buried in the Campo Santo at Turin. His writings are defective in virility and breadth of thought, and his tragedies display neither the insight into character nor the constructive power of a great dramatist. It is in the simple narrative and naïve egotism of Le Mie prigioni that he has established his strongest claim to remembrance, winning fame by his misfortunes rather than by his genius.
See Piero Maroncelli, Addizioni alle mie prigioni (Paris, 1834); the biographies by Latour; Gabriele Rosselli; Didier, Revue des deux mondes (September 1842); De Loménie, Galerie des contemp. illustr. iv. (1842); Chiala (Turin, 1852); Nollet-Fabert (1854); Giorgio Briano (1854); Bourdon (1868); Rivieri (1899–1901).
PELLISSON, PAUL (1624–1693), French author, was born at Béziers on the 30th of October 1624, of a distinguished Calvinist family. He studied law at Toulouse, and practised at the bar of Castres. Going to Paris with letters of introduction to Valentin Conrart, who was a co-religionist, he became through him acquainted with the members of the academy. Pellisson undertook to be their historian, and in 1653 published a Relation contenant l’histoire de l’académie française. This panegyric was rewarded by a promise of the next vacant place and by permission to be present at their meetings. In 1657 Pellisson became secretary to the minister of finance, Nicolas Fouquet, and when in 1661 the minister was arrested, his secretary was imprisoned in the Bastille. Pellisson had the courage to stand by his fallen patron, in whose defence he issued his celebrated Mémoire in 1661, with the title Discours au roi, par un de ses fidèles sujets sur le procès de M. de Fouquet, in which the facts in favour of Fouquet are marshalled with great skill. Another pamphlet, Seconde défense de M. Fouquet, followed. Pellisson was released in 1666, and from this date sought the royal favour. He became historiographer to the king, and in that capacity wrote a fragmentary Histoire de Louis XIV., covering the years 1660 to 1670. In 1670 he was converted to Catholicism and obtained rich ecclesiastical preferment. He died on the 7th of February 1693. He was very intimate with Mlle de Scudéry in whose novels he figures as Herminius and Acante. His sterling worth of character made him many friends and justified Bussy-Rabutin’s description of him as “encore plus honnête homme que bel esprit.”
See Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, vol xiv.; and F. L. Marcon, Étude sur la vie et les œvres de Pellisson (1859).
PELLITORY, in botany, the common name for a small hairy perennial herb which grows on old walls, hedgebanks and similar localities, and is known botanically as Parietaria officinalis (Lat. paries, a wall). It has a short woody rootstock from which spring erect or spreading stems 1 to 2 ft. long, bearing slender leafy branches, and axillary clusters of small green flowers. It belongs to the nettle order (Urticaceae), and is nearly allied to the nettle, Urtica, but its hairs are not stinging.
PELLOUX, LUIGI (1830-), Italian general and politician, was born on the 1st of March 1839, at La Roche, in Savoy, of parents who retained their Italian nationality when Savoy was annexed to France. Entering the army as lieutenant of artillery in 1857 he gained the medal for military valour at the battle of Custozza in 1866, and in 1870 commanded the brigade of artillery which battered the breach in the wall of Rome at Porta Pia. He was elected to the Chamber in 1881 as deputy for Leghorn, which he represented until 1895, and joined the party of the Left. He had entered the war office in 1870, and in 1880 became general secretary, in which capacity he introduced many useful reforms in the army. After a succession of high military commands he received the appointment of chief of the general staff in 1896. He was minister of war in the Rudini and Giolitti cabinets of 1891–1893. In July 1896 he resumed the portfolio of war in the Rudini cabinet, and was appointed senator. In May 1897 he secured the adoption of the Army Reform Bill, fixing Italian military expenditure at a maximum of £9,560,000 a year, but in December of that year he was defeated in the Chamber on the question of the promotion of officers. Resigning office, he was in May 1898 sent as royal commissioner to Bari, where, without recourse to martial law, he succeeded in restoring public order. Upon the fall of Rudini in June 1898, General Pelloux was entrusted by King Humbert with the formation of a cabinet, and took for himself the post of minister of the interior. He resigned office in May 1899, but was again entrusted with the formation of the ministry. He took stern measures against the revolutionary elements in southern Italy, and his new cabinet was essentially military and conservative. The Public Safety Bill for the reform of the police laws, taken over by him from the Rudini cabinet, and eventually promulgated by royal decree, was fiercely obstructed by the Socialist party, which, with the Left and Extreme Left, succeeded in forcing General Pelloux to dissolve the Chamber in May 1900, and to resign office after the general election in June. In the autumn of 1901 he was appointed to the command of the Turin army corps.
PELOMYXA, so named by R. Greeff, a genus of Lobose Rhizopoda (q.v.), naked, multinucleate, with very blunt rounded pseudopodia, formed by eruption (see Amoeba), often containing peculiar vesicles (glycogen?), and full of a symbiotic bacterium. It inhabits the ooze of decomposing organic matter at the bottom of ponds and lakes.
PELOPIDAS (d. 364 B.C.), Theban statesman and general. He was a member of a distinguished family, and possessed great wealth which he expended on his friends, while content to lead the life of an athlete. In 385 B.C. he served in a Theban contingent sent to the support of the Spartans at Mantineia, where he was saved, when dangerously wounded, by Epaminondas (q.v.). Upon the seizure of the Theban citadel by the Spartans (383 or 382) he fled to Athens, and took the lead in a conspiracy to liberate Thebes. In 379 his party surprised and killed their chief political opponents, and roused the people against the Spartan garrison, which surrendered to an army gathered by Pelopidas. In this and subsequent years he was elected boeotarch, and about 375 he routed a much larger Spartan force at Tegyra (near Orchomenus). This victory he owed mainly to the valour of the Sacred Band, a picked body of 300 infantry. At the battle of Leuctra (371) he contributed greatly to the success of Epaminondas’s new tactics by the rapidity with which he made the Sacred Band close with the Spartans. In 370 he accompanied his friend Epaminondas as boeotarch into Peloponnesus. On their return both generals were unsuccessfully accused of having retained their command beyond the legal term. In 369, in response to a petition of the Thessalians, Pelopidas was sent with an army against Alexander, tyrant of Pherae. After driving Alexander out, he passed into Macedonia and arbitrated between two claimants to the throne. In order to secure the influence of Thebes, he brought home hostages, including the king’s brother, afterwards Philip II., the conqueror of Greece. Next year Pelopidas was again called upon to interfere in Macedonia, but, being deserted by his mercenaries, was compelled to make an agreement with Ptolemaeus of Alorus. On his return through Thessaly he was seized by Alexander of Pherae, and two expeditions from Thebes were needed to secure his release. In 367 Pelopidas went on an embassy to the Persian king and induced him to prescribe a settlement of Greece according to the wishes of the Thebans. In 364 he received another appeal from the Thessalian towns against Alexander of Pherae. Though an eclipse of the sun prevented his bringing with him more than a handful of troops, he overthrew the tyrant’s far superior force on the ridge of Cynoscephalae; but wishing to slay Alexander with his own hand, he rushed forward too eagerly and was cut down by the tyrant’s guards.
Plutarch and Nepos, Pelopidas; Diodorus xv. 62-81; Xenophon, Hellenica, vii. 1. See also Thebes. (M. O. B. C.)
PELOPONNESIAN WAR, in Greek history, the name given
specially to the struggle between Athens at the head of the Delian League and the confederacy of which Sparta was the leading power.[1] According to Thucydides the war, which was
- ↑ Some historians prefer to call it the Second Peloponnesian War, the first being that of 457, which ended with the Thirty Years’ Peace.
