See Esox, Ichthyology Index.

The pike never swims in shoals as most other fish do, but always lies alone; and is so bold and ravenous, that he will seize upon almost anything less than himself. Of the ravenous nature of this fish we shall give the following instances. At Rycott in Oxfordshire, in the year 1749, in a moat surrounding the earl of Abingdon's seat, there was a jack or pike of such a monstrous size, that it had destroyed young swans feathers and all. An old cobb swan having hatched five young, one after another was lost till four were gone. At length an under gardener saw the fish, seize the fifth. The old one fought him with their beak, and with the affluence of the gardener, released it although he had got it under water. In the year 1765 a large pike was caught in the river Ouse, which weighed upwards of 28 pounds, and was sold for a guinea. On gutting the fish, a watch with a black ribbon and two steel seals were found in its stomach, which, by the maker's name, &c. was found to belong to a person who had been drowned about six weeks before. This fish breeds but once in a year, which is in March. It is found in almost all fresh waters; but is very different in goodness, according to the nature of the places where it lives. The finest pike are those which feed in clear rivers; those in ponds and meres are inferior, and the worst of all are those of the fen ditches. They are very plentiful in these last places, where the water is foul and coloured, and their food, such as frogs and the like, very plentiful, but very coarse; so that they grow large, but are yellowish and high belled, and differ greatly from those which live in the clearer waters.

The fishermen have two principal ways of catching the pike; by the ledger, and by the walking-bait. The ledger-bait is fixed in one certain place, and may continue while the angler is absent. This must be a live bait, a fish or frog: and among fish, the dace, roach, and gudgeon, are the best; of frogs, the only caution is to choose the largest and yellowest that can be met with. If the bait be a fish, the hook is to be stuck through the upper lip, and the line must be 14 yards at least in length; the other end of this is to be tied to a bough of a tree, or to a stick driven into the ground near the pike's haunt, and all the line wound round a forked stick, except about half a yard. The bait will by this means keep playing so much under water, and the pike will soon lay hold of it.

If the bait be a frog, then the arming wire of the hook should be put in at the mouth, and out at the side; and with a needle and some strong silk, the hinder leg of one side is to be fattened by one stitch to the wire-arming of the hook. The pike will soon seize this, and must have line enough to give him leave to get to his haunt and poach the bait.

The trolling for pike is a pleasant method also of taking them: in this a dead bait serves, and none is so proper as a gudgeon.

This is to be pulled about in the water till the pike seizes it; and then it is to have line enough, and time to swallow it: the hook is small for this sport, and has a smooth piece of lead fixed at its end to sink the bait; and the line is very long, and runs through a ring at the end of the rod, which must not be too slender at top.

The art of feeding pike, so as to make them very fat, is the giving them eels; and without this it is not to be done under a very long time; otherwise perch, while small, and their prickly fins tender, are the best food for them. Bream put into a pike-pond are a very proper food: they will breed freely, and their young ones make excellent food for the pike, who will take care that they shall not increase over much. The numerous shoals of roaches and rudds, which are continually changing place, and often in floods get into the pike's quarters, are food for them for a long time.

Pike, when used to be fed by hand, will come up to the very shore, and take the food that is given them out of the fingers of the feeder. It is wonderful to see with what courage they will do this, after a while practising; and it is a very diverting sight when there are several of them nearly of the same size, to see what striving and fighting there will be for the best bits when they are thrown in. The most convenient place is near the mouth of the pond, and where there is about half a yard depth of water; for, by that means, the offal of the feedings will all lie in one place, and the deep water will will serve for a place to retire into and rest in, and will be always clean and in order.

Carp may be fed in the same manner as pike; and though by nature a fish as remarkably shy and timorous as the pike is bold and fearless, yet by custom they will come to take their food out of the person's hand; and will, like the pike, quarrel among one another for the nicest bits.

**Pike**, in War, an offensive weapon, consisting of a wooden shaft, 12 or 14 feet long, with a flat steel head, pointed, called the spear. This weapon was long in use among the infantry; but now the bayonet, which is fixed on the muzzle of the firelock, is substituted in its stead. It is still used by some of the officers of infantry, under the name of spontoon. The Macedonian phalanx was a battalion of pikemen. See Phalanx.

