pnugues/EB7 huggingface dataset:
POLETAE were ten magistrates of Athens, who, with three that had the management of the money allowed for public shows, were empowered to let out the tribute-money and other public revenues, and to sell confiscated estates; all which transactions were ratified by their president, or in his name.
POLIANTHES, the Tuberose, a genus of plants belonging to the hexandria class; and in the natural method ranking under the tenth order, Coroìiariae.
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POLICY or Insurance, or Assurance, of ships, is a contract or convention, by which a person takes upon himself the risks of a sea-voyage; obliging himself to make good in part or in whole the losses and damages that may befall the vessel, its’equipåge, tackle, victualling, lading, &c. either from tempests, shipwrecks, pirates, fire, war, reprisals, in consideration of a certain sum, more or less, according to the risk; which sum is paid down to the assurer by the assurée upon his signing the policy.
POLIGNA, Melchior de, a French cardinal, was born of an ancient and noble family at Piry, the capital of Velay, in 1662. He was sent by Louis XIV. as ambassador extraordinary to Poland, where, on the death of Sobieski, he formed a project of procuring the election of the prince of Conti; but failing in this, he returned home under some disgrace. When restored to favour, he was sent to Rome as auditor of the Rota. He acted as plenipotentiary during the congress at Utrecht, at which time Clement I. created him cardinal; and upon the accession of Louis XV. he was appointed to reside as minister of France at Rome, where he remained till the year 1732, and died in the year 1741. He left behind him a manuscript poem, entitled Anti-Lucretius, seu De Deo et Natura, the plan of which he is said to have formed in Holland in a conversation with Bayle.
POLIGNY, an arrondissement of the department of the Jura, in France, extending over 496 square miles. It comprehends seven cantons, divided into 161 communes, and contains 72,650 inhabitants. The capital is a city of the same name, situated on the river Elantine. It is well built, and in a fertile district, in which some good red wine is produced. It contains 1150 houses, with 5620 inhabitants, who make porcelain, tan leather, and refine much saltpetre.
POLISHER, or Burnisher, amongst mechanics, an instrument for polishing and burnishing things proper to take a polish.
POLITENESS means elegance of manners, or good breeding. Lord Chesterfield denominates it the art of pleasing. It has also been called an artificial good nature; and indeed good nature is the foundation of true politeness, for without it art will make but a very indifferent figure, and generally defeat its own ends. Where compliance and assent, caution and candour, arise from a natural tenderness of disposition and softness of nature, as they sometimes do, they are almost always amiable, and certainly excusable; but as the effects of artifice, they must be despised. The persons who possess them are often indeed themselves dupes of their own deceit, when they imagine others are deluded by it; for excessive art always betrays itself.

A variety of excellent rules for acquiring politeness, with strictures on particular kinds of impoliteness, may be found in the Spectator, Rambler, Idler, Lounger, Mirror, and other periodical works of that kind; in Knox’s Essays, and among Swift’s works. Chesterfield’s Art of Pleasing, and his Letters, are also worthy of perusal, provided the reader be on his guard against the insincerity and the false maxims which these books are calculated to infuse.
POLITICAL, from τrο ∖ ις, a city, signifies any thing that relates to policy or civil government.
POLITICAL ARITHMETIC is the art of reasoning by figures upon matters relating to government; such as the revenues, number of people, extent and value of land, taxes, trade, &c. in any nation. These calculations are generally made with a view to ascertain the comparative strength, prosperity, and resources of any two or more nations. With this view, Sir William Petty, in his Political Arithmetic, entered into a variety of calculations concerning the different countries of Europe. With these calculations Dr Davenant was dissatisfied; and, therefore, from the observations of Mr Gregory King, he advanced others of his own. (See his Essay on Trade.) The advancement of society has entirely superseded the calculations of these writers; but their works are deserving of notice, as marking the progress of knowledge in this branch of political science. See the articles Insurance, Mortality, and Statistics.
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POLL, a word used in ancient writings for the head. Hence to poll is either to vote, or to enter down the names of those persons who give their , votes at an election.

