The earlier Pilate literature, to the extent of 110 treatises, chiefly
of the 17th and 18th centuries, is enumerated in G. A. Muller’s
Pontius Pilatus der fünfte Prokurator von Judäa (Stuttgart, 1888).
See in loco in the following English or translated histories of the
life or time of Jesus, Theodor Keim, E. Schurer, A. Edersheim,
J. P. Lange, Bernhard Weiss and F. W. Farrar; Expositor (1884)
p. 107 and (1900) p. 59; also H. Peter, “Pontius Pilatus, der rom1scl1e
Landpfleger in Judäa,” in Neue Jahrb. f. d. kl Altertum (1907).
Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, in his Liberty, Equality and Fraternity
(1873), p. 87, starts the question, “Was Pilate right in crucifying
Christ” his somewhat paradoxical answer is criticised in The Trial
of Jesus Christ, a legal monograph, by A. Taylor Innes (1899).
(A. T. I.)
PILATUS, LEO, or Leontius [Leonzio Pilato] (d. 1366), one of the earliest promoters of Greek studies in western Europe, was a native of Thessalonica. According to Petrarch, he was a Calabrian, who posed as a Greek in Italy and as an Italian
abroad. In 1360 he went to Florence at the invitation of
Boccaccio, by whose influence he was appointed to a lectureship
in Greek at the Studio, the first appointment of the kind in the
west. After three years he accompanied Boccaccio to Venice
on a visit to Petrarch, whom he had already met at Padua.
Petrarch, disgusted with his manners and habits, dispatched
him to Constantinople to purchase MSS. of classical authors.
Pilatus soon tired of his mission and, although Petrarch refused
to receive him again, set sail for Venice. Just outside the
Adriatic Gulf he was struck dead by lightning. His chief
importance lies in his connexion with Petrarch and Boccaccio.
He made a bald and almost word for word translation of Homer
into Latin prose for Boccaccio, subsequently sent to Petrarch,
who ow ed his introduction to the poet to Pilatus and was anxious
to obtain a complete translation. Pilatus also furnished
Boccaccio with the material for his genealogy of the gods,
in which he made an ostentatious display of Greek learning.
See Gibbon, Decline and Fall, ch. 66; G. Voigt, Die Wiederbelebung des classischen Alterthums (1893); H. Hody, De Graecis illustrious (1742), G. Tiraboschi, Storia della letteralura italiana, v. 691.
PILAU, a favourite Eastern dish, consisting essentially of rice, boiled with mutton or other meat, fowl or fish, and flavoured with spices, raisins, &c. The word appears in Persian, Turkish and Urdu, and has been adopted in European languages. The form pilaff, showing the Turkish pronunciation, is also common.
PILCHARD (in earlier 16th century forms pylcher, pilchar;
of unknown origin; the Fr. pilseir is adapted from Eng.), Clupea
pilchardus, a fish of the herring family (Clupeidae), abundant
in the Mediterranean and on the Atlantic coasts of Europe,
north to the English Channel. Sardine is another name for the
same fish, which on the coast of Britanny and Normandy is also
called célan or céléren. It is readily distinguished from the
other European species of Clupea. The operculum is sculptured
with ridges radiating and descending towards the suboperculum;
the scales are large, about thirty along the lateral line, deciduous;
the ventral fins are inserted below, or nearly below, the middle
of the base of the dorsal fin, the dorsal fin has seventeen or
eighteen, the anal from nineteen to twenty-one rays. A small
blackish spot in the scapular region is very constant, and
sometimes succeeded by other similar marks. There are no
teeth on the palate, pyloric appendages exist in great numbers;
the vertebrae number fifty-three. The pilchard is one of the
most important fishes of the English Channel. It spawns at
a distance from the shore, and its eggs are buoyant, like those
of many other marine fishes and unlike those of the herring,
which are adhesive and demersal, i.e. develop under water.
The egg of the pilchard is very easily distinguished from other
pelagic eggs by the unusually large space separating the vitelline
membrane from the contained ovum. Spawning takes place
in summer, the season extending from June to October. When
commencing their migrations towards the land the shoals
consist of countless numbers, but they break up into smaller
companies near the shore. Pilchards feed on minute crustaceans
and other pelagic animals and require two or three years before
they attain their full size, which is about 10 in. in length.
