[Phrygia], a country originally extending over the western shores of Asia Minor, but afterwards confined to the western uplands, where are the sources of the Hermus, Mæander, and Sangarius; was made up of barren hills where sheep famous for their wool grazed, and fertile valleys where the vine was cultivated; marble was quarried in the hills, and gold was found; several great trade roads from Ephesus crossed the country, among whose towns the names of Colosse and Laodicea are familiar; the Phrygians were an Armenian people, with a mystic orgiastic religion, and were successively conquered by Assyrians, Lydians, and Persians, falling under Rome in 43 B.C.
[Phrygian Cap], a cap worn by the Phrygians, and worn in modern times as the symbol of freedom.
[Phryné], a Greek courtesan, celebrated for her beauty; was the model to Praxiteles of his statue of Venus; accused of profaning the Eleusinian Mysteries, she was brought before the judges, to whom she exposed her person, but who acquitted her of the charge, to preserve to the artists the image of divine beauty thus recognised in her.
[Phtah], a god of ancient Egypt, worshipped at Memphis; identified with Osiris and Socaris, and placed by the Egyptians at the head of the dynasty of the kings of Memphis.
[Phylacteries], strips of vellum inscribed with certain texts of Scripture, enclosed in small cases of calf-skin, and attached to the forehead or the left arm; originally connected with acts of worship, they were eventually turned to superstitious uses, and employed sometimes as charms and sometimes by way of ostentatious display.
[Physiocratic School], a school of economists founded by Quesney, who regarded the cultivation of the land as the chief sources of natural well-being, and argued for legislation in behalf of it.
[Piacenza] (35), an old Italian city on the Po, 43 m. by rail SE. of Milan; has a cathedral, and among other churches the San Sisto, which contains the Sistine Madonna of Raphael, a theological seminary, and large library; it manufactures silks, cottons, and hats, and is a fortress of great strategical importance.
[Pia-mater], a membrane which invests the brain and the spinal cord; it is of a delicate vascular tissue.
[Piarists], a purely religious order devoted to the education of the poor, founded in 1599 by a Spanish priest, and confirmed in 1617 by Paul V., and again in 1621 by Gregory XV.
[Piazzi], Italian astronomer; discovered in 1801 a planet between Mars and Jupiter, which he named Ceres, and the first of the planetoids recognised, as well as afterwards catalogued the stars (1746-1826).