Result, which helped to secure the rejection of the constitution at the polls. He was a member of the state constitutional convention of 1770-1780, and one of the committee of twenty-six which drafted the constitution; he was also a delegate to the state convention of 1788 which ratified the Federal Constitution; and according to tradition was the author of the famous “Conciliatory Resolutions,” or proposed amendments to the constitution, which did much to win over Samuel Adams and John Hancock to the side of ratification. His Commentaries on the Laws of the United States (1836) contains some of his more important legal opinions.
His son Theophilus Parsons (1797-1882), who was Dane professor of law at Harvard from 1848 to 1870, is remembered chiefly as the author of a series of useful legal treatises, and some books in support of Swedenborgian doctrines; he wrote a life of his father (Boston, 1859).
PARSONS, a city of Labette county, in south-eastern Kansas, U.S.A., situated at the junction of the Big and Little Labette creeks, about 138 m. S. by W. of Kansas City. Pop. (1890), 6736; (1900), 7682, of whom 807 were negroes; (1905, state census), 11,720. It is served by the Kansas City Fort Scott & Memphis (St Louis & San Francisco system) and the Missouri Kansas & Texas railways. The city has large machine shops of the Missouri Kansas & Texas railway and various manufactures. Natural gas is utilized for light and heat. The first settlement on the site of the city was made in 1869 and was called Mendota (“place of meeting”—i.e. of the creeks). In 1871 the city was chartered, and in 1910 government by commission went into effect. It was named in honour of Levi Parsons (1822-1887), the first president of the Missouri Kansas and Texas railway.
PARTABGARH, or Pertabgarh, a native state of India, in the Rajputana agency. Area, 886 sq. m.; pop. (1901), 52,025, showing a decrease of 40% in the decade, owing to the effects of famine. The inhabitants are mostly Bhils and other aboriginal tribes. Estimated revenue, £12,000. The town of Partabgarh (pop., 9819) is connected by a metalled road (20 m.) with the station of Mandasor on the Rajputana railway. It has a reputation for a special kind of enamelled jewelry.
PARTABGARH, Pertabgarh, or Pratapgarh, a district of British India in the Fyzabad division of the United Provinces. The administrative headquarters are at Bela. Area, 1442 sq. m.; pop. (1901), 912,848. The Ganges forms the south-western boundary line, while the Gumti marks the eastern boundary for a few miles. The only mineral products are salt, saltpetre and kankar or nodular limestone. The principal crops are rice, barley, pulse, millets, sugar-cane and poppy. The district is traversed by the branch of the Oudh & Rohilkhand railway from Rae Barcilly to Benares, opened in 1898. There are manufactures of sugar and a little silk; and grain, opium, oilseeds, hemp and hides are exported.
See Partabgarh District Gazetteer (Allahabad, 1904).
PARTERRE, a term, taken from the French phrase par terre, i.e. on the surface of the ground, and used of an arrangement in a garden of beds of flowers with gravel or other paths and plots of grass; also of that part of the auditorium of a theatre which is occupied by the orchestra stalls.
PARTHENAY, a town of western France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Deux-Sèvres, 27 m. N.N.E. of Niort, on the railway between that town and Saumur. Pop. (1906), 5615. The town retains considerable portions of its fine 13th-century ramparts, including the Porte St Jacques, a fortified gateway guarding an old bridge over the Thouet. Amongst ancient buildings of interest are the church of Ste Croix, of the 12th century, restored in 1885, with a 15th-century belfry; the church of St Laurent, also restored in modern times, portions of whose walls date from the 11th century; the ruined Romanesque portal of Notre-Dame de la Couldre; and 1 m. south-west of the town the ancient church (12th century) of Parthenay-le-Vieux. The manufacture of woollen goods and wool-spinning are the principal local industries.
PARTHENIUS, of Nicaea in Bithynia, Greek grammarian and poet. He was taken prisoner in the Mithradatic War and carried to Rome (72 B.C.); subsequently he visited Neapolis, where he taught Virgil Greek. Parthenius was a writer of elegies, especially dirges, and of short epic poems. The pseudo-Virgilian Moretum and Ciris were imitated from his Μυττωτός and Μεταμορφώσεις. His Ἐρωτικὰ παθήματα is still extant, containing a collection of 36 love-stories which ended unhappily, taken from different historians and poets. As Parthenius generally quotes his authorities, these stories are valuable as affording information on the Alexandrian poets and grammarians.
See E. Martini in Mythographi graeci, vol. ii. (1902, in Teubner Series); poetical fragments in A. Meineke, Analecta alexandrina (1853).
PARTHENON (Παρθενών), the name generally given, since the 4th century B.C., to the chief temple of Athena on the Acropolis at Athens (e.g. Demosthenes, c. Androt. 13, 76). The name is applied in the official inventories of the 5th and early 4th centuries to one compartment of the temple, and this was probably its original meaning. It is certainly to be associated with the cult of Athena Parthenos, “the Virgin,” though it is not clear why the name was given to this particular chamber.
| |
| After Dörpfeld, by permission from Mittheilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Institut in Athen, 1881. | Emery Walker sc. |
The most convenient position for a temple upon the natural rock-platform of the Acropolis was occupied by the early temple of Athena. When it was decided to supersede this by a larger and more magnificent temple, it was necessary to provide a site for this new temple by means of a great substructure, which is on its south side about 40 ft. high. This substructure was not built for the present temple, but for an earlier one, which was longer and narrower in shape; there has been much discussion as to the date of this earlier temple; F. C. Penrose maintained that it was the work of Peisistratus. Some have thought that it dated from the time immediately after the Persian wars; but the fact that portions of its columns and entablature, damaged by fire, were built into the north wall of the Acropolis by Themistocles seems to prove that it dates from the 6th century, whether it be the work of the tyrants or of the renewed democracy under Cleisthenes.
The extant temple was the chief among the buildings with which Pericles adorned the Acropolis. The supervision of the whole work was in the hands of Pheidias, and the architects of the temple were Ictinus and Callicrates. The actual building was not begun until 447 B.C., though the decision to build was made ten years earlier (Keil, Anonynus argentorensis). The temple must have been structurally complete by the year 438 B.C., in which the gold and ivory statue of Athena Parthenos was dedicated; but the work of decoration and finish was still going on in 433 B.C. The temple as designed by Ictinus was about 15 ft. shorter and about 6 ft. wider than the building for which the foundations were intended; it thus obtained a proportion of length to breadth of exactly 9:4. It is the most perfect example of the Doric order (see Architecture: Greek). The plan of the temple was peculiar. The cella, which was exactly 100 ft. long, kept the name and traditional measurement of the old Hecatompedon. It was surrounded on three sides by a Doric colonnade, and in the middle of it was the great basis on which the statue was erected. This cella was probably lighted only by the great doorway and by the light that filtered through the marble tiles. The common notion that there was a hypaethral opening is
