Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/148

 132 p A D P M S
 * ind Da Romano began to emerge and to divide the Paduan district

between them. The citizens, in order to protect their liberties, were obliged to elect a podesta, and their choice fell first on one of the D Este family (c. 1175). The temporary success of the Lombard league helped to strengthen the towns ; but their ineradicable jealous} of one another soon reduced them to weakness again, so that hi 123 J Frederick II. found little difficulty in establishing his vicar Ezzelino da Romano in Padua and the neighbouring cities, where he practised frightful cruelties on the inhabitants. When Ezzelino met his death, in 1259, Padua enjoyed a brief period of rest and prosperity : the university flourished ; the basilica of the saint was begun ; the Paduaus became masters of Vicenza. But this advance brought them into dangerous proximity to Can Grande della Scala, lord of Verona, to whom they had to yield in 1311. (5) As a reward for freeing the city from the Scalas, Jacopo da Carrara was elected lord of Padua in 1318. From that date till 1405, with the exception of two years (1388-90) when Gian Galeazzo Yisconti held the town, nine members of the Carrara family succeeded one another as lords of the city. It was a long period of restlessness, for the Carraresi were constantly at war ; they were finally extinguished between the growing power of the Visconti and of Venice. (6) Padua passed under Venetian rule in 1405, and so remained, with a brief interval during the wars of the league of Cambray, till the fall of the republic in 1797. The city was governed by two Venetian nobles, a podesta for civil and a captain for military affairs ; each of these was elected for sixteen months. Under these governors the great and small councils con tinued to discharge municipal business and to administer the Paduan law, contained in the statutes of 1276 and 1362. The treasury was managed by two chamberlains ; and every five years the Paduans sent one of their nobles to reside as nuncio in Venice, and to watch the interests of his native town. (7 and 8) After the fall of the Venetian republic the history of Padua follows the history of Venice during the periods of French and Austrian supremacy, and must be sought for in the article ITALY. In 1866 the battle of Koniggratz gave Italy the opportunity to shake off the last of the Austrian yoke, when Venetia, and with Venetia Padua, became part of the united Italian kingdom. See Chronicon Patavinwn (in Muratori s Ann. Med. ^v., vol. iv.); Rolandino and Monaco Padovano (Muratori s Rer. Ital. Scrip., vol. viii.) ; Cortusiorwn His- toria (ibid., vol. xii.) ; Gattari, Istoria Padoi-ana (ibid., vol. xvii.) ; Vergerius, Vitx Carrariensium Principum (ibid., vol. xvi.); Verci, Storia della Marca Trevigiana; Gennari, Annali di Padova; Cittadclla, Storia della domina- zione Carrarese; Litta, Famiglie Celebri, s.v., &quot;Carraresi&quot;; Cantu, Jllustra- zione Grande del Lombardo- Veneto ; Gonzati, La Basilica di Sanf Antonio di Padova. (H. F. B.) PADUCAH, a city of the United States, the capital of M Cracken -county, Kentucky, on the south bank of the Ohio, at the mouth of the Tennessee river, is, next to Louisville, the most important commercial point in Kentucky. It is on the Chesapeake, Ohio, and South western railroads, and is the terminus for five lines of steamboats plying respectively* to Evansville (Ind.), Cairo (111.), St Louis (Mo.), Nashville (Tenn.) and Florence (Ala.), and a regular stopping point for other lines plying on the Ohio, Tennessee, and Mississippi rivers. It .ships tobacco, whisky, pork, lumber, flour, and grain, and contains a number of tobacco factories and warehouses, marine-ways for the building and repair of steamboats, and manufactories of furniture, hubs and spokes, harness, leather, soap, and brooms. Laid out in 1827, Paducah was incorporated as a town in 1830, and. as a city in 1856. The population was 2428 in 1830, 4590 in 1860, 6866 in 1870, and 8036 in 1880. P^EOXY (Paeonia), a genus of Ranunculaceae, remark able for their gorgeous flowers, constructed almost exactly on the same lines as those of the common buttercup except as regards the pistil, which in the pieonies consists of two or more separate carpels each containing several seeds, and surrounded at the base by a fleshy cup or disk, which