treaty (A.D. 1), by which once again Armenia was recognized as in the Roman sphere (Dio. Cass. lv. 10; Velleius ii. 101). Soon after Phraataces and his mother were slain by the Parthians, about A.D. 5 (Joseph. Ant. xviii. 2, 4).
PHRANTZA, GEORGE [Georgios Phrantzes] (1401-c. 1477), the last Byzantine historian, was born in Constantinople. At an early age he became secretary to Manuel II. Palaeologus, in 1432 protovestiarius (great chamberlain), in 1446 praefect of Sparta, and subsequently great logothete (chancellor). At the capture of Constantinople by the Turks (1453) he fell into their hands, but managed to escape to Peloponnesus, where he obtained protection at the court of Thomas Palaeologus, despot of Achaea. After the downfall of the Peloponnesian princes (1460) Phrantza retired to the monastery of Tarchaniotes in Corfu. Here he wrote his Chronicle, containing the history of the house of the Palaeologi from 1258-1476. It is a most valuable authority for the events of his own times.
Editions by I. Bekker (1838) in the Corpus scriptorum hist. byz., and in J. P. Migne, Patrologia graeca, clvi; see also C. Krumbacher, Geschwhte der byzantinischen Litteratur (1897).
PHRAORTES, the Greek form of Fravartish, king of Media. According to Herodotus (i. 102) he was the son of Deioces, and began the Median conquests. He first subjugated the Persians, and then a great many other peoples of Asia, till at last he attacked the Assyrians, but was defeated and killed in a battle, after a reign of twenty-two years (about 646-625 B.C.; but perhaps, as G. Rawlinson supposes, the fifty-three years of Deioces ought in reality to be transferred to him). From other sources we obtain no information whatever about Phraortes; but the data of the Assyrian inscriptions prove that Assur-bani-pal (see Babylonia and Assyria), at least during the greater part of his reign, maintained the Assyrian supremacy in Western Asia, and that in 645 he conquered Susa. The Medians too were subject to him as far as the Elburz and the central Iranian desert.
When after the assassination of Smerdis all the Iranian tribes, the Babylonians and the Armenians rebelled against Darius and the Persian rule, “a man of the name of Fravartish (i.e. Phraortes), a Mede, rebelled in Media and spoke to the people thus: I am Khshathrita, of the family of Uvakhshatra (Cyaxares).” He reigned for a short time, but was defeated by Hydarnes, and afterwards by Darius himself, taken prisoner in Rhagae (Rai), and executed in Ecbatana (520 B.C.; see inscription of Darius at Behistun).
PHRENOLOGY, (from Gr. φρήν, mind, and λόγος, discourse), the name given by Thomas Ignatius Forster to the empirical system of psychology formulated by F. J. Gall, and developed by his followers, especially by J. K. Spurzheim and G. Combe, by whom it was named “cranioscopy," “craniology,” “physiognomy” or “zoonomy.” The principles upon which it is based are five: (1) the brain is the organ of the mind; (2) the mental powers of man can be analysed into a definite number of independent faculties; (3) these faculties are innate, and each has its seat in a definite region of the surface of the brain, (4) the size of each such region is the measure of the degree to which the faculty seated in it forms a constituent element in the character of the individual; (5) the correspondence between the outer surface of the skull and the contour of the brain-surface beneath is sufficiently close to enable the observer to recognize the relative sizes of these several organs by the examination of the outer surface of the head. It professes primarily to be a system of psychology, but its second and more popular claim is that it affords a method whereby the disposition and character of the subject may be ascertained.
History.—That the phenomena of mind are in some measure connected with the action of the brain has been recognized from a very early age of philosophy. It is true that Aristotle[1] describes the brain as the coldest and most bloodless of bodily organs, of the nature of water and earth, whose chief purpose is to temper the excessive heat of the heart, as the cooler regions of the firmament condense the vapours rising from the earth. In his view, as in that of most of the earlier writers of other nations of antiquity, the heart is the seat of life; to it, not to the brain, the Hebrew writers refer thoughts and affections, while they considered judgment as seated sometimes in the head, sometimes in the kidneys.[2] This was likewise the teaching of the ancient Egyptian philosophy; and hence, while many rites were practised and prayers offered for the preservation of the heart of the deceased, there were none for the conservation of the brain.[3] We learn from Diogenes Laertius[4] that Pythagoras held more accurate physiological views, as he taught that the mind and the intellect have their seat in the brain. The theory of Hippocrates was Pythagorean rather than Aristotelian, for, although in one passage in his work De corde he expresses himself doubtfully, yet elsewhere he clearly states that he considers the brain to be the index and messenger of the intellect.[5] The cerebral seat of sense-perception is also taught by Plato,[6] who puts into the mouth of Socrates the theory that the brain is the organ affected by the senses, whereby memory and opinion arise, and from whence knowledge springs. The classic poets also notice this dependence of mind on brain; for example, in the Clouds (v. 1276) Strepsiades accuses Amynias of not being in his right mind, and, on being asked why, responds, “You seem to me as if you had had a concussion of the brain.”
