Lycomedes, who received this name from the _yellowness_ of his hair.
He was also called Neoptolemus, or _new warrior_, because he came
to the Trojan war in the last year of the celebrated siege of the
capital of Troas. _See:_ Neoptolemus.――――A king of Epirus, descended
from Achilles by the side of his mother, and from Hercules by that
of his father, and son of Æacides and Phthia. He was saved when an
infant, by the fidelity of his servants, from the pursuits of the
enemies of his father, who had been banished from his kingdom, and he
was carried to the court of Glautias king of Illyricum, who educated
him with great tenderness. Cassander king of Macedonia wished to
despatch him, as he had so much to dread from him; but Glautias
not only refused to deliver him up into the hands of his enemy but
he even went with an army and placed him on the throne of Epirus,
though only 12 years of age. About five years after, the absence of
Pyrrhus, to attend the nuptials of one of the daughters of ♦Glautias,
raised new commotions. The monarch was expelled from his throne by
Neoptolemus, who had usurped it after the death of Æacides; and being
still without resources, he applied to his brother-in-law Demetrius
for assistance. He accompanied Demetrius at the battle of Ipsus, and
fought there with all the prudence and intrepidity of an experienced
general. He afterwards passed into Egypt, where, by his marriage
with Antigone the daughter of Berenice, he soon obtained a sufficient
force to attempt the recovery of his throne. He was successful in
the undertaking, but to remove all causes of quarrel, he took the
usurper to share with him the royalty, and some time after he put him
to death under pretence that he had attempted to poison him. In the
subsequent years of his reign, Pyrrhus engaged in the quarrels which
disturbed the peace of the Macedonian monarchy; he marched against
Demetrius, and gave the Macedonian soldiers fresh proofs of his
valour and activity. By dissimulation he ingratiated himself in the
minds of his enemy’s subjects, and when Demetrius laboured under
a momentary illness, Pyrrhus made an attempt upon the crown of
Macedonia, which, if not then successful, soon after rendered him
master of the kingdom. This he shared with Lysimachus for seven
months, till the jealousy of the Macedonians, and the ambition
of his colleague, obliged him to retire. Pyrrhus was meditating
new conquests, when the Tarentines invited him to Italy to assist
them against the encroaching power of Rome. He gladly accepted the
invitation, but his passage across the Adriatic proved nearly fatal,
and he reached the shores of Italy, after the loss of the greatest
part of his troops in a storm. At his entrance into Tarentum, B.C.
280, he began to reform the manners of the inhabitants, and by
introducing the strictest discipline among their troops, to accustom
them to bear fatigue and to despise dangers. In the first battle
which he fought with the Romans, he obtained the victory, but for
this he was more particularly indebted to his elephants, whose bulk
and uncommon appearance astonished the Romans and terrified their
cavalry. The number of the slain was equal on both sides, and the
conqueror said that such another victory would totally ruin him. He
also sent Cineas, his chief minister, to Rome, and though victorious,
he sued for peace. These offers of peace were refused, and when
Pyrrhus questioned Cineas about the manners and the character of
the Romans, the sagacious minister replied, that their senate was a
venerable assembly of kings, and that to fight against them, was to
attack another Hydra. A second battle was fought near Asculum, but
the slaughter was so great, and the valour so conspicuous on both
sides, that the Romans and their enemies reciprocally claimed the
victory as their own. Pyrrhus still continued the war in favour of
the Tarentines, when he was invited into Sicily by the inhabitants,
who laboured under the yoke of Carthage, and the cruelty of their own
petty tyrants. His fondness of novelty soon determined him to quit
