PANATHENAEA, a festival, or rather two festivals, the Lesser and the Greater, anciently celebrated at Athens in honour of Athena, the patron-goddess of the city.
PANCHATANTRA, an old collection of fables and stories originally in Sanskrit, and versions of which have passed into all the languages of India, have appeared in different forms, and been associated with different names.
PANCRAS, ST., a boy martyr of 16, who suffered under the Diocletian persecution about 304, and is variously represented in mediaeval legend as bearing a stone and sword, or a palm branch, and trampling a Saracen under foot, in allusion to his hatred of heathenism.
PANDECTS, the digest of civil law executed at the instance of the Emperor Justinian between the years 530 and 533.
PANDORA (i. e. the All-Gifted) in the Greek mythology a woman of surpassing beauty, fashioned by Hephaestos, and endowed with every gift and all graces by Athena, sent by Zeus to EPIMETHEUS (q. v.) to avenge the wrong done to the gods by his brother Prometheus, bearing with her a box full of all forms of evil, which Epimetheus, though cautioned by his brother, pried into when she left, to the escape of the contents all over the earth in winged flight, Hope alone remaining behind in the casket.
PANDOURS, a name given to a body of light-infantry at one time in the Austrian service, levied among the Slavs on the Turkish frontier, and now incorporated as a division of the regular army.
PANDULF, CARDINAL, was the Pope’s legate to King John of England, and to whom, on his submission, John paid homage at Dover; d. 1226.
PANGE LINGUA, a hymn in the Roman Breviary, service of Corpus Christi, part of which is incorporated in every Eucharistic service; was written in rhymed Latin by Thomas Aquinas.
PANINI, a celebrated Sanskrit grammarian, whose work is of standard authority among Hindu scholars, and who lived some time between 600 and 300 B.C.
PANIPAT (29), a town in the Punjab, 53 m. N. of Delhi; was the scene of two decisive battles, one in 1526 to the establishment of the Mogul dynasty at Delhi, and another in 1701 to the extinction of the Mahratta supremacy in North-West India.
PANIZZI, ANTONIO, principal librarian of the British Museum from 1850 to 1866, born at Modena; took refuge in England in 1821 as implicated in a Piedmontese revolutionary movement that year; procured the favour of Lord Brougham and a post in the Museum, in which he rose to be one of the chiefs (1797-1879).
PANNONIA, a province of the Roman empire, conquered between 35 B.C. and A.D. 8; occupied a square with the Danube on the N. and E. and the Save almost on the S. border; it passed to the Eastern Empire in the 5th century, fell under Charlemagne’s sway, and was conquered by the modern Hungarians shortly before A.D. 1000.
PANOPTICON, a prison so arranged that the warder can see every prisoner in charge without being seen by them.