PIERROT [Ital. Pedrolino], the name given to the leading character in the French pantomime plays since the 18th century; transferred from the Italian stage, and revived especially in recent times. He is always in white, both face and costume, with a loose and daintily clownish garb, and is represented as of a freakish disposition. Modern pierrot plays have converted the pierrot into a romantic and pathetic figure. (See PANTOMIME.) PIETAS, in Roman mythology, the personification of the sense of duty towards God and man and towards the fatherland.
According to legend, a young woman in humble circumstances, whose father (or mother) was lying in prison under sentence of death, without food, managed to gain admittance, and fed her parent with milk from her breast. To commemorate her filial affection, a temple was dedicated (181 B.c.) by Manius Acilius Glabrio to Pietas in the Forum Holitorium at Rome, on the spot where the young woman had formerly lived. The temple was
probably originally vowed by the elder Glabrio out of gratitude for the pietas shown during the engagement by his son, who may have saved his life, as did the elder Africanus that of his father at the battle of Ticinus (Livy xxi. 46) ; the legend of the young woman (borrowed from the Greek story of Mycon and Pero, Val. Max. v. 4, ext. I) was then connected with the temple by the identification of its site with that of the prison. Pietas is shown on coins as a matron throwing incense on an altar, her attribute being a stork. Typical examples of "piety" are Aeneas, and Anto ninus Pius, who founded games at Puteoli in honour of Hadrian.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.—See Val. Max. v. 4, 7; Pliny, Nat. hist. vii. 121 ; Livy xl. 34 ; Festus, s.v. ; G. Wissowa, Religion and Kultus der Romer (1902) ; F. Kuntze, "Die Legende von der guten Tochter," in Jahr bucker fur das klassische Altertum (i904), xiii. 280.