**Pila marina**, or the sea-ball, in Natural History, is the name of a substance very common on the shores of the Mediterranean, and elsewhere. It is generally found in the form of a ball about the size of the balls of horse dung, and composed of a variety of fibrillae irregularly complicated. Various conjectures have been given of its origin by different authors. John Bauhine tells us, that it consists of small hairy fibres and straws, such as are found about the sea plant called *alga vitriariorum*; but he does not ascertain what plant it owes its origin to. Imperatus imagined it consisted of the exuviae both of vegetable and animal bodies. Mercatus is doubtful whether it be a congeries of the fibrillae of plants, wound up into a ball by the motion of the sea water, or whether it be not the workmanship of some sort of beetle living about the sea shore, and analogous to our common dung beetle's ball, which it elaborates from dung for the reception of its progeny. Schreckius says it is composed of the filaments of some plant of the reed kind; and Welchius supposes it is composed of the pappous part of the flowers of the reed. Maurice Hoffman thinks it the excrement of the hippopotamus; and others think it that of the phoca or sea calf. Klein, who had thoroughly and minutely examined the bodies themselves, and also what authors had conjectured concerning them, thinks that they are wholly owing to, and entirely composed of, the capillaments which the leaves, growing to the woody stalk of the *alga vitriariorum*, have when they wither and decay. These leaves, in their natural state, are as thick as a wheat straw, and they are placed so thick about the tops and extremities of the stalks, that they enfold, embrace, and lie over one another; and from the middle of these clutters of leaves, and indeed from the woody substance of the plant itself, there arise several other very long, flat, smooth, and brittle leaves. These are usually four from each tuft of the other leaves; and they have ever a common vagina, which is membranaceous and very thin. This is the style of the plant, and the *pila marina* appears to be a cluster of the fibres of the leaves of this plant, which cover the whole stalk, divided into their constituent fibres; and by the motion of the waves first broken and worn into short threads, and afterwards wound up together into a roundish or longish ball.

**Pila**, was a ball made in a different manner according to the different games in which it was to be used. Playing at ball was very common amongst the Romans of the first division, and was looked upon as a manly exercise, which contributed both to amusement and health. The *pila* was of four sorts: 1st, *Follis* or balloon; 2d, *Pila Trigonalis*; 3d, *Pila Paganica*; 4th, *Harpalium*. All these come under the general name of *pila*. For the manner of playing with each of them, see the articles *Follis*, *Trigonalis*.

**Pilaster**, in Architecture. See there, No. 50, &c.

**Pilate**, or Pontius Pilate, was governor of Judea when our Lord was crucified. Of his family or country we know but little, though it is believed that he was of Rome, or at least of Italy. He was sent to govern Judea in the room of Gratus, in the year 26 or 27 of the vulgar era, and governed this province for ten years, from the 12th or 13th year of Tiberius to the 22d or 23d. He is represented both by Philo and Josephus as a man of an impetuous and obstinate temper, and as a judge who used to tell justice, and to pronounce any sentence that was desired, provided he was paid for it. The same authors make mention of his rapines, his injuries, his murders, the torments that he inflicted upon the innocent, and the persons he put to death without any form of process. Philo, in particular, describes him as a man that exercised an excessive cruelty during the whole time of his government, who disturbed the repose of Judea, and gave occasion to the troubles and revolt that followed after. St Luke (xiii. 1, 2, &c.) acquaints us, that Pilate had mingled the blood of the Galileans with their sacrifices; and that the matter having been related to Jesus Christ, he said, "Think you that these Galileans were greater sinners than other Galileans, because they suffered this calamity. I tell you nay; and if you do not repent, you shall all perish in like manner." It is unknown upon what occasion Pilate caused these Galileans to be slain in the temple while they were sacrificing; for this is the meaning of that expression of mingling their blood with their sacrifices. Some think they were disciples of Judas the Gaulonite, who taught that the Jews ought not to pay tribute to foreign princes; and that Pilate had put some of them to death even in the temple; but there is no proof of this fact. Others think that these Galileans were Samaritans, whom Pilate cut to pieces in the village of Tiratha, as they were preparing to go up to Mount Gerizim, where a certain impostor had promised to discover treasures to them; but this event did not happen before the year 35 of the common era, and consequently two years after the death of Jesus Christ. At the time of our Saviour's passion, Pilate made some endeavours to deliver him out of the hands of the Jews. He knew they had delivered him up, and purified his life with so much violence, only out of malice and envy (Matt. xxvii. 18.). His wife, also, who had been disturbed the night before with frightful dreams, sent to tell him she desired him not to meddle in the affair of that just person (ib. 19.). He attempted to appease the wrath of the Jews, and to give them some satisfaction, by whipping Jesus Christ (John xix. 1. Matt. xxvii. 26.). He tried to take him out of their hands, by proposing to deliver him or Barabbas, on the day of the festival of the passover. Lastly, he had a mind to discharge himself from pronouncing judgment against him, by sending him to Herod king of Galilee (Luke xxiii. 7. 8.). When he saw all this would not satisfy the Jews, and that they even threatened him in some manner, saying he could be no friend to the emperor if he let him go (John xix. 12, 15.), he caused water to be brought, washed his hands before all the people, and publicly declared himself innocent of the blood of that just person (Matt. xxvii. 23, 24); yet at the same time he delivered him up to his soldiers, that they might crucify him. This was enough to justify Jesus Christ, as Calmet observes, and to show that he held him as innocent; but it was not enough to vindicate the conscience and integrity of a judge, whose duty it was as well to affect the cause of oppressed innocence as to punish the guilty and criminal. He ordered to be put over our Saviour’s cross, as it were, an abstract of his sentence, and the motive of his condemnation (John xix. 9.), Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews, which was written in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. Some of the Jews found fault with it, and remonstrated to Pilate that he ought to have written Jesus of Nazareth, who pretended to be king of the Jews. But Pilate could not be prevailed with to alter it, and gave them this peremptory answer, That what he had written he had written.

