POLYGNOTUS, an early Greek painter, born in Thasos, and settled in Athens 463 B.C.; is considered the founder of historical painting, and is praised especially by Aristotle, who pays a high tribute to him; was the first to attempt portrait-painting and exhibit character by his art.

POLYHYMNIA, one of the nine MUSES (q. v.); she is represented as in a pensive mood, with her forefinger on her mouth; she was the inventress of the lyre and the mother of Orpheus.

POLYNESIA is the collective name of all the islands of the Pacific of coral or volcanic origin.  These South Sea islands are scattered, isolated, or more usually in groups over a stretch of ocean 7000 m. from N. to S. and 6000 from E. to W.; with the exception of the two chief members of the New Zealand archipelago they are mostly small, and exhibit wonderful uniformity of climate; the temperature is moderate, and where there are any hills to intercept the moisture-laden trade-winds the rainfall is high; they are extremely rich in flora; characteristic of their vegetation are palms, bread fruit trees, and edible roots like yams and sweet potatoes, forests of tree-ferns, myrtles, and ebony, with endless varieties of beautiful flowering plants; their fauna is wonderfully poor, varieties of rats and bats, a few snakes, frogs, spiders, and centipedes, with the crocodile, being the chief indigenous animals; the three divisions of Polynesia are Micronesia, comprising five small archipelagoes in the NW., N. of the equator, of which the chief are the Mariana and Caroline groups; Melanesia, comprising eleven archipelagoes in the W., S. of the equator, of which the largest are the Solomon, Bismarck, Fiji, New Caledonia, and New Hebrides groups; and Eastern Polynesia, E. of these on both sides of the equator, including New Zealand, Hawaii, and Samoa, ten other archipelagoes, and numerous sporadic islands; the first of these divisions is occupied by a mixed population embracing many distinct elements, the second by the black, low-type Melanesians, the third by the light brown, tall Polynesians; traces of extinct civilisation are found in Easter Island and the Carolines; most of the islands are now in the possession of European powers, and are more or less Christianised; New Zealand is one of the most enterprising and flourishing colonies of Great Britain; everywhere the native races are dying out before the immigration of Europeans.

POLYPHEMUS, in Homeric legend a son of Neptune, the most celebrated of the Cyclops, a huge monster with one eye, who dwelt in Sicily in a cave near AEtna, and whose eye, after making him drunk, Ulysses burnt out, lest he should circumvent him and devour him, as he had done some of his companions.

POLYTECHNIC SCHOOL, an institution for teaching the practical arts and the related sciences, especially such as depend on mathematics.

POLYTHEISM, a belief in a plurality of gods each with a sphere of his own, and each in general a personification of some elemental power concerned in the government of the world.