OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pithecanthropus erectus

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​PITHECANTHROPUS ERECTUS (Erect Ape-Man), the name given by Dr Eugene Dubois, of the Dutch army medical service, to the imaginary creature which he constructed from fossilized remains found by him in Java. These fragments consisted of a thigh-bone, two teeth, and the upper part of a skull, and were unearthed in 1891–1892 on the left bank of the Bengawan River near Trinil. The skull appears to have been low and depressed with strong supraciliary ridges; the teeth are very large, and the femur is quite human. The teeth and skull were found together, the femur a few yards away a year afterwards. The discoverer, however, stated it as his belief that the fragments were portions of the same skeleton and belonged to a creature half-way between man and the higher apes and of the Pleistocene age. Much discussion followed the “find,” and many authorities have given an opinion adverse to Dr Dubois’s theory. The prevailing opinion is that the bones are human. They are not held to represent what has been called “the missing link,” bridging over the gulf between man and the apes, but almost all authorities are agreed that they constitute a further link in the chain, bringing man nearer his Simian prototype. L. Manouvrier concludes that Homo javanensis walked erect, was of about medium height, and was a true precursor, possibly a direct ancestor, of man. He calls attention to the fact that the cranial capacity decreases in proportion to the antiquity of the human skulls found, and that the pithecanthropus skull has a capacity of from 900 to 1000 cc—that is, “stands at the level of the smallest which have been occasionally found amongst the reputedly lowest savage peoples.”
See Dubois, Pithecanthropus erectus (Batavia, 1894); a later paper read by Dr Dubois before the Berlin Anthropological Society was translated in the Smithsonian Report for 1898 Also a paper read by Dr D. J. Cunningham before the Royal Dublin Society, January 23, 1895 (reported in Nature, February 28, 1895); O. C. Marsh, ​American Journ. of Science (June 1896); “Le Pithecanthropus et l’origine de l’homme,” in Bull. de la soc. d’anthrop. de Paris (1896), pp. 460–67; L. Manouvrier, “Discussion du pithecanthropus erectus comme précurseur de l’homme,” in Bull. soc. d’anthrop. de Paris (1895), pp. 13–47 and 216–220; L. Manouvrier, Bull. soc. d’anthrop. (1896), p. 419 sqq.; “The Trinil Femur contrasted with the Femora of various savage and civilized races,” in Journal of Anat. and Physiol. (1896), xxxi. 1 seq., Virchow, “Über den Pithecanthropus erectus Dubois” in Zeitschrift f. Ethnologie (1895), pp. 336, 435, 648.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pitigliano

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​PITIGLIANO, a town in Italy, province of Grossetto. Pop. (1901), 4416. It is the cathedral city of the bishopric named after the neighbouring town of Sovana, and possesses a 16th-century cathedral and a church of the 11th–15th centuries, Pitigliano was originally a fief of the count ship of Sovana, which in 1293 came by marriage into the possession of the Orsini. In 1410 Sovana was taken by the Siennese, but by the terms of a peace concluded in 1417 the Orsini retained Pitigliano, Gentile Orsini (assassinated 1434) assuming the title of count of Pitigliano. The most famous of the line of counts was Niccolo III. (1442–1510), a celebrated condottiere. Under his successors Pitigliano became the scene of ceaseless family feuds culminating in assassinations. In 1562 the Medici of Florence seized part of their territories, and acquired the rest by exchange in 1580. The Orsini stronghold still stands in the town.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pitman, Sir Isaac

