a river of ancient Italy. (See Po.)

PEAN (παιάν, παιάνιον, and παιάνιον), a hymn or song originally sung in honour of Apollo, and deriving its name, as is generally supposed, from Pan, the god of healing, who, although alluded to in Homer as a distinct deity, was in all probability identical with Apollo. At all events, the name and office of healing after Homer's time were transferred to Apollo; he was invoked by the cry τεκτήν Ηαύτιν (Esch., Ag. 146; Soph. Oed. Tyr. 154); and in the choral chants sung to his honour the burden was ὑπὸ Ἁυτίν (Athenaeus, xv., p. 696, &c.). The pean was invariably a loud and joyous song expressive of hope and confidence. It was sung after any great deliverance, as a plague (II. i. 473), or a battle (II. xxii. 391). The Greek troops occasionally sang it as a war-song previous to an engagement (Xen., Anab. i. 8, § 17), which, if we may trust the statement of the scholiast on Thucydides, i. 50, was sacred to Ares or Mars; while that engaged in after the victory was addressed to Apollo. Other gods, and even mortals, had peans occasionally sung to their honour. Thus the Macedonians sang a pean to Poseidon (Xen., Hell. iv. 7, § 4), and the Greek army to Zeus (Xen., Anab. iii. 2, § 9). Aratus sang peans to the Macedonian Antigonus (Plat. Cleom. 16); a similar practice was employed at Delphi in honour of the Macedonian Craterus; and the Rhodians chanted the triumphant song to the praise of Ptolemaeus I. of Egypt (Athen. xv., p. 696). (See Müller's Dorians, and Hist. of Greek Literature.)

PEDO-BAPTISTS (from παιδός, a child, and βαπτίζω, I baptize), those who maintain that baptism should be administered during infancy. (See Baptism, and Baptists.)

PASTUM, or Posidonia, an ancient city of Lucania, was situated near the shore of the Pastanus Sinus (Gulf of Salerno), about 5 miles S.E. from the mouth of the Silarus (Sele). The facts of its primitive history are very few. A colony of Greeks from Sybaris were probably its founders; it was originally called Posidonia ("the city of Poseidon or Neptune"); the magnificent remains of Grecian architecture that are still seen on its site indicate that it rose under its first inhabitants to opulence and splendour; and we infer that it passed, along with the neighbouring colonies, into the power of the Lucanians, and afterwards into that of the Romans. Not much greater is the historical importance of Pastum during the period which followed its subjugation to Rome. During the second Punic war it had become one of the Coloniae Latinae; in the time of Strabo the stagnation of a rivulet that flowed past the walls had rendered the inhabitants unhealthy; during the period between the fifth and tenth centuries the town is noticed by ecclesiastical historians as the seat of a bishopric; and immediately afterwards it fell into ruin and desolation under the devastations of the Saracens. It was not until the eighteenth century that Pastum attained its chief celebrity on account of its splendid architectural remains. These stand on a level uninhabited plain by the sea-shore, and are described by the mariner from afar as he sails across the Gulf of Salerno. The principal structures are two hexastyle peripteral buildings, which, with the exception of the temple of Cerinus, are considered to be the most severe and massive specimens of Doric architecture now extant. The finer and older of the two, which is known by the name of the temple of Neptune, is hypaethral or open to the sky, and occupies a space of 180 feet long by 80 wide. The other, differently called the temple of Vesta and of Ceres, is 108 feet in length by 48 in breadth. There is also another edifice which is supposed to have been a basilica. The remaining vestiges of the city consist of the ruins of an amphitheatre, many private houses, the walls and the gates, interspersed occasionally with the famous Paestan roses, which were celebrated by Ovid, Virgil, and other Latin poets, and which still, in their wild state, flower twice a year, and shed a surpassing fragrance. (Swinburne's Travels into the Two Sicilies in 1777-78-79-80, in 2 vols. 4to, London, 1783-85; and Wilkins' Magna Graecia, fol., Cambridge, 1807.)