grows up around the carpels. The receptacle of the flower, moreover, instead of being flattish or somewhat convex, is in paeonies a little depressed in the centre, so that the stamens become somewhat perigynous as in water-lilies (Nymphtea) or roses (Ro$&amp;lt;.i). The carpels when ripe form dry follicles, splitting along one edge so as to expose the numerous shining black seeds, provided with a .small fleshy aril. There are but few species, natives of the northern hemisphere of the Old World, and divisible into two main groups those with herbaceous stems dying down in winter, and those with shrubby stems (Moutan or Tree Paeonies). The herbaceous paeonies have tuberous roots like those of a dahlia, and bold, much-divided leaves. Their magni ficent cup-like flowers are, in different varieties, of all shades of colour from white to clear yellow (P. Wittman- niana), rose-coloured, and richest crimson. A blue paiony has yet to be introduced. There is little reason to doubt that this desideratum will be fulfilled, for in larkspurs and aconites and columbines, closely related genera, we have a similar range in colour to that of the pseony, together with intense blue. The writer has also seen a Chinese drawing representing a blue paeony, and, although too much stress must not be laid on that circumstance, yet it must be remembered that the correctness of some representations of Chinese plants formerly considered fanciful has been proved by the subsequent introduction of the plant, e.g., Didytra spectabilis. The Moutan or tree paaonies have an erect bushy stem, from which the bark peels off in flakes ; the foliage is divided as in the commoner kinds, and more or less glaucous. The flowers are remarkable for the extreme delicacy of tint, and botanically by the large development of the disk above mentioned. Moutan paeonies are natives of China. In gardens a large variety of paeonies are cultivated, chiefly of hybrid origin ; and one of the European species, P. corallina, has been found naturalized on an island in the mouth of the Severn, to which it is supposed to have been introduced. P^ESTUM (Floo-eiSoWa, Poaidonia, mod. Peato), a Greek city in Lucania, Magna Graecia, near the sea, and about 5 miles south of the river Silarus (Salso). It is said by Strabo (v. p. 251) to have been founded by Troozenian and Achaean colonists from the still older colony of Sybaris, on the Gulf of Tarentum ; this probably happened not later than about 600 B.C. Herodotus (i. 167) speaks of it as being already a flourishing city in about 540 B.C., when the neighbouring city of Velia was founded. The name Posidonia was derived from Poseidon, the deity principally worshipped by the Troezenians. For many years the city maintained its independence, though sur rounded by the hostile native. inhabitants of Lucania. Autonomous coins were struck, of -which many specimens now exist. Fig. 1 shows a didrachm of the 6th century B.C., an interesting example of archaic Greek art. It is struck on a broad thin flai , with guilloche pattern round the border. The obverse has a figure of Poseidon wielding his trident, with the chla- rnys hung across his shoulders. The reverse has the same figure in cuse. Both sides have the legend (retrograde) in relief, MOP (I1O2). Archaic forms of S and Flo _ 1- _ Two tvl, cs of silvcv coins of i&amp;gt; si,i,miu. The II are used. Later sil- larger one, the earlier type, is thin, and is incuse ver coins (see fig 1) on the reverse. The smaller one is much thicker, have the same figure ^tt. &quot; ^ ^ Thdr Welght &quot; of Poseidon on the ob verse, and a bull on the reverse, both in relief, with the legend FOME $AAN*ATAM (HO2EIAANIATA2), in which the archaic M for 2 and 3. for I occur. Bronze coins of the Roman period have the legend IIAI2 (iralcrrov). After long struggles for independence the city fell into the hands of the native Lucanians (who nevertheless did not expel the Greek colonists), and in 273 B.C. it became a municipal town under the Jiotnan rule, the name being ! changed to the Latin form Paestum. The neighbourhood was then healthy, highly cultivated, and celebrated for its flowers ; the .&quot; twice blooming roses of Paestum &quot; are mentioned by Virgil (Geor., iv. 118), Ovid (Met., xv. 708), Martial (iv. 41, 10; vi. 80, 6), and other Latin poets. j Its present deserted and malarious state is probably owing