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​PITMAN, SIR ISAAC (1813–1897), English phonographer, was born at Trowbridge, W1ltshire, on the 4th of January 1813, and was educated at the local grammar school. He started in life as a clerk in a cloth factory, but in 1831 he was sent to the Normal College of the British and Foreign School Society in London. Between 1832 and 1839 he held masterships at Barton-on-Humber and Wotton-under-Edge, but he was dismissed by the authorities when he became a Swedenborgian, and from 1839 to 1843 he conducted a private school of his own at Bath. In 1829 he took up Samuel Taylor’s system of shorthand, and from that time he became an enthusiast in developing the art of phonograph. In 1837 he drew up a manual of Taylor’s system and offered it to Samuel Bagster (1771–1852). The publisher did not accept the work, but suggested that Pitman should invent a new system (see Shorthand) of his own. The result was his Stenographic Soundhand (1837). Bagster’s friendship and active help had been secured by Pitman’s undertaking to verify the half-million references in the Comprehensive Bible, and he published the inventor’s books at a cheap rate, thus helping to bring the system within the reach of all. Pitman devoted himself to perfecting phonograph and propagating its use, and established at Bath a Phonetic Institute and a Phonetic Journal for this purpose; he printed in shorthand a number of standard works, and his book with the title Phonography (1840) went through many editions. He was an enthusiastic spelling reformer, and adopted a phonetic system which he tried to bring into general use. Pitman was twice married, his first wife dying in 1857, and his second, whom he married in 1861, surviving him. In 1894 he was knighted, and on the 22nd of January 1897 he died at Bath. Sir Isaac Pitman popularized shorthand at a time when the advance of the newspaper press and modern business methods were making it a matter of great commercial importance. His system adapted itself readily to the needs of journalism, and its use revolutionized the work of reporting. He was a non-smoker, a vegetarian, and advocated temperance principles.
His Life was written by Alfred Baker (1908) and (1902) by his brother, Benn Pitman (1822–1911).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pitoni, Giuseppe Ottavio

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​PITONI, GIUSEPPE OTTAVIO (1657–1743), Italian musical composer, was born at Rieti on the 18th of March 1657. He came to Rome as a boy and sang in the choir of SS Apostoli. Foggia gave him instructions in counterpoint, and he became maestro di Cappella, first at Terra di Rotondo and later (1673) at Assisi. In 1676 he went to Rieti, and in 1677 to Rome, where he held various appointments, dying on the 1st of February 1743 as maestro di Cappella at St Marco, where he was buried. Pitoni appears to have devoted himself exclusively to church music, and although he did not disdain the modern style with instrumental accompaniment, he is best known by his Masses and other works in the manner of Palestrina. Several volumes of his autograph composition are in the Santini Library at Munster.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pithiviers

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​PITHIVIERS, a town of north central France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Loiret, 28 m. N.N.E. of Orleans, on the railway to Malesherbes. Pop. (1906), 5676. The church of St Solomon, chiefly in the Renaissance style, and remains of the ancient ramparts are of interest. Statues have been erected of the mathematician Denis Poisson (d. 1840), and of the physician and agriculturist Duhamel de Monceau (d. 1782), natives of Pithiviers. The town is an agricultural market, and an important centre for the saffron of the region of Gatinaris the cultivation of which, originally introduced by the Jews of Avignon in the 12th century was fostered by Louis XIV. The shrine of St Solomon in the 9th century and that of St Gregory, an Armenian bishop, in the 10th, formed the nuclei of the town; and the donjon built at the end of the 10th century for Héloise, lady of Pithiviers, was one of the finest of the period.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pithou, Pierre

