Shakespeare has introduced a burlesque of this pretty love story in his Midsummer Night’s Dream, but Ovid has told the tale beautifully.
Pyrgo Polini´ces, an extravagant blusterer. (The word means “tower and town taker.”)—Plautus, Miles Gloriosus.
If the modern reader knows nothing of Pyrgo Polinicês and Thraso, Pistol and Parollês; if he is shut out from Nephelo-Coccygia, he may take refuge in Lilliput.—Macaulay.
*** “Thraso,” a bully in Terence (The Eunuch); “Pistol,” in the Merry Wives of Windsor and 2 Henry IV.; “Parollês,” in All’s Well that Ends Well; “Nephelo-Coccygia,” or cloud cuckoo-town, in Aristophanê’s (The Birds); and “Lilliput,” in Swift (Gulliver’s Travels).
Py´rocles (3 syl.) and his brother, Cy´moclês (3 syl.) sons of Acratês (incontinence). The two brothers are about to strip Sir Guyon, when Prince Arthur comes up and slays both of them.—Spenser, Faëry Queen, ii. 8 (1590).
Pyroc´les and Musidorous, heroes, whose exploits are told by Sir Philip Sidney in his Arcadia (1581).
Pyr´rho, the founder of the sceptics or Pyrrhonian school of philosophy. He was a native of Elis, in Peloponne´sus, and died at the age of 90 (B.C. 285).
It is a pleasant voyage, perhaps, to float,
Like Pyrrho, on a sea of speculation.
Byron, Don Juan, ix. 18 (1824).
*** “Pyrrhonism” means absolute and unlimited infidelity.
Pythag´oras, the Greek philosopher, is said to have discovered the musical scale from hearing the sounds produced by a blacksmith hammering iron on his anvil.—See Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 722.