rn 



PAR 



PARABOLA 



end, and on which the Mribe wrote with a reed 

 r:\lled ka*h, with red or black ink made of an 

 animal carlxiii. When newly prepared it was white 

 or brownish white and lissom ; litit in the process 

 of time those papyri which have reached the present 

 day hare become of a light or dark brown colour, 

 and exceedingly brittle, breaking at the touch. 

 Papyrus was co'mmonly used in Egypt for the pur- 

 POM* of writing, ami wan, in fact, the paper of the 

 period ; but, although mentioned by early Greek 

 Hiitlmni, it does not appear to have come into 

 general use among the Greeks till after (lie tim- 

 of Alexander the Great, when it was extensively 

 exported from the Egyptian ports under the 

 Ptolemies. It was, however, always an expen- 

 sive article to the Greeks. Among the Romans 

 it does not appear to have been in use at an early 

 period, although the Sibylline books are said to 

 have been written on it. It was cultivated in 

 Calabria, Apulia, and the marshes of the Tilier, 

 but the staple was no doubt imported from Alex- 

 andria. So extensive was the Alexandrian manu- 

 factory that Hadrian, in hU visit to that city, was 

 struck by its extent. It continued to be employed 

 in the eastern and western empire till the l-.'th 

 century, and was used amongst the Arabs in the 

 8th ; but after that period it was quite superseded 

 bv parchment or by paper made of rags. During 

 the later periods it was no longer employed in the 

 shape of rolls, but cut up into square pages, and 

 bound like modern books. 



The discovery in Egypt of classical Greek authors 

 written on papyrus Ix-gan about the middle of the 

 19th century, and the results have been on the 

 whole beyond expectation. The great orator 

 Hyperides (q.v.), then only known uy name, is 

 now represented by four or live pretty complete 

 orations ; fragments of Euripides and Airman 

 have lieen added to what we possess of these 

 authors, and early MSS. have been obtained of 

 parts of Homer, I'lato, Thucvdides, Demosthenes, 

 and Isocraten. In 1888-89" Mr Flinders Petrie 

 found near Medinet el Fayum papyri which were 

 identified as fragments of Plato s Phado, tran- 

 scrilied al>out 250 .<., and a part of the lost 

 Aiitiii/ie of Kuripidcs, besides quantities of letters 

 and document* of the Ptolemaic period. In January 

 I vil more than Hid ancient mummies (dating from 

 the 20th and i'1-t Dynasties) were found in a 

 subterranean passage at Dei'r el Bahari, near 

 Thebes ; with these were many papyri, contain- 

 ing, as usual, many ritual passages and extracts 

 from ilie llook of the Dead (q.v.); there were also 

 1 boxes crammed with papyri.' And at the begin- 

 niii;.' of th same year the world was surprised 

 by the announcement that papyrus rolls obtained 

 fiom Kgypt by the Itritish Museum authorities 

 hl been found to contain almost the whole of 

 a hnt hut famous work of Aristotle on the con- 

 stiiution of Athens. Uf these rolls there were 

 four, of which the longest measures seven feet, 

 tin- shortest three feet. They have Ijeen written 

 by four diUcrcnt co|>yisU<, are mainly in a small 

 mi cursive hand, and date from aliout the end 

 ot the 1st rentury A.D. There are thirty-six 

 columns in all, of which the lost six are badly 

 m itilnted. The text was edited and published in 

 February 1891 by Mr F. G. Kenyon ; a later edition 

 was that of Mr J. E. Sandys. 



SM Ptoli. Dtt Papiro (1878) ; alto the article* BOOK 

 ( and work* then quoted ), EOTPT, PALAOGRAFHT, PAPER. 



Par. See SALMON. 



Pant, the name which the river Tocantins 

 (q.v.) receives in its lower course, from Cameta 

 downwards (138 miles). It is 20 miles bnmd 

 ophite the eitv of Parti, and 4O miles broad at its 

 mouth. The Paranan, an arm of the Amazon, 



which cuts off Murajo Island from the mainland, 

 pours into it part of the waters of the great river. 



