Page:EB1911 - Volume 20.djvu/480

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PACORUS—PAD

memorial to his daughter, Mrs Lucy Packer Linderman; and his will bequeathed $1,500,000 as an endowment for the university and $500,000 to the university library, and gave the university an interest (nearly one third) in his estate when finally distributed. He died in Philadelphia on the 17th of May 1879. The Packer Memorial Church (Protestant Episcopal) on the Lehigh University campus, given by his daughter, Mrs Mary Packer Cummings, was dedicated on the 13th of October 1887.

PACORUS, a Parthian name, borne by two Parthian princes.

1. Pacorus, son of Orodes I., was, after the battle of Carrhae, sent by his father into Syria at the head of an army in 52 B.C. The prince was still very young, and the real leader was Osaces. He was defeated and killed by C. Cassius, and soon after Pacorus was recalled by his father, because one of the satraps had rebelled and proclaimed him king (Dio Cass. xl. 28 sqq.; Justin xlii. 4; cf. Cicero, ad Fam. xv. 1; ad Att. vi. 1. 14). Father and son were reconciled, but the war against the Romans was always deferred. In the autumn of 45 Pacorus and the Arabic chieftain Alchaudonius came to the help of Q. Caecihus Bassus, who had rebelled against Caesar in Syria; but Pacorus soon returned, as his troops were unable to operate in the winter (Cic. ad Att. xiv. 9. 3; Dio Cass. xlvii. 27). At last in 40 B.C. the Roman fugitive Titus Labienus induced Orodes to send a great army under the command of Pacorus against the Roman provinces. Pacorus conquered the whole of Syria and Phoenicia with the exception of Tyre, and invaded Palestine, where he plundered Jerusalem, deposed Hyrcanus, and made his nephew Antigonus king (Dio Cass. xlviii. 24 sqq.; Joseph. Ant. xiv. 13; Tac. Hist. v. 9). Meanwhile Labienus occupied Cilicia and the southern parts of Asia Minor down to the Carian coast (Dio Cass. xlviii. 26; Strabo xiv. 660). But in 39 P. Ventidius Bassus, the general of Mark Antony, drove him back into Cilicia, where he was killed, defeated the Parthians in Syria (Dio Cass. xlviii. 39 sqq.) and at last beat Pacorus at Gindarus (in northern Syria), on the 9th of June 38, the anniversary of the battle of Carrhae. Pacorus himself was slain in the battle, which effectually stopped the Parthian conquests west of the Euphrates (Dio Cass. xlix. 19 seq.; Justin xlii. 4; Plut. Anton. 24; Strabo xvi. 751; Velleius ii. 78; cf. Horace, Od. iii. 6, 9).

2. Pacorus, Parthian king, only mentioned by Dio Cass. lxviii. 17; Arrian, ap. Suid. s.v. ὠνητή, according to whom he sold the kingdom of Osroëne to Abgar VII.; and Ammianus Marcellinus xxiii. 6. 23, who mentions that he enlarged Ctesiphon and built its walls. But from his numerous dated coins we learn that he was on the throne, with interruptions, from A.D. 78-95. He always calls himself Arsaces Pacorus. This mention of his proper name, together with the royal name Arsaces, shows that his kingdom was disputed by rivals. Two of them we know from coins—Vologaeses IL, who appears from 77-79 and again from 111-146, and Artabanus III. in 80 and 81. Pacorus may have died about 105; he was succeeded by his brother Osroes.