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​PITHOU, PIERRE (1539–1596), French lawyer and scholar, was born at Troyes on the 1st of November 1539. His taste for literature was early seen, and his father Pierre (1496–1556) cultivated it to the utmost. He was called to the Paris bar in 1560. On the outbreak of the second war of religion in 1567, Pithou, who was a Calvinist, withdrew to Sedan and afterwards to Basel, whence be returned to France on the publication of the edict of pacification. Soon afterwards he accompanied the duc de Montmorency on his embassy to England, returning shortly before the massacre of St Bartholomew, in which he narrowly escaped with his life. Newt year lie followed the example of Henry of Navarre by abjuring the Protestant faith. Henry, shortly after his own accession to the throne of France, recognized Pithou’s talents and services by bestowing upon him various legal appointments. The most important work of his life was his co-operation in the production of the Satire Ménzppée (1593), which did so much to damage the cause of the League; the harangue of the Sieur d’Aubray is usually attributed to his pen. He died at Nogent-sur-Seine on the first of November 1596. His valuable library, specially rich in MSS., was for the most part transferred to what is now the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.
Pithou wrote a great number of legal and historical books, besides preparing editions of several ancient authors His earliest publication was Adveisariorum subsectiorum lib II. (1565). Perhaps his edition of the Leges Visigothorum (1579) was his most valuable contribution to historical science; in the same line he edited the Capuula of Charlemagne, Louis the Pious, and Charles the Bald in 1588, and he also assisted his brother François in preparing an edition of the Corpus juris canonici (1687). His Libertés de l’église gallicane (1594) is reprinted in his Opera sacra juridica his orzoa miscellanea collecta (1609) In classical literature he was the first who made the world acquainted with the Fables of Phaedrus (1596); he also edited the Pervigilium Veneris (1587), and Juvenal and Persius (1585).
Three of Pithou’s brothers acquired distinction as jurists: Jean (1524–1602), author of Traité de police et du gouvernement des républiques, and, in collaboration with his twin brother Nicolas (1524–1598), of Institution du manage chrétzen; and François (1543–1621), author of Glossarium ad libros capitularium (1588), Traité de l’excommunication et de l’interdit, &c. (1587).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Polycrates of Athens

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​POLYCRATES, Athenian sophist and rhetorician, flourished in the 4th century B.C. He taught at Athens, and afterwards in Cyprus. He composed declamations on paradoxical themes an Encomium on Clytaemnestra, an Accusation of Socrates, an Emomium on Busiris (a mythical king of Egypt, notorious for his inhumanity); also declamations on mice, pots and counters. His Enoomium on Busiris was sharply criticized by Isocrates, in a work still extant, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus characterizes his style as frigid, vulgar and inelegant.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Polygamy

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​POLYGAMY, (Gr. πολύς, many, and γάμος, marriage), or as it is sometimes termed, Polygyny (γυνή, woman), the system under which a man is married to several women at the same time. Derivatively it includes the practice of polyandry, but it has become definitely restricted to expressing what has been, and still is, far the commonest type of relations between the sexes (see Family and Marriage). Among Oriental nations plurality of legal wives is customary. Mahommedans are allowed four. A Hindu can have as many as he pleases: the high-caste sometimes having as many as a hundred. Polygamy is the rule among ​African tribes, and is common among those of Australia and Polynesia. In China, however, only one wife is lawful. In many polygamous countries the practical obstacle of expense prevents men from taking advantage of their privileges. While polygamy was the rule in biblical days among the ancient Jews, and was permitted and even enjoined in certain cases by the Mosaic law, the Christian Church, though it is nowhere forbidden, except for “bishops,” in the New Testament, has always set its face against it. There have, however, been divines who dissented from this general disapproval. The Anabaptists insisted on freedom in the matter, and Bernardino Ochino conditionally defended plurality of wives. When in 1540 Philip the Magnanimous, the reforming Landgrave of Hesse, determined (with his wife's approval, she being a confirmed invalid) to marry a second wife, Luther and Melanchthon approved “as his personal friends, though not as doctors of theology”; while Martin Bucer assisted at the marriage. In later times the Mormons (q.v.) in America provide the most notable instance of the revival of polygamy.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Polycrates of Samos

