Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Map" to "Mars" (part 2)

The life of Marat now becomes part of the history of the French Revolution. From the beginning to the end he stood alone. He was never attached to any party; the tone of his mind was to suspect whoever was in power. About his paper, the incarnation of himself, the first thing to be said is that the man always meant what he said; no poverty, no misery or persecution, could keep him quiet; he was perpetually crying, “Nous sommes trahis.” Whoever suspected any one had only to denounce him to the Ami du peuple, and the denounced was never let alone till he was proved innocent or guilty. Marat began by attacking the most powerful bodies in Paris—the Constituent Assembly, the ministers, the corps municipal, and the court of the Châtelet. Denounced and arrested, he was imprisoned from the 8th of October to the 5th of November 1789. A second time, owing to his violent campaign against Lafayette, he narrowly escaped arrest and had to flee to London (Jan. 1790). There he wrote his Dénonciation contre Necker, and in May dared to return to Paris and continue the Ami du peuple. He was embittered by persecution, and continued his vehement attacks against all in power, and at last, after the day of the Champs du Mars (July 17, 1790), against the king himself. All this time he was in hiding in cellars and sewers, where he was attacked by a horrible skin disease, tended only by the woman Simonne Evrard, who remained true to him. The end of the Constituent Assembly he heard of with joy and with bright hopes for the future, soon dashed by the behaviour of the Legislative Assembly. When almost despairing, in December 1791, he fled once more to London, where he wrote his Ecole du citoyen. In April 1792, summoned again by the Cordeliers’ Club, he returned to Paris, and published No. 627 of the Ami. The war was now the question, and Marat saw clearly that it was to serve the purposes of the Royalists and the Girondins, who thought of themselves alone. Again denounced, Marat had to remain in hiding until the 10th of August. The early days of the war being unsuccessful, the proclamation of the duke of Brunswick excited all hearts; who could go to save France on the frontiers and leave Paris in the hands of his enemies? Marat, like Danton, foresaw the massacres of September. After the events of the 10th of August he took his seat at the commune, and demanded a tribunal to try the Royalists in prison. No tribunal was formed, and the massacres in the prisons were the inevitable result. In the elections to the Convention, Marat was elected seventh out of the twenty-four deputies for Paris, and for the first time took his seat in an assembly of the nation. At the declaration of the republic, he closed his Ami du peuple, and commenced, on the 25th, a new paper, the Journal de la république française, which was to contain his sentiments as its predecessor had done, and to be always on the watch. In the Assembly Marat had no party; he would always suspect and oppose the powerful, refuse power for himself. After the battle of Valmy, Dumouriez was the greatest man in France; he could almost have restored the monarchy; yet Marat did not fear to denounce him in placards as a traitor.

His unpopularity in the Assembly was extreme, yet he insisted on speaking on the question of the king’s trial, declared it unfair to accuse Louis for anything anterior to his acceptance of the constitution, and though implacable towards the king, as the one man who must die for the people’s good, he would not allow Malesherbes, the king’s counsel, to be attacked in his paper, and speaks of him as a “sage et respectable vieillard.” The king dead, the months from January to May 1793 were spent in an unrelenting struggle between Marat and the Girondins. Marat despised the ruling party because they had suffered nothing for the republic, because they talked too much of their feelings and their antique virtue, because they had for their own virtues plunged the country into war; while the Girondins hated Marat as representative of that rough red republicanism which would not yield itself to a Roman republic, with themselves for tribunes, orators and generals. The Girondins conquered at first in the Convention, and ordered that Marat should be tried before the Revolutionary Tribunal. But their victory ruined them, for on the 24th of April Marat was acquitted, and returned to the Convention with the people at his back. The fall of the Girondins on the 31st of May was a triumph for Marat. But it was his last. The skin disease he had contracted in the subterranean haunts was rapidly closing his life; he could only ease his pain by sitting in a warm bath, where he wrote his journal, and accused the Girondins, who were trying to raise France against Paris. Sitting thus on the 13th of July he heard in the evening a young woman begging to be admitted to see him, saying that she brought news from Caen, where the escaped Girondins were trying to rouse Normandy. He ordered her to be admitted, asked her the names of the deputies then at Caen, and, after writing their names, said, “They shall be soon guillotined,” when the young girl, whose name was Charlotte Corday (q.v.), stabbed him to the heart.

His death caused a great commotion at Paris. The Convention attended his funeral, and placed his bust in the hall where it held its sessions. Louis David painted “Marat Assassinated,” and a veritable cult was rendered to the Friend of the People, whose ashes were transferred to the Panthéon with great pomp on the 21st of September 1794—to be cast out again in virtue of the decree of the 8th of February 1795.

Marat’s name was long an object of execration on account of his insistence on the death penalty. He stands in history as a bloodthirsty monster, yet in judging him one must remember the persecutions he endured and the terrible disease from which he suffered.

Besides the works mentioned above, Marat wrote: Recherches physiques sur l’électricité, &c. (1782); Recherches sur l’électricité médicale (1783); Notions élémentaires d’optique (1764); Lettres de l’observateur Bon Sens à M. de M. ... sur la fatale catastrophe des infortunés Pilatre de Rozier et Romain, les aéronautes et l’aérostation (1785); Observations de M. l’amateur Avec à M. l’abbé Sans ... &c., (1785); Éloge de Montesquieu (1785), published 1883 by M. de Bresetz; Les Charlatans modernes, ou lettres sur le charlatanisme académique (1791); Les Aventures du comte Potowski (published in 1847 by Paul Lacroix, the “bibliophile Jacob”); Lettres polonaises (unpublished). Marat’s works were published by A. Vermorel, Œuvres de J. P. Marat, l’ami du peuple, recueillies et annotées (1869). Two of his tracts, (1) On Gleets, (2) A Disease of the Eyes, were reprinted, ed. J. B. Bailey, in 1891.

See A. Vermorel, Jean Paul Marat (1880); François Chévremont, Marat: esprit politique, accomp. de sa vie (2 vols., 1880); Auguste Cabanès, Marat inconnu (1891); A. Bougeait, Marat, l’ami du peuple (2 vols., 1865); M. Tourneux, Bibliographie de l’histoire de Paris pendant la révolution française (vol. ii., 1894; vol. iv., 1906), and E. B. Bax, J. P. Marat (1900). The Correspondance de Marat has been edited with notes by C. Villay (1908).

(R. A.*)

MARATHI (properly Marāthī), the name of an important Indo-Aryan language spoken in western and central India. In 1901 the number of speakers was 18,237,899, or about the same as the population of Spain. Marathi occupies an irregular triangular area of approximately 100,000 sq.m., having its apex about the district of Balaghat in the Central Provinces, and for its base the western coast of the peninsula from Daman on the Gulf of Cambay in the north to Karwar on the open Arabian Sea in the south. It covers parts of two provinces of British India—Bombay and the Central Provinces (including Berar)—with numerous settlers in Central India and Madras, and is also the principal language of Portuguese India and of the north-western portion of His Highness the Nizam’s dominions. The standard form of speech is that of Poona in Bombay, and, in its various dialects it covers the larger part of that province, in which it is the vernacular of more than eight and a half millions of people.

As explained in the article Indo-Aryan Languages, there were in ancient times two main groups of these forms of speech—one, the language of the Midland, spoken in the country near the Gangetic Doab, and the other, the languages of the so-called “Outer Band,” containing the Midland on three sides, west, east and south. The country to the south of the Midland, in which members of this Outer group of languages were formerly spoken, included the modern Rajputana and Gujarat, and extended to the basin of the river Nerbudda, being bounded on the south by the Vindhya hills. In the course of time the population of the Midland expanded, and gradually occupied this tract, reaching the sea in Gujarat. The language of the Outer Band was thus forced farther afield. Its speakers crossed the Vindhyas and settled in the central plateau of the Deccan and on the Konkan coast. Here they came into contact with speakers of the Dravidian languages of southern India. As happened elsewhere in India, they retained their own Aryan tongue, and gradually through the influence of their superior civilization imposed it upon the aborigines, so that all the inhabitants of this tract became the ancestors of the speakers of modern Marathi.

In Rajputana and Gujarat the language (see Gujarat) is to a certain extent mixed. Near the original Midland there are few traces of the Outer language, but as we go farther and farther away from that centre we find, as might be expected, the influence of the Midland language becoming weaker and weaker, and traces of the Outer language becoming more and more evident, until in Gujarati we recognize several important survivals of the old language once spoken by the earlier Aryan inhabitants.

Dialects.—Besides the standard form of speech, there is only one real dialect of Marathi, viz. Konkani (Kōnkaṇī), spoken in the country near Goa. There are also several local varieties, and we may conveniently distinguish between the Marathi of the Deccan, that of the Central Provinces (including Berar), and that of the northern and central Konkan. In the southern part of the district of Ratnagiri this latter Konkani variety of Marathi gradually merges into the true Konkani dialect through a number of intermediate forms of speech. There are also several broken jargones, based upon Marathi, employed by aboriginal tribes surviving in the hill country.

Relations with other Indo-Aryan Languages.—Marathi has to its north, in order from west to east, Gujarati, Rajasthani, Western Hindi and Eastern Hindi. To its east and south it has the Dravidian languages, Gondi, Telugu and Kanarese. Elsewhere in India Aryan languages gradually fade away into each other, so that it is impossible to fix any definite boundary line between them. But this is not the case with Marathi. It does not merge into any of the cognate neighbouring forms of speech, but possesses a distinct linguistic frontier. A native writer says: “The Gujarati language agrees very closely with the languages of the countries lying to the north of it, because the Gujarati people came from the north. If a native of Delhi, Ajmere, Marwar, Mewar, Jaipur, &c., comes into Gujarat, the Gujarati people find no difficulty in understanding his language. But it is very wonderful that when people from countries bordering Gujarat on the south, as the Konkan, Maharashtra, &c. (i.e. people speaking Marathi) come to Gujarat, the Gujarati people do not in the least comprehend what they say.” This isolated character of Marathi is partly due to the barrier of the Vindhya range which lies to its north, and partly to the fact that none of the northern languages belongs now to the Outer Band, but are in more or less close relationship to the language of the Midland. There was no common ground either physical or linguistic, upon which the colliding forms of speech could meet on equal terms. Eastern Hindi is more closely related to Marathi than the others, and in its case, in its bordering dialects, we do find a few traces of the influence of Marathi—traces which are part of the essence of the language, and not mere borrowed waifs floating on the top of a sea of alien speech and not absorbed by it.

Written Character.—Marathi books are generally printed in the well-known Nagari character (see Sanskrit), and this is also used to a great extent in private transactions and correspondence. In the Maratha country it is known as the Bālbōdh (“teachable to children,” i.e. “easy”) character. A cursive form of Nagari called Mōḍī, or “twisted,” is also employed as a handwriting. It is said to have been invented in the 17th century by Balaji Avaji, the secretary of the celebrated Sivaji. Its chief merit is that each word can be written as a whole without lifting the pen from the paper, a feat which is impossible in the case of Nagari.

Origin of the Language.—The word “Marāṭhī” signifies (the language) of the Maratha country. It is the modern form of the Sanskrit Māhārāṣṭrī, just as “Marāṭhā” represents the old Māhā-rāṣṭra, or Great Kingdom. Māhārāṣṭrī was the name given by Sanskrit writers to the particular form of Prakrit spoken in Māhārāṣṭra, the great Aryan kingdom extending southwards from the Vindhya range to the Kistna, broadly corresponding to the southern part of the Bombay Presidency and to the state of Hyderabad. As pointed out in the article Prakrit this Māhārāṣṭrī early obtained literary pre-eminence in India, and became the form of Prakrit employed as the language not only of lyric poetry but also of the formal epic (kāvya). Dramatic works were composed in it, and it was the vehicle of the non-canonical scriptures of the Jaina religion. The oldest work in the language of which we have any knowledge is the Sattasaī, or Seven Centuries of verses, compiled at Pratiṣṭhāna, on the Gōdāvarī, the capital of King Hāla, at some time between the 3rd and 7th centuries A.D. Pratiṣṭhāna is the modern Paithan in the Aurangabad district of Hyderabad, and that city was for long famous as a centre of literary composition. In later times the political centre of gravity was changed to Poona, the language of which district is now accepted as the standard of the best Marathi.

General Character of the Language.—In the following account of the main features of Marathi, the reader is presumed to be familiar with the leading facts stated in the articles Indo-Aryan Languages and Prakrit. In the Prakrit stage of the Indo-Aryan languages we can divide the Prakrits into two well-defined groups, an Inner, Śaurasēnī and its connected dialects on the one hand, and an Outer, Māhārāṣṭrī, Ardhamāgadhī, and Māgadhī with their connected dialects on the other. These two groups differed in their phonetic laws, in their systems of declension and conjugation, in vocabulary, and in general character. In regard to the last point reference may be made to the frequent use of meaningless suffixes, such as -alla, -illa, -ulla, &c., which can be added, almost ad libitum to any noun, adjective or particle in Māhārāṣṭrī and Ardhamāgadhī, but which are hardly ever met in Śaurasēnī. These give rise to numerous secondary forms of words, used, it might be said, in a spirit of playfulness, which give a distinct flavour to the whole language. Similarly the late Mr Beames (Comparative Grammar, i. 103) well describes Marathi as possessing “a very decided individuality, a type quite its own, arising from its comparative isolation for so many centuries.” Elsewhere (p. 38) he uses language which would easily well apply to Māhārāṣṭrī Prakrit when he says, “Marathi is one of those languages which we may call playful—it delights in all sorts of jingling formations, and has struck out a larger quantity of secondary and tertiary words, diminutives, and the like, than any of the cognate tongues,” and again (p. 52):—

“In Marathi we see the results of the Pandit’s file applied to a form of speech originally possessed of much natural wildness and licence. The hedgerows have been pruned and the wild briars and roses trained into order. It is a copious and beautiful language, second only to Hindi. It has three genders, and the same elaborate preparation of the base as Sindhi, and, owing to the great corruption which has taken place in its terminations, the difficulty of determining the gender of nouns is as great in Marathi as in German. In fact, if we were to institute a parallel in this respect, we might appropriately describe Hindi as the English, Marathi as the German of the Indian group—Hindi having cast aside whatever could possibly be dispensed with, Marathi having retained whatever has been spared by the action of time. To an Englishman Hindi commends itself by its absence of form, and the positional structure of its sentences resulting therefrom; to our High-German cousins the Marathi, with its fuller array of genders, terminations, and inflexions, would probably seem the completer and finer language.”

In the article Prakrit it is explained that the literary Prakrits were not the direct parents of the modern Indo-Aryan vernaculars. Each Prakrit had first to pass through an intermediate stage—that of the Apabhramśa—before it took the form current at the present day. While we know a good deal about Māhārāṣṭrī and very little about Śaurasēnī Prakrit, the case is reversed in regard to their respective Apabhramśas. The Śaurasēnā Apabhramśa is the only one concerning which we have definite information. Although it would be quite possible to reason from analogy, and thus to obtain what would be the corresponding forms of Māhārāṣṭra Apabhramśa, we should often be travelling upon insecure ground, and it is therefore advisable to compare Marathi, not with the Apabhramśa from which it is immediately derived, but with its grandmother, Māhārāṣṭrī Prakrit. We shall adopt this course, so far as possible, in the following pages.

Vocabulary.—In the article Indo-Aryan Languages it is explained that, allowing for phonetic development, the vocabulary of Śaurasēnī Prakrit was the same as that of Sanskrit, but that the farther we go from the Midland, the more examples we meet of a new class of words, the so-called dēśyas, descendants of the old Primary Prakrits spoken outside the Midland, and strange to Sanskrit. Māhārāṣṭrī Prakrit, the most independent of the Outer languages, was distinguished by the large proportion of these dēśyas found in its vocabulary, and the same is consequently the case in Marathi. The Brahmins of the Maratha country have always had a great reputation for learning, and their efforts to create a literary language out of their vernacular took, as in other parts of India, the direction of borrowing tatsamas from Sanskrit, to lend what they considered to be dignity to their sentences. But the richness of the language in dēśya words has often rendered such borrowing unnecessary, and has saved Marathi, although the proportion of tatsamas to tadbhavas in the language is more than sufficiently high, from the fate of the Pandit-ridden literary Bengali, in which 80 to 90% of the vocabulary is pure Sanskrit. There is indeed a tradition of stylistic chastity in the Maratha country from the earliest times, and even Sanskrit writers contrasted the simple elegance of the Deccan (or Vaidarbhī) style with the flowery complexity of eastern India.

The proportion of Persian and, through Persian, of Arabic words in the Marathi vocabulary is comparatively low, when compared with, say, Hindostani. The reason is, firstly, the predominance in the literary world of these learned Brahmins, and, secondly, the fact that the Maratha country was not conquered by the Mussulmans till a fairly late period, nor was it so thoroughly occupied by them as were Sind, the Punjab, and the Gangetic valley.

Phonetics.—In the standard dialect the vowels are the same as in Sanskrit, but ṛ and ḷ only appear in words borrowed directly from that language (tatsamas). Final short vowels (a, i and u) have all disappeared in prose pronunciation, except in a few local dialects, and final i and u are not even written. On the other hand, in the Nagari character, the non-pronunciation of a final a is not indicated. After an accented syllable a medial a is pronounced very lightly, even when the accent is not the main accent of the word. Thus, if we indicate the main accent by ’, and subsidiary accents (equivalent to the Hebrew methegh) by `, then the word kárawat, a saw, is pronounced kárawat; and kàḷakáḷaṇễ, to be agitated, is pronounced kàḷakáḷaṇễ. In Konkani the vowel a assumes the sound of o in “hot,” a sound which is also heard in the language of Bengal. In dialectic speech ē is often interchangeable with short or long a, so that the standard sāṅgitalễ, it was said, may appear as sāṅgitalā or sāṅgitalẫ. The vowels ē and ō are apparently always long in the standard dialect, thus following Sanskrit; but in Konkani there is a short and a long form of each vowel. Very probably, although the distinction is not observed in writing, and has not been noticed by native scholars, these vowels are also pronounced short in the standard dialect under the circumstances to be now described. When a long ā, ī or ū precedes an accented syllable it is usually shortened. In the case of ā the shortening is not indicated by the spelling, but the written long ā is pronounced short like the ă in the Italian ballo. Thus, the dative of pīk, a ripe crop, is pikā̇s, and that of hāt, a hand, is hātā̇s, pronounced hătā̇s. Almost the only compound consonants which survived in the Prakrit stage were double letters, and in M. these are usually simplified, the preceding vowel being lengthened in compensation. Thus, the Prakrit kannō becomes kān, an ear; Pr. bhikkhā becomes bhīk, alms; and Pr. puttō becomes pūt, a son. In the Piśāca (see Indo-Aryan Languages) and other languages of north-western India it is not usual to lengthen the vowel in compensation, and the same tendency is observable in Konkani, which, it may be remarked, appears to contain many relics of the old Prakrit (Saurāṣṭrī) spoken in the Gujarat country before the invasion from the Midland. Thus, in Konkani, we have put as well as pūt, while the word corresponding to the Pr. ekkō, one, is ek as well as the standard ēk.

On the whole, the consonantal system is much the same as in other Indian languages. Nasalization of long vowels is very common, especially in Konkani. In this article it is indicated by the sign ~ placed over the affected vowel. The palatals are pronounced as in Skr. in words borrowed from that language or from Hindostani, and also in Marathi tadbhavas before i, ī, ē or y. Thus, caṇḍ (tatsama), fierce; jamā (Hindostani), collected; cikhal (M. tadbhava), mud. In other cases they are pronounced ts, tsh, dz, dzh respectively. Thus tsākar (for cākar), a servant; dzāṇễ (for jāṇễ), to go. There are two s-sounds in the standard dialect which are very similarly distinguished. Ś, pronounced like an English sh, is used before i, ī, ē or y; and s, as in English “sin,” elsewhere. Thus, śimphī, a caste-name; śīl, a stone; śēt, a field; śyām, dark blue; but sāp, a snake; sumār (Persian shumār), an estimate; strī, a woman. In the dialects s is practically the only sibilant used, and that is changed by the vulgar speakers of Konkani to h (again as in north-western India). Aspirated letters show a tendency to lose their aspiration, especially in Konkani. Thus, bhīk (for bhīkh), alms, quoted above; hāt (Pr. hatthō), a hand. In Konkani we have words such as boiṇ, a sister, against standard bhain; gēr, standard gharī̇, in a house; āmī, standard āmhī, we. Here again we have agreement with north-western India. Generally speaking Marathi closely follows Māhārāṣṭrā when that differs from the Prakrits of other parts of India. Thus we have Skr. vrajati, Māhārāṣṭrī vaccai (instead of vajjai), he goes; Konkani votsū, to go; Saurasēnī genhiduim, Māhārāṣṭrī ghettuṁ, to take; Marathi ghētalễ, taken. There is similarly both in Marathi and Māhārāṣṭrī a laxness in distinguishing between cerebral and dental letters (which again reminds us of north-western India). Thus, Skr. daśati, Māhārāṣṭrī ḍasai, he bites; M. ḍāsaṇễ to bite; Skr. dahati, Māhārāṣṭrī ḍahai, he burns; M. ḍādzaṇễ, to be hot; Skr. gardabhas; Śaurasēnī gaddahō; Hindostani gadhā; but Māhārāṣṭrī gaḍḍahō; M. gāḍhav, an ass; and so many others. In Māhārāṣṭrī every n becomes ṇ, but in Jaina MSS. when the n was initial or doubled it remained unchanged. A similar rule is followed regarding l and the cerebral ḷ common in Vedic Sanskrit, in MSS. coming from southern India, and, according to the grammarians, also in the Piśāca dialects of the north-west. In M. a Pr. double nn or ll is simplified, according to the usual rule, to n or l respectively, with lengthening of the preceding vowel in compensation. Both ṇ and ḷ are of frequent occurrence in M., but only as medial letters, and then only when they represent ṇ or ḷ in the Pr. stage. When the letter is initial or represents a double nn or ll of Pr. it is always n or l respectively, thus offering a striking testimony to the accuracy of the Jaina and southern MSS. Thus, ordinary Māhārāṣṭrī ṇa, but Jaina Māhārāṣṭrī na, M. na, not; Māhārāṣṭrī (both kinds) ghaṇō, M. ghaṇ, dense; Māhārāṣṭrī soṇṇaaṁ, Jaina sonnaaṁ, M. sōnē̇, gold; Māhārāṣṭrī kālō, time, southern MSS. of the same kālō, M. kāḷ, time; Māhārāṣṭrī callai, M. tsālē, he goes or used to go. In some of the local dialects, following the Vedic practice, we find ḷ where d is employed elsewhere, as in (Berar) ghōḷā for ghōḍā, a horse; and there are instances of this change occurring even in Māhārāṣṭrī; e.g. Skr. taḍagaṁ, Māhārāṣṭrī taḷāam, M. taḷễ, a pond.

The Skr. compound consonant jñ is pronounced dny in the standard dialect, but gy in the Konkan. Thus, Skr. jñānaṁ becomes dnyān or gyān according to locality.

Declension.—Marathi and Gujarati are the only Indo-Aryan languages which have retained the three genders, masculine, feminine and neuter, of Sanskrit and Prakrit. In rural dialects of Western Hindi and of Rajasthani sporadic instances of the neuter gender have survived, but elsewhere the only example occurs in the interrogative pronoun. In Marathi the neuter denotes not only inanimate things but also animate beings when both sexes are included, or when the sex is left undecided. Thus, ghōḍễ, neut., a horse, without regard to sex. In the Konkan the neuter gender is further employed to denote females below the age of puberty, as in cēḍū, a girl. Numerous masculine and feminine words, however, denote inanimate objects. The rules for distinguishing the gender of such nouns are as complicated as in German, and must be learned from the grammars. For the most part, but not always, words follow the genders of their Skr. originals, and the abrasion of terminations in the modern language renders it impossible to lay down any complete set of rules on the subject. We may, however, say that strong bases (see below) in ā—and these do not include tatsamas—are masculine, and that the corresponding feminine and neuter words end in ī and ễ respectively. Thus, mulagā, a son; mulagī, a daughter; mulagễ, a child of so and so. As a further guide we may say that sex is usually distinguished by the use of the masculine and feminine genders, and that large and powerful inanimate objects are generally masculine, while small, delicate things are generally feminine. In the case of some animals (as in our “horse” and “mare”) sex is distinguished by the use of different words; e.g. bōkaḍ, he-goat, and śēḷī, a nanny-goat.

The nominative form of a tadbhava word is derived from the nominative form in Sanskrit and Prakrit, but tatsama words are generally borrowed in the form of the Sanskrit crude base. Thus, Skr. crude base mālin, nom. sing, mālī; Pr. nom. māliō (māḷiō); M. māḷī (tadbhava), a gardener; Skr. base mati-; nom. matis; M. mati (tatsama). Some tatsamas are, however, borrowed in the nominative form, as in Skr. dhanin, nom. dhanī; M. dhanī, a rich man. In Prakrit the nominative singular of many masculine tatsamas ended in ō. In the Apabhraṁśa stage this ō was weakened to u, and in modern Marathi, under the general rule, this final short u was dropped, the noun thus reverting as stated above to the form of the Sanskrit crude base. But in old Marathi, the short u was still retained. Thus, the Sanskrit īśvaras, lord, became, as a Prakrit tatsama, īśvarō, which in Apabhraṁśa took the form īśvaru. The old Marathi form was also īśvaru, but in modern Marathi we have īśvar. Tadbhavas derived from Sanskrit bases in a are treated very similarly, the termination being dropped in the modern language. Thus, Skr. nom. masc. karṇas, Pr. kannō, M. kān; Skr. nom. sing. fem. khaṭvā, Pr. khaṭṭā, M. khāṭ, a bed; Skr. nom. sing. neut. gṛhaṁ, Pr. gharaṁ, M. ghar, a house. Sometimes the Skr. nom. sing. fem. of these nouns ends in ī, but this makes no difference, as in Skr. and Pr. cullī, M. cūl, a fireplace. There is one important set of exceptions to this rule. In the article Prakrit attention is drawn to the frequent use of pleonastic suffixes, especially of -(a)ka- (masc. and neut.), -(i)kā(fem.). This could in Sanskrit be added to any noun, whatever the termination of the base might be. In Prakrit the k of this suffix, being medial, was elided, so that we get forms like Skr. nom. sing. masc. ghōṭa-kas, Pr. ghōḍa-ō, M. ghōḍā, a horse; Skr. nom. sing. fem. ghōṭi-kā, Pr. ghōḍi-ā, M. ghōḍī, a mare; Skr. ghōṭa-kaṁ, Pr. ghōḍa-(y)am, M. ghōḍe, a horse (without distinction of sex). Such modern forms made with this pleonastic suffix, and ending in ā, ī or ễ are called “strong forms,” while all those made without it are called “weak forms.” As a rule the fact that a noun is in a weak or a strong form does not affect its meaning, but sometimes the use of a masculine strong form indicates clumsiness or hugeness. Thus bhākar (weak form) means “bread,” while bhākarā (strong form) means “a huge loaf of bread.” The other pleonastic suffixes mentioned under Prakrit are also employed in Marathi, but usually with specific senses. Thus the suffix -illa- generally forms adjectives, while -ḍa-ka- (in M. -ḍā, fem. -ḍī, neut. -ḍễ) implies contempt.

The synthetic declension of Sanskrit and Prakrit has been preserved in Marathi more completely than in any other Indo-Aryan language. While Māhārāṣṭrī Prakrit, like all others, passed through the Apabhraṁśa stage in the course of its development, the conservative character of the language retained even in that stage some of the old pure Māhārāṣṭrī forms. In the article Prakrit we have seen how there gradually arose a laxity in distinguishing the cases. In Māhārāṣṭrī the Sanskrit dative fell into almost entire disuse, the genitive being used in its place, while in Apabhraṁśa the case terminations become worn down to -hu, -ho, -hi, -hī and -hā, of which -hi and -hī were employed for several cases, both singular and plural. There was also a marked tendency for these terminations to become confused, so that in the earliest stages of most of the modern Indo-Aryan vernaculars we find -hi freely employed for any oblique case of the singular, and -hī for any oblique case of the plural. Another feature of Prakrit was the simplification of the complicated declensional system of Sanskrit by assimilating it in all cases to the declension of a-bases, corresponding to the first and second declensions in Latin.

In the formation of the plural the Prakrit declensions are very closely followed by Marathi. We shall confine our remarks to a-bases, which may be either weak or strong forms, and of which the feminine ends sometimes in ā, and sometimes in ī. In Prakrit the nom. plur. of these nouns ends masc. ā, fem. āō, īō, neut. āiṁ. We thus get the following:—

Masculine. Feminine. Neuter.

Nom. Sing. Nom. Plur. Nom. Sing. Nom. Plur. Nom. Sing. Nom. Plur. Nom. Sing. Nom. Plur.

Weak form.

Prakrit kannō, kannā khaṭṭā, khaṭṭāō cullī, cullīō gharaṁ, gharāiṁ

an ear. a bed. a fireplace. a house.

Marathi kān kān khāṭ khāṭā cūl cūlī ghar gharễ

Strong form.

Prakrit ghōḍaō, ghōḍayā ghōḍiā, ghōḍiāō — — *ghōḍayaṁ, *ghōḍayāiṁ

a horse. a mare. a horse.

Marathi ghōḍā ghōḍē ghōḍī ghōḍyā — — ghōḍễ ghōḍī

Several of the old synthetic cases have survived in Marathi, especially in the antique form of the language preserved in poetry. Most of them have fallen into disuse in the modern prose language. We may note the following, some of which have preserved the Māhārāṣṭrī forms, while others are directly derived from the Apabhraṁśa stage of the language. We content ourselves with giving some of the synthetic cases of one noun, a weak neuter a-base, ghar, a house.

