(2) a Stoic philosopher, traveller, and geographer, who wrote copiously on inscriptions, &c.; fl. c. 195 B.C.
Polýbius: Greek historian from Arcadia, carried to Italy by the Romans 167 B.C., and taken under the patronage of Q. Fabius Maximus and Scipio Aemilianus. He accompanied Scipio against Carthage and in Spain. Wrote a sound, useful, unimaginative history of the years 220-146 B.C. A practical statesman and a student of the military art.
Polycleitus (-clít-): of Argos, fl. c. 450-412 B.C.; a sculptor of the first rank, particularly distinguished for his representation of human forms, to which he imparted his ideals of strength and beauty according to a ‘canon of proportions’. These were best typified in his Doryphorus (‘spear-bearer’), which was itself sometimes called ‘the Canon’. His chief colossal statue was the chryselephantine Hera of Argos.
Pontus: in two senses: (1) the Black Sea; (2) a province or region on the eastern half of the south coast of that sea.
Praxítĕles: the second greatest name in Athenian sculpture; fl. c. 365 B.C. He is the head of the ‘later’ (or more graceful) Attic school, Pheidias (q.v.) representing the earlier, more massive and majestic. He particularly excelled with his statues of Aphrodite (e.g. the ‘Venus of Cnidos’).
Priam: aged king of Troy, father of Hector, whose dead body he came to Achilles to ransom.
Priénë: an Ionian Greek town in Asia Minor a little south of Ephesus; the home of Bias.
Pródȋcus: of Ceos, sophist and rhetorical teacher; a contemporary of Plato and a frequent visitor to Athens. His bodily weakness was notorious.
Prométheus: mythical semi-deity, gifted with great foresight; a benefactor of mankind by giving them fire stolen from heaven (an offence for which he was cruelly punished by Zeus), and by the invention of the civilizing arts. His name was commonly interpreted ‘Fore-thinker’.
Ptolemy: (1) Ptolemy II (Philadelphus), king of Egypt 285-247 B.C.