Charles II. money was obtained in this way on several occasions, although in 1676–1677 especially there was a good deal of resentment against the tax. For some years after 1688 poll taxes were a favourite means of raising money for the prosecution of the war with France. Sometimes a single payment was asked for the year; at other times quarterly payments were required. The poll-tax of 1697 included a weekly tax of one penny from all persons not receiving alms. In 1698 a quarterly poll-tax produced £321,391. Nothing was required from the poor, and those who were liable may be divided roughly into three classes. Persons worth less than £360 paid one shilling; those worth £300, including the gentry and the professional classes, paid twenty shillings; while tradesmen and shopkeepers paid ten shillings. Non-jurors were charged double these rates. Like previous poll-taxes, the tax of 1698 did not produce as much as was anticipated, and it was the last of its kind in England.
Many of the states of the United States of America raise money by levying poll-taxes, or, as they are usually called, capitation taxes, the payment of this tax being a necessary preliminary to the exercise of the suffrage.
See S. Dowell, History of Taxation and Taxes in England (1888), vol. iii.; and W. Stubbs, Constitutional History (1896), vol. ii.
POLLUX, JULIUS, of Naucratis in Egypt, Greek grammarian and sophist of the 2nd century A.D. He taught at Athens, where, according to Philostratus (Vit. Soph.), he was, appointed to the professorship of rhetoric by the emperor Commodus on account of his melodious voice. Suidas gives a list of his rhetorical works, none of which has survived. Philostratus recognizes his natural abilities, but speaks of his rhetoric in very moderate terms. Pollux is probably the person attacked by
Lucian in the Lexiphanes and Teacher of Rhetoricians. In the
Teacher of Rhetoricians Lucian satirizes a worthless and ignorant
person who gains a reputation as an orator by sheer effrontery; the
Lexiphanes, a satire upon the use of obscure and obsolete words,
may conceivably have been directed against Pollux as the author
of the Onomasticon. This work, which we still possess, is a
Greek dictionary in ten books, each dedicated to Commodus,
and arranged not alphabetically but according to subject-matter.
Though mainly a dictionary of synonyms and phrases, chiefly
intended to furnish the reader with the Attic names for individual
things, it supplies much rare and valuable information on
many points of classical antiquity. It also contains numerous
fragments of writers now lost. The chief authorities used were
the lexicological works of Didymus, Tryphon, and Pamphilus;
in the second book the extant treatise of Rufus of Ephesus
On the Names of the Parts of the Human Body was specially
consulted.
The chief editions of the Onomasticon are those of W. Dindorf (1824), with the notes of previous commentators, I. Bekker (1846), containing the Greek text only, and Bethe (1900). There are monographs on special portions of the vocabulary; by E. Rohde (on the theatrical terms, 1870), and F. von Stojentin (on constitutional antiquities, 1875).
POLLUX, or Pollucite, a rare mineral, consisting of hydrous
caesium and aluminium silicate, H2Cs4Al4(SiO3)9. Caesium
oxide (Cs2O) is present to the extent of 30–36%, the
amount varying somewhat owing to partial replacement by
other alkalis, chiefly sodium. The mineral crystallizes in the
cubic system. It is colourless and transparent, and has a
vitreous lustre. There is no distinct cleavage and the fracture
is conchoidal. The hardness is 6½% and the specific gravity 2·90.
It occurs sparingly, together with the mineral “castor” (see
Petalite), in cavities in the granite of the island of Elba, and
with beryl in pegmatite veins at Rumford and Hebron in Maine.
POLO, GASPAR GIL (?1530–1591), Spanish novelist and
poet, was born at Valencia about 1530. He is often confused
with Gil Polo, professor of Greek at Valencia University between
1566 and 1573; but this professor was not named Gaspar. He
is also confused with his own son, Gaspar Gil Polo, the author
of De origine et progressu juris romani (1615) and other
legal treatises, who pleaded before the Cortes as late as 1626.