Māhārāṣṭrī Prakrit. Apabhraṁśa. Marathi.

Sing.

Nominative gharaṁ gharu ghar

Dative gharassa (genitive) gharaho (genitive) gharās (dative)

Locative gharē gharahi (-hī) gharī̃, gharā

General oblique gharassa (genitive) gharaho (genitive) gharās, gharā

Plur.

Nominative gharāiṁ gharaī̃ gharễ

Locative gharēsu gharahi (-hī) gharī̃

General oblique gharāṇa (genitive) gharahā (genitive) gharẫ

As already stated, in Prakrit the genitive is employed instead of the dative, and thus forms the basis of the Marathi dative singular. The genitive plural is not used as a dative plural in Marathi, but it is the basis of the plural general oblique case. The Marathi singular general oblique case is really the same as the Marathi dative singular, but in the standard form of speech when so used the final s is dropped, gharās, as a general oblique case, being only found in dialects. This general oblique case is the result of the confusion of the various oblique cases originally distinguished in Sanskrit and in literary Prakrit. In Apabhraṁśa the genitive began to usurp the function of all the other cases. It is obvious that if it were regularly employed in so indeterminate a sense, it would give rise to great confusion. Hence when it was intended to show clearly what particular case was meant, it became usual to add, to this indeterminate genitive, defining particles corresponding to the English “of,” “to,” “from,” “by,” &c., which, as in all Indo-Aryan languages they follow the main word, are called “postpositions.” Before dealing with these, it will be convenient to give the modern Marathi synthetic declension of the commoner forms of nouns. The only synthetic case which is now employed in prose is the dative, and this can always be formed from the general oblique case by adding an s to the end of the word. It is therefore not given in the following table.

Masculine. Feminine. Neuter.

Meaning. Ear. Horse. Gardener. Bed. Fireplace. Mare. House. Horse. Pearl.

Sing.

Nom. kān ghōḍā māḷī khāṭ cūl ghōḍī ghar ghōḍễ motī

Gen. obl. kānā ghōḍyā māḷyā khāṭē cūlī ghōḍī gharā ghōḍyā mōtyā

Plur.

Nom. kān ghōḍễ māḷī khāṭā cūlī ghōḍyā gharễ ghōḍī̃ mōtyễ

Gen. obl. kānẫ ghōḍyẫ māḷyẫ khāṭẫ cūlī ghōḍyẫ gharẫ ghōḍyẫ mōtyẫ

The usual postpositions are:—

Instrumental: nễ, plural nī̃, by. Dative: lā, plural also nā, to or for. Ablative: hūn, ūn, from. Genitive: tsā, of. Locative: ~t, in. We thus get the following complete modern declension of ghar, a house (neut.):—

Sing. Plur.

Nom. ghar gharễ

Acc. ghar gharễ

Instr. gharānễ gharẫnī̃

Dat. gharās, gharālā gharẫs, gharẫlā, gharẫnā

Abl. gharāhūn, gharūn gharẫhūn

Gen. gharātsā gharẫtsa

Loc. gharẫt gharẫt

The accusative is usually the same as the nominative, but when definiteness is required the dative is employed instead. The termination nễ, with its plural nī̃, is, as explained in the article Gujarati, really the oblique form, by origin a locative, of the nā or nō, employed in Gujarati to form the genitive. The suffix nā of the dative plural is derived from the same word. Here it is probably a corruption of the Apabhraṁśa nāu or naho. The postposition lā is probably a corruption of the Sanskrit lābhē, Apabhraṁśa lahi, for the benefit (of). As regards the ablative, we have in old Marathi poetry a form corresponding to gharāhu-niyẫ, which explains the derivation. Gharāhu is a by-form of the Prakrit synthetic ablative gharāu, to which niyā, another oblique form of nā, is added to define the meaning. The locative termination ~t is a contraction of the Pr. antō, Skr. antar, within.

The genitive gharātsā is really an adjective meaning “belonging to the house,” and agrees in gender, number and case with the noun which is possessed. Thus:

māḷyātsā ghōḍā, the gardener’s horse. māḷyācē ghōḍē, the gardener’s horses.

māḷyācī ghōḍī, the gardener’s mare. māḷyācyā ghōḍyā, the gardener’s mares.

māḷyācễ ghōḍễ, the gardener’s horse (neut.). māḷyācī̃ ghōḍī, the gardener’s horses (neut.).

The suffix tsā, cī, cễ, is derived from the Sanskrit suffix tyakas, Pr. caō, which is used in much the same sense. In Sanskrit it may be added either to the locative or to the unmodified base of the word to which it is attached, thus, ghōṭakē-tyakas or ghōṭaka-tyakas. Similarly in Marathi, while it is usually added to the general oblique base, it may also be added to the unmodified noun, in which case it has a more distinctly adjectival force. The use of tsā has been influenced by the fact that the Sanskrit word kṛtyas, Pr. kiccaō, also takes the same form in Marathi. As explained in the article Hindostani, synonyms of this word are used in other Indo-Aryan languages to form suffixes of the genitive.

Strong adjectives, including genitives, can be declined like substantives, and agree with the qualified noun in gender, number and case. When the substantive is in an oblique case, the adjective is put into the general oblique form without any defining postposition, which is added to the substantive alone. Weak adjectives are not inflected in modern prose, but are inflected in poetry. As in other Indo-Aryan languages, comparison is effected by putting the noun with which comparison is made in the ablative case.

The pronouns closely follow the Prakrit originals. The origin of all these is discussed in the article Hindostani, and the account need not be repeated here. As usual in these languages, there is no pronoun of the third person, its place being supplied by the demonstratives. The following are the principal pronominal forms:—

mī̃, I, instr. mī̃, myā, dat. malā, obl. madz; āmhī, we, instr. āmhī̃, obl. āmhẫ; mādzhā, my, of me; āmtsā, our, of us.

tū̃, thou, instr. tū̃, twā, dat. tulā, obl. tudz; tumhī, you, instr. tumhī̃, obl. tumhẫ; tudzhā, thy, of thee; tumtsā, your, of you.

āpan, self, obl. āpaṇa, gen. āpalā. This is also employed as an honorific pronoun of the second person, and, in addition, to mean “we including you.”

hā, this, fem., hī, neut. hễ; tō, he, that, fem. tī, neut. tễ; dzō, who, fem., jī, neut. jễ.

kōṇ, who? kāy, what? obl. kāśa; kōṇī, any one; kẫhī, anything.

In all these the plural is employed honorifically instead of the singular.

Conjugation.—In Prakrit (q.v.) the complicated system of Sanskrit conjugation had already disappeared, and all verbs fell into two classes, the first, or a-, conjugation, and the second, or ē-, conjugation, in which the ē represents the aya of the Sanskrit tenth conjugation and of causal and denominative verbs. Marathi follows Prakrit in this respect and has two conjugations. The first, corresponding to the Prakrit a-class, as a rule consists of intransitive verbs, and the second, corresponding to the e- or causal class, of transitive verbs, but there are numerous exceptions. Verbs whose roots end in vowels or in h belong partly to one and partly to the other conjugation. These conjugations differ only in the present and past participles and in the tenses formed from them. Here, in the first conjugation an a, and in the second conjugation an i, is inserted between the base and the termination.

The only original Prakrit tenses which have survived in Marathi are the present and the imperative. The present has lost its original meaning and is now a habitual past. It is also the base of the Marathi future. These three tenses, the habitual past, the imperative and the future, are conjugated as follows. They should be compared with the corresponding forms in the article Prakrit. The verb selected is the root uṭh, rise, of the first conjugation.

Person. Habitual past
(old present),
I used to rise. Imperative.
Let me rise. Future.
I shall rise.

Sing. Plural. Sing. Plural. Sing. Plural.

1 uṭhễ uṭhū̃ uṭhū̃ uṭhū̃ uṭhēn uṭhū̃

2 uṭhēs uṭhẫ uṭh uṭhā uṭhaśīl uṭhāl

3 uṭhē uṭhat uṭhō uṭhōt uṭhēl uṭhatīl

As in Rajasthani, Bihari and the Indo-Aryan language of Nepal (see Pahari), the future is formed by adding l, or in the first person singular n, to the old present. In the second person singular the l has been added to a form derived from the Pr. uṭṭhasi, which is also the origin of the old present uṭhēs. Some scholars, however, see in uṭhaśī a derivation of the Prakrit future uṭṭhihisi, thou shalt arise, and a confusion of the Prakrit present and future is quite possible.

The remaining tenses are modern forms derived from the participles. The verbal nouns, participles and infinitives are as follows:—

Prakrit
(First
Conjugation). Marathi
First
Conjugation. Marathi
Second
Conjugation.

Verbal Noun uṭṭhaṇīaṁ uṭhaṇễ, the act of rising. māraṇễ, the act of killing.

Infinitive uṭṭhiuṁ uṭhū̃, to rise. mārū̃, to kill.

Present Participle uṭṭhantō, uṭṭhantaō uṭhat, uṭhatā, rising. mārīt, māritā, killing.

Past Participle uṭṭhiallaō uṭhalā, risen. mārilā, killed.

Future Participle Active uṭṭhaṇaaḍō uṭhaṇār, about to rise. māraṇār, about to kill.

Future Participle Passive uṭṭhiavvaō uṭhāwā, about to be risen. mārāwā, about to be killed.

Conjunctive Participle uṭṭhiu uṭhūn, having risen. mārūn, having killed.

The only form that requires notice is that of the conjunctive participle. It is derived from the Apabhrarṁśa form uṭṭhiu, to which the dative suffix n (old Marathi ni, niyẫ) has been added.

Various tenses are formed by adding personal suffixes to the present, past or future passive participle. When the subject of the verb is in the nominative the tense so formed agrees with it in gender, number and person. We may note four such tenses: a present, uṭhatō̃, I rise; a past, uṭhalō̃, I rose; past conditional, uṭhatō̃, had I risen; and a subjunctive, uṭhāwā, I should rise. In the present, the terminations are relics of the verb substantive, and in the other tenses of the personal pronouns. In these latter, as there is no pronoun of the third person, the third persons have no termination, but are simply the unmodified participle. We thus get the present and the past conjugated as follows, with a masculine subject:—

Present, I rise. Past, I rose.

Singular. Plural. Singular. Plural.

1 uṭhatō̃ uṭhatō uṭhalō̃ uṭhalō̃

2 uṭhatōs uṭhatẫ uṭhalās uṭhalẫ

3 uṭhatō uṭhatāt uṭhalā uṭhalē

The feminine and neuter forms differ from the above: thus, uṭhatēs, thou (fem.) risest; uṭhalīs, thou (fem.) didst rise; and so on for the other persons and for the neuter.

It will be observed that, in the case of transitive verbs, while the present participle is active, the past and future passive participles are passive in meaning. The same is the case with the future passive participle of the intransitive verb. In tenses, therefore, formed from these participles the sentence must be construed passively. The subject must be put into the instrumental case, and the participle inflected to agree with the object. If the object is not expressed, or, as is sometimes the case, is expressed in the guise of a kind of ethic dative, the participle is construed impersonally, and is employed in the neuter form. Thus (present tense) mulagā (nom. masc.) pōthī vācitō, the boy reads a book, but (past tense) mulagyānễ (instrumental pōthī (nom. fem.) vācilī (fem.) the boy read a book, literally, by-the-boy a-book was-read; or mulagyānễ pōthīlā (dative) vācilễ (neuter), the boy read the book, literally, by-the-boy, with-reference-to-the-book, it-(impersonal)-was-read. Similarly in the subjunctive formed from the future passive participle, mulagyānễ pōthī vācāwī, the boy should read a book (by-the-boy a-book is-to-be-read) or mulagyānễ pōthīlā vācāwễ, the boy should read the book [by-the-boy with-reference-to-the-book, it (impersonal)-is-to-be-read]. As an example of the subjunctive of an intransitive verb, we have twā uṭhāwễ, by-thee it-is-to-be-risen, thou shouldst rise. As in intransitive verbs the passive sense is not so strong, in their case the tense may also be used actively, as in tū̃ uṭhāwās, thou shouldst rise, lit., thou (art) to-be-risen. It will be noted that when a participle is used passively it takes no personal suffix.

We have seen that the present tense is formed by compounding the present participle with the verb substantive. Further tenses are similarly made by suffixing, without compounding, various tenses of the verb substantive to the various participles. Thus mī uṭhat āhễ, I am rising; mī uṭhat hōtō̃, I was rising; myā uṭhāvễ hōtễ (impersonal construction), I should have risen. In the case of tenses formed from the past participle, the auxiliary is appended, not to the participle, but to the past tense, as in mī̃ uṭhalō̃ āhē, I have risen; myā mārilā āhē (personal passive construction) or myā mārilễ āhē (impersonal passive construction), I have killed. Similarly mī uṭhalō̃ hōtō̃ (active construction), I had risen. The usual forms of the present and past of the verb substantive are:—

Present, I am. Past, I was (masc).

Singular. Plural. Singular. Plural.

1 āhễ āhễ hōtō̃ hōtō̃

2 āhēs āhẫ hōtās hōtẫ

3 āhē āhēt hōtā hōtē

The past changes for gender, but the present is immutable in this respect. Ahễ is usually considered to be a descendant of the Sanskrit asmi, I am, while hōtō̃ is derived from the Pr. hoṁtaō, the present participle of what corresponds to the Skr. root bhū, become.

A potential passive and a causal are formed by adding av to the root of a simple verb. The former follows the first, or intransitive, and the latter the second or transitive conjugation. The potential passive of a neuter verb is necessarily construed impersonally. The causal verb denotes indirect agency; thus, karanễ, to do, karavanễ, to cause a person to do; tyācyā-kaḍūn myā tễ karavilễ, I caused him to do that, literally, by-means-of-him by-me that was-caused-to-be-done. The potential, being passive, has the subject in the dative (cf. Latin mihi est ludendum) or in the instrumental of the genitive, as in malā (dative), or mājhyānễ (instr. of mādzhā, of me), uthavatē̃, I can rise, literally, for-me, or by-my-(action), rising-can-be-done. So, Rāmālā, or Rāmācyānễ, pōthī vācavalī, Rām could read a book (by R. a book could be read).

Several verbs are irregular. These must be learnt from the grammars. Here we may mention hōṇễ, to become, past participle dzhālā; yēṇễ, to come, past participle ālā; and dzāṇễ, to go, past participle gēlā. There are also numerous compound verbs. One of these, making a passive, is formed by conjugating the verb dzāṇễ, to go, with the past participle of the principal verb. Thus, mārilā dzātō, he is being killed, literally, he goes killed.

Literature.—As elsewhere in India, the modern vernacular literature of the Maratha country arose under the influence of the religious reformation inaugurated by Rāmānuja early in the 12th century. He and his followers taught devotion to a personal deity instead of the pantheism hitherto prevalent. The earliest writer of whom we have any record is Nāmdēv (13th century), whose hymns in honour of Vithoba, a personal form of Vishnu, have travelled far beyond the home of their writer, and are even found in the Sikh Àdi Granth. Dnyānōbā, a younger contemporary, wrote a paraphrase of the Sanskrit Bhagavad Gītā, which is still much admired. Passing over several intermediate writers we come to the period of the warrior Sivaji, the opponent of Aurangzeb. He was a disciple of Rāmdās (1608-1681), who exercised great influence over him, and whose Dāsbōdh, a work on religious duty, is a classic. Contemporary with Rāmdās and Sivaji was Tukārām (1608-1649), a Śūdra by caste, and yet the greatest writer in the language. He began life as a petty shopkeeper, and being unsuccessful both in his business and in his family relations, he abandoned the world and became a wandering ascetic. His Abhangs or “unbroken” hymns, probably so called from their indefinite length and loose, flowing metre, are famous in the country of his birth. They are fervent, but though abounding in excellent morality, do not rise to any great height as poetry. Other Marathi poets who may be mentioned are Śrīdhar (1678-1728), the most copious of all, who translated the Bhāgavata Purāna, and the learned Mayūra or Mōrōpant (1729-1794), whose works smell too much of the lamp to satisfy European standards of criticism. Mahīpati (1715-1790) was an imitator of Tukārām, but his chief importance rests on the fact that he collected the popular traditions about national saints, and was thus the author of the Acta sanctorum of the Marathas. Lāvaṇīs, or erotic lyrics, by various writers, are popular, but are often more passionate than decent. Another branch of Marathi literature is composed of Pāwāḍās or war-ballads, mostly by nameless poets, which are sung everywhere throughout the country. There is a small prose literature, consisting of narratives of historical events (the so-called Bakhars), moral maxims and popular tales.

In the 19th century the facilities of the printing press are responsible for a great mass of published matter. Most of the best works have been written in English by learned natives, upon whom the methods of European scholarship have exercised more influence than elsewhere in India, and have given rise to a happy combination of western science with Oriental lore. No vernacular authors of outstanding merit have appeared during the last century.

Konkani once had a literature of its own, which is said to have been destroyed by the Inquisition at Goa. Temples and manuscripts were burnt wholesale. Under Roman Catholic auspices a new literature arose, the earliest writer being an Englishman, Thomas Stephens (Thomaz Estevão), who came to Goa in 1579, wrote the first Konkani grammar, and died there in 1619. Amongst other works, he was the author of a Konkani paraphrase of the New Testament in metrical form, which has been several times reprinted and is still a favourite work with the native Christians. Since his time there has grown up a considerable body of Christian literature from the pens of Portuguese missionaries and native converts.

Authorities.—Marathi is fortunate in possessing the best dictionary of any modern Indian language, J. T. Molesworth’s (2nd ed., Bombay, 1857). Navalkar’s (3rd ed., Bombay, 1894) is the best grammar. The earliest students of Marathi were the Portuguese, who were familiar only with the language as spoken on the coast, i.e. with the standard dialect of the northern Konkan and with Konkani. They have since devoted themselves to these two forms of speech. For the former, reference may be made to the Grammatica da lingua Concani no dialecto do norte, by J. F. da Cunha Rivara (Goa, 1858). For Konkani proper, see A. F. X. Maffei’s Grammar (Mangalore, 1882) and Dictionaries (ibid., 1883). These are in English. Monsenhor S. R. Dalgado is the author of a Konkan-Portuguese Dictionary (Bombay, 1893).

For further information regarding Marathi in general, see the list of authorities under Indo-Aryan Languages. For accounts of Marathi literature, see the preface to Molesworth’s Dictionary; also J. Murray Mitchell’s “The Chief Marathi Poets” in Transactions of the Congress of Orientalists, London, 1892, i. 282 sqq., and ch. viii. of M. G. Ranade’s Rise of the Maratha Power (Bombay, 1900). For Konkani literature, see J. Gerson da Cunha’s “Materials for the History of Oriental Studies among the Portuguese,” in the Proceedings of the Fourth International Congress of Orientalists, ii. 179 sqq. (Florence, 1881). A full account of Marathi, given in great detail, will be found in vol. vii. of the Linguistic Survey of India (Calcutta, 1905).

(G. A. Gr.)

The name is sometimes spelt Mahrāthī, with an h before the r, but, according to a phonetic law of the Aryan languages of western India, this is incorrect. The original h in “Māhārāṣṭrī,” from which the word is derived, is liable to elision on coming between two vowels.

Shastri Vrajlal Kalidas, quoted by Beames in Comparative Grammar, i. 102.

See B. A. Gupte in Indian Antiquary (1905), xxxiv. 27.

For details see Dr Sten Konow’s article on Māhārāṣṭrī and Marāṭhī in Indian Antiquary (1903), xxxii. 180 seq.

For the explanation of these terms see Indo-Aryan Languages.

Abbreviations: Skr. = Sanskrit. Pr. = Māhārāṣṭrī Prakrit. M. = Marathi.

Fuller information regarding all the above postpositions will be found in G. A. Grierson’s article “On Certain Suffixes in the Modern Indo-Aryan Vernaculars,” on pp. 473 seq. of the Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung for 1903.

See, however, Hoernle, Comparative Grammar, p. 364.

MARATHON,, a plain on the N.E. coast of Attica, divided from the plain of Athens by the range of Pentelicus; it contained four villages—Marathon, Probalinthos, Tricorythos and Oenoe—which originally formed an independent tetrapolis and in historical times still upheld peculiar rites and legendary associations, chiefly connected with Heracles and Theseus. In the 6th century B.C. it served as a base for Peisistratus (q.v.), who owned much property in that district, for securing the rest of Attica. The plain derives its fame mainly from the battle in which the Athenians and Plataeans defeated the Persians (490 B.C.). The Persian force had been sent by King Darius to punish the Athenians for previous interferences in Asia and to restore their tyrant Hippias. It was probably by advice of the latter that the generals Datis and Artaphernes landed their troops, numbering perhaps 50,000, at Marathon. The Athenians, on the recommendation of their strategus Miltiades, resolved to meet this force in the open field, and sent out their full levy of 9000 heavy infantry under the polemarch Callimachus. They were joined on the way by 1000 Plataeans, but were disappointed of the assistance which they expected from Sparta. From their station at the head of the Vrana valley, which slopes down to Marathon plain, the Athenians for some days observed the Persian army, which gave no sign of proceeding to attack. After some waiting, Miltiades, who seems throughout to have played a more prominent part than his superior Callimachus, drew up the Athenian army for battle and charged down upon the enemy, whose line was formed on the level about a mile distant. The Athenian wings, whose formation had been made specially deep, broke the opposing divisions by their impact; the centre was at first overborne by the superior weight of the native Persians, but ultimately was relieved by the victorious wings, which closed in upon the Persian centre. The Persians were thereupon driven back into the sea all along the line, and, although the majority regained their ships, no less than 6400 were left dead, as against 192 Athenians. The Persian fleet, of which perhaps a detachment had been sent on before the battle, now sailed round Cape Sunium in order to effect a landing at Phalerum, close by Athens, and with the help of traitors within the walls to take the city by surprise. But Miltiades, who had suspected some plot all along, and had lately been warned by a signal on Mt Pentelicus which he interpreted as a message to the Persians, marched back the victorious army in time to defend Athens. The enemy, upon noticing his presence, did not venture a second disembarcation and retired straightway out of Greek waters. The details of the battle, and the Persian plan of campaign, are not made clear by our ancient sources, but reconstructions have been attempted by numerous modern authorities.

(M. O. B. C.)

The tumulus or “Soros” was excavated by M. Stais in 1891 and 1892. A slight previous excavation had brought to light some prehistoric implements, and it was supposed that the mound had no connexion with the battle; but it has now been discovered that the presence of those prehistoric objects was accidental. Underlying the mound was found a stratum about 85 ft. long by 20 broad, consisting of a layer of sand, above which lay the ashes and bones of many corpses; together with these were the remains of many lecythi and other vases, some of them contemporary with the Persian wars, some of them of much earlier style, and probably taken in the emergency from neighbouring cemeteries. It is conjectured with some probability that a large vase containing ashes may have been used as the burial urn of one of the Athenian generals who fell. There was also, in the middle of the stratum, a trench for funeral offerings about 30 ft. by 3; it contained bones of beasts, with ashes and fragments of vases. There can therefore be no doubt that the tumulus was piled up to commemorate the Athenians who fell in the battle, and that it marks the place where the carnage was thickest. A selection from the contents of the tumulus has been placed in the National Museum at Athens.

(E. Gr.)

See Herodotus vi. 102-117; W. M. Leake, The Topography of Athens (London, 1841), ii. 203-227; R. W. Macan, Herodotus, iv.-vi. (London, 1895), ii. 149-248; G. B. Grundy, The Great Persian War (London, 1901), pp. 145-194; J. A. Munro in Journal of Hellenic Studies, 1899, pp. 186-197. For the tumulus, Ἀρχαιολογικὸν Δελτίον 1891, pp. 67 sqq. See also Miltiades.

MARAZION, a small seaport in the St Ives parliamentary division of Cornwall, England, on the shore of Mount’s Bay, 2 m. E. of Penzance, served by the Great Western railway. Pop. (1901), 1251. A causeway of boulders and pebbles, thrown up by the sea and passable at low tide, unites Marazion with the insular St Michael’s Mount (q.v.). The church of St Hilary, destroyed by fire in 1853, had a very fine spire, which has been faithfully reproduced in the restored building. Unusual archaeological interest attaches to the churchyard. Its inscribed stones date from the 4th century, one being in honour of Constantine the Great. Another has Cornish lettering, which can no longer be deciphered; and there are British and Roman crosses. Market gardening and fishing are the main industries.

The charter attributed to Robert count of Mortain, granting lands and liberties to St Michael’s Mount, opposite Marazion, included a market on Thursdays. This appears to have been held from the first on the mainland. From it is probably derived the Marghasbigan (Parvum Forum) of the earlier and the Marghasyewe or Marketjew (Forum Jovis) of the later charters. It may be added that a Jewish origin has been ascribed to the place from the name Marketjew. It is certain that Richard king of the Romans provided that the three fairs, on the two feasts of St Michael and at Mid-Lent, and the three markets which had hitherto been held by the priors of St Michael’s Mount on land not their own at Marghasbighan, should in future be held on their own land at Marchadyou. He transferred in fact the fairs and markets from the demesne lands of the Bloyous in Marazion to those of the prior. To remedy the loss incurred by this measure Ralph Bloyou in 1331 procured for himself and his heirs a market on Mondays and a fair on the vigil, feast and morrow of St Andrew at Marghasyon. In Leland’s time the market was held at Marhasdeythyow (Forum Jovis), and both Norden (1582) and Carew (1602) tell us that Marcajewe signifies the Thursday’s market, which, whether etymologically sound or not, shows that the prior’s market had prevailed over its rival. In 1595 Queen Elizabeth granted to Marazion a charter of incorporation. This ratified the grant of St Andrew’s fair, provided for another on the Feast of St Barnabas and established a market on Saturdays. The corporation was to consist of a mayor, 8 aldermen and 12 capital burgesses. This corporation continued to administer the affairs of the borough until it was dissolved under the Municipal Corporations Act in 1835, when the property belonging to it was vested in charity commissioners. The chairman of the commissioners retains possession of the regalia. Of the fairs only the Michaelmas fair has survived and all the markets have gone. It is frequently stated that Marazion had formerly the right of returning two members to parliament, but that owing to its inability to pay the members’ expenses the right was lost. Under the Commonwealth an attempt was made to secure or recover the right, and two members are said to have been returned, but they were not allowed to take their seats. Remains of an ancient bronze furnace, discovered near the town, tend to prove that tin-smelting was practised here at an early period. Marazion was once a flourishing town, and owed its prosperity to the throng of pilgrims who came to visit St Michael’s Mount. During the first half of the 16th century it was twice plundered; first by the French, and later by the Cornish rebels. The rise and progress of the neighbouring borough of Penzance in the 17th century was the undoing of Marazion.

MARBLE (from Lat. marmar, Gr. μάρμαρος, shining stone), a term applied to any limestone or dolomite which is sufficiently close in texture to admit of being polished. Many other ornamental stones—such as serpentine, alabaster and even granite—are sometimes loosely designated marble, but by accurate writers the term is invariably restricted to those crystalline and compact varieties of carbonate of lime (occasionally with carbonate of magnesia) which, when polished, are applicable to purposes of decoration. The crystalline structure is typically shown in statuary marble. A fractured surface of this stone displays a multitude of sparkling facets, which are the rhombohedral cleavage-planes of the component grains. The beautiful lustre of polished statuary marble is due to the light penetrating for a short distance into the rock and then suffering reflection at the surfaces of the deeper-lying crystals. The durability of marble in a dry atmosphere or when protected from rain renders it a valuable building stone (q.v.); on the other hand, when exposed to the weather or the acid atmosphere of large cities, its surface readily crumbles.

Statuary and Economic Marbles.—Among statuary marbles the first place may be assigned to the famous Pentelic marble, the material in which Pheidias, Praxiteles, and other Greek sculptors executed their principal works. The characteristics of this stone are well seen in the Elgin marbles, which were removed from the Parthenon at Athens, and are now at the British Museum. The marble was derived from the quarries of Mount Pentelicus in Attica. Several large buildings have recently been constructed with this marble in London. The neighbouring mountain of Hymettus likewise yielded marbles, but these were neither so pure in colour nor so fine in texture as those of Pentelicus. Parian marble, another stone much used by Greek sculptors and architects, was quarried in the isle of Paros, chiefly at Mount Marpessa. It is called by ancient writers lychnites (from the Gr. λύχνος, a lamp) in allusion to the fact that the quarries were worked by the light of lamps. The Venus de’ Medici is a notable example of work in this material. Carrara marble is better known than any of the Greek marbles, inasmuch as it constitutes the stone invariably employed by the best sculptors of the present day. This marble occurs abundantly in the Apuan Alps, an offshoot of the Apennines, and is largely worked in the neighbourhood of Carrara, Massa and Serravezza. Stone from this district was employed in Rome for architectural purposes in the time of Augustus, but the finer varieties, adapted to the needs of the sculptor, were not discovered until some time later. It is in Carrara marble that the finest works of Michelangelo and of Canova are executed. The purest varieties of this stone are of snow-white colour and of fine saccharoidal texture. Silica is disseminated through some of the marble, becoming a source of annoyance to the workman; while occasionally it separates as beautifully pellucid crystals of quartz known as “Carrara diamonds.” The geological age of the marbles of the Apuan Alps has been a subject of much dispute, some geologists regarding them as metamorphosed Triassic, Liassic or Rhaetic rocks. Much of the common marble is of a bluish colour, and therefore unfit for statuary purposes; when streaked with blue and grey veins the stone is known as bardiglio. Curiously enough, the common white marble of Tuscany comes to England as Sicilian marble—a name probably due to its having been formerly re-shipped from some port in Sicily.