Towards evening, he was applied to for leave to take down the bodies from the cross, that they might not continue there the following day, which was the passover and the sabbath-day (John xix. 31.). This he allowed, and granted the body of Jesus to Joseph of Arimathea, that he might pay his last duties to it, (ib. 33.). Lastly, when the priests, who had solicited the death of our Saviour, came to desire him to set a watch about the sepulchre, for fear his disciples should steal him away by night, he answered them, that they had a guard, and might place them there themselves (Matt. xxvii. 65.). This is the substance of what the gospel tells us concerning Pilate.

Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Eusebius, and after them several others both ancient and modern, assure us, that it was formerly the custom for Roman magistrates to prepare copies of all verbal processes and judicial acts which they passed in their several provinces, and to send them to the emperor. And Pilate, in compliance to this custom, having sent word to Tiberius of what had passed relating to Jesus Christ, the emperor wrote an account of it to the senate, in a manner that gave reason to judge that he thought favourably of the religion of Jesus Christ, and showed that he should be willing they would decree divine honours to him. But the senate was not of the same opinion, and so the matter was dropped. It appears by what Justin says of these acts, that the miracles of Jesus Christ were mentioned there, and even that the soldiers had divided his garments among them. Eusebius intimates that they spoke of his resurrection and ascension. Tertullian and Justin refer to these acts with so much confidence as would make one believe they had them in their hands. However, neither Eusebius nor St Jerome, who were both inquisitive, understanding persons, nor any other author that wrote afterwards, seem to have seen them, at least not the true and original acts; for as to what we have now in great number, they are not authentic, being neither ancient nor uniform. There are also some pretended letters of Pilate to Tiberius, giving a history of our Saviour, but they are universally allowed to be spurious.

Pilate being a man that, by his excessive cruelties and rapine, had disturbed the peace of Judea during the whole time of his government, was at length deposed by Vitellius the proconsul of Syria, in the 36th year of Jesus Christ, and sent to Rome to give an account of his conduct to the emperor. But though Tiberius died before Pilate arrived at Rome, yet his successor Caligula banished him to Vienne in Gaul, where he was reduced to such extremity that he killed himself with his own hands. The evangelists call him governor, though in reality he was no more than procurator of Judea, not only because governor was a name of general use, but because Pilate in effect acted as one, by taking upon him to judge in criminal matters; as his predecessors had done, and other procurators in the small provinces of the empire where there was no proconsul, constantly did. See Calmet’s Dictionary, Eckhardt’s Ecclesiastical Dictionary, and Beaufort’s Annot.

With regard to Pilate’s wife, the general tradition is, that she was named Claudia Procula or Procula; and in relation to her dream, some are of opinion that as she had intelligence of our Lord’s apprehension, and knew by his character that he was a righteous person, her imagination, being struck with these ideas, did naturally produce the dream we read of; but others think that this dream was sent providentially upon her, for the clearer manifestation of our Lord’s innocence.