Italy; he left a garrison at Tarentum, and crossed over to Sicily,
where he obtained two victories over the Carthaginians, and took many
of their towns. He was for a while successful, and formed the project
of invading Africa; but soon his popularity vanished, his troops
became insolent, and he behaved with haughtiness, and showed himself
oppressive, so that his return to Italy was deemed a fortunate event
for all Sicily. He had no sooner arrived at Tarentum than he renewed
hostilities with the Romans with great acrimony, but when his army of
80,000 men had been defeated by 20,000 of the enemy, under Curius, he
left Italy with precipitation, B.C. 274, ashamed of the enterprise,
and mortified by the victories which had been obtained over one
of the descendants of Achilles. In Epirus he began to repair his
military character by attacking Antigonus, who was then on the
Macedonian throne. He gained some advantages over his enemy, and was
at last restored to the throne of Macedonia. He afterwards marched
against Sparta, at the request of Cleonymus, but when all his
vigorous operations were insufficient to take the capital of Laconia,
he retired to Argos, where the treachery of Aristeus invited him. The
Argives desired him to retire, and not to interfere in the affairs of
their republic, which were confounded by the ambition of two of their
nobles. He complied with their wishes, but in the night he marched
his forces into the town, and might have made himself master of
the place had he not retarded his progress by entering it with his
elephants. The combat that ensued was obstinate and bloody, and the
monarch, to fight with more boldness, and to encounter dangers with
more facility, exchanged his dress. He was attacked by one of the
enemy, but as he was going to run him through in his own defence,
the mother of the Argive, who saw her son’s danger from the top of
a house, threw down a tile and brought Pyrrhus to the ground. His
head was cut off, and carried to Antigonus, who gave his remains a
magnificent funeral, and presented his ashes to his son Helenus, 272
years before the christian era. Pyrrhus has been deservedly commended
for his talents as a general; and not only his friends, but also
his enemies, have been warm in extolling him; and Annibal declared,
that for experience and sagacity the king of Epirus was the first
of commanders. He had chosen Alexander the Great for a model, and in
everything he wished not only to imitate, but to surpass him. In the
art of war none were superior to him; he not only made it his study
as a general, but even he wrote many books on encampments, and the
different ways of training up an army, and whatever he did was by
principle and rule. His uncommon understanding and his penetration
are also admired; but the general is severely censured, who has
no sooner conquered a country, than he looks for other victories,
without regarding or securing what he has already obtained, by
measures and regulations honourable to himself, and advantageous to
his subjects. The Romans passed great encomiums upon him, and Pyrrhus
was no less struck with their magnanimity and valour; so much indeed,
that he exclaimed that if he had soldiers like the Romans, or if
the Romans had him for a general, he would leave no corner of the
earth unseen, and no nation unconquered. Pyrrhus married many wives,
and all for political reasons; besides Antigone, he had Lanassa the
daughter of Agathocles, as also a daughter of Autoleon king of Pæonia.
His children, as his biographer observes, derived a warlike spirit
from their father, and when he was asked by one to which of them he
should leave the kingdom of Epirus, he replied, to him who has the
sharpest sword. _Ælian_, _De Natura Animalium_, bk. 10.――_Plutarch_,
_Lives_.――_Justin_, bk. 17, &c.――_Livy_, bks. 13 & 14.――_Horace_, bk.
3, ode 6.――――A king of Epirus, son of Ptolemy, murdered by the people
of Ambracia. His daughter, called Laudamia, or Deidamia, succeeded
him. _Pausanias._――――A son of Dædalus.
♦ ‘Glautius’ replaced with ‘Glautias’
=Pyste=, the wife of Seleucus, taken prisoner by the Gauls, &c.
_Polyænus_, bk. 2.
