ss_, ii. (1830).

=Pyr'amos= (in Latin _Pyr[)a]mus_), the lover of Thisb[^e]. Supposing
Thisb[^e] had been torn to pieces by a lion, Pyramos stabs himself in
his unutterable grief "under a mulberry tree." Here Thisb[^e] finds the
dead body of her lover, and kills herself for grief on the same spot.
Ever since then the juice of this fruit has been blood-stained.--_Greek
Mythology._

Shakespeare has introduced a burlesque of this pretty love story in his
_Midsummer Night's Dream_, but Ovid has told the tale beautifully.

=Pyrgo Polini'ces=, an extravagant blusterer. (The word means "tower and
town taker.")--Plautus, _Miles Gloriosus_.

If the modern reader knows nothing of Pyrgo Polinic[^e]s and Thraso,
Pistol and Paroll[^e]s; if he is shut out from Nephelo-Coccygia, he
may take refuge in Lilliput.--Macaulay.

[Asterism] "Thraso," a bully in Terence (_The Eunuch_); "Pistol," in the
_Merry Wives of Windsor_ and 2 _Henry IV._; "Paroll[^e]s," in _All's Well
that Ends Well_; "Nephelo-Coccygia," or cloud cuckoo-town, in
Aristophan[^e]'s (_The Birds_); and "Lilliput," in Swift (_Gulliver's
Travels_).

=Py'rocles= (3 _syl._) and his brother, Cy'mocl[^e]s (3 _syl._) sons of
Acrat[^e]s (_incontinence_). The two brothers are about to strip Sir
Guyon, when Prince Arthur comes up and slays both of them.--Spenser,
_Fa[:e]ry Queen_, ii. 8 (1590).

=Pyroc'les and Musidorous=, heroes, whose exploits are told by Sir Philip
Sidney in his _Arcadia_ (1581).

=Pyr'rho=, the founder of the sceptics or Pyrrhonian school of philosophy.
He was a native of Elis, in Peloponne'sus, and died at the age of 90
(B.C. 285).

It is a pleasant voyage, perhaps, to float,
Like Pyrrho, on a sea of speculation.

Byron, _Don Juan_, ix. 18 (1824).

[Asterism] "Pyrrhonism" means absolute and unlimited infidelity.

=Pythag'oras=, the Greek philosopher, is said to have discovered the
musical scale from hearing the sounds produced by a blacksmith hammering
iron on his anvil.--See _Dictionary of Phrase and Fable_, 722.

As great Pythagoras of yore,
Standing beside the blacksmith's door.
And hearing the hammers, as he smote
The anvils with a different note ...
... formed the seven-chorded lyre.

Longfellow, _To a Child_.

Handel wrote an "air with variations" which he called _The Harmonious
Blacksmith_, said to have been suggested by the sounds proceeding from a
smithy, where he heard