ss of a weaver; but attending his master's son to school, he used this opportunity to procure knowledge; and acquired so much skill in the common learning, that he obtained his freedom, and became a teacher or preceptor at Rome. His claim to learning cannot be questioned, since he is recorded as a scholar even by Juvenal:
*Quis gremio Enceladi doctique Palæmonis offerit, Quantum grammaticus meruit labor?* Sat. 7.
He had also an excellent memory, a ready elocution, and could make verses extempore. On account of these qualities, notwithstanding his debauched course of life, which was such that nobody was more unworthy to have the preceptorship of youth, he held the first rank among those of his profession. But his arrogance surpassed his merit; he had the confidence to assert, that learning was born when he was born, and would die when he died; and that Virgil had inherited his name in his Eclogues by a certain prophetic spirit; for that he, Palamon, would infallibly become one day sole judge and arbiter of all poetry. He was excessively prodigal for the gratification of his voluptuous humour; insomuch that neither the immense sums he gained by teaching, nor the great profit he made both by cultivating his lands and in the way of traffic, proved a sufficient fund to support his extravagancies. We have only some fragments of his works.
PALÆOLOGUS (Michael), a very able man who was governor of Asia under the emperor Theodorus Lascaris; and who, by various stratagems and cruelties, procured the empire for himself and his posterity. See CONSTANTINOPLE, from no. 145 to the end of that article.
PALÆPAPHOS (Strabo, Virgil, Pliny), a town of Cyprus, where stood a temple of Venus; and an adjoining town called Nea Paphos; where St Paul struck Elymas blind, and converted the proconsul Sergius Paulus.
PALÆSTRA, in Grecian antiquity, a public building where the youth exercised themselves in wrestling, running, playing at quoits, &c. To prevent the combatants from hurting themselves by falling, the bottom of the palestra was covered with dust or gravel. Some will have the palestra to be only a part of the gymnasticum. Many authors imagine that the palestra was of two kinds; the one for the exercise of the body, the other for the cultivation of the mind; but the derivation of the word seems to confine it to bodily exercise.
We have this account of the palestra in Barthelemi's Anacharsis: "They are nearly of the same form with the gymnasia. We visited the apartments appropriated to all the species of baths; those where the wrestlers leave their clothes, where they rub their bodies with oil to render their limbs supple, and where they roll themselves in the sand in order to give their antagonists a hold.
"Wrestling, leaping, tennis, and all the exercises of the lyceum, were here repeated before us with greater varieties, and with more strength and skill on the part of the performers. Among the different groups before us, we distinguished men of the most perfect beauty, and worthy of serving as models for artists; some with vigorous and boldly marked outlines, as Hercules is represented; and others of a more slim and elegant shape, as Achilles is described. The former, devoting themselves to wrestling and boxing, had no object but to increase their bodily strength; the latter, educated to less violent exercises, such as running, leaping, &c., confined themselves to acquirements of agility.
"Their regimen is suited to the different exercises for which they are designed. Some of them abstain from women and wine; others lead a very abstemious life; but those who make laborious exertions stand in need of a great quantity of substantial food, such as roasted beef and pork, to restore their strength. If they require only two minae a-day, with bread in proportion, they give a very favourable idea of their temperance. But several are mentioned who have made a terrible consumption of provisions. Theagenes of Thasos, for instance, is said to have eaten a whole ox in a day. The same exploit is attributed to Milo of Crotona, whose usual quantity of food for a day was twenty minae of meat, as many of bread, and three congi of wine. It is said likewise, that Alcydamas of Miletus, when at the table of Ariobarzanes the Persian satrap, devoured alone the supper prepared for nine guests. These stories, no doubt exaggerated, prove at least the idea generally entertained of the voracity of this class of wrestlers. When they are able to gratify it without danger, they acquire extraordinary strength; their stature becomes sometimes gigantic; and their adversaries, struck with terror, either decline entering the lists, or sink under the weight of their enormous bodies.
"They are so oppressed by excess of nutriment as to be obliged to pass part of their lives in a profound sleep, and soon become so extremely corpulent as to be no longer known to be the same persons: this is succeeded by disorders which render them as wretched as they have always been unserviceable to their country; for it cannot be denied that wrestling, boxing, and all those combats disputed with so much fury and obstinacy in the public solemnities, are no longer anything but ostentatious exhibitions, since tactics have been brought to perfection. Egypt at no time adopted them, as they give only a temporary strength. Lacedaemon has corrected their inconveniences by the wisdom of her institutions. In the other states of Greece men have discovered, that, by subjecting their children to them, they incur the risk of injuring their shape and preventing their growth; and that, in a more advanced age, professed wrestlers never make good soldiers, because they are unable to support hunger, thirst, watching, the smallest wants, or the most trifling deviation from their usual habits." See Pentathlum and Pancratium.
PALÆSTROPHYLAX, was the director of the palaestra, and the exercises performed there.or Palambang, a town of Asia, in the East Indies, and in the island of Java, capital of a kingdom; seated at the east end of the island, on the straits of Bally, and separated from the island of Bally by a narrow channel. E. Long. 115°. S. Lat. 7°. 10'.