=Pythagŏras=, a celebrated philosopher, born at Samos. His father
Mnesarchus was a person of distinction, and therefore the son
received that education which was most calculated to enlighten his
mind and invigorate his body. Like his contemporaries, he was early
made acquainted with poetry and music; eloquence and astronomy became
his private studies, and in gymnastic exercises he often bore the
palm for strength and dexterity. He first made himself known in
Greece, at the Olympic games, where he obtained, in the 18th year
of his age, the prize for wrestling; and, after he had been admired
for the elegance and the dignity of his person, and the brilliancy
of his understanding, he retired into the east. In Egypt and Chaldæa
he gained the confidence of the priests, and learned from them the
artful policy, and the symbolic writings, by which they governed the
prince as well as the people, and, after he had spent many years in
gathering all the information which could be collected from antique
tradition concerning the nature of the gods and the immortality
of the soul, Pythagoras revisited his native island. The tyranny
of Polycrates at Samos disgusted the philosopher, who was a great
advocate for national independence; and though he was the favourite
of the tyrant, he retired from the island, and a second time assisted
at the Olympic games. His fame was too well known to escape notice;
he was saluted in the public assembly by the name of _Sophist_, or
wise man; but he refused the appellation, and was satisfied with that
of philosopher, or, _the friend of wisdom_. “At the Olympic games,”
said he, in explanation of this new appellation he wished to assume,
“some are attracted with the desire of obtaining crowns and honours,
others come to expose their different commodities to sale, while
curiosity draws a third class, and the desire of contemplating
whatever deserves notice in that celebrated assembly; thus, on the
more extensive theatre of the world, while many struggle for the
glory of a name, and many pant for the advantages of fortune, a few,
and indeed but a few, who are neither desirous of money nor ambitious
of fame, are sufficiently gratified to be spectators of the wonder,
the hurry, and the magnificence of the scene.” From Olympia, the
philosopher visited the republics of Elis and Sparta, and retired
to Magna Græcia, where he fixed his habitation in the town of
Crotona, about the 40th year of his age. Here he founded a sect
which has received the name of _the Italian_, and he soon saw himself
surrounded by a great number of pupils, which the recommendation of
his mental as well as his personal accomplishments had procured. His
skill in music and medicine, and his knowledge of mathematics and of
natural philosophy, gained him friends and admirers, and amidst the
voluptuousness that prevailed among the inhabitants of Crotona, the
Samian sage found his instructions respected and his approbation
courted; the most debauched and effeminate were pleased with the
eloquence and the graceful delivery of the philosopher, who boldly
upbraided them for their vices, and called them to more virtuous and
manly pursuits. These animated harangues were attended with rapid
success, and a reformation soon took place in the morals and the life
of the people of Crotona. The females were exhorted to become modest,
and they left off their gaudy ornaments; the youths were called away
from their pursuits of pleasure, and instantly they forgot their
intemperance, and paid to their parents that submissive attention and
deference which the precepts of Pythagoras required. As to the old,
they were directed no longer to spend their time in amassing money,
but to improve their understanding, and to seek that peace and those
comforts of mind which frugality, benevolence, and philanthropy alone
can produce. The sober and religious behaviour of the philosopher
strongly recommended the necessity and importance of these precepts.
Pythagoras was admired for his venerable aspect; his voice was
harmonious, his eloquence persuasive, and the reputation he had
acquired by his distant travels, and by being crowned at the Olympic
games, was great and important. He regularly frequented the temples
of the gods, and paid his devotion to the divinity at an early
hour; he lived upon the purest and most innocent food, he clothed
himself like the priests of the Egyptian gods, and by his continual
purifications and regular offerings, he seemed to be superior to the
rest of mankind in sanctity. These artful measures united to render
him an object not only of reverence, but of imitation. To set himself
at a greater distance from his pupils, a number of years was required
to try their various dispositions; the most talkative were not
permitted to speak in the presence of their master before they had
been his auditors for five years, and those who possessed a natural
taciturnity were allowed to speak after a probation of two years.
When they were capable of receiving the secret instructions of the
philosopher, they were taught the use of cyphers and hieroglyphic
writings, and Pythagoras might boast that his pupils could correspond
together, though in the most distant regions, in unknown characters;
and by the signs and words which they had received, they could
discover, though strangers and barbarians, those that had been
educated in the Pythagorean school. So great was his authority among
his pupils, that to dispute his word was deemed a crime, and the most
stubborn were drawn to coincide with the opinions of their opponent,
when they helped their arguments by the words of _the master said so_,
an expression which became proverbial in _jurare in verba magistri_.
The great influence which the philosopher possessed in his school
was transferred to the world: the pupils divided the applause and
the approbation of the people with their venerable master, and in
a short time the rulers and the legislators of all the principal
towns of Greece, Sicily, and Italy, boasted in being the disciples
of Pythagoras. The Samian philosopher was the first who supported
the doctrine of _metempsychosis_, or transmigration of the soul into
different bodies, and those notions he seemed to have imbibed among
the priests of Egypt, or in the solitary retreats of the Brachmans.
