Scanned text contains errors.

On this page: Palaeste – Palaestra – Palaria – Palatini Ludi – Pale – Palflia

849

PALAESTRA.

plough-share, viz. by casing its extremity with iron. (Golura. x. 45.) The annexed woodcut, taken from a funeral monument at Rome (Fabretti, Jn-scrip. Ant. p. 574), exhibits a deceased countryman with his faix and bidens, and also with a pala, modified by the addition of a strong cross-bar, by the use of which he was enabled to drive it nearly twice as deep into the ground as he could have done witHout it. In this form the instrument was

called bipalium, being employed in trenching (pas-tinatio), or, when the ground was full of roots to a considerable depth, in loosening them, turning them over, and extirpating them, so as to prepare the soil for planting vines and other trees. By means of this implement, which is still used in Italy and called vanga, the ground was dug to the depth of two spades or nearly two feet. (Plin. //. N. xviii. 26. s. 62 ;, Cat de Re Rust, 6, 45, 151 ; Varr. de Re Rust. i. 37 ; Col. de Re Rust. v. 6. p. 214, xi. 3. p. 450, eel. Bip.)

Cato (Ibid. 11) mentions wooden spades qj>«/«s ligneas) among the implements necessary to the husbandman. One principal application of them was in winnowing. The winnowing-shovel, also called in Latin ventilabrum, is still generally used in Greece, and the mode of employing it is ex­hibited by Stuart in his " Antiquities of Athens." The corn which has been threshed lies in a heap upon the floor, and the labourer throws it to a dis­tance \vith the shovel, whilst the wind, blowing strongly across the direction in which it is thrown, drives the chaff and refuse to one side. (Theocrit. vii. 156 ; Matt. iii. 12 ; Luke, iii. 17.) The fruit of leguminous plants was punned and adapted to be used for food in the same manner. (Horn. II. v. 499—502, xiii. 588—592.)

The term pala was applied anciently, as it is in modern Italian, to the blade or broad part of an oar. [remus.] In a ring the broad part, which held the gem, was called by the name of pala [annulus.] [J. Y.]

PALAESTE. [palmus; MjsNsuRA,p.751,b.]

PALAESTRA (iraXaiffTpa) properly means a place for wrestling (TraAcu'et*/, TraA?]), and appears to have originally formed a part of the gymna­sium. The word was, however, used in different

PALILIA.

senses at various periods, and its exact meaning, especially in relation to the gymnasium, has occa­sioned much controversy among modern writers. It first occurs in Herodotus (vi. 126, 128), who says that Cleisthenes of Sicyon built a dromos and a palaestra, both of which he calls by the general name of palaestra. At Athens, however, there was a considerable number of palaestrae, quite distinct from the gymnasia, which were called by the names either of their founders, or of the teachers who gave instruction there ; thus, for ex­ample, we read of the palaestra of Taureas. (Plat. Char mid. init.) Krause (Gymnastik und Agonistik der Hellenen, p. 117, &c.) contends that the pa­laestrae at Athens were appropriated to the gym­nastic exercises of boys and youths (TrcuSes and peipdicta), and the gymnasia to those of men ; but Becker (Charikles, vol. i. pp. 311, 335, &c.) has shown that this cannot be the true distinction, al­though it appears that certain places were, for obvious reasons, appropriated to the exclusive use of boys. (Aesch. c. Timarch. p. 35, Reiske.) But that the ~boys exercised in the gymnasia as well, is plain from many passages (Antiph. de Caed. invol. p, 661, Reiske ; Trows &pcuos airb yv/j.va<riuv, Aristoph. Av. 138, 140) ; while, on the other hand, we read of men visiting the palaestrae. (Lucian, Navig. 4. vol. iii. p. 251, Reitz.)

It appears most probable that the Palaestrae were, during the nourishing times of the Greek republics, chiefly appropriated to the exercises of wrestling and of the pancratium, and were prin­cipally intended for the athletae, who, it must be recollected, were persons that contended in the public-games, and therefore needed special train­ing. This is expressly stated by Plutarch (Symp. ii. 4), who says, " that the place in which all the athletae exercise is called a palaestra j" and we also learn from Pausanias (v. 15. § 5^ vi. 21. § 2), that there were at Olympia palaestrae especially devoted to the athletes. In Athenaeus (x. p. 417, f.) we read of the great athletes Damippus coming out of th-e palaestra ; and Galen (irepl rov §ia nutpas fftyaipas -yv^vaceiov^ c. 5) places the athletae in the palaestra. (Krause, Ibid. p. 115.)

The Romans had originally no places correspond­ing to the Greek gymnasia and palaestrae ; and when towards the close of the republic, wealthy Romans, in imitation of the Greeks, began to build places for exercise in their villas, they called them indifferently gymnasia and palaestrae. (Cic. ad Att. i. 4, 8, .9, 10,. ad Qu. Fr. iii. 1. § 2, Verr. v. 72.) The words were thus used by the Romans as synonymous ; and accordingly we find that Vitru-vius (v. 11) gives a description of a Greek gym­nasium ander the name of palaestra.

PALARIA. [palus..]

PALATINI LUDI. [L.uDi palatinl]

PALE (TrcU??). [lucta,]

PALFLIA, a festival celebrated at Rome every year on the 21st of April, in honour of Pales, the tutelary divinity of shepherds. Some of the ancient writers called this festival Parilia, deriving the name from pario, because sacrifices were offered on that day pro partu pecoris. (Fest. s. v. Pales ; compare Popularia sacra; Varro, de Ling. Lat. vi. 15 ; Dionys. i. 88.) The 21st of April was the day on which, according to the early traditions of Rome, Romulus had commenced the building of the city, so that the festival was at the same time solemnised as the dies natalitius of Rome (Feat

3 r