Although crystalline marbles fit for statuary work are not found to any extent in Great Britain, the limestones of the Palaeozoic formations yield a great variety of marbles well suited for architectural purposes. The Devonian rocks of south Devon are rich in handsome marbles, presenting great diversity of tint and pattern. Plymouth, Torquay, Ipplepen, Babbacombe and Chudleigh may be named as the principal localities. Many of these limestones owe their beauty to the fossil corals which they contain, and are hence known as “madrepore marbles.”

Of far greater importance than the marbles of the Devonian system are those of Carboniferous age. It is from the Carboniferous or Mountain Limestone that British marbles are mainly derived. Marbles of this age are worked in Derbyshire and Yorkshire, in the neighbourhood of Bristol, in North Wales, in the Isle of Man, and in various parts of Ireland. One of the most beautiful of these stones is the “encrinital marble,” a material which owes its peculiarities to the presence of numerous encrinites, or stone-lilies. These fossils, when cut in various directions, give a characteristic pattern to the stone. The joints of the stems and arms are known from their shape as “wheel-stones,” and the rock itself has been called “entrochal marble.” The most beautiful varieties are those in which the calcareous fossils appear as white markings on a ground of grey limestone. In Belgium a black marble with small sections of crinoid stems is known as petit granit, while in Derbyshire a similar rock, crowded with fragments of minute encrinites, is termed “bird’s-eye marble.”

Perhaps the most generally useful marbles yielded by the Carboniferous system are the black varieties, which are largely employed for chimney-pieces, vases, and other ornamental objects. The colour of most black limestone is due to the presence of bituminous matter. Such limestone commonly emits a fetid odour when struck; and the colour, being of organic origin, is discharged on calcination. Black marbles, more or less dense in colour, are quarried in various parts of Ireland, especially at Kilkenny and near Galway, but the finest kind is obtained from near Ashford in Derbyshire. From Ashford is also derived a very beautiful stone known as “rosewood marble.” This is a dense brown laminated limestone, displaying when polished a handsome pattern somewhat resembling the grain of rosewood; it occurs in very limited quantity, and is used chiefly for inlaid work. The black marble of Frosterley, Yorkshire, is another Carboniferous example which owes its “figure” or pattern to the presence of large corals.

With the rosewood marble may be compared the well-known “landscape marble” or Cotham stone, an argillaceous limestone with peculiar dendritic markings, due probably to the infiltration of water containing oxide of manganese. This limestone occurs in irregular masses near the base of the White Lias, or uppermost division of the Rhaetic series. It is found principally in the neighbourhood of Bristol. The arborescent forms depicted in bluish-grey upon this landscape marble form a marked contrast to the angular markings of warm brown colour which are seen on slabs of “ruin marble” from Florence—a stone occasionally known also as landscape stone, or pietra paesina.

British limestones of Secondary and Tertiary age are not generally compact enough to be used as marbles, but some of the shelly beds are employed to a limited extent for decorative purposes. “Ammonite marble” is a dark brown limestone from the Lower Lias of Somersetshire, crowded with ammonites, principally A. planicostata. Under the name of Forest marble, geologists recognize a local division of the Lower Oolitic series, so named by W. Smith from Wychwood Forest in Oxfordshire, where shelly limestones occur; and these, though of little economic value, are capable of being used as rough marbles. But the most important marbles of the Secondary series are the shelly limestones of the Purbeck formation. Purbeck marble was a favourite material with medieval architects, who used it freely for slender clustered columns and for sepulchral monuments. It consists of a mass of the shells of a fresh-water snail, Paludina carinifera, embedded in a blue, grey or greenish limestone, and is found in the Upper Purbeck beds of Swanage in Dorsetshire. Excellent examples of its use may be seen in Westminster Abbey and in the Temple Church, as well as in the cathedrals of Salisbury, Winchester, Worcester and Lincoln. Sussex marble is a very similar stone, occurring in thin beds in the Weald clay, and consisting largely of the shells of Paludina, principally P. sussexiensis and P. fluviorum. The altar stones and the episcopal chair in Canterbury Cathedral are of this material.

Certain calcareous metamorphic rocks frequently form stones which are sufficiently beautiful to be used for ornamental purposes, and are generally classed as marbles. Such serpentinous limestones are included by petrologists under the term “ophicalcite.” The famous verde antico is a rock of this character. Mona marble is an ophicalcite from the metamorphic series of the Isle of Anglesey, while the “Irish green” of architects is a similar rock from Connemara in western Galway. It is notable that some of the “white marble” of Connemara has been found by W. King and T. H. Rowney to consist almost wholly of malacolite, a silicate of calcium and magnesium.

A beautiful marble has been worked to a limited extent in the island of Tiree, one of the Hebrides, but the quarry appears to be now exhausted. This Tiree marble is a limestone having a delicate carnelian colour diffused through it in irregular patches, and containing rounded crystals of sahlite, a green augitic mineral resembling malacolite in composition.

Many marbles which are prized for the variegated patterns they display owe these patterns to their formation in concentric zones—such marbles being in fact stalagmitic deposits of carbonate of lime, sometimes consisting of aragonite. One of the most beautiful stalagmitic rocks is the so-called onyx marble of Algeria. This stone was largely used in the buildings of Carthage and Rome, but the quarries which yielded it were not known to modern sculptors until 1849, when it was rediscovered near Oued-Abdallah. The stone is a beautifully translucent material, delicately clouded with yellow and brown, and is greatly prized by French workmen. Large deposits of a very fine onyx-like marble, similar to the Algerian stone, have been worked at Técali, about 35 miles from the city of Mexico. Among other stalagmitic marbles, mention may be made of the well-known Gibraltar stone, which is often worked into models of cannon and other ornamental objects. This stalagmite is much deeper in colour and less translucent than the onyx marbles of Algeria and Mexico. A richly tinted stalagmitic stone worked in California is known as Californian marble. It is worth noting that the “alabaster” of the ancients was stalagmitic carbonate of lime, and that this stone is therefore called by mineralogists “Oriental alabaster” in order to distinguish it from our modern “alabaster,” which is a sulphate, and not a carbonate, of lime. Gypsum capable of taking a polish is found at Fauld in Staffordshire and in Italy and Spain.

The brown and yellow colours which stalagmitic marbles usually present are due to the presence of oxide of iron. This colouring matter gives special characters to certain stones, such as the giallo antico, or antique yellow marble of the Italian antiquaries. Siena marble is a reddish mottled stone obtained from the neighbourhood of Siena in Tuscany; and a somewhat similar stone is found in King’s County, Ireland. True red marble is by no means common, but it does occur, of bright and uniform colour, though in very small quantity, in the Carboniferous limestone of Derbyshire and north-east Staffordshire. The red marble called rosso antico is often confounded with the porfiro rosso antico, which is really a mica-hornblende porphyrite owing its red colour to the mineral withamite.

Fire marble is the name given to a brown shelly limestone containing ammonites and other fossil shells, which present a brilliant display of iridescent colours, like those of precious opal. It occurs in rocks of Liassic age at the lead-mines of Bleiberg in Carinthia, and is worked into snuff-boxes and other small objects. By mineralogists it is often termed lumachella, an Italian name which may, however, be appropriately applied to any marble which contains small shells.

The quarries of France, Belgium, Italy and Spain, not to mention less important localities, yield a great diversity of marbles, and almost each stone bears a distinctive name, often of trivial meaning; but in this article it is impossible to enumerate the local names used by marble-workers in different countries to distinguish the various stones which pass under their hands.

America possesses some valuable deposits of marble, which in the eastern States have been extensively worked. The crystalline limestones of western New England furnish an abundance of white and grey marble, while a beautiful material fit for statuary work has been quarried near Rutland in Vermont. A grey bird’s-eye marble is obtained from central New York, and the greyish clouded limestones of Thomaston in Maine have been extensively quarried. Of the variegated and coloured marbles, perhaps the most beautiful are those from the northern part of Vermont, in the neighbourhood of Lake Champlain. A fine brecciated marble is found on the Maryland side of the Potomac, below Point of Rocks. Among the principal localities for black marble may be mentioned Shoreham in Vermont and Glen Falls in New York. In 1908 the American States producing marble were, in order of value, Vermont, Georgia, Tennessee, New York, Massachusetts, Alabama, Pennsylvania, Maryland, California, Colorado, Alaska, N. Carolina, Kentucky, New Mexico, Utah, Missouri and Idaho. In Canada the crystalline limestones of the pre-Cambrian series yield beautiful marbles.

In India we find important quarries at Makrana in Rajputana,—a locality which is said to have yielded the marble for the famous Taj Mahal at Agra. In the valley of the Nerbudda, near Jabalpur, there is a large development of marble. The white marble which is used for the delicately pierced screens called jalee work is obtained from near Raialo, in Ulwar.

(F. W. R.*)

Petrography.—Marbles are uniformly crystalline, and hence have no bedding or schistosity which would tend to make them fissile, but are entirely massive and free from grain. The microstructure of pure marble is comparatively simple. In thin sections they are seen to be built up of somewhat rounded grains of calcite, fitting closely together in a mosaic; very rarely do any grains show traces of crystalline form. They are colourless and transparent, and are usually traversed by a lattice-work of sharply defined cleavage cracks, which correspond to the rhombohedral faces. In polarized light the colours are pinkish or greenish white, or in very thin sections iridescent because the mineral has a very strong double refraction. They may also be crossed by bars or stripes, each of which indicates a twin plate, for the crystals are usually polysynthetic. This twinning may be produced by pressure acting either during the crystallization of the rock or at a later period.

The purest marbles generally contain some accessory minerals, and in many of these rocks they form a considerable proportion of the whole mass. The commonest are quartz in small rounded grains, scales of colourless or pale yellow mica (muscovite and phlogopite), dark shining flakes of graphite and small crystals of pyrites or iron oxides. Even fine Carrara marble leaves a residue of this sort when dissolved in acid. Many marbles contain other minerals which are usually silicates of lime or magnesia. The list of these accessories is a very large one. Augite is very frequent and may be white (malacolite) or pale green (coccolite, sahlite, diopside); hornblende occurs as white bladed tremolite or pale green actinolite; feldspars may be present also, such as orthoclase, or more frequently some plagioclase such as albite, labradorite and anorthite; scapolite (or wernerite); various kinds of garnet; vesuvianite, spinel, forsterite, periclase, brucite, talc, zoisite and epidote, chondrodite, biotite, datolite, sphene and apatite may be mentioned as typical accessory minerals. The presence of metalliferous minerals such as galena, grey or red silver ores, zinc blende, antimonite, chalcopyrite, molybdenite, cassiterite, usually indicates impregnation by ore-bearing solutions, especially if these substances occur in workable quantities. The rubies of Burma are found in crystalline limestones and are constantly accompanied by precious spinel (or balas-ruby).

These minerals represent impurities in the original limestone which crystallized at the time that the marble became crystalline. The silicates derive their silica mainly from sand or infiltrated siliceous deposits; the alumina represents an admixture of clay; the iron came from limonite or hematite in the original state of the rock. Where the silicates bulk largely because the original limestone was highly impure, all the carbonic acid may be driven out and replaced by silica during the process of recrystallization. The rock is then a calc-silicate rock, hard, tough, flinty and no longer readily soluble in acids. They are sometimes fine-grained hornstones (known as calc-silicate hornfelses). Where white minerals predominate (wollastonite, tremolite, feldspar) these rocks may have a close resemblance to marbles, but often they are green from the abundance of green augites and amphiboles, or brown (when garnet and vesuvianite are present in quantity) or yellow (with epidote, chondrodite or sphene). Decomposition induces further changes in colour owing to the formation of green or yellow serpentine, pale green talc, red hematite, and brown limonite. Most of the coloured or variegated crystalline marbles have originated in this manner. Often bands of calc-silicate rock alternate with bands of marble, and they may be folded or bent; in other cases, nodules and patches of silicates occur in a matrix of pure marble. Earth movements may shatter the rocks, producing fissures afterwards filled with veins of calcite; in this way the beautiful brecciated or veined marbles are produced. Sometimes the broken fragments are rolled and rounded by the flow of the marble under pressure and pseudo-conglomerates or “crush conglomerates” result. In other cases the banding of the marble indicates the original bedding of the calcareous sediments. Crystalline limestones which contain much mica may be called cipollins; in them quartz, garnet and hornblende often also occur. The ophicalcites are marbles containing much serpentine, which has been formed by the decomposition of forsterite, olivine or augite. The much-discussed Eozoon, at one time supposed to be the earliest known fossil and found in Archaean limestones in Canada, is now known to be inorganic and to belong to the ophicalcites.

Many marbles, probably all of them, are metamorphosed limestones. The passage of limestones rich in fossils into true marbles as they approach great crystalline intrusions of granite is a phenomenon seen in many parts of the world; occasionally the recrystallization of the rock has not completely obliterated the organic structures (e.g. at Carrara and at Bergen in Norway). The agencies which have induced the metamorphism are heat and pressure, the heat arising from the granite and the pressure from overlying masses of rock, for these changes took place before the granite cooled and while it was still deeply buried beneath the surface. In 1806 Sir James Hall described a series of experiments proving this. He enclosed chalk in a gun-barrel securely plugged and heated it to a high temperature in a furnace. Carbonic acid was given off by the chalk and produced a great pressure in the interior of the tube. After slow cooling the mass was found to have become converted into granular crystalline marble. As rocks which have undergone changes of this kind are commonest in the oldest and deepest layers of the earth’s crust, most marbles are Palaeozoic or pre-Cambrian. They occur very often with mica schists, phyllites, &c., which were beds of clay alternating with the original limestone. Formerly it was supposed that some of these marbles were crystalline sediments or even igneous rocks, but the tendency of modern geology is to assume that they were ordinary limestones, many of which may have been fossiliferous. In regions where the sedimentary rocks have been converted into schists, gneisses and granulites, the limestones are represented by calc schists, cipollins and marbles. Often no granite or other intrusive rock is present which may be regarded as the cause of the metamorphism. The marbles are often banded or schistose, and under the microscope show crushing and deformation of the component crystals, such as would have been produced by the earth pressures which accompany rock-folding. These crush structures have been obtained experimentally in marbles subjected to great pressures in steel cylinders. In the recrystallization of these limestones the direct heating action of igneous intrusions may have played no part, but the rise of temperature and increase of pressure due to the folding of great rock masses have probably been the operating causes. This type of metamorphism has been distinguished by the name marmarosis (Sir A. Geikie, Text Book of Geology, 1882).

For descriptions of ancient marbles see F. Corsi, Delle pietre antiche (Rome, 1845); M. W. Porter, What Rome was built with (Oxford, 1907), and for marbles in general consult E. Hull, Building and Ornamental Stones (1872); G. P. Merrill, Stones for Building and Decoration (3rd ed., 1905, New York).

(J. S. F.)

MARBLEHEAD, a township of Essex county, Massachusetts, U.S.A., occupying a rocky promontory on Massachusetts Bay, about 16 m. N. of Boston. Pop. (1890), 8202; (1900), 7582; (1905), 7209; (1910), 7338. Area, about 4 sq. m. Marblehead is served by the Boston & Maine railroad, and by electric railways connecting with Salem, Lynn and Boston. It is a quaint old town, with a number of houses dating back to the 17th and 18th centuries. Among the older buildings are the Lee mansion (1768), St Michael’s church (P. E., 1714), and the old town-hall (1727), sometimes called Marblehead’s “Cradle of Liberty.” Abbot Hall (1877), the municipal building, also contains the public library and several noteworthy paintings, including “The Spirit of ’76” or “Yankee Doodle” by Archibald M. Willard. The post office and custom-house was completed in 1904. There are several parks (Crocker, Fort Sewall, Seaside, and Fountain), and an old burying-ground, in which many of the early settlers and a number of soldiers of the War of Independence (including General John Glover) are buried; and a granite monument near the railway station commemorates the taking of the British supply and powder ship “Hope” off Marblehead in 1776 by Captain James Mugford, who was killed during the fight. The commodious harbour, nearly landlocked, is formed by a rocky peninsula known as Marblehead Neck. On this are the club-houses of the Eastern and Corinthian Yacht clubs; and Marblehead is a popular yachting centre. The manufacture of children’s shoes is the principal industry. Shipbuilding, once important, has been superseded by yacht and launch construction.

Marblehead, originally a part of Salem, known as Marble Harbor, was settled about 1629 by English emigrants (probably mostly from Lincolnshire and Devonshire); later (after about 1700) many emigrants from the Channel Islands settled here, and to them the dialectical peculiarities of Marblehead have often (perhaps mistakenly) been attributed. Marblehead was separately incorporated as a town in 1649. In the colonial period Marblehead was an important commercial port, and at one time was one of the most populous places in Massachusetts. After the passage of the Boston Port Bill (1774) it was made the port of entry instead of Boston, but its merchants refused to take advantage of this opportunity and patriotically invited the Boston merchants to use their wharves and warehouses. During the War of Independence many “state cruisers” (chartered at the Continental expense) set out from this port, the most famous being the “Lee,” commanded by John Manley (1733-93); in November 1775 this cruiser captured the “Nancy” with military stores valued at £20,541, which were taken to the American army at Cambridge. The “Lee” was manned by fifty men of the “amphibious regiment,” which under General John Glover (1732-1797) rendered invaluable services to Washington in conveying his troops across the East River after the battle of Long Island, and later in ferrying them across the Delaware before the battle of Trenton. Marblehead furnished more than 1000 men to the Continental army. During the war of 1812 the sea fight between the “Chesapeake” and the “Shannon” took place (June 1, 1813) off the adjacent coast. Marblehead was the scene of Benjamin (nicknamed “Flood”) Ireson’s ride, immortalized by J. G. Whittier.

See Samuel Roads, jun., The History and Traditions of Marblehead (Boston, 1880; 3rd ed., Marblehead, 1897).

See Robert E. Peabody, “Naval Career of Captain John Manley of Marblehead”, in Essex Institute Historical Collections (Salem, Mass.) for January 1909.

MARBLES, a children’s game of great antiquity, wide distribution, and uncertain origin, played with small spheres of stone, glass, baked clay or other material, from one-third of an inch to two inches in diameter. The game was once popular with all classes. Tradition, both at Oxford and Cambridge, attests that the game was formerly prohibited among undergraduates on the steps of the Bodleian or the Senate House. There is a similar tradition at Westminster School that the boys were forbidden to play marbles in Westminster Hall on account of the complaints made by members of parliament and lawyers. An anonymous poem of the 17th century speaks of a boy about to leave Eton as

“A dunce at syntax, but a dab at taw.”

Rogers, in The Pleasures of Memory, recalls how

“On yon grey stone that fronts the chancel-door,

Worn smooth by busy feet, now seen no more,
Each eve we shot the marble through the ring.”

Defoe (1720) writes of the seer Duncan Campbell: “Marbles, which he used to call children’s playing at bowls, yielded him mighty diversion; and he was so dexterous an artist at shooting that little alabaster globe from between the end of his forefinger and the knuckle of his thumb, that he seldom missed hitting plumb, as the boys call it, the marble he aimed at, though at the distance of two or three yards.” The locus classicus on marbles in the 19th century is in the trial in Pickwick, where Serjeant Buzfuz pathetically says of Master Bardell that “his ‘alley tors’ and his ‘commoneys’ are alike neglected; he forgets the long familiar cry of ‘knuckle down,’ and at tip-cheese, or odd and even, his hand is out.” Many similar passages might be adduced to prove the former popularity of marbles with the young of all classes. In some rural parts of Sussex Good Friday was known as “marble-day” till late in the 19th century, since on that day both old and young, including many who would never have thought of playing marbles at other times, took part in the game. There was some traditional reason for regarding marbles as a Lenten sport—perhaps, as the Rev. W. D. Parish suggests, “to keep people from more boisterous and mischievous enjoyments.”

The origin of the game is concealed in the mists of antiquity. Marbles used by Egyptian and Roman children before the Christian era are to be seen in the British Museum. Probably some of the small stone spheres found among neolithic remains, which Evans (Ancient Stone Implements, 2nd ed., p. 420) admits to be too small for projectiles, are prehistoric marbles. It is commonly assumed that the game which the youthful Augustus, like other Roman children, played with nuts was a form of marbles, and that the Latin phrase of relinquere nuces, in the sense of putting away childish things, referred to this game. Strutt believed that nuts of the roundest sort were the original “marbles.” The earliest unmistakable reference to marbles in literature seems to be in a French poem of the 12th century, quoted by Littré s.v. Bille.

The marbles with which various games are nowadays played are small spheres of stone, glass or baked clay. In the 18th century they were mostly made from chips of marble (whence the name) or other stone, which were ground into a roughly spherical shape by attrition in a special iron mill. Nuremberg was then the centre of the trade in marbles, though some were made in Derbyshire, and indeed wherever there was a stonemason’s yard to afford raw material. The “alley taw,” as its name indicates, was made of alabaster. In the first decade of the 20th century English marbles were all imported from central Germany, and the alleys, or most valuable marbles, used for shooting, were mostly made of coloured glass, sold retail from ten a penny to a penny each. Coloured stone marbles and so-called china marbles—really of baked clay—were sold at prices varying from forty to a hundred a penny, though even the cheapest of these were painted by hand with concentric rings. The well-made and highly valued alleys of earlier times were no longer procurable, owing to the decline in popularity of the sport. In the United States, however, much more expensive and accurately rounded marbles were still manufactured, the latest being of hollow steel.

There has never been any recognized authority on the game of marbles, and it is probable that, in the past as in the present, every parish and school and set of boys made its own rules. There are, however, three or four distinct games which are traditional, and may be found, with trifling variations, wherever the game is played. Strutt, writing at the end of the 18th century, describes these as follows: (1) “Taw, wherein a number of boys put each of them one or two marbles in a ring and shoot at them alternately with other marbles, and he who obtains the most of them by beating them out of the ring is the conqueror.” The marbles placed in the ring—whence the game is often known as “ring-taw”—are usually of the cheaper kind known as “commoneys,” “stoneys” or “potteys,” and the marble with which the player shoots is a more valuable one, known as an “alley,” or “alley taw,” sometimes spelt “tor,” as by Dickens. Usually it is necessary that the alley should emerge from the ring as well as drive out another marble; under other rules the ring is smaller, not more than a foot in diameter, and the player must be skilful enough to leave his alley inside it, whilst driving the object marble outside. (2) “Nine holes: which consists in bowling of marbles at a wooden bridge with nine arches.” Each arch bears a number, and the owner of the bridge pays that number of marbles to the player who shoots through it, making his profit from the missing marbles, which he confiscates; or the game may simply be played so many up—usually 100. (3) “There is also another game of marbles where four, five or six holes, and sometimes more, are made in the ground at a distance from each other; and the business of every one of the players is to bowl a marble by a regular succession into all the holes, which he who completes in the fewest bowls obtains the victory.” This primitive form of golf is played by Zulu adults with great enthusiasm, and is still popular among the car-drivers of Belfast. (4) “Boss out, or boss and span, also called hit and span, wherein one bowls a marble to any distance that he pleases, which serves as a mark for his antagonist to bowl at, whose business it is to hit the marble first bowled, or lay his own near enough to it for him to span the space between them and touch both marbles; in either case he wins, if not, his marble remains where it lay and becomes a mark for the first player, and so alternately until the game be won.” In rural parts of England this was known as a “going-to-school game,” because it helped the players along the road.

Mr F. W. Hackwood states that, in the middle of the 19th century, taverns in the Black Country had regular marble alleys, consisting of a cement bed 20 ft. long by 12 ft. wide and 18 in. from the ground, with a raised wooden rim to prevent the marbles from running off. Players knelt down to shoot, and had to “knuckle down” fairly—i.e. to place the knuckle of the shooting hand on the ground, so that the flip of the thumb was not aided by a jerk of the wrist. The game was usually ring-taw. But marbles is now obsolete in England as a game for adults (Old English Sports, London, 1907).

A writer in Notes and Queries (IX. ii. 314) thus describes the marbles used by English boys in the middle of the 19th century: “In ring-taw the player put only commoneys in the ring, and shot with the taws, which included stoneys, alleys and blood-alleys. Commoneys were unglazed; potteys glazed in the kiln. Stoneys were made from common pebbles such as were used for road-mending; alleys and blood-alleys out of marble. The blood-alleys were highly prized, and were called by this name because of the spots or streaks of red in them. In Derbyshire, where large numbers were made, they had relative values. The stoney was worth three commoneys or two potteys. An alley was worth six commoneys or four potteys. Blood-alleys were worth more, according to the depth and arrangement of colour—from twelve to fifty commoneys and stoneys in proportion.” “A taw with a history was prized above rubies,” another correspondent observes (IX. ii. 76). “All the best-made marbles were taws, and no commoneys or potteys were used for shooting with, either in ring-taw or the various hole-games.” In Belfast, 1854-1858, the marble season extended from Easter to June, when the ground was usually dry and hard. The marbles were stoneys, of composition painted; crockeries, of slightly glazed stone-ware, dark brown and yellow; clayeys, of red brick clay baked in the fire; marbles, of white marble; china alleys, with white glaze and painted rings; and glass marbles. The two chief games were ring-taw and hole and taw; in the latter three holes were made in a line, 6 ft. to 12 ft. apart, and the player had to go three times up and down according to somewhat elaborate rules (Notes and Queries, IX. iii. 65). The stoneys and crockeries were sold at twenty a penny; the clayeys were cheaper and were not used as stakes; the marbles proper and china alleys, used as taws for shooting, cost a halfpenny and a farthing respectively. In other parts of the country the phraseology of marbles affords some interesting problems for the philologist. We hear of “alleys, barios, poppos and stoneys”; of “marididdles,” home-made marbles of rolled and baked clay; in Scotland of “bools, whinnies, glassies, jauries”; of “Dutch alleys,” and so forth. “Dubs, trebs and fobs,” stand for twos, threes and fours. To be “mucked” is to lose all one’s “mivvies” or marbles. When the taw stayed in the ring it was a “chuck.” “Phobbo slips” was a phrase used to forbid the correction of an error.

The fullest account of the various games of marbles played by English children is to be found in Mrs Gomme’s Traditional Games of England, Scotland and Ireland (London, 1898), under the headings Boss-out, Bridgeboard, Bun-hole, Cob, Ho-go, Holy Bang, Hundreds, Lag, Long-Tawl, Marbles, Nine-Holes, Ring-taw, Three-Holes. Other games are known as Plum-pudding, or Picking the Plums, in which one shoots at marbles in a row; Pyramids, in which the marbles are arranged in a pyramid; Bounce About, Bounce Eye, Conqueror, Die Shot, Fortifications, Handers, Increase Pound, Knock Out, Rising Taw, Spanners, Tip-shears; Strutt’s Sports and Pastimes, ed. J. C. Cox (London, 1902). Much information will also be found in Notes and Queries, passim—especially the 9th series. For marbles in France see Larousse, s.v. Billes. See also Solitaire.

(W. E. G. F.)

MARBOT, JEAN BAPTISTE ANTOINE MARCELIN, Baron de (1782-1854), French soldier, son of General Jean Antoine de Marbot (1754-1800), who died in the defence of Genoa under Masséna, was born at La Rivière (Corrèze), on the 18th of August 1782. He joined the republican army as a volunteer in 1799, rose rapidly to commissioned rank, and was aide-de-camp to Marshal Augereau, commanding the VII. corps, in the war against Prussia and Russia in 1806-7. After this he served with great distinction in the Peninsular War under Lannes and Masséna, and showed himself to be a dashing leader of light cavalry in the Russian War of 1812 and the German campaign of the following year. After a slow recovery from the wounds he had received at Leipzig and Hanau, he was promoted general of brigade by Napoleon during the Hundred Days, and took part in, and was wounded at, the battle of Waterloo. He was exiled at the second restoration and only returned to France in 1819, after which, however, his intimacy with the duke of Orleans secured him important military positions. After the July restoration he was made maréchal-de-camp, and in this rank he was present at the siege of Antwerp in 1832. He was promoted lieutenant-general in 1836. From 1835 to 1840 he served in various Algerian expeditions, and in 1845 he was made a member of the Chamber of Peers. Three years later, at the fall of Louis Philippe, he retired into private life. He died at Paris on the 16th of November 1854. Marbot wrote two pamphlets, Remarques critiques sur l’ouvrage de M. le général Roguet, intitulé Considérations sur l’art de la guerre (1820), and La Nécessité d’augmenter les forces militaires de la France (1825), but his fame rests chiefly, if not indeed wholly, on the fascinating Memoirs of his Life and Campaigns which were published in Paris in 1891 (Eng. trans., 1902). To ordinary readers and to students of history alike these give a picture of the Napoleonic age of warfare which for vividness and romantic interest has never been surpassed.

His elder brother, Antoine Adolphe Marcelin de Marbot (1781-1844), was born at La Rivière, on the 22nd of March 1781, entered the army at an early age, obtained commissioned rank in the revolutionary wars and became aide-de-camp to Bernadotte. In 1802 he was arrested on the ground of being concerned in a plot of the Republicans against the Consulate, but he was released, though Napoleon continued to regard him as an opponent of the established régime. After a term of duty with the army in Santo Domingo he participated in the campaigns of 1806-7, and from 1808 to 1811 he was employed in the Peninsular War. In the Russian War of 1812 he was wounded and made prisoner. At the end of two years of captivity he returned to France at the general peace, was aide-de-camp to Marshal Davout during the Hundred Days, and thereafter passed into retirement, from which he did not emerge till 1830. He attained the rank of maréchal-de-camp under Louis Philippe, and died at Bra, near Tulle, on the 2nd of June 1844.