A notary by profession, Polo was attached to the treasury
commission which visited Valencia in 1571, became coadjutor to
the chief accountant in 1572, went on a special mission to
Barcelona in 1580, and died there in 1591. Timoneda, in the
Sarao de amor (1561), alludes to him as a poet of repute; but of
his miscellaneous verses only two conventional, eulogistic sonnets
and a song survive. Polo finds a place in the history of the novel
as the author of La Diana enamorada, a continuation of Montemayor's
Diana, and perhaps the most successful continuation
ever written by another hand. Cervantes, punning on the
writer's name, recommended that “ the Diana enamorada should
be guarded as carefully as though it were by Apollo himself ”;
the hyperbole is not wholly, nor even mainly, ironical.
The book is one of the most agreeable of Spanish pastorals; interesting in incident, written in fluent prose, and embellished with melodious poems, it was constantly reprinted, was imitated by Cervantes in the Canto de Caliope, and was translated into English, French, German and Latin. The English version of Bartholomew Young, published in 1598 but current in manuscript fifteen years earlier, is said to have suggested the Felismena episode in the Two Gentlemen of Verona; the Latin version of Caspar Barth, entitled Erotodidascalus (Hanover, 1625), is a performance of uncommon merit as well as a bibliographical curiosity.
POLO, MARCO (c. 1254–1324), the Venetian, greatest of medieval travellers. Venetian genealogies and traditions of
uncertain value trace the Polo family to Sebenico in Dalmatia,
and before the end of the 11th century one Domenico Polo is
found in the great council of the republic (1094). But the
ascertained line of the traveller begins only with his grandfather.
Andrea Polo of S. Felice was the father of three sons, Marco,
Nicolo and Maffeo, of whom the second was the father of the
subject of this article. They were presumably “noble,” i.e.
belonging to the families who had seats in the great council,
and were enrolled in the Libro d' Oro; for we know that Marco
the traveller is officially so styled (nobilis vir). The three
brothers were engaged in commerce; the elder Marco, resident
apparently in Constantinople and in the Crimea. (especially at
Sudak), suggests, by his celebrated will, a long business
partnership with Nicolo and Maffeo.
About 1260, and even perhaps as early as 1250, we find Nicolo and Maffeo at Constantinople. Nicolo was married and had left his wife there. The two brothers went on a speculation to the Crimea, whence a succession of chances and openings carried them to the court of Barka Khan at Sarai, further north up to Bolghar (Kazan), and eventually across the steppes to Bokhara. Here they fell in with certain envoys who had been on a mission from the great Khan Kublai to his brother Hulagu in Persia, and by them were persuaded to make the journey to Cathay in their company. Under the heading China the circumstances are noticed which in the last half of the 13th century and first half of the 14th threw Asia open to Western travellers to a degree unknown before and since—until the 19th century. Thus began the medieval period of intercourse between China and catholic Europe. Kublai, when the Polos reached his court, was either at Cambaluc (Khanbaligh, the Khan's city), i.e. Peking, which he had just rebuilt, or at his summer seat at Shangtu in the country north of the Great Wall. It was the first time that the khan, a man full of energy and intelligence, had fallen in with European gentlemen. He was delighted with the Venetian brothers, listened eagerly to all they had to tell of the Latin world, and decided to send them back as his envoys to the pope, with letters requesting the despatch of a large body of educated men to instruct his people in Christianity and the liberal arts. With Kublai, as with his predecessors, religion was chiefly a political engine. Kublai, the first of his house to rise above the essential barbarism of the Mongols, had perhaps discerned that the Christian Church could afford the aid he desired in taming his countrymen. It was only when Rome had failed to meet his advance that he fell back upon Buddhism as his chief civilizing instrument.
The brothers arrived at Acre in April 1269. They learned that Clement IV. had died the year before, and no new pope had yet been chosen. So they took counsel with an eminent churchman, Tedaldo, archdeacon of Liege and papal legate for the
