Page:EB1911 - Volume 22.djvu/685

Rh together. The character-painting is good, and the descriptions of scenery introduced faithful to nature. The poem in many places reminds us of Byron, who himself in his mixture of the pathetic and the humorous was a disciple of the Italian school. Pushkin also wrote a great many lyrical pieces. Interspersed among the poet's minor works will be found many epigrams, but some of the best composed by him were not so fortunate as to pass the censorship, and must be read in a supplementary volume published at Berlin. As a prose writer Pushkin has considerable merits. Besides his History of the Revolt of Pugachev, which is perhaps too much of a compilation, he published a small volume of tales under the nom de plume of Ivan Byelkin. These all show considerable dramatic power: the best are The Captain's Daughter, a tale of the times of Catherine II.; The Undertaker, a very ghostly story, which will remind the English reader of some of the tales of Edgar Poe; The Pistol Shot; and The Queen of Spades.

PUSHTU, the language of the Pathan races of Afghanistan and the North-West Frontier province of India. It belongs to the Iranian group of the Indo-European languages, but possesses many Panjabi words. In Afghanistan it is the dominant language, but is not spoken west of the Helmund. In India it has two main dialects, the northern, hard or Pukhtu, and the southern, soft or Pushtu. The dividing line of the two dialects runs eastwards from Thal through the Kohat district almost to the Indus, but it then turns northwards, as the speech of the Akhora Khattaks belongs to the Pushtu or southern dialect. Thus Pukhtu is spoken in Bajour, Swat and Buner, and by the Yusufzais, Bangash, Orakzais, Afridis and Mohmands; while Pushtu is spoken by the Waziris, Khattaks, Marwats and various minor tribes in the south. The language division corresponds roughly with the tribal system of the Pathans, who are aristocratic in the north and democratic in the south. The classical dialect of Pukhtu is that of the Yusufzais, in which the earliest works in the language were composed. The Orakzai dialect differs from that of the Afridis, in that it is broader but less guttural and spoken more rapidly. The standard dialect is that of Peshawar. The literature is richest in poetry, Abdur Rahman, of the 17th century, being the best-known poet. Pushtu was spoken in the North-West Frontier province in 1901 by 1,142,011 persons, or 54% of the population.

See Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India; Roos-Keppel, Manual of Pushtu (1901); Lorimer, Grammar of Waziri Pushtu (1902).

PUTEAUX, a north-western suburb of Paris, on the left bank of the Seine, 4 m. from the centre of the city. Pop. (1906), 28,718. Puteaux has a church of the 16th century with good stained glass windows. There is a fort on the Seine.

PUTEOLI (mod. , q.v.), an ancient town of Campania, Italy, on the northern shore of the Bay of Puteoli, a portion of the Bay of Naples, from which it is 6 m. W. The statement made by Stephanus of Byzantium and Jerome, that the city was founded under the name of Dicaearchia by a colony of Samians about 520, is probably correct, for, though in the territory of Cumae, it does not appear to have been occupied previous to 520, Misenum having been the original port of Cumae. On the other hand, Cumae probably extended her supremacy over it not long after. Its history in the Samnite period is unknown; but the coins of Fistelia (or Fistlus in Oscan) probably belong to Puteoli, as Mommsen thought. Nor do we know anything of its history between 334 (when it probably became a civitas sine suffragio under Roman domination, shortly afterwards receiving, in 318, a praefectus iure dicundo) and 215, when the Romans introduced a garrison of 6000 men to protect the town from Hannibal, who besieged it in vain for three days in 214. In 194 a Roman colony of 300 men was established. The lex parieti faciundo, an interesting inscription of 105 relating to some building works in front of the temple of Serapis, shows that Puteoli had considerable administrative independence, including the right to date such a public document by the names of its own magistrates. Sulla retired to Puteoli after his resignation of the dictatorship in 79, and ten days before his death reconciled the disputes of the citizens by giving them a constitution. Cicero had a house in Puteoli itself, and a villa on the edge of the Lucrine lake (which, though nearer to Puteoli, was in the territory of Cumae), and many prominent men of the republic possessed country houses in the neighbourhood of Puteoli (see ; ; ; ). In the Civil War it sided with Pompey, and later on with Brutus and Cassius. Nero admitted the old inhabitants to the privileges of the colony, thus uniting in one the two previously distinct communities. In 61 St Paul landed here, and spent seven days before leaving for Rome (Acts xxviii. 13). Vespasian, as a reward for its having taken his part, gave the town part of the territory of Capua, and installed more colonists there—whence it took the title Colonia Flavia, which it retained till the end of the empire.

The remains of Hadrian, who died at the neighbouring town of Baiae, were buried at Puteoli, and Antoninus Pius, besides erecting a temple to his memory on the site of Cicero's villa, instituted sacred games to be held in the city every five years. Commodus held the title of duumvir quinquennalis. It was mainly, however, as a great commercial port that Puteoli was famous in ancient times. It joined with Naples to erect one of the finest porticoes of Constantinople at the time of its construction. A letter of Symmachus gives us interesting details as to public corn distributions of the 4th century, throwing some light on the population. Like Ostia, Puteoli was considered a special port of Rome, and, on account of the safety and convenience of its harbour, it was preferred to Ostia for the landing of the more costly and delicate wares. As at Ostia, the various gilds were of considerable importance, but we find no centonarii or fabri, perhaps owing to its relations with the East, where these popular gilds were prohibited. Puteoli was preferred to Naples, (a) as being in Roman territory, (b) because the customs duty was only leviable once, not twice as it would have been at Naples—once by the local authorities, and once by the Roman authorities on entrance into Roman territory. It exported iron from Elba, mosaics, pottery, manufactured locally with earth from Ischia (which was in considerable demand until 1883), sulphur (which indeed was extracted in the neighbourhood until the 18th century), probably alum (which is still worked), perfumes, pozzolana earth (taking its name from the place), cretaceous earth for mixing with grain (alica) from the Leucogaean hills, glass cups engraved with views of Puteoli, mineral dyes (the blue invented by one Vestorius is mentioned by Vitruvius and the purple of Puteoli by Pliny, as being of special excellence), &c., but not agricultural products, except certain brands of Campanian wine; but its imports were considerably greater. During the Punic Wars it was still a naval port, but in the latter part of the 2nd century it became the greatest commercial harbour of Italy and we find Lucilius about 125 placing it next in importance to Delos, then the greatest harbour of the ancient world. We note a little later the existence of merchants of Puteoli in the East. Under the empire we find Eastern cults taking root here sooner than in Rome. The construction of the harbour of Claudius at the mouth of the Tiber adversely affected Puteoli. Nero's scheme for the construction of a canal from Lake Avernus to Ostia would have restored the balance in its favour (though it certainly could not have been continuous all the way to Rome with the means of engineering then available).

The corn supply of Rome came partly through Puteoli, partly through Ostia. Seneca (Epist. 77) describes the joy of the inhabitants in the spring when the fleet of corn vessels from Alexandria was seen approaching, and Statius tells us that the crew of the ship which arrived first made libations to Minerva