MARBURG, a town of Austria, in Styria, 41 m. S. of Graz by rail. Pop. (1900), 24,501. It is very picturesquely situated on the left bank of the river Drave, on a plain called the Pettauer-Feld, at the base of the well-wooded Bachergebirge. To the north of the town the train passes through the Leitersberg tunnel (725 yds. long), opened in 1846, while the Drave, which has here a width of 200 yds., is spanned by a magnificent iron bridge, built in 1845. The principal buildings are the cathedral, dating from the 16th century, the tower of which, erected in 1623, is 136 ft. high, and the old castle. Its situation in the midst of a fertile vine and fruit-growing district, connected by the navigable Drave with Hungary, and by railway with Vienna, Trieste, Tirol and Carinthia, makes it the centre of a considerable traffic in wine and grain. Its industrial products are leather, boots and shoes, iron and tin wares, liqueurs and sparkling wine, and it also contains the extensive workshops of the South Austrian railway. Marburg is the seat of the bishop of Lavant, and is the native town of the famous Austrian admiral, Baron Wilhelm of Tegetthoff (1827-1871). Near Marburg is the village of Mariarast, the church of which is a popular place of pilgrimage.

MARBURG, an ancient university town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau, situated on the slope of a hill on the right bank of the Lahn, 60 m. by rail N. of Frankfort-on-Main, on the main line to Cassel. Pop. (1905), 20,137. On the opposite bank of the river, here spanned by two bridges, lie the suburb of Weidenhausen and the railway station of the Prussian state railway. The hill on which the town lies is crowned by the extensive old Schloss, a fine Gothic building, the most noteworthy parts of which are the Rittersaal, dating from 1277-1312, and the beautiful little chapel. This Schloss was formerly the residence of the landgraves of Hesse, served afterwards as a prison, and is now the repository of the historically interesting and valuable archives of Hesse. The chief architectural ornament of Marburg is, however, the Elisabethenkirche, a veritable gem of the purest Early Gothic style, erected by the grand master of the Teutonic Order in 1235-1283, to contain the tomb of St Elizabeth of Hungary. The remains of the saint were deposited in a rich silver-gilt sarcophagus, which may still be seen, and were afterwards visited by myriads of pilgrims, until the Protestant zeal of Landgrave Philip the Generous caused him to remove the body to some unknown spot in the church. The church also contains the tombs of numerous Hessian landgraves and knights of the Teutonic Order. The Lutheran church is another good Gothic edifice, dating mainly from the 15th century. The town-hall, built in 1512, and several fine houses in the Renaissance style, also deserve mention. The university of Marburg, founded by Philip the Magnanimous in 1527, was the first university established without papal privileges, and speedily acquired a great reputation throughout Protestant Europe. It has a library of 140,000 volumes, is admirably equipped with medical and other institutes, which form some of the finest modern buildings in the town, and was attended, in 1905, by 1576 students. Marburg also possesses a gymnasium, a “Realschule,” an agricultural school, a society of naturalists, a hospital, and an extensive lunatic asylum. It is the seat of a district court, and of superintendents of the Lutheran and Reformed Churches. Marburg pottery is renowned; and leather, iron wares and surgical instruments are also manufactured there. The environs are very picturesque.

Marburg is first historically mentioned in a document of the beginning of the 13th century, and received its municipal charter from the landgrave Louis of Thuringia in 1227. On his death it became the residence of his wife, Elizabeth of Hungary, who built a hospital there, and died in 1231, at the age of twenty-four, worn out with works of religion and charity. She was canonized in 1235 at the instance of the Teutonic Knights, who had settled in Marburg in 1233 and were zealous in promoting her cult. By 1247 Marburg had already become the second town of Hesse, and in the 15th and 16th centuries it alternated with Cassel as the seat of the landgraves. In 1529 the famous conference between Luther and Zwingli on the subject of Transubstantiation took place there in the Rittersaal of the Schloss (see Marburg, Colloquy of). During the Thirty Years’ and Seven Years’ Wars Marburg suffered considerably from sieges and famine. In 1806, and again in 1810, it was the centre of an abortive rising against the French, in consequence of which the fortifications of the castle were destroyed.

See Kolbe, Marburg im Mittelalter (Marb., 1879); Bücking, Mittheilungen aus Marburgs Vorzeit (Marb., 1886); Schoof, Marburg die Perle des Hessenlandes (2nd ed., 1903).

MARBURG, COLLOQUY OF (Marburger Religionsgespräch), the name given to a conference of divines held in 1529 in the interests of the unity of Protestant Germany. The circumstances in which it was held, the influence of the men who conducted its deliberations, and the result of its proceedings, combine to render it of no small importance for the history of the Reformation in Germany.

After the Imperial Diet of Spires in 1526 had decreed that all states of the empire should observe the Edict of Worms (1521), banning Luther and his adherents, in such a manner that they should not be afraid to answer it before God and the emperor, the reform movement had received such an access of strength that the Catholic party felt itself menaced in earnest, and in 1529 again passed a resolution at Spires, deigned not merely to preclude any further expansion of the Reformation, but even to prevent it from maintaining the ground already won. This decision was at once challenged, on the 19th of April, by the protest of the Evangelical states (whence the name Protestants); and the effect of this disclaimer was not small. Still, it was devoid of political significance, unless backed by the united force of all the princes and states subscribing to the Evangelical teaching; and this unity was wanting. The feud which raged round the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper had already broken out before the first diet of Spires, and had aroused great and immediate excitement. At a very early period, however, efforts were made to allay the dissension. Strassburg pronounced for conciliation: but the most powerful and zealous champion of peace was to be found in the landgrave Philip of Hesse, who recognized the absolute necessity—from a political standpoint—of the union of all German Protestants. It is probable that he had invited Luther to a religious conference as early as the year 1527; but on that occasion he met with a refusal. True, the impression conveyed by the attitude of the Catholic party at the second Diet of Spires had served to awaken the feeling for solidarity among the Evangelicals there assembled; and on the 22nd of April they had even secured the basis for a provisional alliance in the shape of a formula drawn up by Bucer and dealing with the Lord’s Supper. But it was obvious that a permanent coalition could not be expected unless some definite understanding on the debated point could be attained; and on the very same day the landgrave despatched to Zwingli an invitation to a colloquy, and received his prompt acquiescence. Melanchthon, who in the tension which prevailed at the synod had shown himself inclined to negotiation, became suspicious on his return, and endeavoured to influence the elector of Saxony and Luther in accordance with his views. The landgrave, however, was so far successful that the beginning of October (1529) saw the colloquy opened in the castle at Marburg. With Zwingli, who had arrived on the 27th of September, he had several interviews of considerable political importance before the Wittenberg divines made their appearance. These interviews settled the preliminaries of an alliance; but they rested on the assumption that the theological feud between Wittenberg and Zürich could be removed, or its violence at least abated.

The proceedings opened on the 1st of October with conferences between Luther and Oecolampadius, and Melanchthon and Zwingli: then on the two following days the discussion proper—confined almost entirely to Luther and Zwingli—was held before the landgrave and his guest Duke Ulrich of Württemberg, in the presence of more than fifty persons. As regards the main point of contention, i.e. the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper, no agreement was found practicable; and the private conversations on the 4th of October, which formed the sequel of the debate, carried matters no farther. “You have another spirit,” said Luther. Since the landgrave, however, was reluctant to see the colloquy brought to an absolutely fruitless close, he requested Luther to draw up a list of the most important points of doctrine on which it might yet be possible to arrive at some degree of unanimity. This was done on the 4th of October; and a few alterations were introduced to meet the wishes of the Swiss deputies. The Articles of Marburg, which thus came into being, contain the doctrine of the Trinity, of the personality of Christ, of faith and justification, of the Scriptures, of baptism, of good works, of confession, of government, of tradition, and of infant baptism. The fifteenth article, treating of the Lord’s Supper, defines the ground common to both parties even in this debateable region, recognizing the necessity of participation in both kinds, and rejecting the sacrifice of the Mass. It then proceeds to fix the point of difference in the fact that no agreement had been reached on the question “whether the true body and blood of Christ are corporeally present in the bread and wine” (“Nit vergleicht haben wir uns, ob der war leib und plut Christi leiblich im brot und wein sey”). Nevertheless, the adherents of each doctrine are recommended to display Christian charity to those of the other. These articles were signed by the ten official members of the colloquy: Luther, Jonas, Melanchthon, Osiander, Agricola, Brenz, Oecolampadius, Bucer, Hedio and Zwingli. The personal contact between Luther and Zwingli led to no mental rapprochement between the two; but in the following year the Articles of Marburg did good service as one of the preliminaries to the Augsburg Confession, and remain a valuable document for the fundamental principles common to the Lutheran and Reformed Churches.

See T. Kolde, s.v. “Marburger Religionsgespräch,” in Realencyklopädie f. protestant. Theologie, 3rd ed. xii. 248 seq.

(C. M.)

MARCA, PIERRE DE (1594-1662), French prelate and historian, was born at Gan, near Pau, on the 24th of January 1594. His family was known among judicial circles in the 16th century, and maintained the Roman Catholic faith after the official introduction of the Reformed religion into Navarre. After having studied law at the university of Toulouse he practised successfully at Pau. But he was ambitious, and turned to a larger sphere. He ardently called for the armed intervention of King Louis XIII. in Béarn, and on this occasion published his first writing, Discours d’un Béarnais, très fidèle sujet du roi, sur l’édit du rétablissement de l’exercice de la religion catholique dans tout le Béarn (1618). After the easy campaign of 1620, the possessions which had been taken by the Protestants were given back to the Roman Catholic church; this task was performed, under his supervision, with judgment and moderation. During the siege of La Rochelle he performed a mission which brought him in touch with Richelieu, who shortly afterwards nominated him intendant de justice in Béarn (1631), and in 1639 summoned him to Paris with the title of counsellor of state. The following year, the question of the intervention of kings in the election of bishops having been raised in a pamphlet by Charles Hersent (Optalus Gallus de cavendo schismate, 1640), Marca defended what were then called the liberties of the Gallican Church, in his celebrated treatise De concordia sacerdotii et imperii, seu de libertalibus ecclesiae gallicanae (1641). He was soon rewarded for this service. Although he had not yet taken even the minor holy orders, he was nominated bishop of Couserans by the king on the 28th of December 1641, but the pope refused to give his sanction. It was only after Marca had formally denied those propositions contained in De concordia which were displeasing to Rome that he was proclaimed in the consistory (Jan. 13, 1648). During this time, and until 1651, he was governor of the province of Catalonia, then occupied by the French. After the Treaty of the Pyrenees, he was sent to direct the conference which had been formed to fix the limits of Roussillon, which had just been ceded to France (1660). Marca now interested himself in the fortunes of Mazarin, and remained faithful to him even during the Fronde. As a recompense, he was nominated archbishop of Toulouse (May 28, 1652), but had to wait for the bulls of investiture till the 23rd of March 1654. It was difficult for him to please both pope and king. In the struggle against the Jansenists he used all the influence he had with the clergy to secure the passage of the apostolic constitution of the 31st of March 1653 (Relation de ce qui s’est fait depuis 1653 dans les assemblées des évêques au sujet des cinq propositions, 1657); but in the rebellion raised by Retz, archbishop of Paris, against the king, he took the part of the king against the pope. Michel Le Tellier having ordered him to refute a thesis of the college of Clermont on the infallibility of the pope, Marca wrote a treatise which was most Gallican in its ideas, but refused to publish it for fear of drawing down “the indignation of Rome.” These tactics were successful, and when Retz, weary of a struggle without definite results, resigned the archbishopric, Marca became his successor (Feb. 26, 1662). He did not derive much profit from this new favour, as he died on the 29th of June following, without his nomination having been sanctioned by the pope.

Marca, clever and covetous, was also an historian of note. When very young he showed his interest in the past history of his native land, and in 1617, at the age of twenty-three, he had set to work looking through archives, copying charters, and corresponding with the principal men of learning of his time, the brothers Dupuy, André Duchesne and Jean Besly, whom he visited in Poitou. His Histoire de Béarn was published at Paris in 1640. It was not so well received as his De concordia, but is more appreciated by posterity. If Marca’s criticism is too often undecided, both in the ancient epochs, where he supports the text by a certain amount of guesswork and in certain points where he touches on religion, yet he always gives the text correctly. A number of chapters end with an interesting collection of charters. It is to be regretted that this incomplete work does not go beyond 1300. During his long stay in Catalonia he made preparations for a geographical and historical description of this province, which was bound to France by so many political and literary associations. Baluze, who became his secretary in 1656, helped him with the work and finished it, adding clever appendices and publishing the whole in 1688 under the title Marca hispanica.

Marca married Marguerite de Forgues on the 4th of June 1618, and had one son and three daughters. His son, Galactoire, who was president of the parlement of Navarre, died on the 10th of February 1689.

Marca’s biography was written in Latin by two of his intimate friends, Étienne Baluze, his secretary (Epistola ad Samuelem Sorbierium, de vita, gestis et scriptis Petri de Marca, Paris, 1663), and his cousin, Paul de Faget (at the beginning of a collection of Marca’s theological pamphlets, first published by Paul de Faget in 1668). This contained four treatises on the Eucharist, the sacrifice of the Mass, the erection of the patriarchate of Constantinople (in Latin), and the sacrament of the Eucharist (in French). It was supposed to contain heretical propositions and caused a good deal of scandal, inciting Baluze against Faget, both of whom abused the other, to defend the memory of the prelate.

See Bayle’s article in the Dictionnaire historique et critique (s.v. “Marca”), and the Vie de Marca in the Histoire de Béarn (vol. i., 1894) of V. Dubarat.

MARCANTONIO [Marcantonio Raimondi], the chief Italian master of the art of engraving in the age of the Renaissance, and the first who practised it in order to reproduce, not designs of his own invention, as earlier craftsmen had commonly done, but those of other artists almost exclusively. The date of his birth is uncertain, nor is there any good authority for assigning it, as is commonly done, approximately to the year 1488. He was probably born some years at least earlier than this, inasmuch as he is mentioned by a contemporary writer, Achillini, as being an artist of repute in 1504. His earliest dated plate, illustrating the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, belongs to the following year, 1505. Marcantonio received his training in the workshop of the famous goldsmith and painter of Bologna, Francesco Raibolini, usually called Francia. “Having more aptitude in design,” says Vasari, “than his master, and managing the graver with facility and grace, he made waist-buckles and many other things in niello, such being then greatly in fashion, and made them most beautifully, as being in truth most excellent in that craft.” The real fame, however, of Marcantonio was destined to be founded on his attainments, not in the goldsmith’s art generally, but in that particular development of it which consists of engraving designs on metal plates for the purpose of reproduction by the printing press. This art was not new in Italy in the days of Marcantonio’s apprenticeship. It had been practised, in a more or less elementary form, for not less than forty or fifty years in the workshops alike of Venetia, the Emilia, Tuscany and Lombardy. But the technical aim of the Italian engravers had not hitherto been directed, like that of Schongauer or Dürer north of the Alps, towards securing such freedom and precision in the use of the burin as should impart to the impressions taken from their engraved plates both a striking decorative effect and a power of suggesting to the eye a complex variety of natural objects and surfaces in light and shade. The Italian masters had been satisfied with much more rudimentary effects. The Florentine primitives had been content either with very simple cloudy patches of cross-hatching in fine straight lines, or with broad open shadings in the manner of a bold pen-drawing. Mantegna and Pollaiuolo, the two chief original masters who practised the art, had used the latter method with great power but at the same time great simplicity.

By the beginning of the 16th century a desire for a more complicated kind of effects was already arising among the followers of the art in Italy. Both backgrounds and passages of foreground detail were often imitated, inartificially enough, from the works of the northern masters. Marcantonio himself was among the foremost in this movement. About eighty engravings can be referred to the first five or six years of his career (1505-1511). Their subjects are very various, including many of pagan mythology, and some of obscure allegory, along with those of Christian devotion. The types of figures and drapery, and the general character of the compositions, bespeak for the most part the inspiration, and sometimes the direct authorship, of Francia. But the influence of German example is very perceptible also, particularly in the landscape backgrounds, and in the endeavour to express form by means of light and shadow with greater freedom than had been hitherto the practice of the southern schools. In a few subjects also the figures themselves correspond to a coarse Teutonic, instead of to the refined Italian, ideal. But so far we find Marcantonio only indirectly leaning on the north for the sake of self-improvement. It must have been for the sake of commercial profit that he by-and-by produced a series of direct counterfeits on copper from Albert Dürer’s woodcuts. These facsimiles are sixty-nine in number, including seventeen of Dürer’s “Life of the Virgin,” thirty-seven of his “Little Passion,” on wood, and a number of single pieces. According to Vasari, Dürer’s indignation over those counterfeits was the cause of his journey to Venice, where he is said to have lodged a complaint against Marcantonio, and induced the Senate to prohibit the counterfeiting of his monogram, at any rate, upon any future imitations of the kind. Vasari’s account must certainly be mistaken, inasmuch as Dürer’s journey to Venice took place in 1506, and neither of the two series of woodcuts imitated by Marcantonio was published until 1511. The greater part of the designs for the “Life of the Virgin” had, it is true, been made and engraved seven years earlier than the date of their publication; and it is to be remarked that, whereas Marcantonio’s copies of the “Little Passion” leave out the monogram of Dürer, it is inserted in his copies of the “Life of the Virgin”; whence it would, after all, seem possible that he had seen and counterfeited a set of impressions of this series at the time when they were originally executed, and before their publication. But the real nature of the transaction, if transaction there was, which took place between Dürer and Marcantonio we cannot now hope to recover. Enough that the Bolognese engraver evidently profited, both in money and in education of the hand, by his work in imitating in a finer material the energetic characters of these northern woodcuts. He was soon to come under a totally different influence, and to turn the experience he had gained to account in interpreting the work of a master of a quite other stamp. Up till the year 1510 Marcantonio had lived entirely at Bologna, with the exception, it would appear, of a visit or visits to Venice. (A few of his early engravings are from drawings of the school of Giorgione.) Very soon afterwards he was attracted, for good and all, into the circle which surrounded Raphael at Rome. Where or when he had first made Raphael’s acquaintance is uncertain. His passage to Rome by way of Florence has been supposed to be marked by an engraving, dated 1510, and known as “The Climbers,” Les Grimpeurs (Bartsch, 487), in which he has reproduced a portion of the design of Michelangelo’s cartoon of the Soldiers surprised bathing, and has added behind the figures a landscape imitated from the then young Dutch engraver Lucas of Leiden. Contemporary or somewhat earlier than this is a large engraving done by him from a design by Baldassare Peruzzi, a Sienese artist drawn about the same time into the Raphael circle. The piece in which he is recorded to have first tried his hand after Raphael himself is the Lucretia (Bartsch 192). From that time until he disappears in the catastrophe of 1527, Marcantonio was almost exclusively engaged in reproducing by means of engraving the designs of Raphael or of his immediate pupils. Raphael, the story goes, was so delighted with the print of the Lucretia that he personally trained and helped Marcantonio afterwards. A printing establishment was set up under the charge of Raphael’s colour-grinder, Il Baviera, and the profits, in the early stage of the business, were shared between the engraver and the printer. The sale soon became very great; pupils gathered round about Marcantonio, of whom the two most distinguished were Marco Dente, known as Marco da Ravenna, and Agostino de’ Musi, known as Agostino Veneziano; and he and they, during the last ten years of Raphael’s life, and for several years following his death, gave forth a great profusion of engravings after the master’s work—not copying, in most instances, his finished paintings, but working up, with the addition of simple backgrounds and accessories, his first sketches and trials, which often give the composition in a different form from the finished work, and are all the more interesting on that account.

The best of these engravings produced in the workshop of Marcantonio—those, namely, done by his own hand, and especially those done during the first few years after he had attached himself to Raphael—count among the most prized and coveted examples of the art. In them he enters into the genius of his master, and loses little of the chastened science and rhythmical purity of Raphael’s contours, or of the inspired and winning sentiment of his faces; while in the parts where he is left to himself—the rounding and shading, the background and landscape—he manages his burin with all the skill and freedom which he had gained by the imitation of northern models, but puts away the northern emphasis and redundance of detail. His work, however, does not long remain at the height marked by pieces like the Lucretia, the Dido, the Judgment of Paris, the Poetry, the Philosophy, or the first Massacre of the Innocents. Marcantonio’s engravings after the works of Raphael’s later years are cold, ostentatious, and soulless by comparison. Still more so, as is natural, were those which he and his pupils produced after the designs of the degenerate scholars of Raphael and Michelangelo, of a Giulio Romano, a Polidoro, or a Bandinelli. Marcantonio’s association with Giulio Romano was the cause of his first great disaster in life. He engraved a series of obscene designs by that painter in illustration of the Sonnetti lussuriosi of Pietro Aretino, and thereby incurred the anger of pope Clement VII., at whose order he was thrown into prison. Marcantonio’s ruin was completed by the calamities attendant on the sack of Rome in 1527. He had to pay a heavy ransom in order to escape from the hands of the Spaniards, and fled from Rome, in the words of Vasari, “all but a beggar.” It is said that he took refuge in his native city, Bologna; but he never again emerges from obscurity, and all we know with certainty is that in 1534 he was dead.

(S. C.)

MARCASITE, a mineral with the same chemical composition as pyrites, being iron disulphide FeS2, but crystallizing in the orthorhombic instead of in the cubic system. The name is of Arabic origin and was long applied to crystallized pyrites (q.v.); it was restricted to the present species by W. Haidinger in 1845. The mineral was known to G. Agricola in 1546 under the names Wasserkies or Weisserkies and Leberkies, and it has been variously known as white pyrites, hepatic pyrites, lamellar pyrites, radiated pyrites (German Strahlkies) and prismatic pyrites. The orthorhombic form of the crystals, as distinct from the cubic form of pyrites, was recognized by Romé de l’Isle in 1772, though later R. J. Haüy considered the crystals to be only distorted cubic forms.

The crystals are isomorphous with mispickel (q.v.), but only rarely are they distinctly developed and simple (fig.). Usually they are twinned on a prism plane, M, producing pentagonal stellate groups of five crystals; twinning on the plain g, in which the crystals intercross at angles of nearly 60°, is less common. This frequent twinning gives rise to characteristic forms, with many re-entrant angles, to which the names “spear pyrites” and “cockscomb pyrites” are applied. The commonest state of aggregation is that of radially arranged fibres, the external surface of the mass being globular, nodular or stalactitic in form.

Apart from crystalline form, the external characters of marcasite are very similar to those of pyrites, and when distinct crystals are not available the two species cannot always be easily distinguished. The colour is usually pale bronze-yellow, often rather lighter than that of pyrites; on freshly fractured surfaces of pure marcasite the colour is tin-white, but this rapidly tarnishes on exposure to air. The lustre is metallic and brilliant. The streak is greyish or brownish-black. The hardness (6-61⁄2) is the same as that of pyrites, and the specific gravity (4.8-4.9) as a rule rather less. Arsenical varieties of marcasite, containing up to 5% of arsenic, are known as lonchidite and kyrosite.

Marcasite readily oxidizes on exposure to moist air, with the production of sulphuric acid and a white fibrous efflorescence of ferrous sulphate, and in course of time specimens in collections often became completely disintegrated. In nature it is frequently altered to limonite with the separation of native sulphur. Marcasite is thus the less stable of the two modifications of iron disulphide. Many experiments have been made with a view to determining the difference in chemical constitution of marcasite and pyrites, but with no very definite results. It is a noteworthy fact that whilst pyrites has been prepared artificially, marcasite has not.

Marcasite occurs under the same conditions as pyrites, but is much less common. Whilst pyrites is found abundantly in the older crystalline rocks and slates, marcasite is more abundant in clays, and has often been formed as a concretion around organic remains. It is abundant, for example, in the plastic clay of the Brown Coal formation at Littmitz, near Carlsbad, in Bohemia, at which place it has been extensively mined for the manufacture of sulphur and ferrous sulphate. In the Chalk of the south-east of England nodules of marcasite with a fibrous radiated structure are abundant, and in the Chalk Marl between Dover and Folkestone fine twinned groups of “spear pyrites” are common. The mineral is also met with in metalliferous veins, though much less frequently than pyrites; for example the “cockscomb pyrites” of the lead mines of Derbyshire and Cumberland.

(L. J. S.)

MARCEAU-DESGRAVIERS, FRANÇOIS SÉVERIN (1769-1796), French general, was born at Chartres on the 1st of March 1769. His father was a law officer, and he was educated for a legal career, but at the age of sixteen he enlisted in the regiment of Savoy-Carignan. Whilst on furlough in Paris Marceau joined in the attack on the Bastille (July 14, 1789); after that event he took his discharge from the regular army and returned to Chartres, but the embarrassments of his family soon compelled him to seek fresh military employment. He became drill instructor, and afterwards captain in the departmental (Eure-et-Loire) regiment of the National Guard. Early in March 1792 he was elected lieutenant-colonel of one of the battalions of the Eure-et-Loire; he took part in the defence of Verdun in 1792, and it fell to his lot to bear the proposals of capitulation to the Prussian camp. The spiritless conduct of the defenders excited the wrath of the revolutionary authorities, and Marceau was fortunate in escaping arrest and finding re-employment as a captain in the regular service. Early in 1793 he became with other officers “suspect,” and was for some time imprisoned. On his release he hurried to take part in the defence of Saumur against the Vendéan royalists, and distinguished himself at the combat of Saumur (June 10, 1793) by gallantly rescuing the representative Bourbotte from the hands of the insurgents. The Convention voted him the thanks of the country, and thenceforward his rise was rapid. His conduct at Chantonnay (Sept. 5) won him the provisional rank of general of brigade. On the 17th of October he bore a great part in the victory of Cholet, and on the field of this battle began his friendship with Kléber. For the victory of Cholet Kléber was made general of division and Marceau confirmed as general of brigade. Their advice was of the greatest value to the generals in command, and the military talents of each were the complement of the other’s. Marceau, who became general of division (Nov. 10), succeeded to the chief command ad interim, and with his friend won important victories near Le Mans (Dec 12-13) and Savenay (Dec. 23). After the battle of Le Mans, Marceau rescued and protected a young Royalist lady, Angélique des Mesliers. It is often supposed that he was in love with his prisoner; but the help even of the commander-in-chief did not avail to save her from the guillotine (Jan. 22, 1794). Marceau had already retired from the war, exhausted by the fatigues of the campaign, and he and Kléber were saved from arrest and execution only by the intervention of Bourbotte. Marceau became affianced about this time to Agathe Leprêtre de Châteaugiron, but his constant military employment, his broken health, and the opposition of the comte de Châteaugiron on the one hand and of Marceau’s devoted half-sister “Emira,” wife of the Republican politician Sergent, on the other, prevented the realization of his hopes. After spending the winter of 1793-1794 in Paris he took a command in the army under Jourdan, in which Kléber also served. He took part in the various battles about Charleroi, and at the final victory of Fleurus (June 26, 1794) he had a horse shot under him. He distinguished himself again at Jülich and at Aldenhoven, and stormed the fines of Coblenz on the 23rd of October. With the Army of the Sambre and Meuse he took his share in the campaign of 1795 on the Rhine and the Lahn, distinguishing himself particularly with Kléber in the fighting about Neuwied on the 18th and 19th of October, and at Sulzbach on the 17th of December. In the campaign of 1796 the famous invasion of Germany by the armies of Jourdan and Moreau ended in disaster, and Marceau’s men covered Jourdan’s retreat over the Rhine. He fought the desperate actions on the Lahn (Sept. 16 and 18), and at Altenkirchen on the 19th received a mortal wound, of which he died on the 21st, at the early age of twenty-seven. The Austrians vied with his own countrymen in doing honour to the dead general. His body was burned, and his ashes, which at the time were placed under a pyramid designed by Kléber, were transferred in 1889 to the Pantheon at Paris.

See Maze, Le Général Marceau (1889); Parfait, Le Général Marceau (1892); and T. C. Johnson, Marceau (London, 1896).

MARCEL, ÉTIENNE (d. 1358), provost of the merchants of Paris under King John II., belonged by birth to the wealthy Parisian bourgeoisie, being the son of a clothier named Simon Marcel and of Isabelle Barbou. He is mentioned as provost of the Grande-Confrérie of Notre Dame in 1350, and in 1354 he succeeded Jean de Pacy as provost of the Parisian merchants. His political career began in 1356, when John was made prisoner after the battle of Poitiers. In conjunction with Robert le Coq, bishop of Laon, he played a leading part in the states-general called together by the dauphin Charles on the 17th of October. A committee of eighty members, constituted on their initiative, pressed their demands with such insistence that the dauphin prorogued the states-general; but financial straits obliged him to summon them once more on the 3rd of February 1357, and the promulgation of a great edict of reform was the consequence. John the Good forbade its being put into effect, whereupon a conflict began between Marcel and the dauphin, Marcel endeavouring to set up Charles the Bad, king of Navarre, in opposition to him. The states-general assembled again on the 13th of January 1358, and on the 22nd of February the populace of Paris, led by Marcel, invaded the palace and murdered the marshals of Champagne and Normandy before the prince’s eyes. Thenceforward Marcel was in open hostility to the throne. After vainly hoping that the insurrection of the Jacquerie might turn to his advantage, he next supported the king of Navarre, whose armed bands infested the neighbourhood of Paris. On the night of the 31st of July Marcel was about to open the gates of the capital to them, but Jean Maillart prevented the execution of this design, and killed him before the Porte Saint-Antoine. During the following days his adherents were likewise put to death, and the dauphin was enabled to re-enter Paris. Étienne Marcel married first Jeanne de Dammartin, and secondly Marguerite des Essars, who survived him.

See F. T. Perrens, Étienne Marcel et le gouvernement de la bourgeoisie au xive siècle (Paris, 1860); P. Frémaux, La Famille d’Étienne Marcel, in the Mémoires of the Société de l’histoire de Paris et de l’Île de France (1903), vol. xxx.; and Hon. R. D. Denman, Étienne Marcel (1898).