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​POLYCRATES, tyrant of Samos (c. 535-515 B.C.). Having won popularity by donations to poorer citizens, he took advantage of a festival of Hera, which was being celebrated outside the walls, to make himself master of the city (about 535 B.C.). After getting rid of his brothers Pantagnotus and Syloson, who had at first shared his power, he established a despotism which is of great importance in the history of the island. Realizing clearly the value of sea-power for a Greek state, he equipped a fleet of 100 ships, and so became master of the Aegean basin. This ascendancy he abused by numerous acts of piracy which made him notorious throughout Greece; but his real purpose in building his navy was to become lord of all the islands of the archipelago and the mainland towns of Ionia. The details of his conquests are uncertain, but it is known that in the Cyclades he maintained an alliance with the tyrant Lygdamis of Naxos, and curried favour with the Delian, Apollo by dedicating to him the island of Rheneia. He also encountered and heavily defeated a coalition of two great naval powers of the Asiatic coast, Miletus and Lesbos. Doubtless with the object of expanding the flourishing foreign trade of Samos, he entered into alliance with Amasis, king of Egypt, who, according to Herodotus, renounced his ally because he feared that the gods, in envy of Polycrates' excessive good fortune, would bring ruin upon him and his allies. It is more probable that the breach of the compact was due to Polycrates, for when Cambyses of Persia invaded Egypt (525) the Samian tyrant offered to support him with a naval contingent. This squadron never reached Egypt, for the crews, composed as they were of Polycrates political enemies, suspecting that Cambyses was under agreement to slay them, put back to Samos and attacked their master. After a defeat by sea, Polycrates repelled an assault upon the walls, and subsequently withstood a siege by a joint armament of Spartans and Corinthians assembled to aid the rebels. He maintained his ascendancy until about 515, when Oroetes, the Persian governor of Lydia, who had been reproached for his failure to reduce Samos by force, lured him to the mainland by false promises of gain and put him to death by crucifixion.
Beside the political and commercial pre-eminence which he conferred upon Samos, Polycrates adorned the city with public works on a large scale-an aqueduct, a mole and a temple of Hera (see Samos; Aqueducts). The splendour of his palace is attested by the proposal of the Roman emperor Caligula to rebuild it. Foreign artists worked for him at high wages; from Athens he brought Democedes, the greatest physician of the age, at an exceptional salary. He was also a patron of letters: he collected a library and lived on terms of intimate friendship with the poet Anacreon, whose verses were full of references to his patron. The philosopher Pythagoras, however, quitted Samos in order to escape his tyranny.
(M. O. B. C.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Polygenists

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​POLYGENISTS, the term -applied to those anthropologists who contend that the several primary races of mankind are separate species of independent origin. (See Monogenists.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Polygnotus

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​POLYGNOTUS, Greek painter in the middle of the 5th century B.C., son of Aglaophon, was a native of Thasos, but was adopted by the Athenians, and admitted to their citizenship. He painted for them in the time of Cimon a picture of the taking of Ilium on the walls of the Stoa Poecile, and another of the marriage of the daughters of Leucippus in the Anaceum. In the hall at the entrance to the Acropolis other works of his were preserved. The most important, however, of his paintings were his frescoes in a building erected at Delphi by the people- .of Cnidus. The subjects of these were the visit to Hades by Odysseus, and the taking of Ilium. Fortunately the traveller Pausanias has left us a careful description of these paintings, figure by figure (Paus. x. 25–31). The foundations of the building have been recovered in the course of the French excavations at Delphi. From this evidence, some modern archaeologists have tried to reconstruct the paintings, excepting of course the colours of them. The best of these reconstructions is by Carl Robert, who by the help of vase-paintings of the middle of the fifth century has succeeded in recovering, both the perspective of Polygnotus and the character of his figures (see Greek Art, fig. 29). The figures were detached and seldom overlapping, ranged in two or three rows one above another; and the farther were not smaller nor dimmer than the nearer. The designs are repeated in Frazer's Pausanias, v. 360 and 372. It will hence appear that paintings at this time were executed on almost precisely the same plan as contemporary sculptural reliefs. We learn also that Polygnotus employed but few colours, and those simple. Technically his art was primitive. His excellence lay in the beauty of his drawing of individual figures; but especially in the “ethical” and ideal character of his art. The contemporary, and perhaps the teacher, of Pheidias, he had the same grand manner. Simplicity, which was almost childlike, sentiment at once noble and gentle, extreme grace and charm of execution, marked his works, in contrast to the more animated, complicated and technically superior paintings of a later age. (P. G.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ladybank