Para (official name H'lfiit], a thriving city and 

 <rt Hi Brazil, capital of the state of the same 

 name, stands on the east bnnk*of the river I'ara. 7'i 

 miles from its mouth, on a point of land fornii'd by 

 the entrance of the Guandu. The harbour is nearly 

 landlocked by wooded islands, and admits vessefs 

 of large size. Parri, as a whole, is a plain-looking 

 commercial town, compactly built, and without 

 straggling suburbs, the dense tropical forest coming 

 close up to the outskirts. The streets are narrow, 

 but regular, well shaded with mangoes and palms, 

 and partly paved; many of the houses, with their 

 blue and white tiled roofs and whitewashed walls, 

 are very pretty. Tram-cars and telephones are in 

 general use, and there is a railway to Brngam a 

 (108 miles). The principal buildings are the 

 theatre, the government building, custom-house, 

 and cathedral ( 1720). The city contains a small fort 

 and botanic gardens. The place is not unhealthy, 

 though the wet season extends over nearly two- 

 thirds of the year. Parti, the headquarters 'of the 

 ' Amazonian Steamboat Company ' and others, is 

 the emporium of the Amazon river-trade, supply- 

 ing the towns of the interior with foreign goods, 

 and exporting india-mblier, cacao, Brazil nuts, the 

 pirarucu fish, &c. The annual value of the exports 

 exceeds 2,500,000. Pop. 50,600. See Vincent, 

 Around and About South America (1890); and 

 BRAZIL, ami liooks there noted. Thecfa/e, border- 

 ing on Guiana and the Atlantic, and divided by 

 the Amazon, has an area of 443,650 sq. in., and a 

 pop. (1895) of 335,000. 'Para Grass is a name 

 given to piassava ; see FIBROUS SUBSTANCES. 



Pa'ra, a coin of copper, silver, or mixed metal, 

 though most generally of copper, in use in Turkey 

 and Egypt; it is the 40th part of a Piastre (q.v.), 

 and varies much in value, owing to the debased 

 condition of the Turkish coinage. 



Parable (Gr. jtaraboli, 'a comparison') was 

 originally the name given by the Greek rhetoricians 

 to an illustration avowedly introduced as such. In 

 Hellenistic and New Testament Greek it came 

 to signify an independent fictitious narrative, 

 employed for the illustration of a moral rule or 

 principle. This kind of illustration is of eastern 

 origin, and the greatest examples lire to be found in 

 the Old and New Testaments, particularly in the 

 discourses of our Lord. The parable differs from 

 the fable in the probability or verisimilitude of the 

 story itself, ami agrees with it in the essential 

 requisites of simplicity and brevity. It is essenti- 

 ally a short allegory marked by probability of 

 incident, and intended to convey one direct moral 

 or spiritual truth. In the course of time the woul 

 parable came to lose its significance of figurative 

 sj>eech, and to mean speech generally. 



There are works on the parables of our Lord by Arch- 

 bishop Trench (1846), Caldcrwood (1U80), A. B. Bruce 

 ( 18S2 ), Goebel ( trans. 1883 ), and D..d ( 1883 ). See also 

 the articles ALLEGORY, APOLOGUE, and FABLK. 



Para'bola. the section of a cone by a plane 

 which is parallel to a generating line. As a 

 particular ease, when the plane passes through the 

 vertex of the cone, the parabola closes up into a 

 straight line. A property of the paraliola is that 

 the distance of any point on the curve from a 

 certain lived point is equal to its distance from a 

 certain fixed straight line. The fixed point is 

 ailed the fonts of the paralHila, and the fixed line 

 is called it* directrix. In the figure, PAP' repre- 

 sents a paralxda of which S is the focus and IK is 

 the directrix. The point A is called the vertex of the 

 parabola. The line ASO is the jirim-ifiril ilium tt-r 

 of the curve ; and any line drawn through a point 

 such as P parallel to AO is called a diameter. 



