PERSIUS, the last king of Macedonia; was conquered by Paulus AEmilius, and died captive at Rome 167 B.C.

PERSIUS, Roman satirist, born in Etruria, was a pupil and friend of Cornutus the Stoic; a man much esteemed, who died young, only 28; wrote six short satires in the purity of a white-souled manhood, of much native vigour, though not equal to those of Horace and Juvenal, and that have commanded the regard of all scholars down to the present time; they have often been translated (34-62).

PERTH (30), the county-town of Perthshire, on the Tay, 22 m.  W. of Dundee:  is a beautifully situated town, with fine buildings, the only old one being the restored St. John’s Church.  Its industries are dyeing and ink-making.  At Scone, 2 m. distant, the kings of Scotland were crowned; and the murder of James I., the Gowrie conspiracy, and the battle of Tippermuir are but a few of its many historical associations.  “The Five Articles of Perth,” adopted by a General Assembly held there in 1618, did much to precipitate the conflict between the Royal power and the Scottish Church; they enjoined kneeling at the Lord’s Supper, observance of Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, and Pentecost, confirmation, and the private administration of the sacraments.

PERTH (8), the capital of West Australia, on the Swan River.

PERTHSHIRE (122), the most beautiful and varied county in Scotland, occupies the whole of the Tay Valley and part of the Forth, and is bounded by nine other counties.  The N. and W. are mountainous, with many rivers and lakes, and much of the finest scenery in Scotland; the Trossachs and Loch Katrine are world famed.  In the E. is extensive woodland and the Carse of Gowrie, one of the most fertile of Scottish plains.  Ben Lawers is the highest mountain, Loch Tay the largest lake.  Much of the soil is good only for sheep farms, deer forests, and grouse moors; the county is visited annually by thousands of tourists and sportsmen.

PERTINAX, HELVIUS, Roman emperor in succession to Commodus; rose from the ranks by his military services to the imperial dignity, which he was pressed to accept against his will, and was assassinated by the Praetorian Guards less than three months after, in consequence of the reforms he projected in order to restore the ancient discipline of the army (126-193).

PERTURBATIONS, name given to irregularities or slight deviations in the movement of a heavenly body, due chiefly to the neighbourhood of another point in its orbit.

PERU (3,000), a country in the W. of South America, twice the size of Austro-Hungary, lies between Brazil and Bolivia and the Pacific, with Ecuador on the N. and Chile on the S.; it consists of a seaboard plain, hot and rainless, but intersected by rich river courses, in which sugar, cotton, and coffee are grown; the Andes chains, snow-tipped and presenting every kind of climate and variety of vegetation on their slopes and in their valleys, rich in minerals and yielding