Chapter Pygmy to Python of P by Brewer's Readers Handbook

does not exceed 164 feet. It stands west of Puebla, faces the four cardinal points, was used as a mausoleum, and is usually called “The Pyramid of Cholula.”

Pyramos (in Latin, Pyramus), the lover of Thisbê had been torn to pieces by a lion, Pyramos stabs himself “under a mulberry tree” in his unutterable grief. Thisbê finds the dead body, and kills herself on the same spot. Ever since then the juice of mulberries has been blood-stained.—Greek Mythology.

(Shakespeare has introduced a burlesque or this pretty love story in his Midsummer Night’s Dream; but Ovid has told the tale beautifully.)

Pyreni, the Pyrenees.

Who [Henry V.] by his conquering sword should all
the land surprise,
Which ’twixt the Penmenmaur and the Pyreni lies.

Drayton: Polyolbion, iv. (1612).

(Penmenmaur, a hill in Caernarvonshire.)

Pyrgo Polinices, an extravagant blusterer. (The word means “tower and town taker.”)—Plautus: Miles Gloriosus.

If the modern reader knows nothing of Pyrgo Polinicés and Thraso, Pistol and Paroll—es; if he is shut out from Nephelo-Coccygia, he may take refuge in Lilliput.—Macaulay.

“Thraso,” a bully in Terence (The Eunuch); “Pistol,” in the Merry Wives of Windsor and 2 Henry IV.; “Parollés,” in All’s Well that Ends Well; “Nephelo-Coccygia” or cloud cuckoo-town, in Aristophanés (The Birds); and “Lilliput,” in Swift (Gulliver’s Travels).

Pyrocles and his brother Cy’moclés , sons of Acratés (incontinence). The two brothers are about to strip sir Guyon, when prince Arthur comes up and slays both of them.—Spenser: Faërie Queene, ii. 8 (1590).

Pyrocles and Musidorus, heroes whose exploits are told by sir Philip Sidney in his Arcadia (1581).

Pyrrho, 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).

(“Pyrrhonism” means absolute and unlimited infidelity.)

Pythagoras, the Greek philosopher, who is said to have invented the lyre from hearing the sounds produced by a blacksmith hammering iron on his anvil. (See Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, p. 1022.)

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 Black-smith, said to have been suggested by the sounds proceeding from a smithy, where he heard the village blacksmiths swinging their heavy sledges “with measured beat and slow.”)

Pythias, a Syracusian soldier, noted for his friendship for Damon. When Damon was condemned to death by Dionysius the new-made king of Syracuse, Pythias obtained for him a respite of six hours,