194 



PIR^DS 



black flag, alternating with luxurious debauchery, 

 has come to lie surrounded with a halo of romance, 

 reflected in E. A. Poe's Gold Bug and It L. Steven 

 son's Trtatitre Inland. The prototype of Scott's 

 Pirate was John Cow, who in January 1725 lioldly 

 anchored in Orcadian waters, and entered into 

 frienilly relations with tin- islanders, till, recognised 

 as an atrocious villain, he was with his crew captured 

 and carried to London to he tried. He and eleven 

 af his comrades were condemned a month or two 

 after, ami the pirate captain and nine of his men 

 WITH executed together. So late as 1864 five men 

 wen- handed in London for murder and piracy. 

 National prejudices tend to olwcure the distinction 

 between Privateering (q.T.) Mid piracy: Paul Jones 

 was called a pirate in England, and the commanders 

 of the Confederate ships Alabama, Shenattdoah, 

 and Floriilit, which preyed on northern commerce, 

 were in northern eves practically pirates. Of late 

 the pirates tried by admiralty courts are rather 

 naval mutineers than pirates in the old sense. The 

 African slave-trade was not considered piracy by 

 the law of nations ; but the municipal laws of the 

 I'nited Kingdom and of the United States by 

 statute declared it to be so ; and in or after 1841 

 it was declared to be so by Austria, Prussia, and 

 Russia, The home of professional piracy, happily 

 now on a small scale, is the .Malay Archipelago 

 and the China Seas : Sea-Dyaks and Malays dis- 

 puting with Cliiiiameii the palm of hardihood us 

 sea-robbers. 



Piracy is recognised as an offence against the law 

 of nations. It is a crime not against any particu- 

 lar state, but against all mankind, ami may be 

 punished in the competent trihumil of any country 

 where the offender may lie found, or into which he 

 may l>e carried, although committed on l>oard a 

 foreign vessel on the high seas. It is of the essence 

 of piracy that the pirate has no commission from 

 a sovereign state, or from one liclligerent state at 

 war with another. Pirates lieing the common 

 enemies of all mankind, and all nations having an 

 equal interest in their apprehension and punish- 

 ment, they may l>e lawfully captured on the high 

 eaa by tlie armed vessels of any particular state, 

 and brought within ite territorial jurisdiction for 

 trial in it- trihunals; but it is not permitted to put 

 pirates to death without trial save in battle. 



The infringement of the Copyright Acts is often 

 spoken of as literary piracy ; and the word is not 

 unfairly extended to cover the case in which the 

 publishers of one nation issue unauthorised reprints 

 oy authors of another nation especially the case 

 of American reprints of Knglish works (see BOOK- 

 TRAHK, Vol. II. p. Hlti). Thus, several pirated 

 reprints of the first edition of this Encyclopedia 

 were issued and were being sold in 1S1KI, in which 

 obsolete facts and statistics twenty years old were 

 reproduced with marvellous fidelity. 



Piraeus (Gr. Peiraieia), called also PORT 

 DRACO, the hiulxiur of iMith ancient and modern 

 Athens (o.v.). Planned by TbanirtodM and laid 

 out hv Hippodamus of Miletus, the Pinrus was 

 built in the glorious days of Pericles; this ruler 

 and Cinion In-fore him built the three 'long walls' 

 that connected Athens with it port (,"i miles to the 

 south-west), and so ensured a free and safe passage 

 from one to the other at all times. It was lioth a 

 war harbour and a commercial port, many foreigners 

 living within its walls. Its arsenal (built 347-323 

 B.C. land fortifications were destroyed by Sulla in 

 i; n.c. . and from that time the town sank into 

 decay. The modern Pineu*, which has grown up 

 since Is.'U. is a regularly laid out but mean-looking 

 town, with a naval and a military school, arsenal 

 defiotM, and nianufactiiri-H of cottons. Hour. P.-IJMT, 

 iron, nails, carts, furniture, &<.. and is growing 

 rapidly. A railway ( 1869), 5J miles long, connects 



PISA 



it with Athens. The foreign trade ( i'4,000,000> 

 annually) is half that of all Greece. The impoit- 

 are mainly coal and railway plant, ,Vc., from 

 Britain, |ietroleuni from the United States, ami 

 sheep and cattle from Knssia ; and the cxjMirt-, 

 tobacco, valonia, hides, bones, horns, cheese, wool, 

 \-c. A total of (XHXi vessels of _> ' million tons enter 

 annuallv, one-half the tonnage being in Greek 

 Imttoms. Pop. (1871) 11,000; (1879) 21,056; (1890) 

 36,000. 



