Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 3.djvu/105

Rh PALFURIUS. Paris with an arrow. The place where he was killed is either Colonae in Troas, or in Tenedos, or at Geraestus, The story of Palamedes, which is not mentioned by Homer, seems to have been first related in the Cypria, and was afterwards deve- loped by the tragic poets, especially Euripides, and lastly by the sophists, who liked to look upon Pala- medes as their pattern. (Pans. x. 31. § 1 ; Phi- lostr. I. c.) The tragic poets and sophists describe him as a sage among the Greeks, and as a poet ; and he is said to have invented light-houses, mea- sures, scales, discus, dice, the alphabet, and the art of regulating sentinels. (Philostr. Her. 10 ; Faus. ii. 20. § 3, X. 31. § 1 ; Schohad Eurip. Orest 422.) A sanctuary and a statue of Palamedes existed on the Aeolian coast of Asia Minor, opposite to Me- thymna in Lesbos. (Philostr. Vit.. Apollon. iv. 13 ; Tzetz. ad Lycoph. 384.) [L. S.] PALAME'DES (naAa^TjSTjs), a Greek gram- marian, was a contemporary of Athenaeus, who introduces him as one of the speakers in his work. Suidas says, that he wrote Kco/xi/cvji/ koX rpayucriP Ae'.Jij', dvoixaToyov, and a commentary on Pindar. Suidas gives him the epithet eAeaxTjs, and Athe- naeus terms him eAcari/crfs. He was also called dvojuaroKoyos, that is, " a collector of words, " probably because he gave in his writings an ex- planation of the difficult words in the tragic and comic poets. The passage in Suidas, in which he is said to have written a work called by his name, is probably corrupt. (Suidas, s. v. TlaXa- jurjSrjs ; Athen. ix. p. 3.97., a ; Etym. M. s. v. Apfj-dreiov fxeXos., where for lLlaajj.7iSr}s iaropiKos we ought perhaps to read UaXafxtjdris 'EAeartKos ; Schol. ad Apoll. Ehod. i. 704, iii. 107, iv. 1563 ; Schol ad. Arist. Vesp. 708, 1103, 1117, Fac. 916 ; Hemster. ad Arid. Flut. p. 98.) PALATI'NUS, a surname of Apollo at Rome, where Augustus, in commemoration of the battle of Actium, dedicated a temple to the god on the Pala- tine hill, in which subsequently a library was esta- blished. (Dion Cass. liii. 1 ; Horat. Carm. i. 31, Epist. i. 3. 17 ; Propert. iv. 6. 11 ; Ov. Ars Am. iii. 389.) [L. S.] PALES, a Roman divinity of flocks and shep- herds, is described by some as a male, and by others as a female divinity ; whence some modern writers have inferred that Pales was a combination of both sexes ; but such a monstrosity is altogether foreign to the religion of the Romans. (Virg. Aen. iii. 1, 297, Georg. iii. 1 ; Serv. ad Virg. Eclog. v. 35 ; Ov Fast. iv. 721, 746, 766; Dionys. i. 88 ; Athen. viii. p. 361.) Some of the rites performed at the festival of Pales, which was celebrated on the 21 st of April, the birth-day of the city of Rome, would indeed seem to indicate, that the divinity was a female character ; but besides the express statements to the contrary (Serv. ad Virg. Georg. iii. 1 ; Arnob. adv. Gent. iii. 23 ; Martian, cap. i. p. 27), there also are other reasons for believing that Pales was a male divinity. The name seems to be connected with Palatinus, the centre of all the earliest legends of Rome, and the god himself was with the Romans the embodiment of the same idea as Pan among the Greeks. Respecting the fes- tival of the Palilia see Diet, of Ant. s. v. (Hartung, DieRelig. derR'om. vol. ii. p. 148, Sec.) [L. S.] PALFU'RIUS SURA, one of the delatores under Domitian, was the son of a man of consular rank. It is related of him that he wrestled with a Lacedaemonian virgin in a public contest in the reign PALICANUS 93 of Nero, and having been expelled from the senate by Vegpasian, applied himself to the study of the Stoic philosophy, and became distinguished for his eloquence. He was restored to the senate by Do- mitian, became one of his informers, and after the death of the tyrant was brought to trial, apparently in the reign of Trajan, and condemned. This ac- count is given by the Scholiast on Juvenal (iv. 53) from the historian Marius Maximus. (Comp. Suet. Do7n. 13.) PALICA'NUS, M. LO'LLIUS, a Picentine of humble origin, was tribune of the plebs, B. c. 71 , in which year he exerted himself most vigorously to obtain for the tribunes the restoration of those powers and privileges of which they had been de- prived by a law of the dictator Sulla. On Pompey's return to Rome, towards the close of the year after his victory over Sertorius, Palicanus immediately held an assembly of the people outside the city- gates, in which Pompey promised the restoration of the tribunitian privileges, a promise Avhich he fulfilled in his consulship in the following year. (Pseudo-Ascon. in Cic. Divin. in Caecil. p. 103, in Verr. p. 148, ed. Orelli.) Palicanus also supported the lex judiciaria of the praetor L. Aurelius Cotta, by which the senators were deprived of their ex- clusive right to act as judices, and the judicia were given to courts consisting of senators, equites, and tribuni aerarii. He further attempted to excite the indignation of the people against the aristocracy by recounting to them the tyrannical and cruel conduct of Verres ; and to produce a still greater impression upon their minds he brought before them a Roman citizen whom Verres had scourged. (Cic. in Verr. i. 47, ii. 41 ; Schol. Gronov. in Cic. Verr. p. 386.) Such steady opposition, united with a humble origin, made him a special object of hatred to the aristocracy ; and accordingly when he became a candidate for the consulship in B. c. 67, the consul Piso, who presided at the comitia, posi- tively refused to announce his name if he should be elected (Val. Max. iii. 8. § 3). In B.C. 64, it was expected that he would again come forward as a candidate (Cic. ad Ait. i. 1) ; but though he seems to have been very popular, he had not distinguished himself sufficiently to counterbalance his lowly birth, and to overcome the formidable opposition of the aristocracy. The last time he is mentioned is in B.C. 60, when he is said to have been abusing almost every day the consul Afranius (ad Att. i. 18). His powers as an orator are perhaps some- what unduly depreciated through party-hatred : Cicero says of him (Brut. 62) Falicanus aptissimm aurihus imperitorum^ and Sallust describes him (ap. Quiniil. iv. 2, init.) loquax magis quam facun- dus. The LoUia, who was the wife of A. Gabinius, and who was debauched by Caesar, is supposed to have been the daughter of Palicanus. [Lollia, No. 1.] (Comp. Drumann, Geschichte Roms, vol. iv. p. 386.) COIN OP M LOLLIUS PALICANUS.