676 



PRASE PRECESSION OF THE EQUINOXES. 



flowed, or contain numerous pools collected in small 

 basins, without outlets, the waters of which there- 

 fore pass oil' solely by evaporation. 



PRASE. See Quartz. 



PRATER ; the most famous promenade of 

 Vienna. See Vienna. 



PRAXITELES ; one of the greatest sculptors of 

 Greece. (See Sculpture.) He carried the art to 

 such perfection that a Greek epigram on his Niobe 

 says, " The gods changed me to stone, but Praxi- 

 teles restored me to life." Praxiteles and his con- 

 temporary Scopas united grandeur with grace ; and 

 with them (about 364 B. C.) begins the period of 

 the beautiful style in statuary. The former also 

 worked in bronze, but, according to Pliny, he was 

 most successful in marble. Pliny (Hist. Nat. lib. 

 36, c. 4, 5) gives a list of his principal "works, which 

 were statues of the gods. The finest is said to have 

 been the Cnidian Venus, whom he was the first to 

 represent naked. According to tradition, the cele- 

 brated courtesans Cratina and Phryne (q. v.) served 

 as models for it. This Venus is represented with a 

 smiling countenance, and in the attitude of having 

 left the bath, or risen from the sea. This statue 

 was frequently copied. His Coan Venus was nude 

 down to the hips. In Bottiger's opinion, the Venus 

 de' Medici resembles the Cnidian Venus only in the 

 position of the left hand ; but the Capitoline Venus 

 is considered as a copy of it. (See Venus.} The 

 group of Niobe now in existence, which is also at- 

 tributed to Scopas, seems to have been the produc- 

 tion of different times. His two statues of Cupid, 

 were also celebrated. One of them, which was 

 placed in the temple of Cupid, at Thespia, and a 

 statue of a satyr, which was called periboetos (the 

 farfamed), were considered by Praxiteles, according 

 to Pausanias, as his finest works. An excellent 

 copy of the latter, discovered in a villa of the em- 

 peror Antoninus, is in the Museo Pio- Clementina. 

 Among his works were also statues of Diana, Ceres, 

 Bacchus, &c., in marble, and in bronze, which serv- 

 ed as models to succeeding artists. 



PRAYER, ATTITUDES OF. The Greeks and 

 Romans, like all other heathen nations, extended 

 their hands when praying, since they prayed to re- 

 ceive. This ancient mode of praying was at first 

 followed by the Christians ; but they afterwards 

 changed it, extending the arms in the form of the 

 cross, to represent the crucifixion of the Saviour. 

 They were therefore often obliged to have their 

 arms supported for hours, during which their pray- 

 ers lasted, by their servants. They afterwards 

 crossed their arms, and thus imitated the Oriental 

 expression of submission and humility. It then be- 

 came the practice to cross the hands, which was 

 finally changed to the present custom of clasping 

 them an attitude, in ancient times, expressive of 

 the most profound grief and submission. Among 

 many nations (for instance, the modern Greeks), it 

 is customary to turn, in prayer, towards the east, as 

 the region of the holy sepulchre. 



PREADAMITES (from the Latin pree, before) ; 

 those men, or generations, who, according to some, 

 inhabited the earth previously to the Adamitic crea- 

 tion. By some, therefore, it is assumed that Adam 

 was not the first man ; and Isaac Peyrer (1655) 

 maintained that the Jews were descended from 

 Adam and Eve, and the Gentiles from the Pread- 

 amites. The term preadamitic is also applied to 

 the remains of the primitive world. 



PREBEND ; a yearly stipend, paid from the 

 funds of an ecclesiastical establishment, as of a 

 cathedral, or collegiate church. Prebendary is the 

 person who has a prebend. A simple prebend has 

 no more than the revenue which is assigned for its 



support ; but if the prebend has a jurisdiction an- 

 nexed, the prebendary is styled a dignitary. Pre- 

 bendaries, as such, have no cure of souls ; and there- 

 fore a prebend and a parochial benefice are not in- 

 compatible promotions. The prebendal stall is the 

 seat of the prebendary in the church, into which he 

 is inducted by the dean and chapter. 



PRECESSION OF THE EQUINOXES is a very 

 slow motion of them, by which they change their 

 place, going from east to west, or backward, in 

 antecedentia, as astronomers call it, or contrary to 

 the order of the signs. The pole, the solstices, the 

 equinoxes, and all the other points of the ecliptic, 

 have a retrograde motion, and are constantly mov- 

 ing from east to west, or from Aries towards Pisces, 

 &c., by means of which the equinoctial points are 

 carried farther and farther back among the preced- 

 ing signs of stars, at the rate of about 50|" each 

 year, which retrograde motion is called the preces- 

 sion, recession, or retrocession of the equinoxes. 

 Hence, as the stars remain immovable, and the 

 equinoxes go backward, the stars will seem to move 

 more and more eastward with respect to them ; for 

 which reason the longitudes of all the stars, being 

 reckoned from the first point of Aries, or the vernal 

 equinox, are continually increasing. From this 

 cause it is that the constellations seem all to have 

 changed the places assigned to them by the ancient 

 astronomers. In the time of Hipparchus and the 

 oldest astronomers, the equinoctial points were fixed 

 to the first stars of Aries and Libra ; but the signs 

 do not now answer to the same points ; and the stars, 

 which were then in conjunction with the sun when 

 he was in the equinox, are now a whole sign, or 30 

 degrees to the eastward of it ; so the first star of 

 Aries is now in the portion of the ecliptic called 

 Taurus ; and the stars of Taurus are now in Gemini, 

 and those of Gemini in Cancer, and so on. Hence, 

 likewise, the stars which rose or set at any particu- 

 lar season of the year in the times of Eudoxus, 

 Hesiod, Virgil, Pliny, &c., by no means answer, at 

 this time, their descriptions. This seeming change 

 of place in the stars was first observed oy Hip- 

 parchus of Rhodes, who, 128 years B. C., found 

 that the longitudes of the stars in his time were 

 greater than they had been before observed by 

 Timochares, and than they were in the sphere of 

 Eudoxus, who wrote 380 years B. C. Ptolemy also 

 perceived the gradual change in the longitudes of 

 the stars ; but he stated the quantity at too little, 

 making it but 1 in 100 years, which is at the rate 

 of only 36" per year. Y-hang, a Chinese, in the 

 year 721, stated the quantity ot this change at 1 

 in 83 years, which is at the rate of 43" per year. 

 Other more modern astronomers have made this 

 precession still more, but with some small differences 

 from each other ; and it is now usually taken at 

 50y per year. All these rates are deduced from a 

 comparison of the longitude of certain stars, as 

 observed by more ancient astronomers, with the 

 later observations of the same stars, namely, 

 by subtracting the former from the latter, and 

 dividing the remainder by the number of years in the 

 interval between the dates of the observations : thus, 

 by a medium of a great number of comparisons, the 

 quantity of the annual change lias been fixed at 

 50", according to which rate it will require 25,791 

 years for the equinoxes to make their revolutions 

 westward quite around the circle, and return to the 

 same point again. The explanation of the physical 

 cause of this slow change in the position of the 

 equinoxes, or the intersections of the equinoctial 

 with the ecliptic, is one of the most difficult problems 

 of physical astronomy, which even Newton attempt- 

 ed in vain to solve in a perfectly satisfactory manner. 