Poll -Money , or Capitation, a tax imposed by authority of parliament on the person or head, either on all indifferently, or according to some known mark or distinction. Thus by the statute 18 Car. II. every subject in the kingdom was assessed by the head, or poll, according to his degree; a duke L.100, a marquis L.80, a baronet L.30, a knight L.20, an esquire L.10, and every single private person 12d. This was no new tax, as appears by former acts of parliament.
POLLARD, or Crocard, the name given to a sort of base money current in Ireland in the time of Edward I. (See Simon’s History of Irish Coins, p. 15.)
POLLEN, the fecundating or fertilizing dust contained within the antherae or tops of the stamina, and dispersed upon the female organ when ripe, for the purposes of impregnation. (See Botany.)
POLLICIS Pressio, and Pollicis Versio, were used at the combats of gladiators as signals of life or death to the vanquished combatant; in other words, to the victor to spare or take the life of his antagonist. The pollicis pressio, by which the people granted life to the prostrate gladiator, was no more than a clenching of the fingers of both hands together, and so holding upright the two thumbs close together. The pollicis versio, which authorized the victor to kill the vanquished as a coward, was the bending back of the thumbs. Such is the opinion of Dacier; but others say that the pollicis pressio was when the people held up one hand with the thumb bent, and the pollicis versio when they showed the hand with the thumb raised. Authors, however, are not perfectly agreed on this matter; though the phrases pollicem premere and pollicem vertere frequently occur in the Latin classics as indications of the people’s will that a gladiator should live or die.
POLLIO, Caius Asinius, a celebrated Latin poet and orator, was of consular dignity, and composed some tragedies which were much esteemed, but are now unfortunately lost. He was the first who opened at Rome a library for the use of the public. Being the friend of Mark Antony, he was prevented from complying with the solicitations of Augustus, who pressed him to embrace his party. At length Augustus having written some verses against Pollio, he was urged to answer them; upon which he observed, “I shall take care of writing against a man who has the power of proscribing us.” He is praised by Virgil and Horace, both of whom he patronized.

There was another Pollio, a friend of Augustus, who used to feed his fishes with human flesh. This cruelty was discovered when one of his servants broke a glass in the presence of Augustus, who had been invited to a feast. The master ordered the servant to be seized, but he threw himself at the feet of the emperor, and begged him to interfere, and not suffer him to be devoured by fishes. Upon this the grounds of his apprehension were examined; and Augustus, astonished at the barbarity of his favourite, caused the servant to be dismissed, all the fish-ponds to be filled up, and the crystal glasses of Pollio to be broken in pieces.
POLLOOR, a town of Hindustan, in the Carn ∣t∣< , . S' - venty-seven miles south-west from Madras. Long. 79.15. E. Lat. 12. 30. N.
POLLUX, the son of Tyndareus king of Amyclae, and of Leda, according to the tradition followed by Homer, was by late writers, along with his sister Helen, made the child of Jupiter, who gained the affections of Lydia in the form of a swan. He was the brother of Castor and Clytemnestra, and was born in the island Pephnos, on the coast of Laconia. Pollux was distinguished for his skill in boxing and wrestling, whilst Castor was famed for his horsemanship. They both took an active part in the hunt of the

Calydonian boar, and joined Jason in his search for the golden fleece. On their return they were invited by their cousins Lynceus and Idas, the sons of Aphareus, to attend their marriage with Phoebe and Hilaeira, daughters of Leucippus, prince of Messene. They, however, became so enamoured of the two brides, that they forcibly attempted to carry them off, when Castor was killed by Idas. Jupiter, enraged at this? proceeding, struck Idas with a thunderbolt; and, to comfort Pollux, offered him his choice of immortality, or, if he preferred it, to live and die alternately with his brother. He chose the latter. Another tradition makes Pollux show his fraternal love by dividing his immortality in such a way that Castor lived one day and Pollux the next; but Homer does not allude to this. Pollux was said to have married Phoebe, daughter of Leucippus, and to have had by her Mnesileus. Having had a dispute with his cousin Idas respecting the division of some spoil they had driven from Messenia, he is represented by one tradition as having perished by the hands of Idas.

