forty ships to aid the Persian king against Egypt; but the people in these vessels returned and made war upon the tyrant. They were defeated. The Sardian satrap Orœtes enticed Polycrates to the mainland, and had him crucified in 522. Polycrates was a powerful but cruel and treacherous sovereign. He was very rich, and fortunate in all his enterprises. Living in magnificence and splendour, his court was frequented by poets and artists, of whom he was a generous patron. His prosperity seems to have been the cause of his ruin. He ruled from 540 till 522.—S. D.
POLYDORE VIRGIL. See Virgil.
POLYGNOTUS, the earliest of the great painters of Greece, was a native of the island of Thasos, and is assumed to have returned with Cimon to Athens after the conquest of that place, 463 b.c. With this painter the art was fully developed in all its essential principles, even to the establishment of portrait-painting. The picture of Cimon's sister Elpinice is the first Greek portrait by a known painter on record. Polygnotus painted her as Cassandra, in the painting of the Rape of Cassandra in the Pœcile at Athens. Polygnotus was distinguished above all his contemporaries for his powers of expression; he was even dignified with the title of the Ethograph; he at the same time idealized his figures, as Aristotle informs us; and Lucian enumerates him among the four greatest colourists of the Greeks. The same writer praises the elegance of his flowing draperies. The most celebrated works of Polygnotus were the two great series of pictures in the "Lesche" or public hall attached to the temple of Apollo at Delphi; they are minutely described by Pausanias. On the right was the "Destruction of Troy," and the preparation for "Helen's return to Greece;" on the left was the "Visit of Ulysses to Hades to consult the soul of Tiresias!" These two series of pictures were afterwards known as the Iliad and Odyssey of Polygnotus, as his subjects were chiefly taken from the lines of Homer; the so-called Odyssey was the more comprehensive and the more popular. The painter received extraordinary honours for these works; he was granted by the Amphictyonic council public hospitality throughout Greece, that is, wherever he travelled he was maintained at the public expense through the agents of the above council. The art of Polygnotus was more representative than dramatic or historical, being generic and essential, like that of Phidias; but this is true chiefly of accessaries. A house or even a wall might represent a city; the pulling down a wall the destruction of a city; a tent an encampment; the taking down a tent a departure; and a ship a fleet; a few captives represented a conquest; a few warriors an army; and a few dead bodies, with a single soldier bent on slaughter, a victory. The various groups of the Lesche at Delphi have been restored from the description of Pausanias by two German artists, the brothers Riepenhausen—Pientures de Polygnote à Delphes, &c. The original pictures were still in a good state in the time of Pausanias; they were probably on panels and let into the walls, as was the case apparently with the pictures of the Pœcile at Athens—(Böttiger, Ideen zur Archäologie der Malerei; Wornum, Epochs of Painting.)—R. N. W.
POLYHISTOR, Alexander Cornelius, a native either of Ephesus or of Cotiæum in Lesser Phrygia, was taken prisoner during the war of Sulla in Greece, and was sold to Cornelius Lentulus, who made him pedagogus to his children. His death was occasioned by his house at Laurentum being burned. Of his works the most important was entitled Παντοδατῆς Ὗλης λόγοι, which consisted of forty-two books, each of which contained a historical and geographical account of a country. It is often referred to by Stephanus Byzantius and Pliny. He is also believed to have written Διαδόχαι Φιλοσόφων, supposed to be the basis of Diogenes Laertius.—D. W. R.