(J. V.*)

MARCELLINUS, ST, according to the Liberian catalogue, became bishop of Rome on the 30th of June, 296; his predecessor was Caius or Gaius. He is not mentioned in the Martyrologium hieronymianum, or in the Depositio episcoporum, or in the Depositio martyrum. The Liber pontificalis, basing itself on the Acts of St Marcellinus, the text of which is lost, relates that during Diocletian’s persecution Marcellinus was called upon to sacrifice, and offered incense to idols, but that, repenting shortly afterwards, he confessed the faith of Christ and suffered martyrdom with several companions. Other documents speak of his defection, and it is probably this lapse that explains the silence of the ancient liturgical calendars. In the beginning of the 5th century Petilianus, the Donatist bishop of Constantine, affirmed that Marcellinus and his priests had given up the holy books to the pagans during the persecution and offered incense to false gods. St Augustine contents himself with denying the affair (Contra litt. Petiliani, ii. 202; De unico baptismo, 27). The records of the pseudo-council of Sinuessa, which were fabricated at the beginning of the 6th century, state that Marcellinus after his fall presented himself before a council, which refused to try him on the ground that prima sedes a nemine iudicatur. According to the Liber pontificalis, Marcellinus was buried, on the 26th of April 304, in the cemetery of Priscilla, on the Via Salaria, 25 days after his martyrdom; the Liberian catalogue gives as the date the 25th of October. The fact of the martyrdom, too, is not established with certainty. After a considerable interregnum he was succeeded by Marcellus, with whom he has sometimes been confounded.

See L. Duchesne, Liber pontificalis, I. lxxiii.-lxxiv. 162-163, and II. 563.

(H. De.)

MARCELLO, BENEDETTO (1686-1739), Italian musical composer, was born in 1686, either on the 31st of July or on the 1st of August. He was of noble family (in his compositions he is frequently described as “Patrizio Veneto”), and although a pupil of Lotti and Gasparini, was intended by his father to devote himself to the law. In 1711 he was a member of the Council of Forty, and in 1730 went to Pola as Provveditore. His health having been impaired by the climate of Istria, he retired after eight years to Brescia in the capacity of Camerlengo, and died there on the 24th of July 1739.

Marcello is best remembered by his Estro poetico-armonico (Venice, 1724-1727), a musical setting for voices and strings of the first fifty Psalms, as paraphrased in Italian by G. Giustiniani. They were much admired by Charles Avison, who with John Garth brought out an edition with English words (London, 1757). Some extracts are to be found in Hawkins’s History of Music. His other works are chiefly cantatas, either for one voice or several; the library of the Brussels conservatoire possesses some interesting volumes of chamber-cantatas composed for his mistress. Although he produced an opera, La Fede riconosciuta, at Vicenza in 1702, he had little sympathy with this form of composition, and vented his opinions on the state of musical drama at the time in the satirical pamphlet Il Teatro alla moda, published anonymously in Venice in 1720. This little work, which was frequently reprinted, is not only extremely amusing, but is also most valuable as a contribution to the history of opera.

A catalogue of his works is given in Monatshefte für Musikgeschichte, vol. xxiii. (1891).

MARCELLUS, the name of two popes.

Marcellus I. succeeded Marcellinus, after a considerable interval, most probably in May 308, under Maxentius. He was banished from Rome in 309 on account of the tumult caused by the severity of the penances he had imposed on Christians who had lapsed under the recent persecution. He died the same year, being succeeded by Eusebius. He is commemorated on the 16th of January.

Marcellus II. (Marcello Cervini), the successor of Julius III., was born on the 6th of May 1501, and was elected pope on the 9th of April 1555. He had long been identified with the rigorist party in the church, and as president of the Council of Trent had incurred the anger of the emperor by his jealous defence of papal prerogative. His motives were lofty, his life blameless, his plans for reform nobly conceived. But death removed him (April 30, 1555) before he could do more than give an earnest of his intentions. He was followed by Paul IV.

Contemporary lives are to be found in Panvinio, continuator of Platina, De vitis pontiff, rom.; and Ciaconius, Vitae et res gestae summorum pontiff. rom. (Rome, 1601-1602). P. Polidoro, De gestis, vita et moribus Marcelli II. (Rome, 1744), makes use of an unpublished biography of the pope by his brother, Alessandro Cervini. See also Brilli, Intorno alla vita e alle azioni di Marcello II. (Montepulciano, 1846); Ranke, Popes (Eng. trans., Austin), i. 284 seq.; A. von Reumont, Gesch. der Stadt Rom, iii. 2, 512, seq.

(T. F. C.)

MARCELLUS, a Roman plebeian family belonging to the Claudian gens. Its most distinguished members were the following:—

1. Marcus Claudius Marcellus (c. 268-208 B.C.), one of the Roman generals during the Second Punic War and conqueror of Syracuse. He first served against Hamilcar in Sicily. In his first consulship (222) he was engaged, with Cn. Cornelius Scipio as colleague, in war against the Insubrian Gauls, and won the spolia opima for the third and last time in Roman history by slaying their chief Viridomarus or Virdumarus (Polybius ii. 34; Propertius v. 10, 39). In 216, after the defeat at Cannae, he took command of the remnant of the army at Canusium, and although he was unable to prevent Capua going over to Hannibal, he saved Nola and southern Campania. In 214 he was in Sicily as consul at the time of the revolt of Syracuse; he stormed Leontini and besieged Syracuse, but the skill of Archimedes repelled his attacks. After a two years’ siege he gradually forced his way into the city and took it in the face of strong Punic reinforcements. He spared the lives of the inhabitants, but carried off their art treasures to Rome, the first instance of a practice afterwards common. Consul again in 210, he took Salapia in Apulia, which had revolted to Hannibal, by help of the Roman party there, and put to death the Numidian garrison. Proconsul in 209, he attacked Hannibal near Venusia, and after a desperate battle retired to that town; he was accused of bad generalship, and had to leave the army to defend himself in Rome. In his last consulship (208), he and his colleague, while reconnoitring near Venusia, were unexpectedly attacked, and Marcellus was killed. His successes have been exaggerated by Livy, but the name often given to him, the “sword of Rome,” was well deserved.

Livy xxiii. 14-17, 41-46; xxiv. 27-32, 35-39; xxv. 5-7, 23-31; xxvi. 26, 29-32; xxvii. 1-5, 21-28; Polybius viii. 5-9, x. 32; Appian, Hannib. 50; Florus ii. 6.

2. M. Claudius Marcellus, an inveterate opponent of Julius Caesar. During his consulship (51 B.C.) he proposed to remove Caesar from his army in March 49, but this decision was delayed by Pompey’s irresolution and the skilful opposition of the tribune C. Curio (see Caesar, Julius). In January 49 he tried to put off declaring war against Caesar till an army could be got ready, but his advice was not taken. When Pompey left Italy, Marcus and his brother Gaius followed, while his cousin withdrew to Liternum. After Pharsalus M. Marcellus retired to Mytilene, where he practised rhetoric and studied philosophy. In 46 his cousin and the senate successfully appealed to Caesar to pardon him, and Marcellus reluctantly consented to return. On this occasion Cicero’s speech Pro Marcello was delivered. Marcellus left for Italy, but was murdered in May by one of his own attendants, P. Magius Chilo, in the Peiraeus. Marcellus was a thorough aristocrat. He was an eloquent speaker (Cicero, Brutus, 71), and a man of firm character, although not free from avarice.

See Cicero, Ad fam. iv. 4, 7, 10, and Ad Att. v. 11 (ed. Tyrrell and Purser); Caesar, B. C. i. 2; Suetonius, Caesar, 29; G. Boissier, Cicero and his Friends (Eng. trans., 1897).

3. M. Claudius Marcellus (c. 43-23 B.C.), son of C. Marcellus and Octavia, sister of Augustus. In 25 he was adopted by the emperor and married to his daughter Julia. This seemed to mark him out as the heir to the throne, but Augustus, when attacked by a serious illness, gave his signet to M. Vipsanius Agrippa. In 23 Marcellus, then curule aedile, died at Baiae. Livia was suspected of having poisoned him to get the empire for her son Tiberius. Great hopes had been built on the youth, and he was celebrated by many writers, especially by Virgil in a famous passage (Aeneid, vi. 860). He was buried in the Campus Martius, and Augustus himself pronounced the funeral oration. The Theatrum Marcelli (remains of which can still be seen) was afterwards dedicated in his honour.

Horace, Odes, i. 12; Propertius iii. 18; Dio Cassius liii. 28, 30; Tacitus, Annals, ii. 41; Suetonius, Augustus, 63; Vell. Pat. ii. 93.

The authorship of this speech has been disputed.

MARCESCENT (Lat. marcescens, withering), a botanical term for withering without falling off.

MARCH, EARLS OF, title derived from the “marches” or boundaries (1) between England and Wales, and (2) England and Scotland, and held severally by great feudal families possessed of lands in those border districts. The earls of March on the Welsh borders were descended from Roger de Mortemer (so called from his castle of Mortemer in Normandy), who was connected by marriage with the dukes of Normandy. His son Ralph (d. c. 1104) figures in Domesday as the holder of vast estates in Shropshire, Herefordshire and other parts of England, especially in the west; and his grandson Hugh de Mortimer, founder of the priory of Wigmore in Herefordshire, was one of the most powerful of the barons reduced to submission by Henry II., who compelled him to surrender his castles of Cleobury and Wigmore. The Mortimers, however, continued to exercise almost undisputed sway, as lords of Wigmore, over the western counties and the Welsh marches.

I. Welsh Marches.—Roger de Mortimer (c. 1286-1330), 8th baron of Wigmore and 1st earl of March, being an infant at the death of his father, Edmund, was placed by Edward I. under the guardianship of Piers Gaveston, and was knighted by Edward in 1306; Mortimer’s mother being a relative of Edward’s consort, Eleanor of Castile. Through his marriage with Joan de Joinville, or Genevill, Roger not only acquired increased possessions on the Welsh marches, including the important castle of Ludlow, which became the chief stronghold of the Mortimers, but also extensive estates and influence in Ireland, whither he went in 1308 to enforce his authority. This brought him into conflict with the De Lacys, who turned for support to Edward Bruce, brother of Robert Bruce, king of Scotland. Mortimer was appointed lord-lieutenant of Ireland by Edward II. in 1316, and at the head of a large army drove Bruce to Carrickfergus, and the De Lacys into Connaught, wreaking vengeance on their adherents whenever they were to be found. He was then occupied for some years with baronial disputes on the Welsh border until about 1318, when he began to interest himself in the growing opposition to Edward II. and his favourites, the Despensers; and he supported Humphrey de Bohun, earl of Hereford, in refusing to obey the king’s summons to appear before him in 1321. Forced to surrender to the king at Shrewsbury in January 1322, Mortimer was consigned to the Tower of London, whence he escaped to France in August 1324. In the following year Isabella, wife of Edward II., anxious to escape from her husband, obtained his consent to her going to France to use her influence with her brother, Charles IV., in favour of peace. At the French court the queen found Roger Mortimer; she became his mistress soon afterwards, and at his instigation refused to return to England so long as the Despensers retained power as the king’s favourites. The scandal of Isabella’s relations with Mortimer compelled them both to withdraw from the French court to Flanders, where they obtained assistance for an invasion of England. Landing in England in September 1326, they were joined by Henry, earl of Lancaster; London rose in support of the queen; and Edward took flight to the west, whither he was pursued by Mortimer and Isabella. After wandering helplessly for some weeks in Wales, the king was taken on the 16th of November, and was compelled to abdicate in favour of his son. But though the latter was crowned as Edward III. in January 1327, the country was ruled by Mortimer and Isabella, who procured the murder of Edward II. in the following September. Rich estates and offices of profit and power were now heaped on Mortimer, and in September 1328 he was created earl of March. Greedy and grasping, he was no more competent than the Despensers to conduct the government of the country. The jealousy and anger of Lancaster having been excited by March’s arrogance, Lancaster prevailed upon the young king, Edward III., to throw off the yoke of his mother’s paramour. At a parliament held at Nottingham in October 1330 a plot was successfully carried out by which March was arrested in the castle, and, in spite of Isabella’s entreaty to her son to “have pity on the gentle Mortimer,” was conveyed to the Tower. Accused of assuming royal power and of various other high misdemeanours, he was condemned without trial and hanged at Tyburn on the 29th of November 1330, his vast estates being forfeited to the crown. March’s wife, by whom he had four sons and eleven daughters, survived till 1356. The daughters all married into powerful families, chiefly of Marcher houses. His eldest son, Edmund, was father of Roger Mortimer (c. 1328-1360), who was knighted by Edward III. in 1346, and restored to his grandfather’s title as 2nd earl of March.

Edmund de Mortimer (1351-1381), 3rd earl of March, was son of Roger, 2nd earl of March, by his wife Philippa, daughter of William Montacute, 1st earl of Salisbury. Being an infant at the death of his father, Edmund, as a ward of the crown, was placed by Edward III. under the care of William of Wykeham and Richard Fitzalan, earl of Arundel. The position of the young earl, powerful on account of his possessions and hereditary influence in the Welsh marches, was rendered still more important by his marriage in 1368 to Philippa, only daughter of Lionel, duke of Clarence, third son of Edward III. Lionel’s wife was Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of William de Burgh, 6th Lord of Connaught and 3rd earl of Ulster, and Lionel had himself been created earl of Ulster before his marriage. The earl of March, therefore, not only became the representative of one of the chief Anglo-Norman lordships in Ireland in right of his wife Philippa, but the latter, on the death of her father shortly after her marriage, stood next in succession to the crown after the Black Prince and his sickly son Richard, afterwards king Richard II. This marriage had, therefore, far-reaching consequences in the history of England, giving rise to the claim of the house of York to the crown of England, contested in the War of the Roses; Edward IV. being descended from the third son of Edward III. as great-great-grandson of Philippa, countess of March, and in the male line from Edmund, duke of York, fifth son of Edward III.

Mortimer, now styled earl of March and Ulster, became marshal of England in 1369, and was employed in various diplomatic missions during the next following years. He was a member of the committee appointed by the Peers to confer with the Commons in 1373—the first instance of such a joint conference since the institution of representative parliaments—on the question of granting supplies for John of Gaunt’s war in France; and in the opposition to Edward III. and the court party, which grew in strength towards the end of the reign, March took the popular side, being prominent in the Good Parliament of 1376 among the lords who, encouraged by the Prince of Wales, concerted an attack upon the court party led by John of Gaunt. The Speaker of the Commons in this parliament was March’s steward, Peter de la Mare; he firmly withstood John of Gaunt in stating the grievances of the Commons, in supporting the impeachment of several high court officials, and in procuring the banishment of the king’s mistress, Alice Perrers. March was a member of the administrative council appointed by the same parliament after the death of the Black Prince to attend the king and advise him in all public affairs. On the accession of Richard II., a minor, in 1377, the earl became a member of the standing council of government; though as father of the heir-presumptive to the crown he wisely abstained from claiming any actually administrative office. The most powerful person in the realm was, however, John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, whose jealousy of March led to the acceptance by the latter of the lieutenancy of Ireland in 1379. March succeeded in asserting his authority in eastern Ulster, but failed to subdue the O’Neills farther west. Proceeding to Munster to put down the turbulency of the chieftains of the south, March died at Cork on the 27th of December 1381. He was buried in Wigmore Abbey, of which he had been a benefactor, and where his wife Philippa who died about the same time was also interred. The earl had two sons and two daughters, the elder of whom, Elizabeth, married Henry Percy (Hotspur), son of the earl of Northumberland. His eldest son Roger succeeded him as 4th earl of March and Ulster. His second son Edmund (1376-1409) played an important part in conjunction with his brother-in-law Hotspur against Owen Glendower; but afterwards joined the latter, whose daughter he married about 1402.

Roger de Mortimer, 4th earl of March and Ulster (1374-1398), son of the 3rd earl, succeeded to the titles and estates of his family when a child of seven, and a month afterwards he was appointed lord-lieutenant of Ireland, his uncle Sir Thomas Mortimer acting as his deputy. Being a ward of the Crown, his guardian was the earl of Kent, half-brother to Richard II.; and in 1388 he married Kent’s daughter, Eleanor. The importance which he owed to his hereditary influence and possessions, and especially to his descent from Edward III., was immensely increased when Richard II. publicly acknowledged him as heir-presumptive to the crown in 1385. In 1394 he accompanied Richard to Ireland, but notwithstanding a commission from the king as lieutenant of the districts over which he exercised nominal authority by hereditary right, he made little headway against the native Irish chieftains. March enjoyed great popularity in England though he took no active part in opposing the despotic measures of the king; in Ireland he illegally assumed the native Irish costume. In August 1398 he was killed in fight with an Irish clan, and was buried in Wigmore Abbey. March’s daughter Anne married Richard earl of Cambridge, son of Edmund duke of York, fifth son of Edward III.; their son Richard, duke of York, was father of King Edward IV., who thus derived his title to the crown and acquired the estates of the house of Mortimer.

Edmund de Mortimer (1391-1425), 5th earl of March and Ulster, son of the 4th earl, succeeded to his father’s claim to the crown as well as to his title and estates on the death of the latter in Ireland in 1398. In the following year Richard II. was deposed and the crown seized by Henry of Lancaster. The young earl of March and his brother Roger were then kept in custody by Henry IV., who, however, treated them honourably, until March 1405, when they were carried off from Windsor Castle by the opponents of the Lancastrian dynasty, of whom their uncle Sir Edmund Mortimer (see above) and his brother-in-law Henry Percy (Hotspur) were leaders in league with Owen Glendower. The boys were recaptured, and in 1409 were committed to the care of the prince of Wales. On the accession of the latter as Henry V., in 1413, the earl of March was set at liberty and restored to his estates, his brother Roger having died some years previously; and he continued to enjoy the favour of the king in spite of a conspiracy in 1415 to place him on the throne, in which his brother-in-law, the earl of Cambridge, played the leading part. March accompanied Henry V. throughout his wars in France, and on the king’s death in 1422 became a member of the council of regency. He died in Ireland in 1425, and as he left no issue the earldom of March in the house of Mortimer became extinct, the estates passing to the last earl’s nephew Richard, who in 1435 was officially styled duke of York, earl of March and Ulster, and baron of Wigmore. Richard’s son Edward having ascended the throne in 1461 as Edward IV., the earldom of March became merged in the crown.

See Thomas Rymer, Foedera, &c. (London, 1704-1732); T. F. Tout, The Political History of England, vol. iii., ed. by William Hunt and R. L. Poole (London, 1905); Sir William Dugdale, Monasticon anglicanum (3 vols., London, 1655-1673); William Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, vol. ii.

II. Scottish Marches.—The Scottish earls of March were descended from Crinan, whose son Maldred married Algitha, daughter of Ughtred, earl of Northumberland, by Elgiva, daughter of the Saxon king Æthelred. Maldred’s son Cospatrick, or Gospatrick, was made earl of Northumberland by William the Conqueror; but being soon afterwards deprived of this position he fled to Scotland, where Malcolm Canmore, king of Scotland, welcomed him and granted him Dunbar and the adjoining lands. Two generations of Cospatricks followed in lineal succession, bearing the title of earl, but without territorial designation. Cospatrick II. witnessed the charter of Alexander I. founding the abbey of Scone in 1115. The 3rd earl, also named Cospatrick, a liberal benefactor of Melrose Abbey, died in 1166, leaving two sons, the younger of whom was the ancestor of the earls of Home. The elder son, Waltheof, was the first of the family to be styled “Comes de Dunbar,” about the year 1174. His importance is proved by the fact that he was one of the hostages for the performance of the Treaty of Falaise for the liberation of William the Lion in 1175. Waltheof’s son Patrick Dunbar (the name Dunbar, derived from the family estates, now becoming an hereditary surname), styled 5th earl of Dunbar, although his father had been the first to adopt the territorial designation, was keeper of Berwick Castle, and married Ada, natural daughter of William the Lion. His grandson Patrick, 7th earl, headed the party that liberated King Alexander III. in 1255 from the Comyns, and in the same year was nominated guardian of the king and queen by the Treaty of Roxburgh. He signed the Treaty of Perth (July 6, 1266) by which Magnus VI. of Norway ceded the Isle of Man and the Hebrides to Scotland. His wife was Christian, daughter of Robert Bruce, the competitor for the crown of Scotland.

Patrick Dunbar, 8th earl of Dunbar and 1st earl of March, claimed the crown of Scotland in 1291 as descendant of Ada, daughter of William the Lion. He was one of the “seven earls of Scotland,” a distinct body separate from the other estates of the realm, who claimed the right to elect a king in cases of disputed succession, and whose authority was, perhaps, to be traced to the seven provinces of the Pictish kingdom. He was the first of the earls of Dunbar to appear in the records as “comes de Marchia,” or earl of March. Like most of his family in later times, he was favourable to the English interest in Scottish affairs, and he did homage to Edward I. of England. His wife Marjory, daughter of Alexander Comyn, earl of Buchan, took the other side and held the castle of Dunbar for Baliol, but was forced to surrender it to Edward in 1296. In 1298 he was appointed the English king’s lieutenant in Scotland.

Patrick Dunbar (1285-1369), 9th earl of Dunbar and 2nd earl of March, son of the preceding, gave refuge to Edward II. of England after Bannockburn, and contrived his escape by sea to England. Later, he made peace with Robert Bruce, and by him was appointed governor of Berwick Castle, which he held against Edward III. until the defeat of the Scots at Halidon Hill (July 19, 1333) made it no longer tenable. His countess, known in Scottish history and romance as “Black Agnes,” daughter of Thomas Randolph, earl of Moray (Murray), and grandniece of Robert Bruce, is famous for her defence of Dunbar Castle against the English under the earl of Salisbury in 1338, Salisbury being forced to abandon the attempt after a fierce siege lasting nineteen weeks. This lady succeeded to the estates and titles of her brother, John Randolph, 3rd earl of Moray. The earldom of Moray passed after her death to her second son, John Dunbar, who married Marjory, daughter of King Robert II. Black Agnes also bore to the earl of March two daughters, the elder of whom, Agnes, after being the mistress of King David II., married Sir James Douglas, lord of Dalkeith, from whom were descended the first three earls of Morton; the younger, Elizabeth, married John Maitland of Lethington, ancestor of the duke of Lauderdale, whose second title was marquess of March.

George Dunbar (d. 1420), 10th earl of Dunbar and 3rd earl of March, great-nephew of the 8th earl and warden of the marches, accompanied Douglas in his foray into England in 1388, and commanded the Scots after Otterburn. He afterwards quarrelled with the Douglases, because his daughter was passed over in favour of a daughter of Archibald, “the Grim Earl of Douglas,” as wife for David, duke of Rothesay, son of Robert III. When Douglas seized March’s lands the latter fled to England, where he was welcomed by Henry IV., to whom he was related. He fought on the English side at Homildon Hill; and, having revealed to Henry the defection of the Percies, who were in league with Douglas and Owen Glendower, he fought against those allies at the battle of Shrewsbury (July 23, 1403). Becoming reconciled with Douglas, he returned to Scotland in 1409, and was restored to his earldom by the regent Albany. He died in 1420.

George Dunbar, 11th earl of Dunbar and 4th earl of March, was one of the negotiators for the release of James I. of Scotland in 1423 from his captivity in England, and was knighted at that king’s coronation. In 1434, however, on the ground that the regent had had no power to reverse his father’s forfeiture for treason, March was imprisoned and his castle of Dunbar seized by the king; and the parliament at Perth declared his lands and titles forfeited to the crown. The earl, being released, retired to England with his son Patrick, whose daughter and heiress Margaret was ancestress of Patrick, 5th earl of Dumfries, now represented by the marquess of Bute.

The earldom of March in the house of Dunbar having thus been forfeited to the crown, James II. in 1455 conferred the title, together with that of warden of the marches, on his second son Alexander, duke of Albany; but this prince entered into treasonable correspondence with Edward IV. of England, and in 1487 the earldom of March and the barony and castle of Dunbar were again declared forfeited and annexed to the crown of Scotland.

The title of earl of March was next held by the house of Lennox. In 1576 the earldom of Lennox became extinct on the death without male issue of Charles (father of Lady Arabella Stuart), 5th earl of Lennox; and it was then revived in favour of Robert Stuart, a grand-uncle of King James VI., second son of John, 3rd earl of Lennox. But in 1579 Esmé Stuart, a member of a collateral branch which in 1508 had inherited the lordship of Aubigny in France, came to Scotland and obtained much favour with James VI. The earldom of Lennox (soon afterwards raised to a dukedom) was taken from Robert and conferred upon Esmé; and Robert was compensated by being created earl of March and baron of Dunbar (1582). Robert died without legitimate issue in 1586, when the earldom of March again reverted to the crown. In 1619 Esmé, 3rd duke of Lennox, was created earl of March; and his son James was created duke of Richmond in 1641. On the death without issue of Charles, 6th duke of Lennox and 3rd duke of Richmond, in 1672, his titles devolved upon King Charles II. as nearest collateral heir-male. In 1675 Charles conferred the titles of duke of Richmond and Lennox and earl of March on Charles Lennox, his natural son by Louise de Keroualle, duchess of Portsmouth, from whom the earldom of March has descended to its present holder the duke of Richmond and Gordon. (See Richmond, Earls and Dukes of; and Lennox.)

The title of earl of March in the peerage of Scotland, by another creation, was conferred in 1697 on William Douglas, second son of William, 1st duke of Queensberry. His grandson William, 3rd earl of March, became 4th duke of Queensberry on the death without surviving male issue of his cousin Charles, 3rd duke of Queensberry, in 1778. Dying unmarried in 1810, the several titles of the duke passed to different branches of the house of Douglas. The earldom of March is stated by Sir Bernard Burke and other authorities to have devolved upon Francis, 8th earl of Wemyss, great-great-grandson of David, 3rd earl of Wemyss, whose wife was Anne, daughter of the 1st duke of Queensberry and sister of the 1st earl of March; and the title is now assumed by the earl of Wemyss. On the other hand, Francis, 8th earl of Wemyss, not having been an heir of the body of the 1st earl of March, Sir Robert Douglas says in The Peerage of Scotland that on the death of the 4th duke of Queensberry in 1810 “the earldom of March, it is supposed, became extinct.”

See Andrew Lang, History of Scotland (4 vols., London, 1900-1907); Sir Bernard Burke, A Genealogical History of Dormant and Extinct Peerages (London, 1866); Sir Robert Douglas, The Peerage of Scotland (2 vols., Edinburgh 1813); Lady Elizabeth Cust, Some Account of the Stuarts of Aubigny in France (London, 1891).

(R. J. M.)

MARCH, AUZIAS (c. 1395-1458), Catalan poet, was born at Valencia towards the end of the 14th century. Little is known of his career except that he was twice married—first to Na Ysabel Martorell, and second to Na Johanna Scorna—that he died on the 4th of November 1458, and that he left several natural children. Inheriting an easy fortune from his father, the treasurer to the duke of Gandia, and enjoying the powerful patronage of Prince Carlos de Viana of Aragon, March was enabled to devote himself to poetical composition. He is an undisguised follower of Petrarch, carrying the imitation to such a point that he addresses his Cants d’amor to a lady whom he professes to have seen first in church on Good Friday; so far as the difference of language allows, he reproduces the rhythmical cadences of his model, and in the Cants de mort touches a note of brooding sentiment peculiar to himself. Though his poems are disfigured by obscurity and a monotonous morbidity, he was fully entitled to the supremacy which he enjoyed among his contemporaries, and the success of his innovation no doubt encouraged Boscán to introduce the Italian metres into Castilian.

His verses were first printed in Catalan in 1543, but they had already become known through the Castilian translation published by Baltasar de Romani in 1539.

MARCH, FRANCIS ANDREW (1825- ), American philologist and educationalist, was born on the 25th of October 1825 in Millbury, Massachusetts. He graduated in 1845 at Amherst, where his attention was turned to the study of Anglo-Saxon by Noah Webster. He was a teacher at Swanzey, New Hampshire, and at the Leicester Academy, Massachusetts, in 1845-1847, and attempted the philological method of teaching English “like Latin and Greek,” later described in his Method of Philological Study of the English Language (1865); at Amherst in 1847-1849; at Fredericksburg, Virginia, in 1852-1855; and in 1855 became a tutor at Lafayette College, where he became adjunct professor of belles-lettres and English literature in 1856, and professor of English language and comparative philology—the first chair of the kind established—in 1857. He lectured on constitutional and public law and Roman law in 1875-1877, and also taught subjects as diverse as botany and political economy. In 1907 he became professor emeritus. At Lafayette he introduced the first carefully scientific study of English in any American college, and in 1870 published A Comparative Grammar of the Anglo-Saxon Language, in which its Forms are Illustrated by Those of the Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Gothic, Old Saxon, Old Friesic, Old Norse and Old High German, and An Anglo-Saxon Reader; he was editor of the “Douglass Series of Christian Greek and Latin Classics,” to which he contributed Latin Hymns (1874); he was chairman of the Commission of the State of Pennsylvania on Amended Orthography; and was consulting editor of the Standard Dictionary, and in 1879-1882 was director of the American readers for the Philological Society’s (New Oxford) Dictionary. He was president of the American Philological Association in 1873-1874 and in 1895-1896, of the Spelling Reform Association after 1876, and of the Modern Language Association in 1891-1893. Among American linguistic scholars March ranks with Whitney, Child and Gildersleeve; and his studies in English, though practically pioneer work in America, are of undoubted value. His article “On Recent Discussions of Grimm’s Law” in the Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association for 1873 in large part anticipated Verner’s law. With his son, Francis Andrew March, jun. (b. 1863), adjunct-professor of modern languages in 1884-1891 and subsequently professor of English literature at Lafayette, he edited A Thesaurus Dictionary of the English Language (1903).

See Addresses in Honor of Professor Francis A. March, LL.D., L.H.D., delivered at Easton, Pennsylvania, on the 24th of October 1895.