Pollux, Julius, a Greek writer of antiquity, was born at· Naucrates, a town in Egypt, and flourished in the reign of the Emperor Commodus. He was educated under the Sophists, and made great progress in grammatical and critical learning. Having taught rhetoric at Athens, he became so famous that he was made preceptor of the Emperor Commodus. He drew up for the use of the latter, and inscribed to him, whilst his father Marcus Antoninus was living, an Onomastico, or Greek vocabulary, which he divided into ten books. It is extant, and contains a vast variety of synonymous words and phrases, ranged under the general classes of things. It was intended to facilitate the knowledge of the Greek language to the young prince; and it is still very useful to all who have a mind to be perfect in that tongue. The first edition of the Onomastico was printed at Venice by Aldus in 1502, and a Latin version was afterwards published along with it; but there was no correct and handsome edition of this work till that of Amsterdam, 1706, in folio, by Lederlinus and Hemsterhusius. Lederlinus went through the first seven books, and corrected the text and the version, subjoining his own along with the notes of Salmasius, Vossius, Valesius, and Kuhnius. Pollux wrote many other things, none of which remains. He lived to the age of fifty-eight. Philostratus and Lucian have both treated him with much contempt and ridicule. (Philostrat. de Vit. Sophist, lib. ii.; and Lucian in Rhetorum Praeceptoreï)
POLO, a small island, one of the Philippines, off the western coast of Luzon, about the fifteenth degree of north latitude. It is twenty-five miles in length by three in average breadth.
POLOONSHAH, a small town and district of Hindustan, in the province of Hyderabad, tributary to the nizam. It is situated in a rich and luxuriant valley, and has a fort 300 yards square, with a large round tower at each angle. It is seventy miles north-west from Rajahmundry. Long. 81. 10. E. Lat. 17. 35. N.
POLTROON, or Poltron, a coward or dastard, wanting the courage requisite to perform anything great or noble. The word is borrowed from the French, who, according to Salmasius, derived it a pollice truncato ; because anciently those who wished to avoid going to the wars cut off their thumb. But Ménage, with more probability, derives it from the Italian poltrone, and that from poltro, a bed; because timorous and pusillanimous people take pleasure in lying a-bed. Others, again, derive the word from the Italian poltro, a colt, because of that creature’s readiness to run away.
POLYAENUS, the name of many famous men recorded by the ancient writers. Amongst them was Julius Polyaenus, of whom we have some Greek epigrams extant in the first book of the Anthologia. The Polyaenus whom it most concerns us to know about, is the author of the eight books of [7:18:309]the Stratagems of Illustrious Commanders in War. He was probably a Macedonian, and perhaps a soldier in the early part of his life; but of this there is no certainty. He was undoubtedly a rhetorician and a pleader of causes; and, from the dedication of his work to the Emperors Antoninus and Verus, he appears to have lived towards the latter part of the second century. The Stratagemata were published in Greek by Isaac Casaubon, with notes, 1589, in 12mo; but no good edition of them appeared till that of Leyden, published in 1690, in 8vo.

We have in this work the various stratagems employed by above three hundred captains and generals of armies, chiefly Greeks and barbarians, for the Romans seldom resorted to such arts; and, besides, Polyaenus has shown that he was little acquainted with Roman affairs. A great number of these stratagems appear to us to be ridiculous or impracticable; and neither the generals, nor even common soldiers, of our days, would be found simple enough to be caught by them. Few of the latter order indeed are capable of reading Polyaenus’s Stratagems; and if they were, they would reap but little benefit from the book. It is usefill, however, to such as study the Greek language and antiquity; for many things will be found in it illustrative of the customs and opinions of ancient times. The sixth and seventh books are both imperfect.