The two founders of anatomical science, Erasistratus and Herophilus, who lived in the days of Ptolemy Soter, taught not only that the brain was the seat of sensation and of intellect, but also that there was therein a certain degree of localization of function. Erasistratus believed that the sensory nerves arose from the brain-membranes, the motor from the cerebral substance. Herophilus was apparently the first who held that the vital forces resided in and circulated from the ventricles of the brain, at least so we gather from Celsus and the other authors who have preserved his views. By the influence of the writings of Galen,[7] which directly teach that the brain is the seat of soul and intellect the Pythagorean doctrine prevailed among the later philosophers. According to the Galenical theory the animal spirits have their origin in the ventricles of the brain, and pass into the heart from which they are conveyed by the arteries through the body. Galen in one place (viii. 159) refers their origin to the brain-substance, but the ventricular theory was that adopted by his followers, some of whom suggested that there was some relation between the shape of the head and the character and disposition of the mind.[8] The Arabian physicians Averroes[9] and Rhazes[10] adopted the Galenical doctrine and developed the hypothesis of a fourfold ventricular localization of faculties, which the Greeks had originated. Avicenna[11] added to these a fifth region. Such of the early Christian authors as referred in
- ↑ De partibus animalium, ii. c. 7 (Paris, 1629, p. 986).
- ↑ In the Chaldee portion of Daniel (ii. 28, iv. 5, vii. 1) visions and thoughts are referred to the head. For other particulars as to early views see Nasse on the psychical relations of the heart in Zeitschr. f. psychische Aerzte (1818), vol. i. A few of the later medical writers express similar views; see Santa Cruz, Opuscula medica, Madrid (1624).
- ↑ Book of the Dead, ch. xxvi -xxx.
- ↑ viii. 30; ed. Cobet, Paris (1850), p. 211,—Φρένας δὲ καὶ νοῦν, τὰ ἐν τῷ ἐγκεφάλῳ.
- ↑ De morbo sacro, on Opp. ed. Kühn, i. 612 seq.; also Epist. iii. 824. Among later writers Licetus of Genoa taught the co-extension of soul and body, upon which subject he wrote two books (Padua, 1616). In this connexion may be noted a curious work by Schegkius, Dialogus de animae principatu, Aristotelis et Galeni rationes praeferens quibus ille cordi, hic cerebro, principatum attribuit (Tübingen, 1542).
- ↑ Phaedo, Valpy's ed. 1833, ch. xlv., p. 128. See also Haller's Bibl. anat., i. 30.
- ↑ De usu partium, ed. Kühn, iii. 700.—τὰς μὲν οὖν ἀποδείξεις τοῦ τὴν λογιστικήν ψυχὴν οἰκεῖν ἐν ἐγκεφάλῳ, καὶ πνεῦμα ψυχικὸν ἐν αὐτῷ περιέχεσθαι πάμπολυ. See also v. 288, viii. 159, xv. 360. In his Definitiones medicae (467, xix. 459) he says that the brain has a ψυχικὴ δύναμις, but does not specify in what part the power inheres.
- ↑ See Paulus Aegineta, Stephen's ed. 1567, cap. 62, col. 363, also Actuarius, De actionibus et affectibus spiritus animalis (Paris, 1556), p. 22, c. 7.
- ↑ Comment. in Arist., Latin tr. (Venice, 1550), vi. 73.
- ↑ “Imaginatio quidem in doubus ventriculis anterioribus perficitur. Cogitatio vero in medio expletur. Memoria autem posteriorem possidet ventricular.” De re medica, Gérard's trans. (Basel, 1554), i. 9.
- ↑ Lib. canonis (1507), p. 19, and De naturalibus, c. 6.