I'irano. a seaport of Austria, on a promontory 

 on the south side of the Gulf of Trieste and 12 miles 

 SW. of the city of Trieste. It has two harlionis, 

 an old castle, and manufactures of soap, glass, A< . 

 with neighbouring salt works. Pop. 9419. 



Pirkheimer. See DURER. 



Pirmasens. a town of the Bavarian Palatin- 

 ate, and formerly the chief town of the county of 

 Hanau-Lichtenberg, 34 miles by rail W. of Landau. 

 The chief manufactures an- shoes urn! musical in 

 Mnimeiit-. Close by the Prussians under the 

 Duke of r.runswick defeated the French com- 

 manded by Moreau on 14lh September 1793. Pop. 

 (1885) 14,938; (1895)24,548. 



I'irna. a town of Saxony, stands on the left 

 bank of the Elbe, 11 miles by rail SK. of Dresden. 

 Here are a fine 16th-century church; a castle 

 (1573), used as a lunatic asylum since 1811 ; and 

 manufactures of glass, chemicals, tobacco, stoves, 

 &c. Eight thousand men are employed in the 

 sandstone-quarries. Pop. 15,670. 



Pirogue. See PERIAGUA. 



Pirot, a town of Servia, on the Nischava, 30 

 miles ESK. of Nisch. It was occupied by Servian 

 troops in 1877, and taken by the Bulgarians in 

 1885. Pop. 8832. 



Pisa, one of the oldest cities of Italy, the rival 

 of Venice and Genoa, which still has it.s walls 

 standing and a citadel, is situated on the Arno. by 

 rail 4!l miles \V. of Florence and 13 XE. of Leg- 

 horn. It was formerly a great port, though six 

 miles from the sea, but owing to the silling up of 

 the river is now quite inaccessible to ships. It 

 commerce has been transferred to Leghorn. It 

 is still a city of fine buildings, foremost 

 amongst which is the cathedral (1003-1118), 

 with a noble dome, fine paintings by Cimahiie, 

 Andrea del Sarto, and others, and beautiful 

 marble altars. Its shape is that of a Latin 

 ero-x, .'ill feet long by 252 wide; the nave is 109 

 feet high. Externally it has a magnificent facade 

 of four Mperimpoaed row* of pilasters and arches, 

 and line bron/.e doors by Giovanni da Bologna and 

 otheis. Near the cathedral stands the round 

 marble campanile, the 'Leaning Tower of Pisa,' 

 which is a magnificent spi-ciinen of the southern 

 Komanesouc architecture, but is peculiar ill that 

 it, (including the cornice) deviates a>Miut 14 feet 

 from the perpendicular. This ]M-culiaiity is not 

 due to original design. The tower seems to bav.- 

 liegun to heel over to one side when the thiid 

 story was completed; the architects delilx-ratelx 

 accepted the conditions, and adhered to the inclin- 

 ing position, but diminished the slope of the upper 

 stories so as to keen the centre of gravity well 

 within the walls. (There are two leaning towers 

 also at Bologna, q.v.) The tower is 180 feet in 

 height, consists of eight stories divided by rows 

 of columns, the last, which contain- the lells, 

 lieing smaller in diameter than the others. The 

 tower was erected in 1174 and succeeding years 

 by the architects Bonanno of Pisa and William of 

 Innsl.ruck : but the eighth storv was not com- 

 pleted till the middle of the 14th century. The 

 marble Baptistery, or Church of St John (1152- 

 1278), opposite the cathedral, is circular, and 



