time, a remarkable grace and ease, a good deal of tender ness, and not inconsiderable fancy and wit. One famous piece, the Elegy on a Young Girl, is scarcely to be excelled in its kind. In the natural comparison of Parny with his younger English contemporary, Moore, whom he in many ways resembles, the palm must be given to the French poet for precision and enduring elegance of style at his best, though he has less melody and tenderness, and though he condescended to much work far inferior both morally and artistically to the worst of Moore s. There is no complete edition of Parny s works, and the loss is small. There are several good selections containing almost everything of real value, among which may be mentioned that of Gamier Freres. PARODY (TrapwSta, literally a song sung beside, a comic parallel) may be denned as an imitation of the form or style of a serious writing in matter of a meaner kind so as to produce a ludicrous effect. The lowest savages show a turn for comic mimicry, and it is almost as old in European literature as serious writing. The Batracho- myomachia, or " Battle of the Frogs and Mice," a travesty of the heroic epos, was ascribed at one time to Homer himself; and it is probably at least as old as the 5th century B.C. The great tragic poetry of Greece very soon provoked the parodist. Aristophanes parodied the style of Euripides in the Acharnians with a comic power that has never been surpassed. The debased grand style of mediaeval romance was parodied in Don Quixote. Shakespeare parodied the extravagant heroics of an earlier stage, and was himself parodied by Marston, incidentally in his plays and elaborately in a roughly humorous burlesque of Venus and Adonis. The wits of the Queen Anne age succeeded better in mock-heroics than in serious composition. A century later the most celebrated parodists were the brothers Smith, whose Rejected Addresses may be regarded as classic in this kind of artificial production. The Victorian age has pro duced a plentiful crop of parodists in prose and in verse, in dramatic poetry and in lyric poetry. By common con sent, the most subtle and dexterous of metrical parodists is the late Mr C. S. Calverley, who succeeded in reproducing not merely tricks of phrase and metre, but even manner- istic turns of thought. Johnson s dictum about pastoral poetry, that most of it is " easy, vulgar, and therefore dis gusting," might be applied to parody; but Calverley would escape the censure. PA11OS, or PARO, an island in the ^Egean Sea, one of the largest of the group of the Cyclades, with a population of 8000. It lies to the west of Naxos, from which it is separated by a channel about 6 miles broad, and with which it is now grouped together, in popular language, under the common name of Paronaxia. It is in 37 N. lat, and 25 10 E. long. Its greatest length from north-east to south-west is 13 miles, and its greatest breadth 10 miles. It is formed of a single mountain about 2400 feet high, sloping evenly down on all sides to a maritime plain, which is broadest on the north-east and south-west sides. The island is composed of marble, though gneiss and mica-schist are to be found in a few places. Grey and bare rises the mountain, but on the level ground as well as on some of the lower slopes corn and vines are cultivated with success. A sweetish dark- red wine is exported in considerable quantities. The island is almost treeless ; the olives, which formerly yielded abundance of oil, were cut down by the Venetians for fire wood in the war of Candia. The capital, Paroikia or Parikia (Italian, Parechiu situated on a bay on the north west side of the island, occupies the site of the ancient capital Paros. Its harbour admits small vessels ; the entrance is dangerous on account of rocks. Houses built in the Italian style with terraced roofs, shadowed by luxuriant vines, and surrounded by gardens of oranges and pomegranates, give to the town a picturesque and pleasing aspect. Here on a rock beside the sea are the remains of a mediaeval castle built almost entirely of ancient marble remains. Similar traces of antiquity in the shape of bas-reliefs, inscriptions, columns, <tc., are numerous in the town. Outside the town is the church of Katapoliani (rj E/carovTairvXiai/^), well known in the Archipelago. On the north side of the island is the bay of Naousa (Naussa) or Agoussa, forming a safe and roomy harbour. In ancient times it was closed by a chain or boom. Another good harbour is that of Drios on the south-east side, where the Turkish fleet used to anchor on its annual voyage through the ^Egean. The three villages of Tragoulas, Marmora, and Kepidi (K^Trt St, pronounced Tschipidi), situated on an open plain on the eastern side of the island, and rich in remains of antiquity, probably occupy the site of an ancient town. They are known together as the " villages of Kephalos," from the steep and lofty headland of Kephalos. On this headland stands an abandoned monastery of St Anthony, amidst the ruins of a mediteval castle, which belonged to the Venetian family of the Venieri, and was gallantly though fruitlessly defended against the Turkish general Barbarossa in 1537. In antiquity the island contained a famous altar, the sides of which were said to be a stadium (606 feet) long. But the celebrated marble quarries are the real centre of interest of the island. They lie on the northern side of the mountain anciently known as Marpessa (afterwards Capresso), a little below a former convent of St Mina. The marble, which was employed by Phidias, Praxiteles, and other great Greek sculptors, was obtained by means of subterranean quarries driven horizontally or at a descend ing angle into the rock, and the marble thus quarried by lamplight got the name of Lychnites, Lychneus (from lychnos, a lamp), or Lygdos (Plin., H. N., xxxvi. 5, 14; Plato, Eryxias, 400 D; Athen., v. 2050; Diod. Sic., 2, 52). Several of these tunnels are still to be seen. At the entrance to one of them is a celebrated bas- relief dedicated to the Nymphs by one Adamas, of the Thracian tribe of the Odrysae ; it represents a festival of Silenus or Pan. History. Like the rest of the Cyclades, Paros seems to have been peopled at an early date by Carians (Herod., i. 171 ; Time., i. 4) perhaps also by the Phoenicians, whom we know from the Greek historians to have occupied other islands in the vEgean, including the neighbouring Thcra (Herod., ii. 44 ; iv. 147 ; compare Time., i. 8). The institution of a form of sacrifice to the Graces, apparently peculiar to Paros, at which neither garlands nor flutes were made use of, was ascribed to Minos. The story that Paros was colonized by one Paros of Parrhasia, who brought with him a colony of Arca dians to the island (Heraclides, De Rebus Publicis, 8 ; Steph. Byz., s.v. Tldpos), is one of those etymologizing fictions in which Greek legend abounds. Ancient names of the island are said to have been Plateia (or Pactia), Demetrias, Zacynthus, Hyria, Hyleessa, Minoa, and Cabarnis (Steph. Byz.). From Athens the island afterwards received a colony of lonians (Schol. Dionys. , Per. , 525; comp. Herod., i. 171), under whom it attained a high degree of prosperity. It sent out colonies to Thasos (Thuc., iv. 104 ; Strabo, 487) and Parium on the Hellespont. In the former colony, which was planted in the.loth or 18th Olympiad, the poet Archilochus, a native of Paros, is said to have taken part. As late as 385 B.C. the Parians, in conjunction with Dionysius of Syracuse, founded a colony on the Illyrian island of Pharos (Diod. Sic., xv. 13). So high was the reputation of the Parians that they were chosen by the people of Miletus to arbitrate in a party dispute (Herod., v. 28 sq.). Shortly before the Persian "War Paros seems to have been a depend ency of Naxos (Herod., v. 31). In the Persian War Paros sided with the Persians and sent a trireme to Marathon to support them. In retaliation, the capital Paros was besieged by an Athenian fleet under Miltiades, who demanded a fine of 100 talents. But the town offered a vigorous resistance, and the Athenians were obliged to sail away after a siege of twenty-six days, during which they had laid the island waste. It was at a temple of Demeter Thesmo-