POMBAL, Dom Sebastiao Josè de Carvalho, Marquis de, a celebrated Portuguese statesman, was born in 1669, at Soura in Coimbra. Being destined for the legal profession, he was sent to study at the university of Coimbra; but finding this pursuit uncongenial to his taste, he obtained a commission in the royal guards. The restraint of military discipline, however, was irksome, and he resigned his commission and retired to his native place. He next married a wealthy widow; and after spending some time in retirement and learned leisure, he repaired to Lisbon, where he was introduced at court and became a favourite of the queen. In 1739, through the influence of his uncle, a canon of the royal chapel, he was appointed ambassador extraordinary to the British court. He was recalled in 1745, on a change of ministry, but was soon after sent to Vienna for the purpose of mediating between Pope Benedict XIV. and the Empress Maria Theresa. His wife having died at this time, he married the young Countess Daun, a relation of the famous general of that name. Shortly after his return to Lisbon John V. died, and the queen-dowager having formed an attachment to the wife of Carvalho, recommended him to her son, Joseph I., who appointed him, in 1750, secretary of state for foreign affairs, an office for which he was eminently qualified. He soon gained the entire confidence of the king, and the promptitude and activity which he displayed in repairing the desolation caused by the terrible earthquake of 1755 made him equally a favourite with the people. The finest parts of the resuscitated capital were built according to his designs, and still attest his taste and skill. In the following year he was appointed prime minister. He soon became the virtual sovereign of the kingdom, and ruled it with almost absolute authority. He set himself vigorously to root out the abuses which had attained a frightful magnitude under the government of his predecessors; cleared the capital of the ruffians who infested its streets, plundering and murdering the citizens; expelled the jesuits from the court; and imprisoned even the highest nobles who had any share in the misgovernment of former years, or who ventured to speak against his measures. Hostile criticism of these was, indeed, forbidden on pain of death. This policy was arbitrary and severe, but it was for the most part beneficial to the country. As might have been expected, his severity and haughtiness created many enemies, and in 1758 an attempt was made to murder his royal master. The conspiracy, however, was discovered, and its ringleader, the duke of Aveiro, broken on the wheel. His accomplices were then imprisoned and otherwise punished, and the Jesuits who had been implicated in the plot were banished the country. The far-seeing, though despotic minister, was not satisfied with the mere extirpation of existing abuses—his great aim was to rouse the slumbering energies of the people, and to excite them to imitate the improvements of other and more advanced countries. He established a system of national education for all classes of the community, sent for English and French instructors to teach the Portuguese navigation and shipbuilding, and the most improved processes of agriculture; instituted special schools for instruction in industrial and commercial pursuits; reformed the universities, and introduced into the curriculum the study of the mathematical and physical sciences. Joseph I., highly gratified with the benefits thus conferred upon his kingdom by his able and energetic minister, left the management of public affairs entirely in his hands, created him Marquis of Pombal, and bestowed upon him a liberal pension and an extensive estate. On the death of the king, however, in 1771, the enemies of Pombal regained their ascendancy; he was dismissed from office, and a clamour was even raised for his head. But the fallen minister presented an undaunted front to the dangers which menaced him, and dared his assailants to punish him for merely obeying the commands of his sovereign. He was allowed to retreat unmolested to his estates, and lived there in dignified retirement until his death in May, 1782. It is mentioned as a proof of the prudence and economy with which he administered the government, that when he retired from office he left about forty-eight millions of cruzados in the public treasury, and thirty in the caixa di decimos—a surplus which the Portuguese government never had either before or since.—J. T.
POMFRET, John, a minor poet of the seventeenth century, was the son of a clergyman, and was born about 1665. He was educated at Cambridge, and then took orders, and was presented to the living of Maiden in Bedfordshire. He published his poems in 1699. In 1703 he came up to London to seek from Bishop Compton institution to a more lucrative living to which he had been presented. It seems, however, that some illnatured person, having affixed a false sense to the words, "for I'd have no wife," used by Pomfret in his poem of "The Choice," as if the poor poet preferred a less regular connection, so prejudiced the bishop's mind that he demurred to granting the institution sought for. Pomfret was soon able to convince the bishop by an unanswerable argument, the fact of his having a wife, that the interpretation was untenable; but unhappily during the prolonged stay which he was thus obliged to make in London, he caught the small-pox, and died. His poems, which fill half a small volume, are of tolerable merit. "The Choice," which has been admired quite as much as it deserves, with several other poems—one of which is an eclogue on the
