180 PAULUS .EGINETA Perseus of Macedon induced the people to call upon him to take the field again, and he was at once elected consul. Without delay he set out for Macedonia, and, meeting the enemy near Pydna, gained so decisive a victory as to end the war immediately, Perseus surrendering himself to his conqueror, whose treatment^ of him was kind and courteous. After governing Macedonia as proconsul for nearly a year, he made a journey through Greece, then formally settled the affairs of his province with 10 Ro- man commissioners at Amphipolis, gave up ^70 towns of Epirus to pillage (almost the only in- justice recorded of him), and finally returned to Rome, bringing enormous quantities of trea- sure and plunder, nearly all of which he paid into the state treasury, and being received with a triumph. The only office held by him after this was the censorship in 164. PACLUS 1GINETA, a Greek physician, born in the island of ^Egina probably in the 7th cen- tury A. D. He was called "the traveller" (Trepiodevrfa), and appears to have visited Alex- andria, and obtained there his title of iarpoGo- fyLarfa or scientific physician. He compiled with materials from Galen and others a treatise in nine books on medicine, still extant, besides one on female diseases, mostly lost. His works were translated into Arabic by Honain ibn Ishak. There is an English translation of part of them by Francis Adams (London, 1834). PAUL VERONESE. See CAGLIARI. PAUMOTOU (or Touamotou) ISLANDS. See Low ABOHIPELAGO. PAUPERISM, that degree of poverty for which public relief is provided. Extreme poverty must always have existed, and among com- munities in any degree civilized has been pro- vided for by law and social customs. The Mosaic jubilee was an ingenious plan for pre- venting pauperism by a redistribution of land and a cancelling of debts every 50 years. In the Grecian states institutions of various kinds provided for the relief of the poor, and the same is most probably true of the Roman repub- lic and empire. It is true that in the ancient communities, as in some modern ones, slavery in a measure took the place of pauperism ; and at Rome the system of clients and patrons did something to relieve the poor without expense to the state. But in Rome during the historical period the relief of the poor was commonly one of the most important functions of the state, as it is now in England and other European coun- tries. ^ The favorite method of performing this function was by a cheap sale or an actual gift of corn to the people, under the so-called " corn laws " (leges frumentaricB), first formally en- acted at the instance of Oaius Gracchus, in 123 B. 0. Two years later the patricians revoked this Sempronian law, but it was reenacted in 73 B. 0., under the consuls Oassius and Teren- tius. Cato of Utica caused it to be amended a dozen years later, and at the time of Csesar's Gallic wars, Clodius made the distribution of corn wholly gratuitous. When Csesar became PAUPERISM dictator, he found 320,000 persons receiving this charity; he reduced their number to 150,- 000, but even this was probably one tenth of the whole population. The civil war raised the number again to 300,000, which Augustus reduced to 200, 000. Under the Antonines there were sometimes 500,000, but then the whole population had greatly increased. Aurelian gave the poor bread and pork instead of the unground wheat, and in course of time the dis- tributions were extended from Rome to Con- stantinople, Alexandria, and Antioch. Mendi- cancy was common under the emperors. In all the early Christian societies it became a rule to apply that part of the church revenue which remained, over and above what was necessary for the maintenance of the clergy and the ex- penses of public worship, to the support of the needy. This was called the patrimony of the poor, and it was shared even with the hea- then. The first Christian emperor, in making Constantinople the chief centre of the gratui- tous distribution of bread and grain, did not interfere with the eleemosynary laws in exis- tence among the various churches. Julian the Apostate maintained the customary distribu- tions, and reproached his pagan subjects with not emulating the generous charity of "the Galileans," who " support not only their own but the heathen poor." These annual gratui- ties became so important that Theodosius the Younger made a special law to regulate them ; and any interruption in these supplies produced wide-spread misery, as happened in Africa when that province was cut off from the em- pire after its conquest by Genseric. Benefi- cent institutions were multiplied everywhere after the 4th century both by the charity of the sovereigns and that of private individuals. Monastic establishments were also multiplied throughout. the East and West ; and thus alms- giving soon became an abuse, and mendicity an evil which Charlemagne and other princes after him tried in vain to check. History of the Modern Poor Laws. By poor laws are here understood legislative enactments levying a rate in aid of persons unable to work or to find employment. There is no record of any such legislative measure of a general character in any European country before the 16th cen- tury. In England, in Saxon times, the house- holder was bound to provide for his laborers, and men who had no master were assigned to some householder. After the feudal times, by the common law, the poor were to be sustained in each parish by its pastor and inhabitants, so that none should die of hunger. A similar customary law existed everywhere on the con- tinent. The earliest laws relating to the poor throughout Christendom were directed against beggary and vagrancy ; they are anterior even to Charlemagne. The church assisted the legis- lator to arrest and localize the growing evil of mendicity. Thus the second council of Tours in 567 decreed that every city should make provision for its own poor, and that in every
