reduced the country to the condition of a province.
Man- Antony restored Darius, the son of Pharnaces; and a Bhorl line of princes, none of whom require any
DOtice in this place, governed the country till the time
'lie- last of these, Polemo If was the lather of that Berenice who married Herod Agrippa If before
« 1 1 Paul pleaded his cause with so much eloquence.
Prom this time Pontus ceased to he an independent state, constituting a province or dependency of the Ro- man empire, tin the east ii was bounded by Colchis, on the south by Cappadocia ami part of Armenia, and on the wesi by Paphlagonia ami Galatia. Ptolemy {Geog. v, 5) and Pliny {Hist. Nat. \ i. 1 1 regard Pontus and Cappadocia as ■ province; hut Straho (Geog. \ii.
641) rightly distinguishes them, seeing that each formed a distinct government w ith its own ruler or prince. Ptol-
emy divides what may he called the true Pontus into three districts- Pontus Galaticus, Pontus Cappadocius, and Pontus I'olcmoniacus. This last was imagined to he the country of the Amazons.
The climate of Pontus i- hot in summer, but severe in winter, especially along the shores of the Euxine. The soil is fertile, hut less bo thin in the more southern parts of Asia Minor; yet it abounds with olives and cherry-trees, and the vail- nsiderable quan-
rain. I best advantages it owi - to its being watered by many small rivers, while tin- great river Halys Hows far into the interior. The inhabitants were a hardy and industrious race: deriving their ori- gin, according to tradition, from Tubal Cain. They were industrious as well a- warlike, and addicted to commerce, .and the inhabitants of Pontus Cappadocius were celebrated for their skill in the manufacture of arms, ami fur working in metal in general. They had many com enienl harbors on the Euxine, ami abundance of line timber for Bhip-building, .ami of these the] - em very early to have taken lull advantage. They retained more ol' the Eastern elements in their language and n - ligion than the inhabitants ofLydia and Pergamos, who w ere brought more entirely under the influence of Greek art. literature, and philosophy. The) spoke a dialect of the Persian, largely corrupted with Greek; and their re- ligion seems to have been a compound of Greek, Scyth- ian, and Persian. Demeter, Zeus, and Poseidon were
their chief deities: hut tins emus to u- on Greek au- thority; ami they sacrificed to the last-named deity while horse.-, by harnessing them four abreast to char- iots, and driving them into the sea, where they were drowned. The principal towns of Pontus were Ama-ia. the ancient metropolis, and the birthplace of Straho,
Themiscyra, Cerasus, and Trapezus; which last is -till an important town under the name of Trebizond. See Cellarius, Notit. ii. 287 : Mannert, vi, 350; RosenmUller, BibL (•>";/. iii. 5 9 : Encyclop. Methodigue, sect. Geog. \ncienne, -. v. Pontes; Smith. Diet. •■/ Gr. ami Rom. Geog. s. v. Pontus; Conybeare and How -on. Lift </»</ Epistles i X. V. ed.'. i. '-'17. See Asia Minor.
Fontyon, Council of {Concilium Ponligoneme),
was held iii .lime and .Inly. 876, by the Cisalpine bish- ops, the emperor Charles and the Roman legates bt ing present. The pretensions of Ansegisiis. metropolitan of Sens, w hoi ii pope .Inh n VIII, at the request of the em- peror, had nominated primate vicar apostolic in Gaul and Germany (in violation of the canons and of the rights of tin' metropolitans), were brought before the council, and so resolutely opposed by the bishops that the affair, for the time, came to nothing; i. e. the pon- titical rescript in favor of Ansegisus remained practically null and void. The archbishop of Sens, it i- true, from thai lime forward assumed the title of "Primate of ( iaul and ( lermany," hut it was a lucre nominal distinc- tion, unattended by jurisdiction or authority. The acts of the Synod of Pavia, in the beginning of the year, were confirmed by tin- Council of Pontyon. fifty-two bishops ami archbishops subscribed the acts. t..^. tin r with live abbots. See Labbe, ConciL i\. 280; Hefele, Conciliengesch. vol. i. iv. and v : Sirmond, <"„<■;/. Antiq, GalLvoL iii; Jervis, Hist. <>/'//<■ Church of I , i,
38 Bq.
Pool is the rendering in the A. A', of the following Ilch. ami Creek word-:
l. Usually i"i"2. bereiah (Sept Koqvn or coXv/t- i ~"^. berakdh (Psa. l\\\i\. G, see Id ra-
(li Mil. from ~~^. " to fall on the knee-" (see dud--. \ ii. 6,6). This word i- akin to the Arabic I'irbli. ami its Spanish form Alrberca. In the Old Te8t.il stand- for the larger reservoirs of rain or spring water: while b6r, " cistern," is used for the smaller domestic tanks,
of which e\ .ry house had one or more. Some arc -up- plied by springs, and some are merely receptacle- for rain-water (Burckhardt, Syria, p. B14). It is thus ap-
POOL
399
POOL
plied to the large public reservoirs, corresponding to the tanks of India, belonging to the towns of Gibeon (2 Sam. ii, 13), Hebron (iv, 12), Samaria ( 1 Kings xxii. 38), and Jerusalem; ''the upper pool," 2 Kings xviii, 17 ; Isa. vii, 3 ; xxxiv, 2 (now the " Birket el-Mamilla") : " the lower pool," Isa. xxii, 9, 11 (" Birket es-Sultan") ; " Hezekiah's pool," 2 Kings xx, 20 (" Birket el-Ham- mam"); "the king's pool," Net), ii, 14 ("the fountain of the Virgin") ; " the pool of Siloah," Neh. iii, 15 (" Bir- ket Silwan"); and "the old pool." Isa. xxii, 11. We read also (Eccl. ii, 6) of the "pools" or cisterns made by Solomon to irrigate his gardens. The importance of these reservoirs in a country possessing scarcely more than one perennial stream, and where wells are few and inconsiderable, can hardly be estimated by those accustomed to an unfailing abundance of the precious fluid. In Jer. xiv, 3 we have a powerful description of the disappointment caused by the failure of the wa- ter in the cisterns (n^5 ; A. V. " pits;" comp. Isa. xlii 15; Jer. ii, 13). In modern Palestine they are often very filthy, although in constant use (Thomson, Land and. Boole, h 316). See Water.