PALÆMON, Ῥημμίντης, a famous grammarian of Rome, in the reign of Tiberius. He was born of a slave at Vienza. We are told he was first brought up in the business 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 affert, Quantum grammaticus meruit labor?* Sat. vii.

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 Elegies by a certain prophetic spirit: for that he, Palæmon, would infallibly become one day sole judge and arbiter of all poetry. He was excessively prodigal for Palæologus the gratification of his voluptuous humour; inasmuch 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 Laiçaros; 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 Neo 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 palaestra was covered with dust or gravel. Some will have the palaestra to be only a part of the gymnasticum. Many authors imagine that the palaestra 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 palaestra in Bartholomew's Anacharsis: "They are nearly of the same form with Vol. ii. the gymnasticum. We visited the apartments appropriated to all the species of baths; thole 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 acquirement 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 s