a 60-ft. tower telescope (completed in 1907), and a second tower telescope of 150 ft. focal length (under construction in 1910). At this observatory important researches in solar and stellar spectroscopy have been carried on under the direction of George Ellery Hale (b. 1868), the inventor of the spectroheliograph. The physical laboratory, computers' offices and instrument construction shops of the Solar Observatory are in Pasadena. About 5 m. south-east of Pasadena, in the township of San Gabriel (pop. 2501 in 1900), is the Mission (monastery) de San Gabriel Arcangel, founded in 1771. Pasadena is one of the most beautiful places in southern California. Fruits and flowers and sub-tropical trees and small plants grow and bloom the year round in its gardens. On the first of January of every year a flower carnival, known as the “Tournament of Roses,” is held. Among the principal public buildings are a handsome Romanesque public library, which in 1909 contained about 28,500 volumes, an opera house of considerable architectural merit, high school, and several fine churches. The surrounding country was given over to sheep ranges until 1874, when a fruit-growing colony, organized in 1873, was established, from which the city was developed. The sale of town lots began in 1882. Pasadena was first chartered as a city in 1886; by a clause in the present special free-holders' charter, adopted in 1901, saloons are prohibited in the city.
PASARGADAE, a city of ancient Persia, situated in the modern plain of Murghab, some 30 m. N.E. of the later Parsepolis. The name originally belonged to one of the tribes of the Persians, which included the clan of the Achaemenidae, from which sprang the royal family of Cyrus and Darius (Herod, i. 125; a Pasargadian Badres is mentioned, Herod, iv. 167). According to the account of Ctesias (preserved by Anaximenes of Lampsacus in Steph. Byz. s.v. Πασσαργάδαι; Strabo xv. 730, cf. 729; Nicol. Damasc. fr. 66,68 sqq.; Polyaen. vii. 6, 1. 9. 45, 2), the last battle of Cyrus against Astyages, in which the Persians were incited to a desperate struggle by their women, was fought here. After the victory Cyrus built a town, with his palace and tomb, which was named Pasargadae after the tribe (cf. Curt. v. 6, 10; x. 1, 22). Every Persian king was, at his accession, invested here, in the sanctuary of a warlike goddess (Anaitis?), with the garb of Cyrus, and received a meal of figs and terebinths with a cup of sour milk (Plut. Artax. 3); and whenever he entered his native country he gave a gold piece to every woman of Pasargadae in remembrance of the heroic intervention of their ancestors in the battle (Nic. Damasc. loc. cit.; Plut. Alex. 69). According to a fragment of the same tradition, preserved by Strabo (xv. 729), Pasargadae lay “in the hollow Persis (Coele Persis) on the bank of the river Cyrus, after which the king changed his name, which was formerly Atradates” (in Nic. Damasc. this is the name of his father). The river Cyrus is the Kur of the Persians, now generally named Bandamir; the historians of Alexander call it Araxes, and give to its tributary, the modern Pulwar, which passes by the ruins of Murghab and Persepolis, the name Medos (Strabo xv. 729; Curt. v. 4, 7). The capital of Cyrus was soon supplanted by Persepolis, founded by Darius; but in Pasargadae remained a great treasury, which was surrendered to Alexander in 336 after his conquest of Persis (Arrian iii. 18, 10; Curt. v. 6, 10). After his return from India he visited Pasargadae on the march from Carmania to Persepolis, found the tomb of Cyrus plundered, punished the malefactors, and ordered Aristobulus to restore it (Arrian vi. 29; Strabo xv. 730). Aristobulus' description agrees exactly with the ruins of Murghab on the Bandamir, about 30 m. upwards from Persepolis; and all the other references in the historians of Cyrus and Alexander indicate the same place. Nevertheless, some modern authors[1] have doubted the identity of the ruins of Murghab with Pasargadae, as Ptolemy (vi. 4, 7), places Pasargada or Pasarracha south-eastwards of Persepolis, and mentions a tribe Pasargadae in Carmania on the sea (vi. 8, 12); and Pliny, Nat. hist. vi. 99, names a Persian river Sitioganus “on which one navigates in seven days to Pasargadae.”[2] But it is evident that these accounts are erroneous. The conjecture of Oppert, that Pasargadae is identical with Pishiyauvāda, where (on a mountain Arakadri) the usurper Gaumāta (Smerdis) proclaimed himself king, and where his successor, the second false Smerdis Vahyazdāta, gathered an army (inscrip. of Behistun, i. 11; iii. 41), is hardly probable.
