Peace Societies. See War.
Peacliani, Hexuv, an English writer who in early life was intending to enter the ministry, but finally be- came a travelling teacher, is supposed to have been tu- tor in the earl of Arundel's family. He was reduced to poverty in his old age, and wrote for bread. He pub- lished in earh' life a Sermon upon the last Three I>;-.«r.? of the First Chapter of' Job (Loud. 1590, 16mo). But he is principally known to readers of polite literature. Among his publications are some complimentary poems, The Gentlemau^s Exercise, intended as a treatise on art ; Minerva Britannica, a collection of emblems in verse, illustrated with plates; and The Complete Gentleman. This latter work is the one for which he was most cele- brated, and it has been frequently reprinted. He died about 1640. See Chambers, Cyclop, of Enyl. Literature ; AUibone, Diet, of Brit, and Amer. Aiith.
Peacock. It is a question, perhaps, more of geo- graphical and historical than of Biblical interest to de- cide whether Q'^'^SFl (tnkkiyim ; Sept. roioi'fc; Vulg. pari, 1 Kings x, 22, also written D'^^I^O, 2 Chron. ix, 21) denotes peacocks strictly so called, or some other species of animal or bird; for on the solution of the question in the aflirmative depends the real direction of Solomon's fleet; that is, whether, after passing the Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb, it proceeded along the east coast of Africa towards Sofala, or whether it turned eastward, ranging along the Arabian and Persian shores to the peninsula of India, and perhaps went onwards to Ceylon, and penetrated to the great Australian, or even to the Spice Islands. Bochart, unable to discover a Hebrew root in tukyim, rather arbitrarily proposes a transposition of letters by which he converts the word into Cuthyim, denoting, as he supposes, the country of the Cuthei, which, in an extended sense, is applied, in conformity with various writers of antiquity, to Media and Persia; and Greek authorities show that peacocks abounded in Babylonia, etc. (See vElian, A nim. xiii, 18; Curtius, ix, 1^ 13; Diod. Sic. ii, 53. Peacocks are called "Persian birds" by Aristophanes, Aves, 484; see also Acharn. 63.) This mode of proceeding to deter- mine the species and the native country of the bird is altogether inadmissible, since Greek writers speak of Persian peacocks at a much later period than the age of Solomon; and it is well known that they were suc- cessively carried westward till they passed from the Greek islands into Europe, and that, as Juno's birds,
PEACOCK
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PEACOCK
the Komans grailually spread them to Gaul and Spain, where, however, they were not common until after the 10th century. They do not occur on tlie Assyrian or Egyptian monuments. But even if peacocks had been numerous in Media and Northern Persia at the time in question, how were they to be furnished to a fleet which was navigating the Indian Ocean, many degrees to the south of the colder region of High Asia? and as for the land of the Cuthei, or of Cush, when it serves their pur- pose writers remove it to Africa along with the migra- tions of the Cushites. The tukki/im have been pre- sumed to derive their appellation from an exotic word implying "tufted" or "crested," which, though true of the peacock, is not so obvious a character as that afford- ed by its splendid tail; and therefore a crested parrot has been supposed to be meant : so Huet {Diss, de Nuv. Sal. 7, § 6) and one or two others. Parrots, though many species are indigenous in Africa, do not appear to have existed in ancient Egypt ; they were unknown till the time of Alexander, and then both Greeks and Ro- mans were acquainted only with species from Ceylon, destitute of crests, such as Psittacus Alexandri (see Antiphanes in A then, xiv, 654; Horace, Sat. ii, 2, 23; and esp. Bochart, IJiei-oz. ii, 709 sq.) ; and the Romans for a long time received these only by way of Alex- andria, though in the time of Pliny others became known. Keil {Diss, de Ophir, p. 104, and Comment, on 1 Kings X, 22), with a view to support his theory that Tarshish is the old Phoenician Tartessus in Spain, de- rives the Hebrew name from Tucca, a town of Mau- retania and Numidia, and concludes that the A ves Ait- midicte (Guinea-fowls) are meant: which birds, how- ever, in spite of their name, never existed in Numidia, nor within a thousand miles of that country. Again, the pheasant has been proposed as the bird intended; but Phas. Colchiciis, the only species known in antiqui- ty, is likewise without a prominent crest, and is a bird of the colder regions of the central range of Asiatic mountains. Following a line of latitude, it gradually reached westward to High Armenia and Colchis, whence it was first brought to Europe by Greek merchants, who frequented the early emporium on the Phasis. The centre of existence of the genus, rich in splendid species, is in the woody region beneath the snowy peaks of the Himalayas, reaching also eastward to Northern China, where the common pheasant is abundant, but not, we believe, anywhere naturally in a low latitude. (Other interpretations are supported in Hase's Biblioth. Brem. ii, 468 sq. ; Ugolino, Tkesaur. vii.)
All versions and comments agree that after the Cehi, or apes (probably Cercopithecus Entellus, one of the sa- cred species of India), some kind of remarkable bird is meant; and none are more obviously entitled to the application of the name than the peacock, since it is abundant in the jungles of India, and would be met with, both wild and domesticated, by navigators to the coasts from Gamboge to Ceylon, and would better than any of the others bear a long sea voyage in the crowd- ed ships of antiquity. Moreover, wc find it still denom- inated togei in the Malabaric dialects of the country, which may be the source of thuki, as well as of the Arabic tawas and Armenian tans. Gesenius {The- saur. p. 1502) cites many authorities to prove that the tucci is to be traced to the Tamul or Malabaric toffei, "peacock;" which opinion has recently been confirmed by Sir E.Tenncnt (Ceylon, ii, 102. and'i, p. xx, 3d ed.), •who says, " It is very remarkable that the terms by which these articles (ivory, apes, and peacocks) are designated in the Hebrew S(ri[ituros are identical with the Tamil names, by which some of them are called in Ceylon to the present day — tukeyim may be recognised in tokn, the modern name for these birds." Thus Keil's objection " that this supposed tor/e'i is not yet itself suf- ficiently ascertained" {Comment, on 1 Kings x, 22) is satisfactorily met. With regard to the objection that the long occllated feathers of the rum;), and not those of the tail, as is commonly believed, are the most con-