Polyaenus composed several other works besides the Stratagemata. Stoboeus has produced some passages out of a book De Pepublica Macedonum ; and Suidas mentions a piece concerning the Thebans. If death had not prevented him, he would have written Memorabilia of the Emperors Antoninus and Verus, which he promised to undertake in the preface to his sixth book of Stratagems. Casaubon, in the dedication of Polyaenus to Mornaeus, calls him an elegant, acute, and learned writer.
POLYANTHEA, a collection of common-places arranged in alphabetical order, for the use of orators, preachers, and others. The word is formed from the Greek πολύ;, τMwcΛ,and ανάος, flower, and has mnch the same meaning with anthology or florilege. The first author of the Polyanthea was Dominie Nanni di Mirabellio, whose labour has been improved on by Amantius and Torsius; and since their time by Langius, under the title of Polyanthea Nova, 1613.
POLYCHORD, from the Greek τroaυχοξδος, a bow instrument resembling the double-bass, but smaller. It had ten strings, and a compass from C the second space in the bass clef, to C the third space in the treble clef. Its fingerboard could be lengthened or shortened at pleasure, in order to tune the instrument. It was invented in 1799, by Hilmer, at Leipzig.
POLYCLETUS, a celebrated statuary and architect, who is said to have been a native of Sicyon, and a disciple of Ageladas. He was the fellow-disciple of Myron. But it seems doubtful whether he was born at Sicyon, since Plato, who was his contemporary, calls him in his dialogue entitled Protagoras, a native of Argos, and Maximus of Tyre expressly says that the statue of Juno was a work of Polycletus of Argos. He is not, however, to be confounded with another statuary of Argos, who lived at a later period. It is believed that he was born about 480 b. c., and was still alive 405 b. c., after the battle of Oegos-potamos, as Pausanias states that he executed one of the bronze tripods which the Spartans consecrated in the temple of Apollo at Amyclae. By far the most celebrated of his statues was that of the Argive Juno, which is thought to have been executed about 416 b. c., eighteen years after the consecration of Jupiter of Olympia, and twenty or twenty-four years after that of the Minerva of the Parthenon. The statue of Juno was colossal, and seated on a golden throne, in a majestic attitude; the head, breast, arms, and feet, were of ivory, and the drapery of gold. She had a crown on her head, on which the artist had represented the Hours and Graces. In one hand she held a sceptre, with a cuckoo seated on it; in the other she bore a pomegranate. Her mantle was ornamented with vine branches, and her feet rested on the skin of a lion. Another celebrated statue was called Canon, or the Rule, because it was so perfect that it was looked upon as the model after which all others ought to be made. Galen says, that he composed a treatise on the proportions which constitute the harmony, and consequently the beauty of the human body, and that his statue was designed to illustrate his work. Winckelman suspects that this statue was also called Doryphorus, as Lysippus states that he formed his taste principally by studying it. The group called Canephorae, two young girls carrying sacred baskets on their heads, formed part of the plunder of Verres, carried off from Messana in Sicily. It is believed that we have still a copy of his Diadumenus, in a young athlete attaching to his forehead a garland as the sign of victory, which is now in the Museo Borbonicoat Naples. This Diadumenos was sold for about one hundred talents. As an architect, Polycletus is known to have constructed two buildings at Epidaurus, which are highly spoken of; the Tholus, a circular building, and a theatre, of which considerable remains are still to be seen. Varro thought that he had too much sameness in his statues; and Quintilian says that he never was able to represent the awful majesty of the gods, probably meaning such statues as the Jupiter and Minerva of Phidias. Amongst his pupils were Asopodorus, Aristides, Dinon, Athenodorus, and Pericletus the brother of Naucydes.
POLYCROTA, in the naval architecture of the ancients, a word used to express such of their galleys as had three, four,five, ormore tiersof benches, seated at different heights. TRey were distinguished by this term from the monocrota, or those which had only single rows of oars. The number of rows of benches in the polycrote galleys has given occasion to some to suppose that those vessels were of such a height above the water as is scarcely credible. Commen tators, however, are not at all agreed as to the construction of these vessels.
POLYDORE Virgil. Sec Virgil.