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​LADYBANK, a police burgh of Fifeshire, Scotland, 51/2 m. S.W. of Cupar by the North British railway, 1/2 m. from the left bank of the Eden. Pop. (1901) 1340. Besides having a station on the main line to Dundee, it is also connected with Perth and Kinross and is a railway junction of some importance and possesses a locomotive depot. It is an industrial centre, linen weaving, coal mining and malting being the principal industries. Kettle, a village 1 m. S., has prehistoric barrows and a fort. At Collessie, 21/2 m. N. by W., a standing stone, a mound and traces of ancient camps exist, while urns and coins have been found. Between the parishes of Collessie and Monimail the boundary line takes the form of a crescent known as the Bow of Fife. Monimail contains the Mount, the residence of Sir David Lindsay the poet (1490–1555). Its lofty site is now marked by a clump of trees. Here, too, is the Doric pillar, 100 ft. high, raised to the memory of John Hope, 4th earl of Hopetoun. Melville House, the seat of the earls of Leven, lies amidst beautiful woods.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ladybrand

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​LADYBRAND, a town of the Orange Free State, 80 m. E. of Bloemfontein by rail. Another railway connects it with Natal via Harrismith. Pop. (1904) 3862, of whom 2334 were whites. The town is pleasantly situated at the foot of a flat-topped hill (the Platberg), about 4 m. W. of the Caledon river, which separates the province from Basutoland. Ladybrand is the centre of a rich arable district, has a large wheat market and is also a health resort, the climate, owing to the proximity of the Maluti Mountains, being bracing even during the summer months (November–March). Coal and petroleum are found in the neighbourhood. It is named after the wife of Sir. J. H. Brand, president of the Orange Free State.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Laestrygones

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​LAESTRYGONES, a mythical race of giants and cannibals. According to the Odyssey (x. 80) they dwelt in the farthest north, where the nights were so short that the shepherd who was driving out his flock met another driving it in. This feature of the tale contains some hint of the long nightless summer in the Arctic regions, which perhaps reached the Greeks through the merchants who fetched amber from the Baltic coasts. Odysseus in his wanderings arrived at the coast inhabited by the Laestrygones, and escaped with only one ship, the rest being sunk by the giants with masses of rock. Their chief city was Telepylus, founded by a former king Lamus, their ruler at that time being Antiphates. This is a purely fanciful name, but Lamus takes us into a religious world where we can trace the origin of the legend, and observe the god of an older religion becoming the subject of fairy tales (see Lamia) in a later period.
The later Greeks placed the country of the Laestrygones in Sicily, to the south of Aetna, near Leontini; but Horace (Odes, iii. 16. 34) and other Latin authors speak of them as living in southern Latium, near Formiae, which was supposed to have been founded by Lamus.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Laenas

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​LAENAS, the name of a plebeian family in ancient Rome, notorious for cruelty and arrogance. The two most famous of the name are:—
Gaius Popillius Laenas, consul in 172 B.C. He was sent to Greece in 174 to allay the general disaffection, but met with little success. He took part in the war against Perseus, king of Macedonia (Livy xliii. 17, 22). When Antiochus Epiphanes, king of Syria, invaded Egypt, Laenas was sent to arrest his progress. Meeting him near Alexandria, he handed him the decree of the senate, demanding the evacuation of Egypt. Antiochus having asked time for consideration, Laenas drew a circle round him with his staff, and told him he must give an answer before he stepped out of it. Antiochus thereupon submitted (Livy xlv. 12; Polybius xxix. 11; Cicero, Philippica, viii. 8; Vell. Pat. i. 10).
Publius Popillius Laenas, son of the preceding. When consul in 132 B.C. he incurred the hatred of the democrats by his harsh measures as head of a special commission appointed to take measures against the accomplices of Tiberius Gracchus. In 123 Gaius Gracchus brought in a bill prohibiting all such commissions, and declared that, in accordance with the old laws of appeal, a magistrate who pronounced sentence of death against a citizen, without the people’s assent, should be guilty of high treason. It is not known whether the bill contained a retrospective clause against Laenas, but he left Rome and sentence of banishment from Italy was pronounced against him. After the restoration of the aristocracy the enactments against him were cancelled, and he was recalled (121).
See Cicero, Brutus, 25. 34, and De domo sua, 31; Vell. Pat. ii. 7; Plutarch, C. Gracchus, 4.