MARCH, a market town in the Wisbech parliamentary division of Cambridgeshire, England, 30 m. N. by W. of Cambridge. Pop. of urban district (1901), 7565. It lies in the midst of the flat fen country, on the old course of the river Nene. It is an important junction on the Great Eastern railway and the starting-point of a line worked by that company jointly with the Great Northern to Lincoln and Doncaster. The church of St Wendreda, in Early English and later styles, is remarkable for a magnificent Perpendicular timber roof, beautifully carved. There are agricultural implement and engineering works, and corn mills.

MARCH, the third month of the modern calendar, containing thirty-one days. It was the Romans’ first month until the adoption of the Julian calendar, 46 B.C., and it continued to be the beginning of the legal year in England until the 18th century. In France it was reckoned the first month of the year until 1564, when, by an edict of Charles IX., January was decreed to be thenceforth the first month. Scotland followed the example of France in 1599; but in England the change did not take place before 1752. The Romans called the month Martius, a name supposed to have been conferred on it by Romulus in honour of his putative father, Mars, the god of war; but Ovid declares the month to have existed before the time of Romulus, though in a different position in the calendar. The Anglo-Saxons called March Hlyd-monath, “loud or stormy month,” or Lencten-monath, “lengthening month,” in allusion to the fact that the days then rapidly become longer. There is an old saying, common to both England and Scotland—which has its equivalent among the Basques and many European peoples—representing March as borrowing three days from April; the last three days of March being called the “borrowing” or the “borrowed days.” As late as the end of the 18th century the first three days of March were known in Devonshire as “Blind Days,” and were deemed so unlucky that no farmer would sow seed then.

The chief festival days of March are the 1st, St David; the 12th, St Gregory; the 17th, St Patrick; and the 25th, Lady Day, one of the quarter days in England.

MARCH (1) (from Fr. marcher, to walk; the earliest sense in French appears to be “to trample,” and the origin has usually been found in the Lat. marcus, hammer; Low Lat. marcare, to hammer; hence to beat the road with the regular tread of a soldier: cf. “beat,” of a policeman’s round), the movement of military troops with regular rhythmical steps, often with the time marked by the beat of drum, the sound of pipes or bugles or the music of a military band; hence the advance or movement of a body of troops from one point to another, and the distance covered in so doing. The word is also naturally applied to the music composed for marching to, and to the steady regular advance or progress of non-military bodies or persons, or of events, &c. In the military sense, “marching” is walking in formed bodies of troops, either during drill evolutions on parade or on the “line of march” from one place to another. In both senses the word is used with mounted troops as well as with dismounted men. Formerly all evolutions were carried out at the so-called “parade-march” pace of about 75-80 paces to the minute, and in one or two armies of the 18th century the parade step cadence was as slow as 60. These cadences are now, however, reserved in all armies for ceremonial occasions, and the usual manœuvre and marching pace (“quick march”) is about 120, the “double” march pace (pas gymnastique) about 180. The “quick” march, translated into miles and hours, is about 31⁄2 or 35⁄8 miles an hour in all armies, though a few special bodies of light troops such as the Italian Bersaglieri are trained to move at a much faster rate for hours together, either by alternate “quick” and “double” marching or by an unvarying “jog-trot.” The paces recognized for cavalry are the walk, the trot, the canter and the gallop; the usual practice on the line of march being to alternate the walk and the trot, which combination gives a speed of about 5 miles an hour for many hours together. A “day’s march,” or more simply a “march,” is usually reckoned to be 15-16 miles for a large body of troops, a “forced” march being one of 20 miles or over, or one in which, from whatever cause, the troops are on foot for more than about seven hours. For large bodies of troops the rate of movement on the line of march rarely exceeds 3 miles an hour. The immense assistance afforded by music to marching troops has been recognized from the earliest times of organized armies, and a great deal of special march-music has been written for military bands, formerly often in 3⁄4 or 6⁄8 time (one bar representing one pace with the foot), but now almost invariably in common or 2⁄4 time, which is more suitable for the “quick march.” The music itself is usually a combination of simple, lively melody and well-marked accents for the drums, with little attempt at contrapuntal writing. The fife or piccolo, the natural bugle (in Italy and elsewhere the chromatic key-bugle is used), and the drum are the principal instruments, the “band,” as distinct from the “drums” and “bugles,” having in addition to drum and fifes clarinets (saxophones in France and Belgium) and saxhorns of all types. In Scottish regiments, and in a few isolated cases elsewhere, bagpipes provide the marching music. The importance of music on the march is attested further by the almost universal practice of singing or whistling marching songs, and even playing them on concertinas, &c., in the absence of the band and drums.

2. From marche, the French form of a common Teutonic word represented in English by “mark” (q.v.), a boundary or frontier region between two countries or districts. The word appears to have been first used in this sense in the 8th century, and the earliest “mark” or “march” districts were tracts of land on the borders of the Carolingian Empire. Wherever Charlemagne pushed forward the frontiers of the Frankish realm he provided for the security of his lands, new and old alike, by establishing mark districts on the borders. The defence and oversight of these were entrusted to special officers, afterwards called margraves, or counts of the mark, who usually enjoyed more extensive powers than fell to the lot of an ordinary count. It is at this time that we hear first of the Spanish mark (marca hispanica) and the Bavarian mark (marca bajoariae). These mark districts were practically obliterated during the reigns of the feeble sovereigns who succeeded Charlemagne, but the system was revived with the accession of Henry the Fowler to the German throne early in the 10th century and with a renewal of the work of conquering and colonizing the regions east of the Elbe, and in eastern Germany generally. Under Henry and his son, Otto the Great, marks were again set upon the borders of Germany, and this time the organization was more lasting. The mark districts increased in size and strength, especially those which fell under the dominion of an able and energetic ruler, and some of them became powerful states, retaining the name mark long after the original significance of the word had been forgotten. It is interesting to note that the two most important of the modern German states, Austria and Prussia, both had their origin in mark districts, the mark of Brandenburg, the nucleus of the kingdom of Prussia, being at first a border district to the east of the duchy of Saxony, and the east mark, or mark of Austria, being a border district of the duchy of Bavaria. In Italy march districts made their appearance about the same time as in other parts of the Frankish Empire. The best known of these is the march of Ancona, which with other marches and adjoining districts, was known later as the Marches, a province lying about the centre of Italy between the Apennines and the Adriatic Sea. After forming part of the states of the Church the Marches were united with the kingdom of Italy in 1860 (see Marches, The).

In England in the same connexion the plural word “marches” was the form commonly adopted, and soon after the Norman Conquest the disturbed districts on the borders of Wales began to be known as the Welsh marches. Lands therein were granted to powerful nobles on condition that they undertook the defence of the neighbouring counties of England. These lords of the marches, or lords marcher, as they were often called, had special privileges, but they were generally so fully occupied in fighting against each other and in seeking to increase their own wealth and power that the original object of their appointment was entirely forgotten. The condition of the marches grew worse and worse, and during disturbed reigns, like those of Henry III. and Edward II., lawlessness was rampant and rebellion was centred therein. A more satisfactory condition of affairs, however, prevailed after the conclusion of the Wars of the Roses; and the establishment by Henry VIII. in 1542 of a council of Wales and the marches was followed by a notable diminution of disorder in this region. About the time of Elizabeth the Welsh marches ceased to have any but an historical importance. In 1328 Roger Mortimer, a member of one of the most powerful of the marcher families, was created earl of March (comes de marchia Waliae), and in the reign of Edward III. (1354) the marches were declared to be no part of the principality, but directly subject to the English crown. It is difficult to define the boundaries of the Welsh marches, as their extent varied considerably from time to time, but under Edward I. and again under the Lancastrian kings the marcher lordships included more than half of the area of Wales; they embraced practically the whole of the principality except the counties of Anglesea, Carnarvon and Merioneth in the north and Carmarthen and Cardigan in the south, together with parts of the English border counties, Monmouth, Hereford and Shropshire.

The debateable ground between England and Scotland was also known as the marches, although its condition began to attract the attention of the southern kingdom somewhat later than was the case with Wales. Arrangements were made for garrisoning them and at one time they were divided into three sections: the east, the west, and the middle marches, the oversight of each being entrusted to a warden. Roughly speaking, they embraced the modern counties of Northumberland and Cumberland, together with a tract on the Scottish side of the border. The need for protecting them ceased soon after the accession of James VI. of Scotland to the English throne, and they have now only an historical and legendary significance. About 1200 Patrick de Dunbar, earl of Dunbar, called himself earl of March, taking the name from the merse, or march, a tract of land in Berwickshire.

In France under the ancien régime there was a county of La Marche, and in north-east Germany there was the county of La Marck, now part of the kingdom of Prussia.

MARCHE, or La Marche, one of the former provinces of France. It owes its name to its position, it having been in the 10th century a march or border district between the duchy of Aquitaine and the domains of the Frankish kings in central France. Sometimes it was called the Marche Limousine, and originally it was a small district cut partly from Limousin and partly from Poitou. Its area was increased during the 13th century, after which, however, it remained unaltered until the time of the Revolution. It was bounded on the N. by Berry; on the E. by Bourbonnais and Auvergne; on the S. by Limousin; and on the W. by Poitou. It embraced the greater part of the modern department of Creuse, a considerable part of Haute Vienne, and a fragment of Indre. Its area was about 1900 sq. m.; its capital was Charroux and later Guéret, and among its other principal towns were Dorat, Bellac and Confolens.

Marche first appears as a separate fief about the middle of the 10th century when William III., duke of Aquitaine, gave it to one of his vassals named Boso, who took the title of count. In the 12th century it passed to the counts of Limousin, and this house retained it until the death of the childless Count Hugh in 1303, when it was seized by the French king, Philip IV. In 1316 it was made a duchy for Prince Charles, afterwards King Charles IV., and a few years later (1327) it passed into the hands of the family of Bourbon. The family of Armagnac held it from 1435 to 1477, when it reverted to the Bourbons, and in 1527 it was seized by Francis I. and became part of the domains of the French crown. It was divided into Haute Marche and Basse Marche, the estates of the former being in existence until the 17th century. From 1470 until the Revolution the province was under the jurisdiction of the parlement of Paris.

See A. Thomas, Les États provinciaux de la France centrale (1879).

MARCHE, a town of Belgium in the province of Luxemburg, 33 m. S.W. of Liége and about 28 m. S.E. of Namur. Pop. (1904), 3540. It dates from the 7th century, when it was the chief town of the pagus falmiensis, as it still is of the same district now called Famène. Formerly it was fortified, and a treaty was signed there in 1577 between Philip II. and the United Provinces. In 1792 Lafayette was taken prisoner by the Austrians in a skirmish near it.

MARCHENA, a town of southern Spain, in the province of Seville, on the Cordova-Utrera and Marchena-La Roda railways. Pop. (1900), 12,468. Marchena occupies a sandy valley near the river Corbones, a left-hand territory of the Guadalquivir. Formerly it was surrounded with walls and towers, a large portion of which still remains. Among the principal buildings is the palace of the dukes of Arcos, within the enclosure of which is an ancient Moorish building, now the church of Santa Maria de la Mota. At the eastern end of the town is a sulphur spring. There is some trade in wheat, barley, olives, oil and wine. Marchena (perhaps the Castra Gemina of Pliny) was taken from the Moors by St Ferdinand in 1240.

MARCHENA RUIZ DE CASTRO, JOSÉ (1768-1821?), Spanish author, was born at Utrera on the 18th of November 1768 and studied with distinction at the university of Seville. He took minor orders and was for some time professor at the seminary of Vergara, but he became a convert to the doctrines of the French philosophes, scandalizing his acquaintances by his professions of materialism and his denunciations of celibacy. His writings being brought before the Inquisition in 1792, Marchena escaped to Paris, where he is said to have collaborated with Marat in L’Ami du peuple; at a later date he organized a revolutionary movement at Bayonne, returned to Paris, avowed his sympathies with the Girondists, and refused the advances of Robespierre. He acted as editor of L’Ami des lois and other French journals till 1799, when he was expelled from France; he succeeded, however, in obtaining employment under Moreau, upon whose fall in 1804 he declared himself a Bonapartist. In 1808 he accompanied Murat to Spain as private secretary; in this same year he was imprisoned by the Inquisition, but was released by Joseph Bonaparte, who appointed him editor of the official Gaceta. In 1813 Marchena retired to Valencia, and thence to France, where he supported himself by translating into Spanish the works of Montesquieu, Rousseau, Voltaire and Volney. The Liberal triumph of 1820 opened Spain to him once more, but he was coldly received by the revolutionary party. He died at Madrid shortly before the 26th of February 1821. The interest of his voluminous writings is almost wholly ephemeral, but they are excellent specimens of trenchant journalism. His Fragmentum Petronii (Basel, 1802), which purports to reconstruct missing passages in the current text of Petronius, is a testimony to Marchena’s fine scholarship; but, by the irony of fate, Marchena is best known by his ode to Christ Crucified, which breathes a spirit of profound and tender piety.

MARCHES, THE (It. Le Marche), a territorial division of Italy, embracing the provinces of Pesaro and Urbino, Ancona, Macerata, and Ascoli Piceno, with an area of 3763 sq. m., and a population of 1,088,763 in 1901. It is bounded by the Emilia on the N., the Adriatic on the E., the Abruzzi on the S., and Umbria and Tuscany on the W. The four provinces follow one another in the order given from north to south and have a certain amount of coast-line. The chief rivers, all of which run into the Adriatic eastwards and north-eastwards, are the Metauro (anc. Metaurus, q.v.) and the Tronto (anc. Truentus), the latter forming the southern boundary of the compartimento for some distance. Except for the river valleys and the often very narrow coast strip, the general level is more than 500 ft. above the sea. The lower hills are very largely composed of loose, clayey, unstable earth, while the Apennines are of limestone. The province of Pesaro and Urbino falls within the boundaries of the ancient Umbria (q.v.), while the territory of the other three belonged to Picenum (q.v.). The railway from Bologna to Brindisi runs along the coast-line of the entire territory. At Ancona it is joined by the main line from Foligno and Rome; at Porto Civitanova is a branch to Macerata, San Severino and Fabriano (a station on the line from Ancona to Rome and the junction for Urbino); at Porto S. Giorgio is a branch to Fermo and, at Porto d’Ascoli, a branch to Ascoli Piceno. But, with the exception of the railway along the coast, there is no communication north and south, owing to the mountainous nature of the country, except by somewhat devious roads.

Owing largely to the mezzadria or métayer system, under which products are equally divided between the owners and the cultivators of the land, the soil is fairly highly cultivated, though naturally poor in quality. The silk industries, making of straw-plait and straw hats, rearing of silkworms and cocoons, with some sugar-refining, tobacco, terra-cotta manufacture, brickworks and ironworks, furnish the chief occupations of the people next after agriculture and pastoral pursuits. Another important branch of activity is the paper industry, especially at Fabriano. Chiaravalle possesses one of the largest tobacco factories of the Italian régie. Limestone quarries and sulphur mines supply building stone and sulphur to the regions of central Italy; chalk and petroleum are also found. As regards maritime trade the province possesses facilities in the port of Ancona (the only really good harbour, where are also important shipbuilding works), the canal ports of Senegallia (Sinigaglia), Pesaro, Fano and other smaller harbours chiefly used by fishing boats. Fishing is carried on by the entire coast population, which furnishes a large contingent of sailors to the Italian navy.

For the early history of the territory of the Marches see Picenum. From the Carolingian period onwards the name Marca begins to appear—first the Marca Fermana for the mountainous part of Picenum, the Marca Camerinese for the district farther north, including a part of Umbria, and the Marca Anconitana for the former Pentapolis. In 1080 the Marca Anconitana was given in investiture to Robert Guiscard by Gregory VII., to whom the countess Matilda ceded the Marches of Camerino and of Fermo. In 1105 we find the emperor Henry IV. investing Werner with the whole territory of the three marches under the name of March of Ancona. It was afterwards once more recovered by the Church and governed by papal legates. It became part of the kingdom of Italy in 1860.

The pictorial art of the Marches from the 13th century onwards has become the object of considerable interest since the important exhibition held at Macerata in 1905, when many interesting works, scattered all over the district in small towns and villages, were brought together. The result was something of a revelation, for, though the influence of Umbria was always considerable, there were many independent elements (see F. M. Perkins in Rassegna d’ Arte, 1906, 49 sqq.).

(T. As.)

MARCHMONT, EARLS OF. The 1st earl of Marchmont was Sir Patrick Hume or Home (1641-1724), son of Sir Patrick Hume, bart. (d. 1648), of Polwarth, Berwickshire, and a descendant of another Sir Patrick Hume, a supporter of the Reformation in Scotland. A member of the same family was Alexander Hume (c. 1560-1609), the Scottish poet, whose Hymns and Sacred Songs were published in 1599 (new ed. 1832). Polwarth, as Patrick Hume was usually called, became a member of the Scottish parliament in 1665. Here he was active in opposing the harsh policy of the earl of Lauderdale towards the Covenanters, and for his contumacy he was imprisoned. After his release he went to London, where he associated himself with the duke of Monmouth. Suspected of complicity in the Rye House plot, he remained for a time in hiding and then crossed over to the Netherlands, where he took part in the deliberations of Monmouth, the earl of Argyll and other exiles about the projected invasion of Great Britain. Although he appeared to distrust Argyll, Polwarth sailed to Scotland with him in 1685, and after the failure of the rising he escaped to Utrecht, where he lived in great poverty until 1688. He accompanied William of Orange to England, and in 1689 he was again a member of the Scottish parliament. In 1690 he was made a peer as Lord Polwarth; in 1696 he became lord high chancellor of Scotland, and in 1697 was created earl of Marchmont. When Anne became queen in 1702 he was deprived of the chancellorship. He died on the 2nd of August 1724. His son Alexander, the 2nd earl (1676-1740), took the name of Campbell instead of Hume after his marriage in 1697 with Margaret, daughter and heiress of Sir George Campbell of Cessnock, Ayrshire. He was a lord of session from 1704 to 1714; ambassador to Denmark from 1715 to 1721, and lord clerk register from 1716 to 1733. His son Hugh Hume, 3rd earl (1708-1794), who entered parliament in 1734 at the same time as his twin brother Alexander (d. 1756), afterwards lord clerk register of Scotland, was keeper of the great seal of Scotland, one of Bolingbroke’s most intimate friends and one of Pope’s executors. His two sons having predeceased their father, the earldom became dormant, Marchmont House, Berwickshire, and the estates passing to Sir Hugh Purves, bart., a descendant of the 2nd earl, who took the name of Hume-Campbell. The 3rd earl had, however, three daughters, one of whom, Diana (d. 1827), married Walter Scott of Harden, Berwickshire; and in 1835 her son Hugh Hepburne-Scott (1758-1841) successfully claimed the Scottish barony of Polwarth. In 1867 his grandson, Walter Hugh (b. 1838), became 6th Lord Polwarth.

See The Marchmont Papers, ed. Sir G. H. Rose (1831).

MARCHPANE, or Marzipan, a sweetmeat made of sweet almonds and sugar pounded and worked into a paste, and moulded into various shapes, or used in the icing of cakes, &c. The best marchpane comes from Germany, that from Königsberg being celebrated. The origin of the word has been much discussed. It is common in various forms in most European languages, Romanic or Teutonic; Italian has marzapane, French massepain, and German marzipan, which has in English to some extent superseded the true English form “marchpane.” Italian seems to have been the source from which the word passed into other languages. In Johann Burchard’s Diarium curiae romanae (1483-1492) the Latin form appears as martiapanis (Du Cange, Glossarium s.v.), and Minshseu explains the word as Martius Panis, bread of Mars, from the “towers, castles and such like” that appeared on elaborate works of the confectioner’s art made of this sweatmeat. Another derivation is that from Gr. μάζα, barley cake, and Lat. panis. A connexion has been sought with the name of a Venetian coin, matapanus (Du Cange, s.v.), on which was a figure of Christ enthroned, struck by Enrico Dandolo, doge of Venice (1192-1205). From the coin the word was applied to a small box, and hence apparently to the sweetmeat contained in it.

MARCIAN (c. 390-457), emperor of the East (450-457), was born in Thrace or Illyria, and spent his early life as an obscure soldier. He subsequently served for nineteen years under Ardaburius and Aspar, and took part in the wars against the Persians and Vandals. Through the influence of these generals he became a captain of the guards, and was later raised to the rank of tribune and senator. On the death of Theodosius II. he was chosen as consort by the latter’s sister and successor, Pulcheria, and called upon to govern an empire greatly humbled and impoverished by the ravages of the Huns. Marcian repudiated the payment of tribute to Attila; he reformed the finances, checked extravagance, and repeopled the devastated districts. He repelled attacks upon Syria and Egypt (452), and quelled disturbances on the Armenian frontier (456). The other notable event of his reign is the Council of Chalcedon (451), in which Marcian endeavoured to mediate between the rival schools of theology.

See Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (ed. Bury, London, 1896), iii. 384, iv. 444-445; J. Bury, The Later Roman Empire (London, 1889), i. 135-136.

MARCIANUS (c. A.D. 400), Greek geographer, was born at Heraclea in Pontus. Two of his works have been preserved in a more or less mutilated condition. In the first, the Periplus of the Outer Sea, in two books, in which he proposed to give a complete description of the coasts of the eastern and western oceans, his chief authority is Ptolemy; the distances from one point to another are given in stades, with the object of rendering the work easier for the ordinary student. In this he follows Protagoras, who, according to Photius (cod. 188), wrote a sketch of geography in six books. The work contains nothing that cannot be learned from Ptolemy, whom he follows in calling the promontory of the Novantae (Mull of Galloway) the most northern point of Britain. Improving on Ptolemy, he makes the island of Taprobane (Ceylon) twenty times as large as it is in reality. The second, the Periplus of the Inner Sea (the Mediterranean), is a meagre epitome of a similar work by Menippus of Pergamum, who lived during the times of Augustus and Tiberius. It contains a description of the southern coast of the Euxine from the Thracian Bosporus to the river Iris in Pontus. A few fragments remain of an epitome by Marcianus of the eleven books of the Geographumena of Artemidorus of Ephesus.

See J. Hudson, Geographiae veteris scriptores graeci minores, vol. i. (1698), with Dodwell’s dissertation; C. W. Müller, Geographici graeci minores, vol. i. pp. cxxix., 515-573; E. Miller, Périple de Marcien d’Héraclée (1839); S. F. G. Hoffmann, Marciani Periplus (1841); E. H. Bunbury, Hist. of Ancient Geography (1879), ii. 660; A. Forbiger, Handbuch der alten Geographie, vol. i. (1842).

MARCION and THE MARCIONITE CHURCHES. In the period between 130 and 180 A.D. the varied and complicated Christian fellowships in the Roman Empire crystallized into close and mutually exclusive societies—churches with fixed constitutions and creeds, schools with distinctive esoteric doctrines, associations for worship with peculiar mysteries, and ascetic sects with special rules of conduct. Of ecclesiastical organizations the most important, next to Catholicism, was the Marcionite community. Like the Catholic Church, this body professed to comprehend everything belonging to Christianity. It admitted all believers without distinction of age, sex, rank or culture. It was no mere school for the learned, disclosed no mysteries for the privileged, but sought to lay the foundation of the Christian community on the pure gospel, the authentic institutes of Christ. The pure gospel, however, Marcion found to be everywhere more or less corrupted and mutilated in the Christian circles of his time. His undertaking thus resolved itself into a reformation of Christendom. This reformation was to deliver Christendom from false Jewish doctrines by restoring the Pauline conception of the gospel,—Paul being, according to Marcion, the only apostle who had rightly understood the new message of salvation as delivered by Christ. In Marcion’s own view, therefore, the founding of his church—to which he was first driven by opposition—amounts to a reformation of Christendom through a return to the gospel of Christ and to Paul; nothing was to be accepted beyond that. This of itself shows that it is a mistake to reckon Marcion among the Gnostics. A dualist he certainly was, but he was not a Gnostic. For he ascribed salvation, not to “knowledge” but to “faith”; he appealed openly to the whole Christian world; and he nowhere consciously added foreign elements to the revelation given through Christ. It is true that in many features his Christian system—if we may use the expression—resembles the so-called Gnostic systems; but the first duty of the historian is to point out what Marcion plainly aimed at; only in the second place have we to inquire how far the result corresponded with those purposes.

The doctrines of Marcion and the history of his churches from the 2nd to the 7th century are known to us from the controversial works of the Catholic fathers. From Justin onwards, almost every eminent Church teacher takes some notice of Marcion, while very many write extensive treatises against him. The most important of those which have come down to us are the controversial pieces of Irenaeus (in his great work against heretics), Tertullian (Adv. Marc. i.-v.), Hippolytus, Pseudo-Origen Adamantius, Epiphanius, and the Armenian Esnik. From these works the contents of the Marcionite Gospel, and also the text of Paul’s epistles in Marcion’s recension, can be settled with tolerable accuracy. His opponents, moreover, have preserved some expressions of his, with extracts from his principal work; so that our knowledge of Marcion’s views is in part derived from the best sources.

Marcion was a wealthy shipowner, belonging to Sinope in Pontus. He appears to have been a convert from Paganism to Christianity, although it was asserted in later times that his father had been a bishop. That report is probably as untrustworthy as another, that he was excommunicated from the Church for seducing a virgin. What we know for certain is that after the death of Hyginus, bishop of Rome (or c. 139 A.D.), he arrived, in the course of his travels, at Rome, and made a handsome donation of money to the local church. Even then, however, the leading features of his peculiar system must have been already thought out. At Rome he tried to gain acceptance for them in the college of presbyters and in the church; indeed he had previously made similar attempts in Asia Minor. But he now encountered such determined opposition from the majority of the congregation that he found it necessary to withdraw from the great church and establish in Rome a community of his own. This was about the year 144. The new society increased in the two following decades; and very soon numerous sister-churches were flourishing in the east and west of the empire. Marcion took up his residence permanently in Rome, but still undertook journeys for the propagation of his opinions. In Rome he became acquainted with the Syrian Gnostic Cerdo, whose speculations influenced the development of the Marcionite theology. Still Marcion seems never to have abandoned his design of gaining over the whole Church to his gospel. The proof of this is found, partly in the fact that he tried to establish relations with Polycarp of Smyrna, from whom he got a sharp rebuff, partly in a legend to the effect that towards the end of his life he sought readmission to the Church. Such, presumably, was the construction put in after times on his earnest endeavour to unite Christians on the footing of the “pure gospel.” When he died is not known, but his death can scarcely have been much later than the year 165.

The distinctive teaching of Marcion originated in a comparison of the Old Testament with the gospel of Christ and the theology of the apostle Paul. Its motive was not cosmological or metaphysical, but religious and historical. In the gospel he found a God revealed who is goodness and love, and who desires faith and love from men. This God he could not discover in the Old Testament; on the contrary, he saw there the revelation of a just, stern, jealous, wrathful and variable God, who requires from his servants blind obedience, fear and outward righteousness. Overpowered by the majesty and novelty of the Christian message of salvation, too conscientious to rest satisfied with the ordinary attempts at the solution of difficulties, while prevented by the limitations of his time from reaching an historical insight into the relation of Christianity to the Old Testament and to Judaism, he believed that he expressed Paul’s view by the hypothesis of two Gods: the just God of the law (the God of the Jews, who is also the Creator of the world), and the good God, the Father of Jesus Christ. Paradoxes in the history of religion and revelation which Paul draws out, and which Marcion’s contemporaries passed by as utterly incomprehensible, are here made the foundation of an ethico-dualistic conception of history and of religion. It may be said that in the 2nd century only one Christian—Marcion—took the trouble to understand Paul; but it must be added that he misunderstood him. The profound reflections of the apostle on the radical antithesis of law and gospel, works and faith, were not appreciated in the 2nd century. Marcion alone perceived their decisive religious importance, and with them confronted the legalizing, and in this sense judaizing, tendencies of his Christian contemporaries. But the Pauline ideas lost their truth under his treatment; for, when it is denied that the God of redemption is at the same time the almighty Lord of heaven and earth, the gospel is turned upside down.

The assumption of two Gods necessarily led to cosmological speculations. Under the influence of Cerdo, Marcion carried out his ethical dualism in the sphere of cosmology; but the fact that his system is not free from contradictions is the best proof that all along religious knowledge, and not philosophical, had the chief values in his eyes. The main outlines of his teaching are as follows. Man is, in spirit, soul and body, a creature of the just and wrathful god. This god created man from ὔλη (matter), and imposed on him a strict law. Since no one could keep this law, the whole human race fell under the curse, temporal and eternal, of the Demiurge. Then a higher God, hitherto unknown, and concealed even from the Demiurge, took pity on the wretched, condemned race of men. He sent his Son (whom Marcion probably regarded as a manifestation of the supreme God Himself) down to this earth in order to redeem men. Clothed in a visionary body, in the likeness of a man of thirty years old, the Son made his appearance in the fifteenth year of Tiberius, and preached in the synagogue at Capernaum. But none of the Jewish people understood him. Even the disciples whom he chose did not recognize his true nature, but mistook him for the Messiah promised by the Demiurge through the prophets, who as warrior and king was to come and set up the Jewish empire. The Demiurge himself did not suspect who the stranger was; nevertheless he became angry with him, and, although Jesus had punctually fulfilled his law, caused him to be nailed to the cross. By that act, however, he pronounced his own doom. For the risen Christ appeared before him in his glory, and charged him with having acted contrary to his own law. To make amends for this crime, the Demiurge had now to deliver up to the good God the souls of those who were to be redeemed; they are, as it were, purchased from him by the death of Christ. Christ then proceeded to the underworld to deliver the spirits of the departed. It was not the Old Testament saints, however, but only sinners and malefactors like Cain, Esau and Saul, who obeyed his summons. The prophets and patriarchs, having been often deceived by the Demiurge, suspected a trick and would not avail themselves of the promised salvation, remaining content with the bliss of being in Abraham’s bosom. Then, to gain the living, Christ raised up Paul as his apostle. He alone understood the gospel, and recognized the difference between the just God and the good. Accordingly, he opposed the original apostles with their Judaistic doctrines, and founded small congregations of true Christians. But the preaching of the false Jewish Christians gained the upper hand; nay, they even falsified the evangelical oracles and the letters of Paul. Marcion himself was the next raised up by the good God, to proclaim once more the true gospel. This he did by setting aside the spurious gospels, purging the real gospel (the Gospel of Luke) from supposed judaizing interpolations, and restoring the true text of the Pauline epistles. He likewise composed a book, called the Antitheses, in which he proved the disparity of the two Gods, from a comparison of the Old Testament with the evangelical writings.

