Pelūsium, now Tineh, a town of Egypt, situate at the entrance of one of the mouths of the Nile, called from it Pelusian. It is about 20 stadia from the sea, and it has received the name of Pelusium from the lakes and marshes ([♦]πυλος) which are in its neighbourhood. It was the key of Egypt on the side of Phœnicia, as it was impossible to enter the Egyptian territories without passing by Pelusium, and therefore on that account it was always well fortified and garrisoned, as it was of such importance for the security of the country. It produced lentils, and was celebrated for the linen stuffs made there. It is now in ruins. Mela, bk. 2, ch. 9.—Columella, bk. 5, ch. 10.—Silius Italicus, bk. 3, li. 25.—Lucan, bk. 8, li. 466; bk. 9, li. 83; bk. 10, li. 53.—Livy, bk. 44, ch. 19; bk. 45, ch. 11.—Strabo, bk. 17.—Virgil, Georgics, bk. 1, li. 228.
[♦] ‘πμλος’ replaced with ‘πυλος’
Pĕnātes, certain inferior deities among the Romans, who presided over houses and the domestic affairs of families. They were called Penates, because they were generally placed in the innermost and most secret parts of the house, in Penitissimâ ædium parte, quod, as Cicero says, penitus insident. The place [♦]where they stood was afterwards called penetralia, and they themselves received the name of Penetrales. It was in the option of every master of a family to choose his Penates, and therefore Jupiter, and some of the superior gods, are often invoked as patrons of domestic affairs. According to some, the gods Penates were divided into four classes; the first comprehended all the celestial, the second the sea-gods, the third the gods of hell, and the last all such heroes as had received divine honours after death. The Penates were originally the manes of the dead, but when superstition had taught mankind to pay uncommon reverence to the statues and images of their deceased friends, their attention was soon exchanged for regular worship, and they were admitted by their votaries to share immortality and power over the world, with a Jupiter or a Minerva. The statues of the Penates were generally made with wax, ivory, silver, or earth, according to the affluence of the worshipper, and the only offerings they received were wine, incense, fruits, and sometimes the sacrifice of lambs, sheep, goats, &c. In the early ages of Rome, human sacrifices were offered to them; but Brutus, who expelled the Tarquins, abolished this unnatural custom. When offerings were made to them, their statues were crowned with garlands, poppies, or garlic, and besides the monthly day that was set apart for their worship, their festivals were celebrated during the Saturnalia. Some have confounded the Lares and the Penates, but they were different. Cicero, de Natura Deorum, bk. 2, ch. 27; Against Verres, bk. 2.—Dionysius of Halicarnassus, bk. 1.
[♦] ‘were’ replaced with ‘where’
Pendalium, a promontory of Cyprus.
Pēneia, or Penēis, an epithet applied to Daphne, as daughter of Peneus. Ovid, Metamorphoses, bk. 1, li. 452.
Penelius, one of the Greeks killed in the Trojan war. Homer, Iliad, bk. 2, li. 494.——A son of Hippalmus among the Argonauts.
Pēnĕlŏpe, a celebrated princess of Greece, daughter of Icarius, and wife of Ulysses king of Ithaca. Her marriage with Ulysses was celebrated about the same time that Menelaus married Helen, and she retired with her husband to Ithaca, against the inclination of her father, who wished to detain her at Sparta, her native country. She soon after became mother of Telemachus, and was obliged to part with great reluctance from her husband, whom the Greeks obliged to go to the Trojan war. See: [Palamedes]. The continuation of hostilities for 10 years made her sad and melancholy; but when Ulysses did not return like the other princes of Greece at the conclusion of the war, her fears and her anxieties were increased. As she received no intelligence of his situation, she was soon beset by a number of importuning suitors, who wished her to believe that her husband was shipwrecked, and that therefore, she ought no longer to expect his return, but forget his loss, and fix her choice and affections on one of her numerous admirers. She received their addresses with coldness and disdain; but as she was destitute of power, and a prisoner, as it were, in their hands, she yet flattered them with hopes and promises, and declared that she would make choice of one of them, as soon as she had finished a piece of tapestry, on which she was employed. The work was done in a dilatory manner, and she baffled their eager expectations, by undoing in the night what she had done in the daytime. This artifice of Penelope has given rise to the proverb of Penelope’s web, which is applied to whatever labour can never be ended. The return of Ulysses, after an absence of 20 years, however, delivered her from her fears and from her dangerous suitors. Penelope is described by Homer as a model of female virtue and chastity, but some more modern writers dispute her claims to modesty and continence, and they represent her as the most debauched and voluptuous of her sex. According to their opinions, therefore, she liberally gratified the desires of her suitors, in the absence of her husband, and had a son whom she called Pan, as if to show that he was the offspring of all her admirers. Some, however, suppose that Pan was son of Penelope by Mercury, and that he was born before his mother’s marriage with Ulysses. The god, as it is said, deceived Penelope, under the form of a beautiful goat, as she was tending her father’s flocks on one of the mountains of Arcadia. After the return of Ulysses, Penelope had a daughter, who was called Ptoliporthe; but if we believe the traditions that were long preserved at Mantinea, Ulysses repudiated his wife for her incontinence during his absence, and Penelope fled to Sparta, and afterwards to Mantinea, where she died and was buried. After the death of Ulysses, according to Hyginus, she married Telegonus, her husband’s son by Circe, by order of the goddess Minerva. Some say that her original name was Arnea, or Amirace, and that she was called Penelope, when some river birds called Penelopes had saved her from the waves of the sea, when her father had exposed her. Icarius had attempted to destroy her, because the oracles had told him that his daughter by Peribœa would be the most dissolute of her sex, and a disgrace to his family. Apollodorus, bk. 3, ch. 10.—Pausanias, bk. 3, ch. 12.—Homer, Iliad & Odyssey.—Ovid, Heroides, poem 1; Metamorphoses.—Aristotle, History of Animals, bk. 8.—Hyginus, fable 127.—Aristophanes, The Birds.—Pliny, bk. 37.
Pēneus, a river of Thessaly, rising on mount Pindus, and falling into the Thermean gulf, after a wandering course between mount Ossa and Olympus, through the plains of Tempe. It received its name from Peneus, a son of Oceanus and Tethys. The Peneus anciently inundated the plains of Thessaly, till an earthquake separated the mountains Ossa and Olympus, and formed the beautiful vale of Tempe, where the waters formerly stagnated. From this circumstance, therefore, it obtained the name of Arexes, ab ἀρασσω, scindo. Daphne the daughter of the Peneus, according to the fables of the mythologists, was changed into a laurel on the banks of this river. This tradition arises from the quantity of laurels which grow near the Peneus. Ovid, Metamorphoses, bk. 1, li. 452, &c.—Strabo, bk. 9.—Mela, bk. 2, ch. 3.—Virgil, Georgics, bk. 4, li. 317.—Diodorus, bk. 4.——Also a small river of Elis in Peloponnesus, better known under the name of Araxes. Pausanias, bk. 6, ch. 24.—Strabo, bks. 8 & 11.
Penidas, one of Alexander’s friends, who went to examine Scythia under pretence of an embassy. Curtius, bk. 6, ch. 6.