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and he may very likely have caused a corrected edition to be prepared for his public library. To defray the expense of his magnificent public buildings, he was obliged to impose a heavy land-tax of five per cent, (or as some say ten per cent.) on the wealthier citizens; and Aristotle charges him with designedly impoverishing his people to keep them in subjection. He died at an advanced age, 527 b.c., and was succeeded by his sons Hippias and Hipparchus.—Hippias was born probably about 560 b.c. The joint rule of the brothers has been characterized as at once virtuous and intelligent. In 514 b.c. Hipparchus was assassinated, after which Hippias, dreading a similar fate, became morose and suspicious. In revenge for the death of his brother, he put many of the citizens to death, and extorted money by means which were felt to be arbitrary and oppressive. Influenced by the Alcmæonidæ; and other Athenian exiles, the Lacedemonians sent an army against him, but it was defeated and its commander slain. The Spartans then sent a larger army, before which Hippias retreated into the Acropolis. Here he could have defied his enemies, but his family attempting to leave the city, fell into the hands of the besiegers, who restored them only on the condition that Hippias and his relatives should depart from Athens within five days. They retired to Sigeum. The Spartans subsequently repented of their conduct towards one who had been their friend, and with a view to his restoration invited Hippias to their capital. Hippias afterwards proceeded to the court of Darius, and persuaded him to fit out an expedition to chastise the Athenians. Hippias, who had now reached a very advanced age, accompanied this army, which he led to the plains of Marathon. While making arrangements for battle he happened to sneeze, when one of his teeth fell out and was buried in the sand. This he regarded as a bad omen, and forthwith abandoned the enterprise. There is much uncertainty regarding the after history of Hippias. It is usually stated that he met his death while fighting against the Athenians at the battle of Marathon, but this is very doubtful.—G.

PISTRUCCI, Benedetto, a distinguished Italian gem engraver and medallist, was born at Rome in 1782. He practised in that city as a gem engraver with much success, having among his patrons several of the principal English dilettanti. At the suggestion, it is said, of one of them, Mr. Hamilton, he engraved a sardonyx of three strata with a head of Flora, which was so successful an imitation of an antique cameo that it was purchased as a genuine antique by the celebrated Payne Knight, and assigned a leading place in his famous collection. In 1816 Pistrucci came to England and was introduced to the prince regent, who was so delighted with his skill in deceiving Payne Knight that he gave him a commission to engrave his portrait; and though not a medallist he was soon after appointed to engrave the dies for the new coinage. During the remainder of the regency and the early part of the reign of George IV., Pistrucci acted (without the official title) as chief engraver to the mint; but about 1822 the king preferring the more youthful profile given to him in Chantrey's bust, desired that it should be copied on the coinage. Pistrucci, however, declined to copy another artist's design, and the engraving was taken out of his hands. On Mr. Wyon being appointed some years later chief engraver to the mint, Pistrucci was named medallist to the king, and in this office he was continued under William IV. and Queen Victoria. He died September 16, 1855. Pistrucci was essentially a gem engraver, and his coins and medals partake more of the character of gem engraving than is desirable. He is said to have to the last cut his dies with the gem engraver's lathe and diamond, instead of the customary steel tools. He obtained for his gems remarkably high prices. Mr. King in his work on Antique Gems says, that he received for a cameo of the heads of Augustus and Livia the unprecedented sum of £800; forty years later (1859) this cameo, a blue chalcedony, was sold at the Herz sale for £30, a noteworthy illustration of the eccentricities of fashionable connoisseurship. Pistrucci's crown pieces with the St. George on the reverse have been much admired; but the St. George, however prettily modelled, is too palpable an outrage on common sense. The coronation medal of George IV. is a very fine work; but Pistrucci was accustomed to speak of his great Waterloo medal, on which he had been more or less engaged for above twenty years, as his masterpiece. The die proved, however, when completed to be of too elaborate a character to admit of working successfully.—J. T—e.