More strenuously to support his chimerical system, he declared he
recollected the different bodies which his soul had animated before
that of the son of Mnesarchus. He remembered to have been Æthalides
the son of Mercury, to have assisted the Greeks during the Trojan
war in the character of Euphorbus [_See:_ Euphorbus], to have been
Hermotimus, afterwards a fisherman, and last of all Pythagoras.
He forbade his disciples to eat flesh, as also beans, because he
supposed them to have been produced from the same putrefied matter
from which, at the creation of the world, man was formed. In his
theological system Pythagoras supported that the universe was created
from a shapeless heap of passive matter by the hands of a powerful
being, who himself was the mover and soul of the world, and of whose
substance the souls of mankind were a portion. He considered numbers
as the principles of everything, and perceived in the universe
regularity, correspondence, beauty, proportion, and harmony, as
intentionally produced by the Creator. In his doctrines of morality,
he perceived in the human mind propensities common to us with the
brute creation; but besides these, and the passions of avarice and
ambition, he discovered the nobler seeds of virtue, and supported
that the most ample and perfect gratification was to be found in
the enjoyment of moral and intellectual pleasures. The thoughts
of the past he considered as always present to us, and he believed
that no enjoyment could be had where the mind was disturbed by
consciousness of guilt, or fears about futurity. This opinion induced
the philosopher to recommend to his followers a particular mode
of education. The tender years of the Pythagoreans were employed
in continual labour, in study, in exercise, and repose; and the
philosopher maintained his well-known and important maxim, that many
things, especially love, are best learnt late. In a more advanced age,
the adult was desired to behave with caution, spirit, and patriotism,
and to remember that the community and civil society demanded
his exertions, and that the good of the public, and not his own
private enjoyments, were the ends of his creation. From lessons like
these, the Pythagoreans were strictly enjoined to call to mind, and
carefully to review, the actions, not only of the present, but of the
preceding days. In their acts of devotion, they early repaired to the
most solitary places of the mountains, and after they had examined
their private and public conduct, and conversed with themselves,
they joined in the company of their friends, and early refreshed
their body with light and frugal aliments. Their conversation was
of the most innocent nature; political or philosophic subjects were
discussed with propriety, but without warmth, and after the conduct
of the following day was regulated, the evening was spent with the
same religious ceremony as the morning, in a strict and partial
self-examination. From such regularity nothing but the most salutary
consequences could arise, and it will not appear wonderful that
the disciples of Pythagoras were so much respected and admired
as legislators, and imitated for their constancy, friendship, and
humanity. The authors that lived in, and after, the age of Alexander,
have rather tarnished than brightened the glory of the founder of the
Pythagorean school, and they have obscured his fame by attributing
to him actions which were dissonant with his character as a man and
a moralist. To give more weight to his exhortations, as some writers
mention, Pythagoras retired into a subterraneous cave, where his
mother sent him intelligence of everything which happened during
his absence. After a certain number of months he again reappeared on
the earth, with a grim and ghastly countenance, and declared, in the
assembly of the people, that he was returned from hell. From similar
exaggerations, it has been asserted that he appeared at the Olympic
games with a golden thigh, and that he could write in letters of
blood whatever he pleased on a looking-glass, and that, by setting it
opposite to the moon, when full, all the characters which were on the
glass became legible on the moon’s disc. They also support that, by
some magical words, he tamed a bear, stopped the flight of an eagle,
and appeared on the same day and at the same instant in the cities
of Crotona and Metapontum, &c. The time and the place of the death
of this great philosopher are unknown; yet many suppose that he died
at Metapontum about 497 years before Christ; and so great was the
veneration of the people of Magna Græcia for him, that he received
the same honours as were paid to the immortal gods, and his house
became a sacred temple. Succeeding ages likewise acknowledged his
merits, and when the Romans, A.U.C. 411, were commanded by the oracle
of Delphi to erect a statue to the bravest and wisest of the Greeks,
the distinguished honour was conferred on Alcibiades and Pythagoras.