The sardines of the west coast of France, which are tinned in oil
for export, are immature fish of the same stock as those taken
on the coasts of Cornwall; they are 5 to 712 in. in length, and
though such fish occur also on the Cornish coast it is only in
small numbers and for brief periods. In the Mediterranean
the sardine does not exceed 712 in. in length when mature.
On the Pacific coast of America, in New Zealand and in Japan
a pilchard occurs (Clupea sagax) which in its characters and habits
is so similar to the European pilchard that its general utilization
is deserving of attention. Immense shoals are reported to visit
the east coast of Otago every year in February and March.
Clupea scombrina is the “ oil sardine ” of the east coast of India. (J. T. C.)
PILE, an homonymous word, of which the main branches
are (1) a heap, through Fr. from pila, pillar; (2) a heavy beam
used in making foundations, literally a pointed stake, an adaptation
of Lat. pīlum, javelin; (3) the nap on cloth, Lat. pilus,
hair. In the first branch the Lat. pila (for pigla, from root of
pangere, to fasten) meant also a pier or mole of stone, hence any
mass of masonry, as in Fr. pile. In English usage the word
chiefly means a “heap” or “mass” of objects laid one on the
top of the other, such as the heap of faggots or other combustible
material on which a dead body is cremated, “funeral pile,”
or on which a living person is burnt as a punishment. It also is
applied to a large and lofty building, and specifically, to a stand
of arms, “piled” in military fashion, and to the series of plates,
“galvanic” or “voltaic piles,” in an electric battery. The
modern “head and tail” of a coin was formerly “cross and pile,”
Fr. croix el pile, in modern Fr. face et pile. In the older apparatus
for minting the die for the reverse was placed on a small upright
pillar, pile, the other on a puncheon known as a “trussell”
(Fr. trousseau). The common name of the disease of haemorrhoids
(q.v.) or “piles” is probably an extension of this word,
in the sense of mass, swelling, but may be referred to the Lat.
pila, ball. The name of the pilum, or heavy javelin (lit.
pounder, pestle, from pinsere, pisere, to beat), the chief weapon
of the ancient Roman infantry, was adopted into many Teutonic
languages in the sense of dart or arrow, cf. Germ. Pfeil; in English
it was chiefly used of a heavy stake with one end sharpened,
and driven into swampy ground or in the bed of a river to form
the first foundations for a building; the primitive lake-dwellings
built on “piles” are also known as “pile-dwellings.” For the
use of piles in building see Foundations and Bridges. In
heraldry a charge represented by two lines meeting in the form
of an arrow head is known as a “pile,” a direct adaptation probably
of the Lat. pilum. The division of this intricate word,
followed here, is that adopted by the New English Dictionary;
other etymologists (e.g. Skeat, Etym. Dict., 1898) arrange the
words and their Latin originals somewhat differently.
PILGRIM, a wanderer, traveller, particularly to a holy place (see Pilgrimage). The earliest English forms are pilegrim or pelegrim, through Fr. pélerin (the original O. Fr. pelegrin is not found), from Lat. peregrines, a stranger, foreigner, particularly
a resident alien in Rome (see Praetor, and Roman Law).
The Lat. pereger, from which peregrinus is formed, meant “from
abroad,” “travelled through many lands ” (per, through,
an ager, country .
It was customary for pilgrims to bring back as proof of their pilgrimage to a particular shrine or holy place a badge, usually made of lead or pewter, bearing some figure or device identifying it with the name or place. These “pilgrim signs” are frequently alluded to in literature—notably in the Canterbury Tales and in Piers Plowman. The British Museum and the Musée Cluny in Paris have fine collections of them, mainly dredged from the Thames and the Seine. The badges were generally worn fastened to the pilgrim’s hat or cape. Among the best known are those of the cockle or scallop shell of St. James of Compostella in Spain; the “vernicle,” a representation of the miraculous head of Christ; the vera icon, true image, on St Veronica’s handkerchief, at Rome, or of the Abgar portrait at Genoa, of “a vernicle hadde he sowed on his cappe” (Cant. Tales, “Prol.” 685); the Amiens badge of the head of John the Baptist on the charger, the cathedral claiming the custody of the relic from 1206 (fig. 1); and the palm branches or cross of palm leaf, the
