PISANO, NICOLA, Italian sculptor and architect of Pisa; his most famous works are the pulpit in the Baptistery at Pisa, and that for the Duomo at Siena, the last being the fountain in the piazza of Perugia (1206-1278).

PISGAH, a mountain range E. of the Lower Jordan, one of the summits of which is Mount Nebo, from which Moses beheld the Promised Land, and where he died and was buried.

PISHIN (60), a district of South Afghanistan, N. of Quetta, occupied by the British since 1878 as strategically of importance.

PISIDIA, a division of ancient Asia Minor, N. of Pamphilia, and traversed by the Taurus chain.

PISISTRATUS, tyrant of Athens, was the friend of Solon and a relative; an able but an ambitious man; being in favour with the citizens presented himself one day in the Agora, and displaying some wounds he had received in their defence, persuaded them to give him a bodyguard of 50 men, which grew into a larger force, by means of which in 560 B.C. he took possession of the citadel and seized the sovereign power, from which he was shortly after driven forth; after six years he was brought back, but compelled to retire a second time; after 10 years he returned and made good his ascendency, reigning thereafter peacefully for 14 years, and leaving his power in the hands of his sons Hippias and Hipparchus; he was a good and wise ruler, and encouraged the liberal arts, and it is to him we owe the first written collection or complete edition of the poems of Homer (600-527 B.C.).

PISTOIA (20), a town of N. Italy, at the foot of the Apennines, 21 m.  NW. of Florence, with palaces and churches rich in works of art; manufactures iron and steel wares.

PISTOL, ANCIENT, a swaggering bully and follower of Falstaff in the “Merry Wives of Windsor.”

PISTOLE, an obsolete gold coin of Europe, originally of Spain, worth some 16s. 2d.

PIT`AKA` (lit. a basket), the name given to the sacred books of the Buddhists, and constituting collectively the Buddhistic code.  See TRIPITAKA.

PITAVAL, a French advocate, compiler of a famous collection of causes celebres (1673-1743).

PITCAIRN ISLAND, a small volcanic island 21/2 m. long and 1 broad, solitary, in the Pacific, 5000 m.  E. of Brisbane, where, in 1790, nine men of H.M.S. Bounty who had mutinied landed with six Tahitians and a dozen Tahitian women; from these have sprung an interesting community of islanders, virtuous, upright, and contented, of Christian faith, who, having sent a colony to Norfolk Island, numbered in 1890 still 128.

PITCAIRNE, ARCHIBALD, Scottish physician and satirist, born at Edinburgh; studied theology and law, and afterwards at Paris, medicine; he practised in Edinburgh, and became professor at Leyden; returning, he acquired great fame in his native city; in medicine he published a treatise on Harvey’s discovery of the circulation of the blood; being an Episcopalian and Jacobite, he wrote severe satires on all things Presbyterian, e. g.  “Babel, or the Assembly, a Poem,” 1692 (1652-1713).