Pythagoras had a daughter, called Damo. There is now extant a
poetical composition ascribed to the philosopher, and called the
_golden verses of Pythagoras_, which contain the greatest part of
his doctrines and moral precepts; but many support that it is a
supposititious composition, and that the true name of the writer was
Lysis. Pythagoras distinguished himself also by his discoveries in
geometry, astronomy, and mathematics, and it is to him that the world
is indebted for the demonstration of the 47th proposition of the
first book of Euclid’s elements, about the square of the hypothenuse.
It is said that he was so elated after making the discovery, that
he made an offering of a hecatomb to the gods; but the sacrifice
was undoubtedly of small oxen, made with wax, as the philosopher was
ever an enemy to shedding the blood of all animals. His system of
the universe, in which he placed the sun in the centre, and all the
planets moving in elliptical orbits round it, was deemed chimerical
and improbable, till the deep inquiries and the philosophy of the
16th century proved it, by the most accurate calculations, to be true
and incontestable. Diogenes Laërtius, Porphyry, Iamblicus, and others,
have written an account of his life, but with more erudition, perhaps,
than veracity. _Cicero_, _de Natura Deorum_, bk. 1, ch. 5; _Tusculanæ
Disputationes_, bk. 4, ch. 1.――_Diogenes Laërtius_, bk. 8, &c.
――_Hyginus_, fable 112.――_Ovid_, _Metamorphoses_, bk. 15, li. 60,
&c.――_Plato._――_Pliny_, bk. 34, ch. 6.――_Aulus Gellius_, bk. 9.
――_Iamblic._――_Porphyry._――_Plutarch._――――A soothsayer of Babylon,
who foretold the death of Alexander and of Hephæstion, by consulting
the entrails of victims.――――A tyrant of Ephesus.――――One of Nero’s
wicked favourites.
=Pytheas=, an archon at Athens.――――A native of Massilia, famous for
his knowledge of astronomy, mathematics, philosophy, and geography.
He also distinguished himself by his travels, and, with a mind that
wished to seek information in every corner of the earth, he advanced
far into the northern seas, and discovered the island of Thule, and
entered that then unknown sea, which is now called the _Baltic_. His
discoveries in astronomy and geography were ingenious, and, indeed,
modern navigators have found it expedient to justify and accede
to his conclusions. He was the first who established a distinction
of climate by the length of days and nights. He wrote different
treatises in Greek, which have been lost, though some of them
were extant in the beginning of the fifth century. Pytheas lived,
according to some, in the age of Aristotle. _Strabo_, bk. 2,
&c.――_Pliny_, bk. 37.――――An Athenian rhetorician, in the age of
Demosthenes, who distinguished himself by his intrigues, rapacity,
and his opposition to the measures of Demosthenes, of whom he
observed that his orations smelt of the lamp. Pytheas joined
Antipater after the death of Alexander the Great. His orations were
devoid of elegance, harsh, unconnected, and diffuse, and from this
circumstance he has not been ranked among the orators of Athens.
_Ælian_, _Varia Historia_, bk. 7, ch. 7.――_Plutarch_, _Demosthenes_
& _Politica Præcepta_.
=Pythes=, a native of Abdera, in Thrace, son of Andromache, who
obtained a crown at the Olympian games. _Pliny_, bk. 34, ch. 7.
――_Pausanias_, bk. 6, ch. 14.
=Pytheus=, a Lydian in the age of Xerxes, famous for his riches. He
kindly entertained the monarch and all his army, when he was marching
on his expedition against Greece, and offered him to defray the
expenses of the whole war. Xerxes thanked him with much gratitude,
and promised to give him whatever he should require. Pytheus asked
him to dismiss his son from the expedition; upon which the monarch
ordered the young man to be cut in two, and one half of the body to
be placed on the right hand of the way, and the other on the left,
that his army might march between them. _Plutarch_, _de Mulierum
Virtutes_.――_Herodotus._