PYROXENE 



1880 



PYTHIAS 



copper and sulphur, is of a darker yellow than 

 iron, and may be smelted for the copper. It 

 sometimes contains small quantities of gold and 

 silver. 



PYROXENE, pi'rokacen, a mineral closely 

 related to hornblende (which see) and com- 

 posed chiefly of silica, calcium and magnesium. 

 It crystallizes in four-sided prisms which are 

 nearly square. Some varieties are arranged in 

 layers. Pyroxene crystals are found in lime- 

 stone, dolomite and occasionally in igneous 

 rocks. The color of this mineral ranges from 

 pure white to green, brown and black, depend- 

 ing upon the presence of magnesium, manga- 

 nese, iron or aluminum in the composition. 

 Augite is a variety of pyroxene, black, green- 

 ish-black and dark green in color, which enters 

 largely into the formation of igneous rocks. 



PYRRHUS, pir'us (about 318-272 B.C.), a 

 Greek military leader, declared by some au- 

 thorities to have been a distant relative of 

 Alexander the Great. During his youth he re- 

 covered the throne of Epirus, which his father 

 had lost, but Pyrrhus himself was deposed by 

 his people in 302 B.C. He was forced to take 

 refuge with Demetrius Poliorcetes, serving as 

 hi> hostage in Egypt after the fatal battle of 

 Ipsus. After marrying the daughter of Ptolemy 

 Soter, Pyrrhus returned to his native country, 

 recovered the throne and undertook the con- 

 quest of Macedonia. His friend Demetrius at- 

 tacked him after he had obtained possession of 

 the western part, but Pyrrhus was successful 

 and ruled over the kingdom with Lysimachus, 

 until he was expelled. 



The Tarentines, a Greek colony of lower 

 Italy, and their neighbors, appealed to Pyrrhus 

 in 281 B. c. for aid against the surrounding ene- 

 mies. Pyrrhus hastened to their assistance with 

 25,000 men and twenty elephants; the Romans 

 were conquered, chiefly because of the part the 

 large elephants played in the battle. In 279 

 B. c. he won the Battle of Asculum, the famous 

 "Pyrrhic victory;" although he conquered his 

 foe it was with so great a loss that as he sur- 

 veyed the thousands of dead he remarked, 

 "Another such victory and I shall be ruined." 



Later, he assisted the Greeks of Sicily against 

 the Carthaginians, at first successfully, but met 

 a heavy defeat in 275 B. c. During the last three 

 years of his life he renewed his invasions of 

 Macedonia, led an army into the Peloponnesus, 

 and unsuccessfully attacked Sparta. At Argos 

 he met Antigonus of Macedon in a pitched fight 

 and was killed. 



Consult Mahaffy's Alexander's Empire. 



PYTHAGORAS, pithag'oras, a Greek phi-, 

 losopher who lived in tho sixth century B.C. 

 Little is known definitely of his life or teach- 

 ings, but it seems certain that ho was born on 

 the island of Samos and that he founded, in the 

 Greek city of Crotona, in Italy, a brotherhood 

 among the aristocrats of that place. A funda- 

 mental proposition of geometry is known to 

 have been first proved by him. This is tho 

 theorem that the square on the hypotenuse 

 of a right-angled triangle is equal to the sum 

 of the squares on the other two sides. Mathe- 

 maticians call it the 4?th problem in Euclid. 

 The philosophy of Pythagoras seems to have 

 included a belief in the transmigration of the 

 soul. There is also connected with the Py- 

 thagorean school the idea that the earth is a 

 sphere and that it revolves about a central fire. 

 The Pythagorean brothers, being aristocrats, 

 were looked upon with suspicion by the mem- 

 bers of the radical popular party of the period, 

 and in a political uprising most of them^were 

 killed. It is not known whether Pythagoras 

 perished in the outbreak, or whether he had 

 withdrawn to Metapontum before the uprising 

 and died there. 



Consult Burnet's Early Greek Philosophy-; 

 Fink's Brief History of Mathematics. 



PYTHIAN, pith' i an, GAMES, a national 

 festival of the ancient Greeks, celebrated in 

 honor of Apollo, at Delphi, near the shrine and 

 oracle of the god. The name had reference to 

 the dragon Python, the slaughter of which was 

 the first exploit of Apollo (see APOLLO; PY- 

 THON). The games were the second of the four 

 great national festivals, the others being the 

 Olympian, the Nemean and the Isthmian. At 

 first the Pythian games were celebrated every 

 ninth year and consisted merely of a contest 

 between singers, but a new series was inaugu- 

 rated in 586 B.C. Thereafter the celebration 

 occurred every four years, and there were added 

 to the musical contests athletic contests and 

 horse racing. Eventually, dramatists, historians, 

 poets and artists competed for honors. The 

 prizes were the laurel wreath and the palm 

 branch. 



Related Subject*. The reader is referred to 

 the following articles, in addition to those men- 

 tioned above : 



Athletics Nemean Games 



Isthmian Games Olympian Games 



PYTHIAS, pith' i as. See DAMON AND 

 PYTHIAS. 



PYTHIAS, KNIGHTS OF, a fraternal and 

 benevolent order, originally based, as its name 