The principal ruins of the town of Pasargadae at Murghab are a great terrace like that of Persepolis, and the remainders of three buildings, on which the building inscription of Cyrus, “I Cyrus the king the Achaemenid” (sc. “have built this”), occurs five times in Persian, Susian and Babylonian. They were built of bricks, with a foundation of stones and stone door-cases, like the palaces at Persepolis; and on these fragments of a procession of tribute-bearers and the figure of a winged demon (wrongly considered as a portrait of Cyrus) are preserved. Outside the town are two tombs in the form of towers and the tomb of Cyrus himself, a stone house on a high substruction which rises in seven great steps, surrounded by a court with columns; at its side the remains of a guardhouse, in which the officiating Magians lived, are discernible. The ruins of the tomb absolutely correspond to the description of Aristobulus.
See Sir W. Gore-Ouseley, Travels in Persia (1811); Morier, Ker Porter, Rich and others; Texier, Description de l'Armenie et la Perse; Flandin and Coste, Voyage en Perse, vol. ii.; Stolze, Persepolis; Dieulafoy, L'Art antique de la Perse; and E. Herzfeld, “Pasargadae,” in Beiträge zur alten Geschichte, vol. viii. (1908), who has in many points corrected and enlarged the earlier descriptions and has proved that the buildings as well as the sculptures are earlier than those of Persepolis, and are, therefore, built by Cyrus the Great. New photographs of the monuments are published by Fr. Sarre, Iranische Felsreliefs (unter Mitwirkung von E. Herzfeld, Berlin, 1908).
PASCAL, BLAISE (1623–1662), French religious philosopher and mathematician, was born at Clermont Ferrand on the 19th of June 1623. His father was Étienne Pascal, president of the Court of Aids at Clermont; his mother’s name was Antoinette Bégon. The Pascal family were Auvergnats by extraction as well as residence, had for many generations held posts in the civil service, and were ennobled by Louis XI. in 1478, but did not assume the de. The earliest anecdote of Pascal is one of his being bewitched and freed from the spell by the witch with strange ceremonies. His mother died when he was about four years old, and left him with two sisters—Gilberte, who afterwards married M. Perier, and Jacqueline. Both sisters are of importance in their brother’s history, and both are said to have been beautiful and accomplished. When Pascal was about seven years old his father gave up his official post at Clermont, and betook himself to Paris. It does not appear that Blaise, who went to no school, but was taught by his father, was at all forced, but rather the contrary. Nevertheless he has a distinguished place in the story of precocious children, and in the much more limited chapter of children whose precocity has been followed by great performance at maturity, though he never became what is called a learned man, perhaps did not know Greek, and was pretty certainly indebted for most of his miscellaneous reading to Montaigne.
The Pascal family, some years after settling in Paris, had to go through a period of adversity. Étienne Pascal, who had bought some of the hôtel-de-ville rentes, protested against Richelieu’s reduction of the interest, and to escape the Bastille had to go into hiding. He was, according to the story (told by Jacqueline herself), restored to favour owing to the good acting and graceful appearance of his daughter Jacqueline in a representation of Scudéry’s Amour tyrannique before Richelieu. Mme d’Aiguillon's intervention in the matter was perhaps as powerful as Jacqueline’s acting, and Richelieu gave Étienne Pascal (in 1641) the important and lucrative
- ↑ E.g. Weissbach in Zeitschr. d. d. morgenl. Ges., 48, pp. 653 sqq.; for the identification cf. Stolze, Persepolis, ii. 269 sqq.; Curzon, Persia, ii. 71 sqq.
- ↑ In vi. 116, he places “the Castle of Frasargida, where is the tomb of Cyrus, and which is occupied by the Magi”—i.e. the guard of Magians mentioned by Aristobulus, which had to protect the tomb—eastwards of Persepolis, and by a curious confusion joins it to Ecbatana.