On the basis of these writings Marcion proclaimed the true Christianity, and founded churches. He taught that all who put their trust in the good God, and his crucified Son, renounce their allegiance to the Demiurge, and approve themselves by good works of love, shall be saved. But he taught further—and here we trace the influence of the current gnosticism on Marcion—that only the spirit of man is saved by the good God; the body, because material, perishes. Accordingly his ethics also were thoroughly dualistic. By the “works of the Demiurge,” which the Christian is to flee, he meant the whole “service of the perishable.” The Christian must shun everything sensual, and especially marriage, and free himself from the body by strict asceticism. The original ethical contrast of “good” and “just” is thus transformed into the cosmological contrast of “spirit” and “matter.” The good God appears as the god of spirit, the Old Testament God as the god of matter. That is Gnosticism; but it is at the same time illogical. For, since, according to Marcion, the spirit of man is derived, not from the good, but from the just God, it is impossible to see why the spiritual should yet be more closely related to the good God than the material. There is yet another direction in which the system ends with a contradiction. According to Marcion, the good God never judges, but everywhere manifests His goodness—is, therefore, not to be feared, but simply to be loved, as a father. But here the question occurs, What becomes of the men who do not believe the gospel? Marcion answers, The good God does not judge them, but merely removes them from His presence. Then they fall under the power of the Demiurge, who—rewards them for their fidelity? No, says Marcion, but on the contrary—punishes them in his hell! The contradiction here is palpable; and at the same time the antithesis of “just” and “good” ultimately vanishes. For the Demiurge now appears as an inferior being, who in reality executes the purposes of the good God. It is plain that dualism here terminates in the idea of the sole supremacy of the good God.

It is not surprising, therefore, that even in the 2nd century the disciples of Marcion diverged in several directions. Rigorous asceticism, the rejection of the Old Testament, and the recognition of the “new God” remained common to all Marcionites, who, moreover, like the Catholics, lived together in close communities ruled by bishops and presbyters (although their constitution was originally very loose, and sought to avoid every appearance of “legality”). Some, however, accepted three first principles (the evil, the just, the good); others held by two, but regarded the Demiurge as the god of evil, i.e. the devil; while a third party, like Apelles, the most distinguished of Marcion’s pupils, saw in the Demiurge only an apostate angel of the good God—thus returning to monotheism. The golden age of the Marcionite churches falls between the years 150 and 250. During that time they were really dangerous to the great Church; for in fact they maintained certain genuine Christian ideas, which the Catholic Church had forgotten. The earliest inscription (A.D. 318) on a Christian place of worship is Marcionite, and was found on a stone which had stood over the doorway of a house in a Syrian village. From the beginning of the 4th century they began to die out in the West, or rather they fell a prey to Manichaeism. In the East also many Marcionites went over to the Manichaeans; but there they survived much longer. They can be traced down to the 7th century, and then they seem to vanish. But it was unquestionably from Marcionite impulses that the new sects of the Paulicians and Bogomils arose; and in so far as the western Cathari, and the antinomian and anticlerical sects of the 13th century are connected with these, they also may be included in the history of Marcionitism.

See A. Harnack, History of Dogma, i. 266, 286; F. Loofs, Dogmengeschichte pp. 111-114; G. Krüger, Early Christian Literature, and art. in Hauck-Herzog’s Realencyklopädie für prot. Theol. und Kirche, xii.; F. J. Foakes Jackson’s Christian Difficulties of the Second and Twentieth Centuries, is a study of Marcion and his relation to modern thought.

(A. Ha.)

Esnik’s presentation of the Marcionite system is a late production, and contains many speculations that cannot be charged upon Marcion himself.

On the relation of matter to the Creator, Marcion himself seems not to have speculated, though his followers may have done so.

Marcion’s teaching at this point forestalls the patripassian christology of Noetus and Praxeas (see Neander, Church Hist. ii. 143).—[Ed.]

Marcion was the earliest critical student of the New Testament canon and text. It is noteworthy that he refused to admit the genuineness of the Pastoral Epistles and said that the letter to the Ephesians was really addressed to the Laodiceans (Tertullian, Adv. Marc. v. 11, 21).—(Ed.)

Some have seen a reference to this work in 1 Tim. vi. 20.—(Ed.)

MARCOMANNI (i.e. men of the mark, or border), the name of a Suevic tribe. With kindred peoples they were often in conflict with the Roman Empire, and gave their name to the Marcomannic War, a struggle waged by the emperor Marcus Aurelius against them and the Quadi. The Marcomanni disappeared from history during the 4th century, being probably merged in the Baiouarii, the later Bavarians.

See Suebi; also F. M. Wittmann, Die älteste Geschichte der Markomannen (Munich, 1855), and E. Devrient, “Hermunduren und Markomannen” in Neues Jahrb. f. das klassische Altertum (1901), 51.

MARCOS DE NIZA (c. 1495-1558), a Franciscan friar born in Nice about 1495. He went to America in 1531, and after serving his order zealously in Peru, Guatemala and Mexico, was chosen to explore the country north of Sonora, whose wealth was pictured in the hearsay stories of Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca. Preceded by Estevanico, the negro companion of Cabeza de Vaca in his wanderings and the “Black Mexican” of Zuñi traditions, Fray Marcos left Culiacan in March 1539, crossed south-eastern Arizona, penetrated to Zuñi or the “Seven Cities of Cibola,” and in September returned to Culiacan. He saw Zuñi only from a distance, and his description of it as equal in size to the city of Mexico was probably exact; but he embodied much mere hearsay in his report, the Descubrimiento de las siete ciudades, which led F. V. de Coronado to make his famous expedition next year to Zuñi, of which Fray Marcos was the guide; and the realities proved a great disappointment. Fray Marcos was made Provincial of his order for Mexico before the second trip to Zuñi, and returned in 1541 to the capital, where he died on the 25th of March 1558.

The Descubrimiento is one of the world’s famous narratives of travel. It may be found in J. F. Pacheco’s Documentos (vol. iii.) and Hakluyt’s Voyages (vol. iii.); also in G. Ramusio, Navigazione (vol. iii.) and H. Ternaux-Compans, Voyages (vol. iii.). See A. F. A. Bandelier, The Gilded Man (El Dorado), (New York, 1893); H. H. Bancroft, Arizona and New Mexico (San Francisco, 1888), and, for critical opinions, G. P. Winship, “The Coronado Expedition,” in U.S. Bureau of Ethnology, Fourteenth Annual Report (for 1892-1893), (Washington, 1896).

MARCOU, JULES (1824-1898), Swiss-American geologist, was born at Salins, in the department of Jura, in France, on the 20th of April 1824. He was educated at Besançon and at the college of St Louis, Paris. He worked in early years with J. Thurmann (1804-1855) on the geology of the Jura mountains. In 1847 he went to North America as travelling geologist for the Jardin des Plantes, and in the following year in Boston he joined Agassiz, whom he had met in Switzerland, and accompanied him to the Lake Superior region. Marcou spent two years in studying the geology of various parts of the United States and Canada, and returned to Europe for a short time in 1850. In 1853 he published a Geological Map of the United States, and the British Provinces of North America. In 1855 he became professor of geology and palaeontology at the polytechnic school of Zurich, but relinquished this office in 1859, and in 1861 again returned to the United States, when he assisted Agassiz in founding the Museum of Comparative Zoology. In 1861 he published his Geological Map of the World (2nd ed. 1875). Of his published papers the more noteworthy are those on the Jura-Cretaceous formations of the Jura, on the “Dyas” (Permian) of Nebraska, and on the Taconic rocks of Vermont and Canada. His other works include Lettres sur les roches du Jura et leur distribution géographique dans les deux hémisphères (1857-1860) and Geology of North America (1858). Marcou died at Cambridge, Mass., on the 17th of April 1898.

MARCUS AURELIUS ANTONINUS (121-180), Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher, was born in Rome A.D. 121, the date of his birth being variously stated as the 6th, 21st and 26th of April. His original name was Marcus Annius Verus. His mother Domitia Calvilla (or Lucilla) was a lady of consular rank, and the family of his father Annius Verus (prefect of the city and thrice consul), originally Spanish, had received patrician rank from Vespasian. Marcus was three months old when his father died, and was thereupon adopted by his grandfather. The moral training which he received from his grandfather and his mother must have been all but perfect. The noble qualities of the child attracted the attention of Hadrian, who, playing upon the name “Verus,” said that it should be changed to “Verissimus” (BHPICCIMOC on medals). Hadrian adopted, as his successor, Titus Antoninus Pius (uncle of Marcus), on condition that he in turn adopted both Marcus (then seventeen) and Lucius Ceionius Commodus, the son of Aelius Caesar, who had originally been intended by Hadrian as his successor, but had died before him. Marcus had been, at the age of fifteen, betrothed to Fabia, the sister of Commodus; the engagement was broken off by Antoninus Pius, and he was betrothed to Faustina, the daughter of the latter. In 139 the title of Caesar was conferred upon him and he dropped the name of Verus. The full name he then bore was Marcus Aelius Aurelius Antoninus, Aelius coming from Hadrian’s family, and Aurelius being the original name of Antoninus Pius. In 140 he was made consul.

The education of Aurelius in his youth was minute (see Medit. i. 1-16). A better guardian than Antoninus Pius could not be conceived. Marcus himself says, “To the gods I am indebted for having good grandfathers, good parents, a good sister, good teachers, good associates, good kinsmen and friends, nearly everything good.” He was educated, not at school, but by tutors, Herodes Atticus and M. Cornelius Fronto (q.v.) in the usual curriculum of rhetoric and poetry; but at the age of eleven he became acquainted with Diognetus the painter and Stoic philosopher (Hist. script. aug. i. 305, notes), was fascinated by the philosophy he taught, assumed the dress of his sect, and ultimately abandoned rhetoric and poetry for philosophy and law, having among his teachers of the one Sextus of Chaeronea, grandson of Plutarch, and later Q. Junius Rusticus, and of the other L. Volusius Maecianus (or Metianus), a distinguished jurist. He went thoroughly into the practice as well as the theory of Stoicism, and lived so abstemious and laborious a life that he injured his health. From his Stoic teachers he learned to work hard, to deny himself, to avoid listening to slander, to endure misfortunes, never to deviate from his purpose, to be grave without affectation, delicate in correcting others, “not frequently to say to any one, nor to write in a letter, that I have no leisure,” nor to excuse the neglect of duties by alleging urgent occupations. Through all his Stoical training Aurelius preserved the natural sweetness of his nature.

During the reign of Antoninus Pius (138 to 161), the concord between him and Aurelius was complete; Capitolinus (c. 7) says “nec praeter duas noctes per tot annos mansit diversis vicibus.” The two were associated in the administration and in the simple country occupations of the seaside villa of Lorium, the birthplace of Pius, to which he loved to retire. It has been assumed on the strength of a passage in Capitolinus that Aurelius married Faustina in 146, but the passage is not clear, and other evidence points strongly to 140; at all events it seems certain that a daughter was born to him in 140. Antoninus Pius died in 161, having recommended as his successor Aurelius, then forty years of age, without mentioning Commodus, his other adopted son, commonly called Lucius Verus. It is believed that the senate urged Aurelius to take the sole administration. But he showed the magnanimity of his nature by at once admitting Verus as his partner, giving him the tribunician and proconsular powers, and the titles Caesar and Augustus. This was the first time that Rome had two emperors as colleagues. Verus, a weak, self-indulgent man, had a high respect for his adoptive brother, and deferred uniformly to his judgment. In the first year of his reign Faustina gave birth to twins, one of whom became the emperor Commodus.

The early part of the reign of Aurelius was clouded by national misfortunes. An inundation of the Tiber swept away a large part of Rome, destroying fields, drowning cattle, and causing a famine (162); then came earthquakes, fires and plagues of insects; the soldiers in Britain tried to induce their general Statius Priscus to proclaim himself emperor; finally, the Parthians under Vologaeses III. resumed hostilities, annihilated the Roman forces under Severianus at Elegia in Cappadocia, and devastated Syria. Verus, originally a man of considerable courage and ability, was sent to oppose the Parthians, but gave himself up to sensual excesses, and the Roman cause in Armenia would have been lost, and the empire itself, perhaps, imperilled, had not Verus had under him able generals, the chief of whom was Avidius Cassius (see Cassius, Avidius). By them the Parthian War was brought to a conclusion in 165, but Verus and his army brought back with them a terrible pestilence, which spread through the whole empire. The people seem to have thought that the last days of the empire had come. The Parthians had at the best been beaten, not subdued; the Britons threatened revolt; there were signs that various tribes beyond the Alps intended to break into Italy. Indeed, the bulk of the reign of Aurelius was spent in efforts to ward off the attacks of the barbarians. He went himself to the wars with Verus in 167, first to Aquileia and then on into Pannonia and Noricum, wintering at Sirmium in Pannonia. Ultimately the Marcomanni, the fiercest of the tribes that inhabited the country between Illyria and the sources of the Danube, sued for peace in 168. In January or February 160 Verus died at Altinum, apparently of apoplexy, though some ventured to say that he was poisoned by Aurelius.

Aurelius was thenceforth indisputed master of the empire, during one of the most troubled periods of its history. His reign is well described by F. W. Farrar (Seekers after God): “He regarded himself as being, in fact, the servant of all. The registry of the citizens, the suppression of litigation, the elevation of public morals, the care of minors, the retrenchment of public expenses, the limitation of gladiatorial games and shows, the care of roads, the restoration of senatorial privileges, the appointment of none but worthy magistrates, even the regulation of street traffic, these and numberless other duties so completely absorbed his attention that, in spite of indifferent health, they often kept him at severe labour from early morning till long after midnight. His position, indeed, often necessitated his presence at games and shows, but on these occasions he occupied himself either in reading, in being read to, or in writing notes. He was one of those who held that nothing should be done hastily, and that few crimes were worse than the waste of time.” The comprehensiveness of his legal and judicial reforms is very striking. Slaves, heirs, women and children, were benefited, and he made serious attempts to deal with the steady fall in the birth-rate of legitimate children.

In the autumn of 169 two of the German tribes, the Quadi and the Marcomanni, with their allies the Vandals, Iazyges and Sarmatians, renewed hostilities and, for three years, Aurelius resided almost constantly at Carnuntum. In the end the Marcomanni were driven out of Pannonia, and were almost destroyed in their retreat across the Danube. In 174 Aurelius gained over the Quadi a decisive victory, which is commemorated by one of the sculptures on the column of Antonine. The story is that the Romans, entangled in a defile, were suffering from thirst. A sudden storm gave abundance of rain, while hail and thunder confounded their enemies, and enabled the Romans to gain an easy and complete victory. This triumph was universally considered at the time, and for long afterwards, to have been a miracle, and bore the title of “The Miracle of the Thundering Legion.” The pagan writers (e.g. Dio Cassius, lxx. 8-10) ascribed the victory to the magic arts of an Egyptian named Arnuphis who prevailed on Mercury and other gods to give relief, while the Christians attributed it to the prayers of their brethren in a legion to which, they affirmed, the emperor then gave the name of “The Thundering.” Dacier, however, and others who adhere to the Christian view of the miracle, admit that the appellation of “Thundering” or “Lightning” (κεραυνοβόλος, or κεραυνοφόρος) was given to the legion because there was a figure of lightning on their shields. It has also been virtually proved that it had the title even in the reign of Augustus.

Aurelius next marched to Germany. There news reached him that Avidius Cassius, the commander of the Roman troops in Asia, had revolted and proclaimed himself emperor (175). But after three months Cassius was assassinated, and his head was brought to Aurelius, who with characteristic magnanimity, persuaded the senate to pardon all the family of Cassius. It is a proof of the wisdom of Aurelius’s clemency that he had little or no trouble in pacifying the provinces which had been the scene of rebellion. He treated them all with forbearance, and it is said that when the correspondence of Cassius was brought him he burnt it without reading it. During his journey of pacification, Faustina, who had borne him eleven children, died. Dio Cassius and Capitolinus charge Faustina with the most shameless infidelity to her husband, who is even blamed for not paying heed to her crimes. But none of these stories rests on trustworthy evidence; on the other hand, there can be no doubt that Aurelius trusted her while she lived, and mourned her loss.

After the death of Faustina and the pacification of Syria, Aurelius proceeded, on his return to Italy, through Athens, and was initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries, the reason assigned for his doing so being that it was his custom to conform to the established rites of the countries he visited. He gave large sums of money for the endowment of chairs in philosophy and rhetoric, with a view to making the schools the resort of students from all parts of the empire. Along with his son Commodus he entered Rome in 176, and obtained a triumph for victories in Germany. In 177 occurred that persecution of Christians, the share of Aurelius in which has been the subject of so much controversy. Meanwhile the German War continued, and the two Quintilii, who had been left in command, begged Aurelius once more to take the field. In this campaign Aurelius, after a series of successes, was attacked, according to some authorities, by an infectious disease, of which he died after a seven days’ illness, either in his camp at Sirmium (Mitrovitz), on the Save, in Lower Pannonia, or at Vindobona (Vienna), on the 17th of March 180, in the fifty-ninth year of his age. Other accounts are: (1) that he was poisoned in the interests of Commodus (Dio. Cass. lxxi. 33, 4), (2) that he died of a chronic stomachic disease; the latter is perhaps the most likely. His ashes (according to some authorities, his body) were taken to Rome. By common consent he was deified and all those who could afford the cost obtained his statue or bust; for a long time his statues held a place among the penates of the Romans. Commodus, who was with his father when he died, erected to his memory the Antonine column (now in the Piazza Colonna at Rome), round the shaft of which are sculptures in relief commemorating the miracle of the Thundering Legion and the various victories of Aurelius over the Quadi and the Marcomanni. A bronze equestrian statue was set up in the Forum, now on the Capitol.

Aurelius throughout his reign was hostile to Christianity. The Christians suffered from systematic persecution, and many historians, with a strange lack of historical insight, have poured denunciation upon him for an attitude which was the natural outcome of his convictions. During his reign the atmosphere of Roman society was heavily charged with the popular Greek philosophy to which, ethics apart, Christianity was diametrically opposed. Under Antoninus the “pursuit” of Christians was unknown; under Trajan and Hadrian it was forbidden (cf. Keim, Aus dem Urchrist, p. 99). But Aurelius was an eager patriot and a man of logical mind. From his earliest youth he had learned to identify the ritual of the Roman religion with the very essence of the imperial idea. He became a Salian priest at the age of eight, and soon knew by heart all the forms and liturgical order of the official worship, and even the sacred music. In the earliest statue we have he is a youth offering incense; he is a priest at the sacrificial altar in the latest triumphal reliefs. Naturally he felt that the prevalence of Christianity was incompatible with his ideal of Roman prosperity, and therefore that the policy of the Flavian emperors was the only logical solution of an important problem. Neumann argued that the recrudescence of active persecution was initiated by a deliberate ad hoc rescript issued probably in A.D. 176. Sir W. M. Ramsay, however, doubts this (The Church in the Roman Empire, London, 1893), and argues that it was due to a long series of instructions to provincial governors (mandata, not decreta) who interpreted their duty largely in conformity with the attitude of the reigning emperor. In other words the governors were ordered merely to punish sacrilege, and, under Aurelius, Christianity was regarded as such. In the second place, though it is true that the persecutions indicated by Celsus (Origen, Celsus, viii. 69), Justin, Melito (in Eusebius, H.E., iv. 26), Athenagoras (Libellus pro Christianis) and the Acts of Martyrs, were greatly in excess of those recorded in previous reigns, it must not be forgotten that it was only in this period that the Christians began to keep records. Thirdly, there can be no doubt that the Christians had recently assumed a much bolder attitude, and thus segregated themselves from the mass of those unorthodox sects which the Roman could afford to despise. Like the Druids in Gaul (cf. T. Mommsen, Prov. Rom. Emp., Eng. trans. i. 105, and V. Duruy, Rev. archéol., Apr. 1880), the Christians were particularly dangerous, inasmuch as they taught a unity which transcended that of the Roman Empire, and must, therefore, have been regarded as antagonistic to the existing political and social organism.

When, therefore, we remember that Aurelius knew little of the Christians, that the only mention of them in the Meditations is a contemptuous reference to certain fanatics of their number whom even Clement of Alexandria compares for their thirst for martyrdom to the Indian gymnosophists, and finally that the least worthy of them were doubtless the most prominent, we cannot doubt that Aurelius was acting unquestionably in the best interests of a perfectly intelligible ideal. He was “Roman in resolution and repression, Roman in civic nobility and pride, Roman in tenacity of imperial aim, Roman in respect for law, Roman in self-effacement for the service of the State” (G. H. Rendall).

Philosophy.—The book which contains the philosophy of Aurelius is known by the title of his Reflections, or Meditations, although that is not the name which he gave to it himself (Τὰ εἰς ἑαυτόν). Of the genuineness of the work no doubts are now entertained. It is believed that he wrote also an autobiography, which has perished. The Meditations were written, it is evident, as occasion offered—in the midst of public business, and on the eve of battles on which the fate of the empire depended—hence their fragmentary appearance, but hence also much of their practical value and even of their charm. It is believed by many critics that they were intended for the guidance of Aurelius’s son, Commodus (q.v.); at all events they are generally considered as one of the most precious of the legacies of antiquity. Renan even called them “the most human of all books,” and they are described by J. S. Mill in his Utility of Religion as almost equal in ethical elevation to the Sermon on the Mount.

Aurelius throughout his life adhered to the Stoical philosophy. But, as Tenneman says, he imparted to it “a character of gentleness and benevolence, by making it subordinate to a love of mankind, allied to religion.” His thoughts represent a transitional movement, and it is difficult to discover in them anything like a systematic philosophy. From the manner, however, in which he seeks to distinguish between matter and cause or reason, and from the earnestness with which he advises men to examine all the impressions on their minds, it may be inferred that he held the view of Anaxagoras—that God and matter exist independently, but that God governs matter. There can be no doubt that Aurelius believed in a deity, although Schultz is probably right in maintaining that all his theology amounts to this—the soul of man is most intimately united to his body, and together they make one animal which we call man; and so the deity is most intimately united to the world or the material universe, and together they form one whole. We find in the Meditations no speculations on the absolute nature of the deity, and no clear expressions of opinion as to a future state. We may also observe here that, like Epictetus, he is by no means so decided on the subject of suicide as the older Stoics. Aurelius is, above all things, a practical moralist. The goal in life to be aimed at, according to him, is not happiness, but tranquillity, or equanimity. This condition of mind can be obtained only by “living conformably to nature,” that is to say, one’s whole nature, and as a means to that man must cultivate the four chief virtues, each of which has its distinct sphere—wisdom, or the knowledge of good and evil; justice, or the giving to every man his due; fortitude, or the enduring of labour and pain; and temperance, or moderation in all things. It is no “fugitive and cloistered virtue” that Aurelius seeks to encourage; on the contrary, man must lead the “life of the social animal,” must “live as on a mountain”; and “he is an abscess on the universe who withdraws and separates himself from the reason of our common nature through being displeased with the things which happen.” While the prime principle in man is the social, “the next in order is not to yield to the persuasions of the body, when they are not conformable to the rational principle which must govern.” This divinity “within a man,” this “legislating faculty,” which, looked at from one point of view, is conscience, and from another is reason, must be implicitly obeyed. He who thus obeys it will attain tranquillity of mind; nothing can irritate him, for everything is according to nature, and death itself “is such as generation is, a mystery of nature, a composition out of the same elements, and a decomposition into the same, and altogether not a thing of which any man should be ashamed, for it is not contrary to the nature of a reasonable animal, and not contrary to the reason of our constitution.”

The morality of Marcus Aurelius cannot be said to have been new when it was given to the world. Its charm lies in its exquisite accent and its infinite tenderness. But above all, what gives the sentences of Marcus Aurelius their enduring value and fascination, and renders them superior to the utterances of Epictetus and Seneca, is that they are the gospel of his life. His precepts are simply the records of his practice. To the saintliness of the cloister he added the wisdom of the man of the world; he was constant in misfortune, not elated by prosperity, never “carrying things to the sweating-point,” but preserving, in a time of universal corruption, unreality and self-indulgence, a nature sweet, pure, self-denying, unaffected.

Bibliography.—P. B. Watson’s M. Aurelius Antoninus (1884) contains a general account—life, character, philosophy, relations with Christianity—as well as a bibliography; see also art. in Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopädie, s.v. “Annius” (No. 94), col. 2279. For special points see: (1) Historical: Authorities under Rome: Ancient History; S. Dill, Roman Society from Nero to M. Aurelius (London, 1904). (2) Relations to Christianity: Sir W. M. Ramsay, op. cit.; W. Moeller, History of the Christian Church, A.D. 1-600 (Eng. trans., A. Rutherford, 1892); W. E. Addis, Christianity and the Roman Empire (1893); E. G. Hardy, Christianity and the Roman Government (1894), pp. 145 sqq., which criticizes both Neumann and Ramsay; Leonard Alston, Stoic and Christian of the 2nd century (1906); J. Dartigue-Peyrou, Marc-Aurèle dans ses rapports avec le christianisme (Paris, 1897). (3) Philosophical: Besides article Stoics, E. Renan, Marc. Antoninus et la fin du monde antique (Paris, 1882; Eng. trans., W. Hutchinson, 1904); W. Pater, Marius the Epicurean (London, 1888); Matthew Arnold’s Essays; C. H. W. Davis, Greek and Roman Stoicism (1903); editions of the Meditations (5, below). (4) Military: E. Napp, De rebus imperat. M. Aurel. Anton, in oriente gestis (Bonn, 1879); Conrad, Mark Aurels Markomannenkrieg (1889); Th. Mommsen, Provinces of the Roman Empire (Eng. trans., W. P. Dickson, London, 1886); for the Aurelius column, E. Petersen, A. von Domaszewski, and G. Calderini, Die Marcussäule (Munich, 1896), with historical introduction by Th. Mommsen. (5) The Meditations were published by Xylander in 1558; the best critical edition is that of J. Stich in the Teubner series (Leipzig, 1882; 2nd ed., 1903); textual emendations also in Journal of Philology, xxiii. 116-160 (G. H. Rendall); Classical Review, xix. (1905), pp. 18 sqq. (Herbert Richards), ibid., pp. 301 sqq. (A. J. Kronenberg). Translations exist in almost every language; that of George Long (London, 1862, re-edited 1900) has been superseded by those of G. H. Rendall (London, 1898, with valuable introduction) and J. Jackson (Oxford, 1906, with introduction by Charles Bigg). (6) For a full account of the correspondence of Aurelius and Fronto, see Robinson Ellis, Correspondence of Fronto and M. Aurelius (Oxford, 1904).

(J. M. M.)

Capitolinus states that he was originally called Catilius Severus after his mother’s grandfather; if so the name was early discarded.

Aurelius has been severely criticized for sending Verus. Among various reasons, the most convincing is that the presence of Aurelius was required in Rome; moreover, the real leader was evidently Cassius.

