=Peregri´nus Proteus=, a cynic philosopher, born at Parium, on the Hellespont. After a youth spent in debauchery and crimes, he turned Christian, and, to obliterate the memory of his youthful ill practices, divided his inheritance among the people. Ultimately he burned himself to death in public at the Olympic games, A.D. 165. Lucan has held up this immolation to ridicule in his _Death of Peregrinus_; and C. M. Wieland has an historic romance in German entitled _Peregrinus Proteus_ (1733-1813). =Per´es= (_Gil_), a canon, and the eldest brother of Gil Blas’ mother. Gil was a little punchy man, three feet and a half high, with his head sunk between his shoulders. He lived well, and brought up his nephew and godchild, Gil Blas. “In so doing, Perês taught himself also to read his breviary without stumbling.” He was the most illiterate canon of the whole chapter.--Lesage, _Gil Blas_, i. (1715). =Perez= (_Michael_), the “copper captain,” a brave Spanish soldier, duped into marrying Estifania, a servant of intrigue, who passed herself off as a lady of property. Being reduced to great extremities, Estifania pawned the clothes and valuables of her husband; but these “valuables” were but of little worth--a jewel which sparkled as the “light of a dark lanthorn,” a “chain of whitings’ eyes” for pearls, and as for his clothes, she tauntingly says to her husband: Put these and them [_his jewels_] on, and you’re a man of copper, A copper, copper captain. Beaumont and Fletcher, _Rule a Wife and Have a Wife_ (1640). =Peri=, (plu., =Peris=), gentle, fairy-like beings of Eastern mythology, offspring of the fallen angels, and constituting a race of beings between angels and men. They direct with a wand the pure-minded the way to heaven, and dwell in Shadu´kiam´ and Am´bre-abad, two cities subject to Eblis. Are the peries coming down from their spheres? W. Beckford, _Vathek_ (1786). =Pe´richole= (_La_), the heroine of Offenbach’s comic opera (_opera bouffe_) of that name. She was originally a street-singer of Lima, the capital of Peru, but became the mistress of the viceroy. She was not a native of Lima and offended the Creole ladies by calling them, in her bad Spanish, _pericholas_, “flaunting, bedizened creatures,” and they, in retaliation, called her “La Périchole,” _i.e._, “the flaunting one _par excellence_.” =Pericles=, the Athenian who raised himself to royal supremacy (died B.C. 429). On his death-bed he overheard his friends recalling his various merits, and told them they had forgotten his greatest praise, viz., that no Athenian through his administration had had to put on mourning, _i.e._ he had caused no one to be put to death.