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On this page: Parthenia – Parthenius – Parthenon

460

PARTHENIA——PARTHENON.

ducted by two qucestOrls parncidii, on whom it was also incumbent to bring the accusation before the comitia for trial. Sulla transferred the decision in all cases of parricide to a standing tribunal (see qu^estio perpetua), which had also to try cases of assassination and poisoning. The punishment for parricide was drowning in a leathern sack (culleits), into which were sewn, besides the criminal, a dog, a cock, a viper, and an ape [Cicero, Base. Am. 70; Juvenal viii 214]. The murder of relations in other degrees of relationship was punished by exile (interdictlo dquai et ignis). See exilium.

he composed the only work of his which has survived, under the title, Of the Sorrows of Love. This is a collection of thirty-six prose stories of unhappy lovers, compiled from ancient poets, especially from those of the Alexandrine school. Apart from the light it throws on the Alexandrine poets, of whose works it contains f ments, it has a special interest as a cursor of the Greek novel.

Parthenon (Greek). "The maiden's" chamber," particularly a temple of Athene Parthenis (the virgin goddess), especially that on the Acropolis of Athens, distin' guished by the grandeur of its dimensions,

(1) THE PARTHENON.

(From the south-west, restored.)

ParthfinJa. A species of religious songs, fsung to the accompaniment of the flute with cheerful, lively movements b y choirs of maidens.

Parthenlus. A Greek grammarian and poet, of NicEea in BSthynia, who was forought captive to Home during the war with Mithridates. After his release, ha lived there till the time of Tiberius, es­teemed as a scholar and poet, especially as a writer of elegiac poems. He was ac­quainted with Vergil, whom he taught Greek, and one of his poems is said to have been the model for the Mdretum ; but he was more closely connected with the elegiac poet, Cornelius Gallus. For Gallus

the beauty of its execution, and the splen­dour of its artistic adornment. [There was an earlier temple of Athene immediately to the south of the Erechthemn (see plan of acropolis), and the foundations of a new temple were laid after the Persian War, probably in the time of Cimon. This temple was never completed; on the sama site there was built a temple of less length, but greater breadth, which is usually called the Parthenon.] It was built at the com­mand of Pericles by the architects Ictlnus and Calllcrates. It took about five years in building, and was finished in 438 b.c. (fig. 1). Its further adornment with sculp­tures in the pediments, and with metopes