Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/433

Rh P O L P O L 417 His great public works were executed, according to Aristotle, for the purpose of employing his subjects and diverting their thoughts from the recovery of their free dom. 1 He imported Spartan and Molossian hounds, goats from Naxos and Scyros, sheep from Attica and Miletus. The splendour of his palace is attested by the design which many centuries later the emperor Caligula formed of rebuilding it. Foreign artists worked for him at high wages : from Athens he brought Demacedes, the greatest physician of the age, at a salary of two talents. Polycrates 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. The good fortune of Polycrates is the subject of a famous story. Amasis, moved with fear at the exceeding great prosperity of his friend, reminded him that God is jealous, and that the man who is uplifted very high must needs fall very low. Therefore he besought him, if he would avert the jealous wrath of heaven, to cast from him that which he valued most. Pulycrates hearkened to him and flung into the sea an emerald signet set in gold, the work of the Samian artist Theodorus. But a few days after the signet was found in the belly of a large fish which a fisherman had presented to the king. When Amasis heard of this he knew that Polycrates was doomed, and renounced his alliance. Amasis died before his forebodings were fulfilled. When the Persians under King Cambyses were preparing to invade Egypt, Polycrates, anxious to conciliate the growing power of Persia, sent forty ships to their help (525 B.C.). But the squadron was largely manned by malcontents whom Polycrates had hoped thus to get rid of ; hardly had it reached the island of Carpathus when the crews mutinied and turned the ships heads back to Samos. They defeated the tyrant in an action at sea, but were themselves over thrown in a land battle and compelled to flee the island. Having taken refuge in Sparta, they prevailed on the Spartans to make war on Polycrates. A powerful Spartan armament laid siege to Samos, but was fain to retire after forty days without effecting its object. Not very long afterwards Orcetes, the Persian satrap of Sardes, by work ing on the avarice and ambition of Polycrates, lured him to Magnesia and put him to a shameful death (522 B.C.). The name of Polycrates was also borne by an Athenian rhetorician of some repute, vlio flourished early in the 4th century B.C. He t tught at Athens, and afterwards in Cyprus. He composed declama tions on paradoxical themes an Encomium on Clytcmncstra, an Accusation of Socrates, an Encomium on Busiris (a mythical king of Egypt, notorious for his inhumanity); also declamations on mice, pots, and counters. His Eiicomium on Busiris was sharply criticized by his younger contemporary Isocratrs, in a work still extant, and Dionysius of Halicarnassns characterises his style as frigid, vulgar, and inelegant. Nevertheless his works are said to have been studied by Demosthenes. See Jebb s Attic Orators, ii. p. 94 ; Cope on Aristotle s Rhetoric, ii. c. 24. POLYGLOTT. A polyglott is a book which contains side by side versions of the same text in several different languages : and the most important polyglotts are editions of the Bible, or its parts, in which the Hebrew and Greek originals are exhibited along with the great historical versions, which are of value for the history of the text and its interpretation. The first enterprise of this kind is the famous Hexapla of Origen ; but here only Hebrew and 1 Herodotus, our chief authority for the life of Polycrates, mentions three great engineering and architectural works for which Samos was remarkable: (1) a tunnel, about 1400 yards long, dug through a mountain, and serving to bring water to the capital ; (2) a great mole or breakwater round the harbour ; (3) a great temple (the temple of Hera, patron goddess of Samos), said by Herodotus to be the largest he had ever seen. But we cannot say what share Polycrates had in these works ; certainly the temple of Hera seems to have been begun before his time. Greek were employed (though the versions of Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion were shown as well as the Septuagint), so that the work was rather diglott than polyglott in the usual sense. After the invention of print ing and the revival of philological studies, polyglotts became a favourite means of advancing the knowledge of Eastern languages (for which no good helps were available) as well as the study of Scripture. The series began with the Complutensian (Alcala, 1514-17), already spoken of in the article on its promoter Cardinal JIMEXES or Ximenes next came the Antwerp Polyglott (1569-72, in 8 vols. folio) of which the principal editor was Arias Montanus aided by Guido Fabricius Boderianus, Raphelengius, Masius, Lucas of Bruges, and others. This work was under the patronage of Philip II. of Spain ; it added a new language to those of the Complutensian by including the Syriac New Testament ; and, while the earlier polyglott had only the Targum of Onkelos on the Pentateuch, the Antwerp Bible had also the Targum on the Prophets, and on Esther, Job, Psalms, and the Salomonic writings. Next came Le Jay s Paris Polyglott (1645), which embraces the first prints of the Syriac Old Testament (edited by Gabriel Sionita, a Maronite, but the book of Ruth by Abraham Ecchelensis, also a Maronite) and of the Samaritan Pentateuch and version (by MORINTJS, q.v.}. It has also an Arabic version, or rather a series of various Arabic versions. Le Jay s work is a splendid piece of typography, but its success was marred by the appearance of the cheaper and more comprehensive London Polyglott. Le Jay was ruined, and a great part of the impression went to the trunkmakers. The last great polyglott is Walton s (London, 1657), which is much less beautiful than Le Jay s, but more complete in various ways, including among other things the Syriac of Esther and several apocryphal books for which it is wanting in the Paris Bible, Persian versions of the Pentateuch and Gospels, the Psalms and New Tes tament in Ethiopic. Walton was aided by able scholars, and used much new manuscript material. His prolego mena, too, and collections of various readings mark an important advance in Biblical criticism. It was in con nexion with this polyglott that E. Castle produced his famous Heptaglott Lexicon (London, 2 vols. folio, 1669), an astounding monument of industry and erudition even when allowance is made for the fact that for the Arabic he had the great MS. lexicon compiled and left to the university of Cambridge by the almost forgotten W. Bedwell. The later polyglotts are of little .scientific importance, the best recent texts having been confined to a single language; but every Biblical student still uses Walton and, if he can get it, Le Jay. Of the numerous polyglotts on parts of the Bible it may suffice to mention the Genoa psalter of 1516, edited by Giustiniani, bishop of Nebbio. It is in Hebrew, Latin, Greek, Chaldee, and Arabic, and is interesting from the character of the Chaldee text, from being the first specimen of Western printing in the Arabic character, and from a curious note on Columbus and the discovery of America on the margin of Psalm xix. POLYGNOTUS, a Greek painter. For a description of his work see vol. ii. p. 358. It may here be added that an approximate date for his paintings at Delphi is obtained from the fact that one of them was inscribed with an epigram written by the poet Simonides, who died 467 B.C. As Simonides appears to have resided in Sicily during the last ten years of his life, the epigram was pro bably composed previous to 477 B.C. This series of mural paintings at Delphi, embracing about one hundred and forty-six figures, seems to have occupied tvo opposite walls of an oblong building known as the Lesche. The figures, hardly under life size, were disposed in two or sometimes XIX. - 53