was washed ashore at Naples,
which was called Parthenope after her name.

PARTHIA, an ancient country corresponding to Northern Persia; was
inhabited by a people of Scythian origin, who adopted the Aryan speech
and manners, and subsequently yielded much to Greek influence; after
being tributary successively to Assyria, Media, Persia, Alexander the
Great, and Syria, they set up an independent kingdom in 250 B.C. In two
great contests with Rome they made the empire respect their prowess;
between 53 and 36 B.C. they defeated Crassus in Mesopotamia, conquered
Syria and Palestine, and inflicted disaster on Mark Antony in Armenia;
the renewal of hostilities by Trajan in A.D. 115 brought more varied
fortunes, but they extorted a tribute of 50,000,000 denarii from the
Emperor Macrinus in 218. Ctesiphon was their capital; the Euphrates lay
between them and Rome; they were over thrown by Ardashir of Persia in
224. The Parthians were famous horse-archers, and in retreat shot their
arrows backwards often with deadly effect on a pursuing enemy.

PARTICK (36), a western suburb of Glasgow, has numerous villas, and
its working population is very largely engaged in shipbuilding.

PARTINGTON, MRS., an imaginary lady, the creation of the American
humorist Shillaber, distinguished for her misuse of learned words; also
another celebrity who attempted to sweep back the Atlantic with her mop,
the type of those who think to stave back the inevitable.

PASCAL, BLAISE, illustrious French thinker and writer, born at
Clermont, in Auvergne; was distinguished at once as a mathematician, a
physicist, and a philosopher; at 16 wrote a treatise on conic sections,
which astonished Descartes; at 18 invented a calculating machine; he
afterwards made experiments in pneumatics and hydrostatics, by which his
name became associated with those of Torricelli and Boyle; an accident
which befell him turned his thoughts to religious subjects, and in 1654
he retired to the convent of PORT ROYAL (q. v.), where he spent
as an ascetic the rest of his days, and wrote his celebrated "Provincial
Letters" in defence of the Jansenists against the Jesuits, and his no
less famous "Pensees," which were published after his death; "his great
weapon in polemics," says Prof. Saintsbury, "is polite irony, which he
first brought to perfection, and in the use of which he has hardly been
equalled, and has certainly not been surpassed since" (1623-1662).

PAS-DE-CALAIS, t