is a name by which a variety of foreign fishes are distinguished. The pira oca is a little horned fish of the West Indies, called by Clusius and others the monoceros or unicorn fish. The pira acangata is the name of a Brazilian fish, which resembles the perch both in size and shape. It seldom exceeds four or five inches in length; its mouth is small; its tail forked. On the back it has only one long fin, which is supported by rigid and prickly spines. This fin it can depress at pleasure, and sink within a cavity made for it in the back. Its scales are of a silvery white colour; it is wholesome and well tasted. Pira bebe is the name of the milvus, or kite-fish. Pira coaba is an American fish of the truttaeuous kind, of a very delicate flavour. It grows to the length of 12 inches; its nose is pointed, and its mouth large, but without teeth; the upper jaw is longer than the under one, and hangs over like a cartilaginous prominence; its eyes are very large, and its tail is forked; under each of the gill fins there is a beard made of six white filaments, and covered with silvery scales. Pira jurumenbeca is a Brazilian fish otherwise called boca mole. It lives in the muddy bottom of the American seas, and is a long-bodied not flatted fish. It grows to a great size, being found nine, and sometimes even ten or eleven, feet long, and two feet and a half thick. It has one long fin on the back, the anterior part of which is thin and pellucid. There is also a cavity on the back, as in the pira acangata, into which the fin can be depressed at pleasure; the tail is not forked, and the scales are all of a silvery colour and brightness. The fish is very well tasted; the pira pixanga is another Brazilian fish of the turdus or wrasse kind, and called by some the guttersch. It is generally about four or five inches long; its mouth is pretty large, and furnished with very small and very sharp teeth; its head is small, but its eyes are large and prominent, the pupil being of a fine turquoise colour, and the iris yellow and red in a variety of shades. The coverings of the gills end in a triangular figure, and are terminated by a short spine or prickle; its scales are very small, and so evenly arranged, and closely laid on the flesh, that it is very smooth to the touch; its tail is rounded at the end; its whole body, head, tail, and fins, are of a pale yellow colour, variegated all over with very beautiful blood-coloured spots; these are round, and of the bigness of hemp-seed on the back and sides, and something larger on the belly; the fins are all spotted in the same manner, and are all marked with an edge of red. It is caught among the rocks, and about the shores, and is a very well tasted fish. Piranha is an American fish, more generally known by the name piraya. Piraruba, or ipiraruba, is the name of a fish originally Brazilian, which some writers apply to the remora or sucking fish.

PIRAEUS PORTOS, in Ancient Geography, a celebrated port to the west of Athens, consisting naturally of three harbours or basins, (Thucydides); which lay neglected, till Themistocles put the Athenians on making it a commodious port, (Nepos); the Phalerus, a small port, and not far from the city, being what they used before that time, (Pausanias, Nepos). Piraeus was originally a village of Attica, (Pausanias); an island (Strabo); and though distant 40 stadia from Athens, was joined to it by two long walls, (Thucydides), and itself locked or walled round, (Nepos:) A very commodious and safe harbour. The whole of its compass was 62 stadia, including the Munichia. Not far from the Piraeus stood the sepulchre of Themistocles; whither his friends conveyed his bones from Magnesia, into the Hither Asia, (Cicero, Plotarch, Pausanias). The entrance of the Piraeus is narrow, and formed by two rocky points, one belonging to the promontory of Eetion, the other to that of Alcinus. Within were three stations for shipping; Kantharus, so named from a hero; Aphrodissium, from a temple of Venus; and Zen, the resort of vessels laden with grain. By it was a demos or borough town of the same name before the time of Themistocles, who recommended the exchanging its triple harbour for the single one of Phalerum, both as more capacious and as better situated for navigators. The wall was begun by him when archon, in the second year of the 75th Olympiad, 477 years before Christ; and afterwards he urged the Athenians to complete it as the importance of the place deserved. This whole fortification was of hewn stone, without cement or other material, except lead and iron, which were used to hold together the exterior ranges or facings. It was so wide that loaded carts could pass on it in different directions, and it was 45 cubits high, which was about half what he had designed.

The Piraeus, as Athens flourished, became the common emporium of all Greece. Hippodamus an architect, celebrated, besides other monuments of his genius, as the inventor of many improvements in house-building, was employed to lay out the ground. Five porticoes, which uniting formed the Long Portico, were erected by the ports. Here was an agora, or market-place, and farther from the sea, another called Hippodamia. By the vessels were dwellings for the mariners. A theatre was opened, temples were raised, and the Piraeus, which surpassed the city in utility, began to equal it in dignity. The cavities and windings of Munichia, natural and artificial, were filled with houses; and the whole settlement, comprehending Phalerum and the ports of the Piraeus, with the arsenals, the storehouses, the famous armory of which Philo was the architect, and the sheds for 300, and afterwards 400, triremes, resembled the city of Rhodes, which had been planned by the same Hippodamus. The ports, on the commencement of the Peloponnesian Peloponnesian war, were secured with chains. Centinels were stationed, and the Piraeus was carefully guarded.

The Piraeus was reduced with great difficulty by Sulla, who demolished the walls, and set fire to the armoury and arsenals. In the civil war it was in a defenceless condition. Calenus, lieutenant to Caesar, seized it, invested Athens, and ravaged the territory. Strabo, who lived under the emperors Augustus and Tiberius, observes, that the many wars had destroyed the long walls, with the fortress of Munychia, and had contracted the Piraeus into a small settlement by the ports and the temple of Jupiter Saviour. This fabric was then adorned with wonderful pictures, the works of illustrious artists, and on the outside with statues. In the second century, besides houses for triremes, the temple of Jupiter and Minerva remained, with their images in brass, and a temple of Venus, a portico, and the tomb of Themistocles.

The port of the Piraeus has been named Porto Leone, from the marble lion seen in the chart, and also Porto Dracco. The lion has been described as a piece of admirable sculpture, 10 feet high, and as reposing on its hinder parts. It was pierced, and, as some have conjectured, had belonged to a fountain. Near Athens, in the way to Eleusis, was another, the posture couchant; probably its companion. Both these were removed to Venice by the famous general Morosini, and are to be seen there before the arsenal. At the mouth of the port are two ruined piers. A few vessels, mostly small craft, frequent it. Some low land at the head seems an intrenchment on the water. The buildings are a mean customhouse, with a few sheds; and by the shore on the east side, a warehouse belonging to the French, and a Greek monastery dedicated to St Spiridion. On the opposite side is a rocky ridge, on which are remnants of the ancient wall, and of a gateway towards Athens. By the water edge are vestiges of building; and going from the customhouse to the city on the right hand, traces of a small theatre in the side of the hill of Munychia.