PACUVIUS, MARCUS (c. 220-130 B.C.), Roman tragic poet, was the nephew and pupil of Ennius, by whom Roman tragedy was first raised to a position of influence and dignity. In the interval between the death of Ennius (169) and the advent of Accius, the youngest and most productive of the tragic poets, he alone maintained the continuity of the serious drama, and perpetuated the character first imparted to it by Ennius. Like Ennius he probably belonged to an Oscan stock, and was born at Brundusium, which had become a Roman colony in 244. Hence he never attained to that perfect idiomatic purity of style, which was the special glory of the early writers of comedy, Naevius and Plautus. Pacuvius obtained distinction also as a painter; and the elder Pliny (Nat. Hist. xxxv. 19) mentions a work of his in the temple of Hercules in the Forum boarium. He was less productive as a poet than either Ennius or Accius; and we hear of only about twelve of his plays, founded on Greek subjects (among them the Antiope, Teucer, Armorum Judicium, Dulorestes, Chryses, Niptra, &c., most of them on subjects connected with the Trojan cycle), and one praetexta (Paulus) written in connexion with the victory of Lucius Aemilius Paulus at Pydna (168), as the Clastidium of Naevius and the Ambracia of Ennius were written in commemoration of great military successes. He continued to write tragedies till the age of eighty, when he exhibited a play in the same year as Accius, who was then thirty years of age. He retired to Tarentum for the last years of his life, and a story is told by Gellius (xiii. 2) of his being visited there by Accius on his way to Asia, who read his Atrcus to him. The story is probably, like that of the visit of the young Terence to the veteran Caecilius, due to the invention of later grammarians; but it is invented in accordance wtih the traditionary criticism (Horace, Epp. ii. 1. 54-55) of the distinction between the two poets, the older being characterized rather by cultivated accomplishment (doctus), the younger by vigour and animation (altus). Pacuvius's epitaph, said to have been composed by himself, is quoted by Aulus Gellius (i. 24), with a tribute of admiration to its “modesty, simplicity and fine serious spirit”:

Adulescens, tam etsi properas, te hoc saxum rogat
Ut sese aspicias, deinde quod scriptum 'st legas.
Hie sunt poetae Pacuvi Marci sita
Ossa. Hoc volebam nescius ne esses. Vale.

Cicero, who frequently quotes from him with great admiration, appears (De Optimo genere oratorum, i.) to rank him first among the Roman tragic poets, as Ennius among the epic, and Caecilius among the comic poets.

The fragments of Pacuvius quoted by Cicero in illustration or enforcement of his own ethical teaching appeal, by the fortitude, dignity, and magnanimity of the sentiment expressed in them, to what was noblest in the Roman temperament. They are inspired also by a fervid and steadfast glow of spirit and reveal a gentleness and humanity of sentiment blended with the severe gravity of the original Roman character. So far too as the Romans were capable of taking interest in speculative questions, the tragic poets contributed to stimulate curiosity on such subjects, and they anticipated Lucretius in using the conclusions of speculative philosophy as well as of common sense to assail some of the prevailing forms of superstition. Among the passages quoted from Pacuvius are several which indicate a taste both for physical and ethical speculation, and others which expose the pretensions of religious imposture. These poets aided also in developing that capacity which the Roman language subsequently displayed of being an organ of oratory, history and moral disquisition. The literary language of Rome was in process of formation during the 2nd century B.C., and it was in the latter part of this century that the series of great Roman orators, with whose spirit Roman tragedy has a strong affinity, begins. But the new creative effort in language was accompanied by considerable crudeness of execution, and the novel word-formations and varieties of inflexion introduced by Pacuvius exposed him to the ridicule of the satirist Lucilius, and, long afterwards, to that of his imitator Persius. But, notwithstanding the attempt to introduce an alien element into the Roman language, which proved incompatible with its natural genius, and his own failure to attain the idiomatic purity of Naevius, Plautus or Terence, the fragments of his dramas are sufficient to prove the service which he rendered to the formation of the literary language of Rome as well as to the culture and character of his contemporaries.

Fragments in O. Ribbeck, Fragmenta scaenicae romanorum poesis (1897), vol. i.; see also his Römische Tragedie (1875); L. Müller, De Pacuvii fabulis (1889); W. S. Teuffel, Caecilius Statius, Pacuvius, Attius, Afranius (1858); and Mommsen, History of Rome, bk. iv. ch. 13.

PAD. (1) Probably from the same root as “pod,” the husk or seed-covering in certain plants, a term used in various connexions, the sense being derived from that of a soft cushion, or cushion-like combination used either for protective purposes or as stuffing or stiffening. In zoology, it is particularly used of the fleshy elastic protuberances on the sole of the foot of many animals such as the cat and dog, the camel, &c.; and of the similar cushion beneath the toes of a bird's foot or of the tarsal cushion of an insect. In sporting phraseology the whole paw of a fox or other beast of chase is called the “pad.” A special technical use, somewhat difficult to connect with the above meanings, is