PITAU, Nicolas, a celebrated Flemish engraver, was born at Antwerp in 1633. He was a scholar or imitator of F. de Poilly, but his style eventually became freer and more masculine in handling. He executed several plates after the great masters, the most esteemed being a Holy Family after Raphael, and some from pictures in the Florence gallery. He also engraved numerous portraits. He died in 1676.—His son, Nicolas Pitau, the younger, also engraved portraits very creditably.—J. T—e

PITAVAL. See Gayot de Pitaval.

PITCAIRNE, Archibald, M.D., a physician of eminence in the seventeenth century, whose teaching and writings exercised a considerable influence on the medical opinions of his time, was born in Edinburgh in 1652. His early education was principally obtained at the university of his native city. He applied himself first to the study of divinity, but not finding that to his taste, he turned his attention to law. Health, however, failing he went to Montpellier, where he acquired a taste for and adopted the profession of medicine. He pursued his studies for a time at Paris, and then returned to Edinburgh, where he went through a course of mathematical reading. He again visited Paris for the purpose of medical study, and ultimately graduated at Rheims in 1680. He was a man of original thought, and endeavoured to connect a theory of medicine with the laws of mathematics. After his graduation he returned to Edinburgh, and soon after produced a short treatise on scientific discoveries, in which he vindicates Harvey's claim to the discovery of the circulation. In 1692, the chair of medicine at Leyden being vacant, Pitcairne was invited by the university to fill it. Finding that his political opinions and attachment to the exiled monarch were a bar to his advancement at home, he accepted the offer; and although he remained professor at Leyden for little more than a year, he had the good fortune to number among his pupils Boerhaave and Mead—afterwards the two most distinguished physicians in Europe. In his lectures he expounded those mechanical doctrines of which he was the originator. He is said to have been generally reserved towards his pupils; but in the case of Mead he permitted a greater degree of intercourse than usual, and communicated to him hints which were afterwards used and acknowledged in Mead's writings. In 1693 he visited Edinburgh, and married the daughter of Sir A. Stephenson. It was his intention to have returned to Leyden; but the wishes of his wife's parents prevailed, and he consented to resign his professorship and to remain. He now rapidly attained the foremost place as a physician in the northern capital, which he held until his death in 1713. Pitcairne was an elegant scholar; he was the author of some Latin poems, which were published by Ruddiman in 1727. Amongst his scientific writings are "Dissertatio de Legibus Historiæ Naturalis," and "Elementa Medicinæ Physico-Mathematica." His works were collected and published at Leyden in 1737. Of open, convivial, and eccentric habits, Pitcairne was an avowed enemy to the rigid presbyterianism of his time and country, and a warm partisan of the cause of the Stewarts.—F. C. W.

PITHOU, François, a learned French canonist, born at Troyes, 1543, attorney-general to the chamber of justice, established by Henry IV., to check the frauds of the financiers, and appointed a commissioner for settling the boundaries between the Netherlands and France, was remarkable alike for learning and integrity. He assisted his brother in his great work on the Body of the Canon Law, Paris, 2 vols., folio, 1687. He published separately an edition of the Salic law with notes, "Antiqui Rhetores Latini," Paris, 1597, and he discovered the Fables of Phædrus. He died in 1621.—T. J.

PITHOU, Pierre, was born at Troyes in 1539. He was one of the pupils of Turnebus. As a protestant, he nearly lost his life in the massacre of St. Bartholomew. Next year, having conformed to the Romish church, he was made substitute to the attorney-general, and in 1581 attorney-general to the chamber of justice in Guienne. Pithou was a zealous Gallican, and wrote a strong defence of his king and country against the brief of Gregory XIII. on the ordinance of Henry III. concerning the council of Trent. He was a leaguer till the conversion of Henry IV., but after that event he became one of his most loyal friends, especially by the publication of a paper entitled "Raisons pour lesquelles les Evêques de France ont pu de droit donner l'absolution à Henri de Bourbon," &c. He died in 1596. De Thou eulogized him as most remarkable for the depth of his learning and political wisdom. By his masterly "Traité des Libertés de l'Eglise Gallicane," he has won deservedly the gratitude of his