[Petra], a ruined city, and once the rock capital of Edom, and afterwards of Arabia Petræa; was a place of some importance at one time as a commercial centre; the name Petra signifies rock.
[Petrarch, Francesco], the famous Italian lyric poet, born at Arezzo, in Tuscany, whither his father had gone when exiled with Dante from Florence; spent his youth in Avignon; intended for the profession of law, devoted his time to the study of Cicero and Virgil; met Laura in the church of St. Clare there in 1327, a lady of surpassing beauty; conceived a passion for her which she could not return, and wrote sonnets in praise of her, which immortalised both himself and her; after travel in France and Germany he retired in 1337 to the valley of Vaucluse, where he composed the most of his poems, and his reputation reached its height in 1341, when he was crowned laureate in the Capitol of Rome; he was in Italy when tidings reached him of the death of Laura in 1348, on the anniversary of the day when he first met her, upon which he gave expression to his feelings over the event in a touching note of it in his Virgil; we find him again at Rome in 1350, and after moving from place to place settled in Arqua in 1370, where he died; his Latin works are numerous, and include an epic on the Second Punic war, Eclogues, Epistles in verse, and Letters of value giving the details of his life; his fame rests on his lyrics; by those alone he still lives, and that more from the finished art in which they are written than from any glow of feeling they kindle in the reader's heart (1304-1374).
[Petri, Laurentius], a Swedish Reformer; was a disciple of Luther; became professor of Theology and first Protestant archbishop of Upsala, and superintended the translation of the Bible into Swedish (1499-1573).
[Petrie, Flinders], Egyptologist, son of an Australian explorer; after explorations at Stonehenge, surveyed the pyramids and temples of Ghizeh in 1881-82; excavated for the Egyptian Exploration Fund Nankratis, Am, and Defenneh; has achieved many other important works of the kind, and issued a popular work, "Ten Years' Diggings in Egypt"; b. 1853.
[Petrie, George], Irish archæologist, born in Dublin, of Scottish parentage; bred to art; executed Irish landscapes, but is best known for his "Essay on the Round Towers of Ireland," a work of no small interest (1790-1866).
[Petroleum], is the common name of a series of rock oils found in large quantities in the United States and Canada, near Rangoon, and in the neighbourhood of the Caspian Sea. The oil issues from the rocks, or is drawn from subterranean reservoirs, where its presence is supposed to result from natural distillation of vegetable and animal substances, and after refining, put in the market as benzoline, paraffin, and lubricating oil. It is extensively used in the industries, and has been applied as fuel to steamships.
[Pétroleuse], was a name given to certain Parisian women of the Commune of 1871, who poured petroleum on the Hôtel de Ville and other buildings to burn them.
[Petronius], a Roman satirist and accomplished voluptuary at the court of Nero, and the director-in-chief of the imperial pleasures; accused of treason, and dreading death at the hands of the emperor his master, he opened his veins, and by bandaging them bled slowly to death, showing the while the same frivolity as throughout his life; he left behind him a work, extant now only in fragments, but enough to expose the abyss of profligacy in which the Roman world was then sunk at that crisis of its fate; d. 63.
[Pettie, John], painter, born at Edinburgh; his works, chiefly historical, were numerous, and of a high character (1839-1893).