POLYDORUS, a son of Priam by Hecuba, or, according to others, by Laothe, the daughter of Altes, king of Pedasus. Being young and inexperienced when Troy was besieged by the Greeks, his father removed him to the court of Polymnestor, king of Thrace, to whose care he intrusted the greater part of his treasures, until his country should be freed from foreign invasion. On the death of Priam, Polymnestor made himself master of the riches which were in his possession; and to insure them the more, he murdered the young prince, and threw his body into the sea, where it was found by Hecuba. According to Virgil, his body was buried near the shore by his assassin; and there grew on his grave a myrtle, the boughs of which dropped blood, when Aeneas, going to Italy, attempted to tear them from the tree.
POLYGAMIA (noXu¢, many, and γαμος, marriage) is a term expressing an intercommunication of sexes, and is applied by Linnaeus both to plants and to flowers. A polygamous plant is that which bears both hermaphrodite flowers, and male or female, or both.
POLYGARS ’ Territory. This is a district in the Southern Carnatic, and it is situated between the tenth and eleventh degrees of north latitude. To the north it is bounded by Trichinopoly, to the south by Mara was and Madura, to the east it has Tanjore and the sea, and to the west Dindigul. The Polygars, amongst whom this country is divided, are military chieftains, resembling the Zemindars of Bengal. Their estates are called Pallams. The country, before it was finally subdued by the British, having been long the scene of violence and disorder, where might was the rule of right, these Polygars were extremely averse to the British yoke, and defended their independence and their properties with resolution. They were, however, brought under subjection by the irresistible power of the British arms, and forced to yield to whatever terms were imposed upon them. Those who resisted the demand of tribute imposed on them, or showed signs of turbulence, were made prisoners, and deprived of their lands; others fled to the hills, where they made inroads on the lower country, collecting the tribute of their lands, or marauding and plundering the country. They have been now, however, mostly subdued, and the country has been restored to tranquillity, under the rule of the British.
POLYGLOTT, amongst divines and critics, denotes a Bible printed in several languages. See Bibliography.
POLYGNOTUS, a famous painter of Thasos, flourished about 422 years before the Christian era, and was the son and scholar of Aglaophon. He adorned one of the public porticos of Athens with his paintings, in which he had represented the most striking events of the Trojan war. The Athenians were so pleased with him, that they offered to reward his labours with whatever he pleased to accept; but he declined the offer; and the Amphictyonie council, which was composed of the representatives of the principal cities of Greece, ordered that Polygnotus should be maintained at the public expense wherever he went. Of the talents of Polygnotus, much honourable mention is made by many of the best authors of antiquity, as Aristotle and Plutarch, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Pliny, and others. Pausanias speaks of his pictures of the events of the Trojan war, and, in his tenth book, introduces a long description of other pictures by the same artist, painted also from Homer, in the temple at Delphos. The passage, however, gives but a confused and imperfect idea of the painter’s performance. How much the art is indebted to this ancient master, what grace and softness he gave to the human countenance, what embellishments he added to the female figure and dress, are much more happily described by Pliny. See also the article Painting.
POLYGON, in Geometry, a figure with many sides, or one the perimeter of which consists of more than four sides at least; such are the pentagon, hexagon, heptagon, and others.
POLYGRAPHY, Polygraphia, or Polygraphice, the art of writing in various unusual manners or ciphers; as also that of deciphering the same. The word is formed from the Greek πoλυ, signifying much, and γ%a<ρr l , scriptura, writing.
POLYHYMNIA, in the Pagan mythology, one of the nine muses, thus named from the Greek words τολυ, much, and μνεια, memory. She presided over history, or rather rhetoric, and is represented with a crown of pearls and a white robe; her right hand in action as if haranguing, and holding in her left a caduceus, or sceptre, to show her power.
POLYHEDRON, in Geometry, denotes a body or solid comprehended under many sides or planes.

Polyhedron, in Optics, is a multiplying glass or lens, consisting of several plane surfaces disposed into a convex form.
POLYMATHY denotes the knowledge of many arts and sciences. The word is derived from the Greek, πoλ⅛ multum, and μανόανω, disco.
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