MARCY, WILLIAM LEARNED (1786-1857), American statesman, was born in Southbridge (then part of Sturbridge), Massachusetts, on the 12th of December 1786. He graduated at Brown University in 1808, studied law, was admitted to the bar in Troy, New York, and began practice there in 1810. During the War of 1812 he served first as a lieutenant and afterwards as a captain of volunteers, and on the 22nd of October 1812 took part in the storming of the British post at St Regis, Canada. In 1816 he became recorder of Troy, but as he sided with the Anti-Clinton faction of the Democratic-Republican Party, known as the “Bucktails,” he was removed from office in 1818 by his political opponents. As editor of the Troy Budget (daily) he was a vigorous supporter of Martin Van Buren, and when Van Buren’s followers acquired control of the legislature in 1821 Marcy was made adjutant-general of the New York militia. From 1823 to 1829 Marcy was comptroller of the state, an office then especially important on account of the large expenditures for internal improvements, and during this period he became the leading member of the famous “Albany Regency,” a group of able Democratic politicians who exerted a powerful influence throughout the state by their control of the party patronage and machinery. He was one of the associate justices of the New York Supreme Court from 1829 to 1831, presiding over the trial of the alleged murderers of William Morgan and in other important cases; and was a member of the United States Senate from December 1831 to July 1832, when he resigned to become governor of New York. In a speech in the Senate defending Van Buren against an attack by Henry Clay, Marcy made the unfortunate remark that “to the victors belong the spoils of the enemy,” and thereby became widely known as a champion of the proscription of political opponents. He served as governor of New York for six years (Jan. 1, 1833 to Dec. 31, 1838), but was defeated in 1838 by the Whig candidate, William H. Seward. As governor he checked the issue of bank charters by the legislature and secured the enactment, in 1838, of a general banking law, which abolished the monopoly features incident to the old banking system. In 1839-1842 Marcy was a member of a commission appointed by President Van Buren, in accordance with the treaty of 1839 between the United States and Mexico to “examine and decide upon” certain claims of citizens of the United States against Mexico. In 1843 he presided over the Democratic state convention at Syracuse, and in 1844-1845 he was recognized as one of the leaders of the “Hunkers,” or regular Democrats in New York, and an active opponent of the “Barnburners.” He was secretary of war under President Polk from 1845 to 1849, and as such, discharged with ability the especially onerous duties incident to the conduct of the Mexican War; he became involved, however, in controversies with Generals Scott and Taylor, who accused him, it seems very unjustly, of seeking to embarrass their operations in the field because they were political opponents of the administration. In the Democratic convention at Baltimore, in 1852, Marcy was a prominent candidate for the presidential nomination, and from 1853 to 1857 he was secretary of state in the cabinet of President Pierce. Few cabinet officers in time of peace have had more engrossing duties. His circular of the 1st of June 1853 to American diplomatic agents abroad, recommending that, whenever practicable, they should “appear in the simple dress of an American citizen,” created much discussion in Europe; in 1867 his recommendation was enacted into a law of Congress. One of the most important matters with which he was called upon to deal was the “Koszta Affair”; his “Hülsemann letter” (1853), is an important state paper, and the principles it enunciates have been approved by leading authorities on international law. In the same year he secured the negotiation of the Gadsden Treaty (see Gadsden, James), by which the boundary dispute between Mexico and the United States was adjusted and a large area was added to the Federal domain; and in June 1854 he concluded with Lord Elgin, governor-general of Canada, acting for the British Government, a treaty designed to settle the fisheries question and providing for tariff reciprocity (as regards certain enumerated commodities) between Canada and the United States. In 1854 Marcy had to deal with the complications growing out of the bombardment of San Juan del Norte (Greytown), Nicaragua, by the United States sloop-of-war “Cyane” for insults offered the American minister by its inhabitants and for their refusal to make restitution for damages to American property. The expedition of William Walker (q.v.) to Nicaragua in 1855 further complicated the Central American question. The Crimean War, on account of the extensive recruiting therefor by British consuls in several American cities, in violation of American neutrality, led to a diplomatic controversy with Great Britain, and in May 1856 the British minister, John F. T. Crampton (1805-1886), received his passports, and the exequaturs of the British consuls at New York, Philadelphia and Cincinnati were revoked. The incident created great excitement in England, but in 1857 the British government sent Sir Francis Napier to Washington to take Crampton’s place. To the Declaration of Paris of 1856, prescribing certain rules of naval warfare, Marcy on behalf of his government refused to subscribe, because Great Britain had rejected his proposed amendment exempting from seizure in time of war all private property not contraband. The diplomatic relations of the United States and Spain furnished, perhaps, the most perplexing of Marcy’s problems. Upon the seizure (on Feb. 28, 1854) of the American vessel “Black Warrior,” the confiscation of her cargo, and the fining of her captain by the Cuban authorities, on the ground that this vessel had violated the customs regulations of the port of Havana, slavery propagandists sought to force the administration into an attitude that would lead to war with Spain and make possible the seizure of Cuba; and it was largely due to Marcy’s influence that war was averted, Spain restoring the confiscated cargo and remitting the captain’s fine. The secretary, however, was not averse to increasing his popularity and his chances for the presidency by obtaining Cuba in an honourable manner, and it was at his suggestion that James Buchanan, J. Y. Mason and Pierre Soulé, the ministers respectively to Great Britain, France and Spain, met at Ostend and Aix-la-Chapelle in October 1854 to discuss the Cuban question. But the remarkable “Ostend Manifesto” (see Buchanan, James), the outcome of their conference, was quite unexpected, and Marcy promptly disavowed the document. Marcy died at Ballston Spa, New York, on the 4th of July 1857, a short time after the close of Pierce’s administration. In domestic affairs Marcy was a shrewd, but honest partisan; in diplomacy he exhibited the qualities of a broad-minded, patriotic statesman, endowed, however, with vigour, rather than brilliancy, of intellect.

For his early career, consult J. S. Jenkins, Lives of the Governors of New York (Auburn, New York, 1851), and for his work as secretary of state, see James Ford Rhodes, History of the United States (vols. i. and ii., New York, 1892), and an article by Sidney Webster, “Mr Marcy, the Cuban Question, and the Ostend Manifesto,” in vol. viii. of the Political Science Quarterly (New York, 1893).

The “Koszta Affair” involved an interesting question of international law—i.e. the right of an alien domiciled in any country to the protection of that country—and has served as a precedent for the American government in somewhat similar cases that have arisen. Martin Koszta, a Hungarian revolutionist of 1848, had emigrated to the United States and had there taken the preliminary step for naturalization by formally declaring his intention to become a citizen of the United States. In 1853 he went on personal business to Smyrna, where he secured a passport from the American consul; the Austrian consul, however, caused him to be seized and detained on an Austrian brig-of-war. Soon afterward Captain Duncan N. Ingraham (1802-1891), in command of a United States sloop-of-war, arrived at Smyrna, and threatened to attack the Austrian vessel unless Koszta were released; and as a compromise Koszta was placed in the custody of the French consul. To Chevalier Hülsemann, then representing Austria at Washington, who had demanded from the United States the disavowal of the acts of its agents, the complete surrender of Koszta, and “satisfaction proportionate to the magnitude of the outrage,” Marcy wrote on the 26th of September 1853, that Koszta “when seized and imprisoned was invested with the nationality of the United States” and had a right to the protection of the United States government, and added: “Whenever by the law of nations an individual becomes clothed with our national character—he can claim the protection of this government, and it may respond to that claim without being obliged to explain its conduct to any foreign power; for it is its duty to make its nationality respected by other nations and respectable in every quarter of the globe.” Eventually Koszta was released and returned to the United States. The Hülsemann letter was published and greatly increased Marcy’s popularity.

See Henry L. James, “The Black Warrior Affair” in the American Historical Review, vol. xii. (1907).

MARDIN, the chief town of a sanjak of the Diarbekr vilayet of Asiatic Turkey. It is a military station on the Diarbekr-Mosul road. It occupies a remarkable site on the south side of a conical hill of soft limestone, and the houses rise tier above tier. The streets are narrow and paved in steps, while often the roadway runs along the roof of the house in the tier below. The hill is almost surrounded by old walls, while on the summit are the remains of the famous castle of the Kaleh Shubha (Lat. Maride or Marde,) which from Roman times has played an important part in history. The Arab geographers considered it impregnable, and from its steep approaches and well-arranged defences it was able to offer a protracted resistance to the Mongolian conqueror Hulagu and to the armies of Timur. It was also for several centuries the residence of more or less independent princes of the Ortokid Turkoman dynasty. The climate is healthy and dry, and fruit grows well, but water is sometimes scanty in the summer. Mardin is the centre of a good corn-growing district, and is important chiefly as a border town for the Kurds on the north and the Arab tribes to the south. It is the chief centre of the Jacobite Christians, who have many villages in the Tor Abdin hills to the north-east, and whose patriarch lives at Deir Zaferan, a Syrian monastery of the 9th century not far off in the same direction. The population is estimated at 27,000, of whom about one-half are Christians of the Armenian, Chaldean, Jacobite, Protestant and Roman Catholic communities. Besides many mosques and churches there are three monasteries (Syrian, Franciscan and Capuchin), and an important American Mission station, with church, schools and a medical officer.

MARDUK (Bibl. Merodach), the name of the patron deity of the city of Babylon, who, when Babylon permanently became the political centre of the united states of the Euphrates valley under Khammurabi (c. 2250 B.C.), rose to the position of the head of the Babylonian pantheon. His original character was that of a solar deity, and he personifies more specifically the sun of the spring-time who conquers the storms of the winter season. He was thus fitted to become the god who triumphs over chaos that reigned in the beginning of time. This earlier Marduk, however, was effaced by the reflex of the political development through which the Euphrates valley passed and which led to imbuing him with traits belonging to gods who at an earlier period were recognized as the heads of the pantheon. There are more particularly two gods—Ea and Bel—whose powers and attributes pass over to Marduk. In the case of Ea the transfer proceeds pacifically and without involving the effacement of the older god. Marduk is viewed as the son of Ea. The father voluntarily recognizes the superiority of the son and hands over to him the control of humanity. This association of Marduk and Ea, while indicating primarily the passing of the supremacy once enjoyed by Eridu to Babylon as a religious and political centre, may also reflect an early dependence of Babylon upon Eridu, not necessarily of a political character but, in view of the spread of culture in the Euphrates valley from the south to the north, the recognition of Eridu as the older centre on the part of the younger one. At all events, traces of a cult of Marduk at Eridu are to be noted in the religious literature, and the most reasonable explanation for the existence of a god Marduk in Eridu is to assume that Babylon in this way paid its homage to the old settlement at the head of the Persian Gulf.

While the relationship between Ea (q.v.) and Marduk is thus marked by harmony and an amicable abdication on the part of the father in favour of his son, Marduk’s absorption of the power and prerogatives of Bel of Nippur was at the expense of the latter’s prestige. After the days of Khammurabi, the cult of Marduk eclipses that of Bel (q.v.), and although during the five centuries of Cassite control in Babylonia (c. 1750-1200 B.C.), Nippur and the cult of the older Bel enjoy a period of renaissance, when the reaction ensued it marked the definite and permanent triumph of Marduk over Bel until the end of the Babylonian empire. The only serious rival to Marduk after 1200 B.C. is Assur (q.v.) in Assyria. In the south Marduk reigns supreme, and his supremacy is indicated most significantly by making him the Bel, “the lord,” par excellence.

The old myths in which Bel of Nippur was celebrated as the hero were transformed by the priests of Babylon in the interest of the Marduk cult with the chief rôle assigned to their favourite. The hymns once sung in the temple of Bel were re-edited and adapted to the cult of Babylon. In this process the older Bel was deliberately set aside, and the climax was reached when the conquest of the monster Tiamat, symbolizing the chaos prevailing in primeval days, was ascribed to Marduk instead of, as in the older form of the epic, to Bel. With this stroke Marduk became the creator of the world, including mankind—again setting aside the far older claims of Bel to this distinction.

Besides absorbing the prerogatives of Ea and Bel, Marduk was also imbued with the attributes of other of the great gods, such as Adad, Shamash, Nergal and Ninib, so that, more particularly as we approach the days of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, the impression is created that Marduk was the only real deity recognized, and that the other gods were merely the various forms under which he manifested himself. So far as one can speak of a monotheistic tendency in Babylonia it connects itself with this conception that was gradually crystallized in regard to the old solar deity of Babylon.

The history of the city of Babylon can now be traced back to the days of Sargon of Agade (before 3000 B.C.) who appears to have given the city its name. There is every reason to assume, therefore, that the cult of Marduk existed already at this early period, though it must always be borne in mind that, until the days of Khammurabi, his jurisdiction was limited to the city of which he was the patron and that he was viewed solely as a solar deity.

On monuments and cylinders he is represented as armed with the weapon with which he despatched the monster Tiamat. At times this monster is also depicted lying vanquished at his feet, and occasionally the monster with the lance or the lance alone is reproduced instead of the god himself.

In the astral-theological system, Marduk is identified with the planet Jupiter. As the creator of the world, the New Year’s festival, known as Zagmuk and celebrated at the time of the vernal equinox, was sacred to him. The festival, which lasted for eleven days, symbolized the new birth of nature—a reproduction therefore of the creation of the world. The arbiter of all fates, Marduk, was pictured as holding an assembly of the gods during the New Year’s festival for the purpose of deciding the lot of each individual for the year to come. The epic reciting his wonderful deed in despatching the monster Tiamat and in establishing law and order in the world in the place of chaos was recited in his temple at Babylon known as E-Saggila, “the lofty house,” and there are some reasons for believing that the recital was accompanied by a dramatical representation of the epic.

The meaning of the name Marduk is unknown. By a species of word-play the name was interpreted as “the son of the chamber,” with reference perhaps to the sacred chamber of fate in which he sat in judgment on the New Year’s festival. Ideographically he is represented by two signs signifying “child of the day” (or “of the sun”) which is a distinct allusion to his original solar character. Other ideographic signs describe him as the “strong and universal ruler.” The name of his consort was Sarpanit, i.e. the shining or brilliant one—again an allusion to Marduk’s solar traits—and this name was playfully twisted by the Babylonian priests to mean “the seed-producing” (as though compounded of zēr, seed, and bānit, producing), which was regarded as an appropriate appellation for the female counterpart of the creator of mankind and of life in general. The punning etymology betrays the evident desire of the priests to see in Marduk’s consort a form or manifestation of the great mother-goddess Ishtar (q.v.), just as in Assyria Ishtar frequently appears as the consort of the chief god of Assyria, known as Assur (q.v.).

(M. JA.)

The name Mordecai denotes “belonging to Marduk.”

MARE, the English term for the female of any animal of the family Equidae, of the ass, or zebra, but particularly of the horse. It is also used of the camel. To find a “mare’s nest” is an old proverbial saying for a purely imaginary discovery. In “night-mare,” an oppressive or terrifying dream, the termination is a word appearing as mar, maer and mara in various Teutonic languages for a goblin, supposed to sit on a sleeper’s chest and cause these dreams: cf. elf. This Teutonic word also appears in the French cauchemar, the first part being from caucher, to tread or trample upon, Lat. calcare.

MARE CLAUSUM and MARE LIBERUM (Lat. for “closed sea” and “free sea”), in international law, terms associated with the historic controversy which arose out of demands on the part of different states to assert exclusive dominion over areas of the open or high sea. Thus Spain laid claim to exclusive dominion over whole oceans, Great Britain to all her environing narrow seas and so on. These claims gave rise to vigorous opposition by other powers and led to the publication of Grotius’s work (1609) called Mare liberum. In Mare clausum (1635) John Selden endeavoured to prove that the sea was practically as capable of appropriation as territory. Owing to the conflict of claims which grew out of the controversy, maritime states had to moderate their demands and base their pretensions to maritime dominion on the principle that it extended seawards from land.

A formula was found by Bynkershoek in his De dominio maris (1702) for the restriction of dominion over the sea to the actual distance to which cannon range could protect it. This became universally adopted and developed into the three-mile belt (see Territorial Waters). In recent times controversies have arisen in connexion with the Baltic, the Black Sea and more especially the Bering Sea. In the latter case the United States, after the purchase of Alaska, vainly attempted to assert dominion beyond the three-mile limit. Still more recently the hardship of treating the greater part of Moray Firth as open sea to the exclusion of British and to the advantage of foreign fishermen has been raised (see North Sea Fisheries Convention; Territorial Waters).

Conventions for the suppression of the slave trade, including the Brussels General Act of 1885, and the North Sea Fisheries Convention, have placed restrictions on the freedom of the high sea, and possibly, in the general interest, other agreements will bring it further under control, on the principle that what is the property of all nations must be used without detriment to its use by others (see High Seas).

(T. Ba.)

MAREE, LOCH, a fresh-water lake in the county of Ross and Cromarty, Scotland. Its name—of which Maroy and Mourie are older variants—does not, as is often supposed, commemorate the Virgin, but St Maelrubha, who came from Bangor in Ireland in 671 and founded a monastery at Applecross and a chapel (now in ruins) on Isle Maree. Trending in a south-easterly to north-westerly direction, the lake has a length of 131⁄2 m. from Kinlochewe at the head of the dam erected in the 16th century (or earlier) by the iron-smelters of the Cheardach Ruardh, or Red Smiddy, on the short but impetuous river Ewe by which it drains to the sea. It lies at a height of 32 ft. above sea-level; the greatest breadth is just over 2 m. at Slattadale, the mean breadth being 9⁄10 of a mile; and the greatest depth, 367 ft., occurs in the upper basin, the mean depth being 125 ft. Its waters cover an area of fully 11 sq. m., and its islands nearly 1 sq. m., while the drainage area is 171 sq. m. A remarkable feature is the large number (more than 30) and considerable area of the islands. Excepting Loch Cròcach, a small lake in the Assynt district of Sutherlandshire, its insularity (i.e. the ratio of the total area of the islands to that of the water surface) is higher than that of any other lake in Great Britain, Loch Lomond coming next. Nearly all the islands lie north and east of Slattadale, the largest being Eilean Subhainn, or St Swithin’s Isle, which contains a small lake 750 ft. long, 300 ft. broad and 64 ft. deep. For two-thirds of its length the loch is flanked by magnificent mountains. On the north-east the principal heights are Ben Slioch (3217 ft.), whose sugar-loaf form dominates the landscape, Ben Lair (2817) and Ben Airidh-a-Char (2593), and, on the south-west, the peaks of Ben Eay, four of which exceed 3000 ft.

MAREMMA (a corruption of Marittima, “situated on the sea”), a marshy region of Tuscany, Italy, extending from the mouth of the Cecina to Orbetello and varying in breadth from 15 to 20 m. In Etruscan and Roman times the Maremma was a populous and fertile coast plain, with considerable towns situated on the hills—Populonia, Russellae, Cosa, &c., and was drained by a complete system of subterranean canals which were brought to light by the excavations made in connexion with the railways passing through the district. But the decline of agriculture at the end of the Republic led to a conversion of the land to pasture, and later the unsettled state of affairs consequent on the fall of the Roman Empire resulted in neglect of the watercourses. Leopold II. of Tuscany (1822-1844) made the first successful efforts to counteract the malaria which has affected the district, by drainage, the filling up of swamps, and the establishment of new farms, and since his time continuous efforts have been made with considerable success.

MARENGO, a village of north Italy, on the road between Alessandria and Tortona, and 43⁄4 m. E.S.E. of the gates of the former. It is situated on the Fontanone brook, a small affluent of the Tanaro which marks the western edge of the plain of Marengo, the scene of the great victory won by Napoleon over the Austrians under Baron Melas (1729-1806) on the 14th of June 1800. (The antecedents of the battle are described under French Revolutionary Wars).

The French army, in ignorance of its opponent’s position, had advanced westward from the Scrivia towards Alessandria on the 12th, and its outposts had reached the Bormida on the evening of the 13th. But contact with the main Austrian army was not obtained, and on the assumption that it was moving towards either Valenza or Genoa Napoleon weakened his army by considerable detachments sent out right and left to find the enemy and to delay his progress. Unknown, however, to Napoleon Melas’s army was still at Alessandria, and on the morning of the 14th of June it filed out of the fortress and began its advance into the great plain of Marengo, one of the few favourable cavalry battle-grounds in north Italy.

The dispersion of the French army allowed only a fragmentary, though most energetic, resistance to be offered to the Austrian onset. The latter, considerably delayed at first by the crossing of the river Bormida, broke up into two columns, which advanced, the right by the main road on Marengo, the left on Castel Ceriolo. The former, personally commanded by Melas, was 20,000 strong, and General Victor, its immediate opponent, about 10,000, or including some 5000 of Lannes’ corps who fought on his right, about 15,000 strong; the Austrians were, moreover, greatly superior in guns and cavalry. The French disputed every yard of ground, holding their first line until they had by fire and counter-attack forced practically the whole of the Austrian right to deploy, and two hours passed before the Austrians managed to reach the Fontanone brook. But Victor’s troops, being disorganized and short of ammunition, had then to retire more rapidly across the plain. The retreat was orderly, according to Victor’s report, and made in échelon from the centre, and it is certain that at any rate the regiments held together, for the 6000 Austrian sabres found no opportunity to charge home. Many guns and wagons were, however, abandoned.

On the French right, opposed to the column of Lieut.-Field-Marshal Ott, was Lannes, with some 4000 men (excluding Watrin’s division which was with Victor) against 7500. He too was after a time forced to retire, with heavy losses. Thus, about 11 a.m. the First Consul, who was at some distance from the field, was at last convinced that he had to deal with Melas’s army. At once he sent out his staff officers to bring back his detachments, and pushed forward his only reserve, Monnier’s division, to support Lannes and Victor. But before this help arrived Lannes had been driven out of Castel Ceriolo, and Victor and Watrin forced back almost to San Giuliano. A little after 2 p.m. Monnier’s division (3500) came into action, and its impetuous advance drove the Austrians out of Castel Ceriolo. But after an hour it was forced back in its turn, and by 3 p.m. therefore, the 20,000 French troops, disordered and exhausted, and in one line without reserves, held a ragged line of battle to the right and left of San Giuliano. The best that could be expected was a prolongation of the struggle till nightfall and a fairly orderly retreat. The Austrian general, believing that the battle was won, returned to Alessandria, leaving a younger man, his chief of staff Zach, to organize the pursuit.

Then followed one of the most dramatic events in military history. Of the two detachments sent away by Napoleon in search of the enemy, one only received its orders of recall. This was Boudet’s division of Desaix’s corps, away to the south at Rivalta and at noon heading for Pozzolo-Formigaro on the Alessandria-Genoa road. At 1 p.m. a brief message, “Revenez, au nom de Díeu!” altered the direction of the column, and between 4 and 5, after a forced march, the division, headed by Desaix, came on to the battle-field. It was deployed as a unit and moved forward at the word of command along the main road Alessandria-Tortona, the sight of their closed line giving fresh courage to the men of Lannes and Victor. Then, while on the other side Zach was arraying a deep column of troops to pursue along the main road, Napoleon and Desaix, themselves under fire, hastily framed a plan of attack. All arms were combined. First, Marmont with eight of Boudet’s guns and ten others (the rest had been abandoned in the retirement) came into action on the right of the road, replying to the fire of the Austrian guns and checking their advanced infantry; close in rear of the artillery was Desaix’s infantry with the remnants of Lannes’ and Victor’s troops rallying on its right and left; on Lannes’ right, still facing Ott’s column, was Monnier, supported by the Consular Guard of horse and foot; lastly 400 sabres of Kellermann’s cavalry brigade, which had already been engaged several times and had lost heavily, formed up on the right of Desaix. About 5 p.m. Desaix advanced against the head of the Austrian main column formed by Zach. He himself fell in the attack, but the onset of his intact troops drove back the leading Austrians upon their supports, and at the critical moment when the attack of Boudet’s single weak division had almost spent its force, Kellermann with his 400 sabres sallied out of the French line. Marmont had brought up two guns to assist the infantry, and as he fired his last round of case-shot the cavalry raced past him to the front, wheeled inwards against the flank of the great column, and rode through and through it. Zach was taken prisoner with more than 2000 men, and Kellermann, rallying some of his troopers, flung himself upon the astonished Austrian cavalry and with the assistance of the Consular Guard cavalry defeated it. The “will to conquer” spread along the whole French line, while the surprise of the Austrians suddenly and strangely became mere panic. Lannes, Victor and Monnier advanced afresh, pushing the Austrians back on Marengo. A few Austrian battalions made a gallant stand at that place, while Melas himself, as night came on, rallied the fugitives beyond. Next day the completely exhausted, but victorious, French army extorted from the dazed Austrians a convention by which all Italy up to the Mincio was evacuated by them. The respective losses were: French about 4000, Austrians 9500.

See the French official Campagne de l’armée de réserve, vol. ii., by C. de Cugnac.

A third column was sent out to the extreme right (3000 under O’Reilly). This destroyed a small French detachment on the extreme left, but took little or no part in the main battle.

The Austrians, too, fighting in “linear” formation had few reserves. About one-third only of the imperial forces in Italy was actually engaged in the battle.

MAREOTIS (Arabic Mariut), the most westerly of the lakes in the Delta of Egypt. On the narrow strip of land separating the lake from the Mediterranean the city of Alexandria is built. (See Egypt; and Alexandria.)

MARE’S-TAIL, in botany, the popular name for an aquatic herb known botanically as Hippuris vulgaris (natural order Haloragaceae). It grows on margins of lakes, ponds and similar localities, and has a submerged stout creeping rootstock from which spring many-jointed cylindrical stems bearing numerous narrow leaves close-set in whorls. The minute greenish flowers are borne in the leaf-axils. Like many fresh-water plants it has a wide distribution, occurring in arctic and temperate regions in the northern hemisphere and reappearing in antarctic South America.

MARET, HUGUES-BERNARD, Duc de Bassano (1763-1839), French statesman and publicist, was born at Dijon. After receiving a sound education, he entered the legal profession and became advocate at the King’s Council at Paris. The ideas of the French Revolution profoundly influenced him, and wholly altered his career. The interest aroused by the debates of the first National Assembly suggested to him the idea of publishing them, conjointly with Méjean, in the Bulletin de l’Assemblée. The publicist Charles Joseph Panckoucke (1736-1798), owner of the Mercure de France and publisher of the famous Encyclopédie (1781), persuaded him to merge this in a larger paper, the Moniteur universel, which gained a wide repute for correctness and impartiality. He was a member of the moderate club, the Feuillants; but after the overthrow of the monarchy on the 10th of August 1792 he accepted an office in the ministry of foreign affairs, where he sometimes exercised a steadying influence. On the withdrawal of the British legation from Paris Maret went on a mission to London, where he had a favourable interview with Pitt on the 2nd of December 1792. All hope of an accommodation was, however, in vain. After the execution of Louis XVI. (Jan. 21, 1793), the chief French diplomatic agent, Chauvelin, was ordered to leave England, while the French Convention declared war (Feb. 1, 1793). These events precluded the possibility of success attending a second mission of Maret to London in January. After a space, in which he held no diplomatic post, he became ambassador of the French Republic at Naples; but, while repairing thither with De Sémonville he was captured by the Austrians and was kept in durance by them for some thirty months, until, at the close of 1795, the two were set free in return for the liberation of the daughter of Louis XVI. For a time Maret betook himself to journalism; but he played a useful part in the negotiations for a peace with Great Britain which went on at Lille during the summer of 1797, until the victory of the Jacobins at Paris in the coup d’état of Fructidor (Sept. 1797) frustrated the hopes of Pitt for peace and inflicted on Maret another reverse of fortune. On the return of Bonaparte from Egypt in 1799 Maret joined the general’s party which came to power with the coup d’état of Brumaire (Nov. 9-10, 1799).

Maret now became one of the First Consul’s secretaries and shortly afterwards secretary of state. In this position his moderation, industry, good sense, knowledge of men and of affairs, made his services of great value. The Moniteur, which became the official journal of the state in 1800, was placed under his control. He sometimes succeeded in toning down the hard, abrupt language of Napoleon’s communications, and in every way proved a useful intermediary. It is known that he had a share in the drawing up of the new constitutions for the Batavian and Italian Republics. In 1804 he became Minister; in 1807 he was named count, and in 1809 he received the title of duc de Bassano, an honour which marked the sense entertained by Napoleon of his strenuous toil, especially in connexion with the diplomatic negotiations and treaties of this period. His personal devotion to the emperor was of that absolute unwavering kind which Napoleon highly valued; it is seen in the attempt to defend the unworthy artifices adopted by the great man in April-May 1808 in order to make himself master of the destinies of Spain. Maret also assisted in drawing up the constitution destined for Spain, which the Spaniards at once rejected.

Maret accompanied Napoleon through most of his campaigns, including that of 1809; and at its close he expressed himself in favour of the marriage alliance with the archduchess Marie Louise of Austria, which took place in 1810. In the spring of 1811, the duc de Bassano replaced Champagny, duc de Cadore, as minister of Foreign Affairs. In this capacity he showed his usual industry and devotion, concluding the treaties between France and Austria and France and Prussia, which preceded the French invasion of Russia in 1812. He was with Napoleon through the greater part of that campaign; and after its disastrous conclusion helped to prepare the new forces with which Napoleon waged the equally disastrous campaign of 1813. But in November 1813 Napoleon replaced him by Caulaincourt, duc de Vicence, who was thought to be more devoted to the cause of peace and personally grateful to the emperor Alexander I. of Russia. Maret, however, as private secretary of the emperor, remained with his master through the campaign of 1814, as also during that of 1815. After the second restoration of the Bourbons he was exiled, and retired to Grätz where he occupied himself with literary work. In 1820 he was allowed to return to France, and after the Revolution of 1830, Louis Philippe, king of the French, made him a peer of France; he also held two high offices for a few days. He died at Paris in 1839. He shares with Daru the honour of being the hardest worker and most devoted supporter in Napoleon’s service; but it has generally been considered that he carried devotion to the length of servility, and thus often compromised the real interests of France. This view has been contested by Baron Ernouf in his work Maret, duc de Bassano, which is the best biography.

For Maret’s mission to England in 1792 and his work at Lille in 1797, see Augustus W. Miles, Letters on the French Revolution; J. H. Rose, The Life and Times of William Pitt, and for other incidents of Maret’s career, the memoirs of Bourrienne, Pasquier, Méneval and Savary (duc de Rovigo), may be consulted. Thiers’s account of Maret is in general hostile to him.

(J. Hl. R.)

MARGARET (Fr. Marguerite, It. Margherita, Ger. Margareta, and Margarete, with dim. Grete, Gretchen, Meta, fr. Lat. margarita, Gr. μαργαρίτης, a pearl), a female proper name, which became very popular in all Christian countries as that of the saint noticed below. Biographies of some who have borne it are arranged below in the following order: saints, queens of Scotland, queens of other countries, princesses and duchesses.

MARGARET, ST (Sancta Margarita), virgin and martyr, is celebrated by the Church of Rome on the 20th of July. According to the legend, she was a native of Antioch, daughter of a pagan priest named Aedesius. She was scorned by her father for her Christian faith, and lived in the country with a foster mother keeping sheep. Olybrius, the “praeses orientis,” offered her marriage as the price of her renunciation of Christianity. Her refusal led to her being cruelly tortured, and after various miraculous incidents, she was put to death. Among the Greeks she is known as Marina, and her festival is on the 17th of July. She has been identified with St Pelagia (q.v.)—Marina being the Latin equivalent of Pelagia—who, according to a legend, was also called Margarito. We possess no historical documents on St Margaret as distinct from St Pelagia. An attempt has been made, but without success, to prove that the group of legends with which that of St Margaret is connected is derived from a transformation of the pagan divinity Aphrodite into a Christian saint. The problem of her identity is a purely literary question. The cult of St Margaret was very widespread in England, where more than 250 churches are dedicated to her.

See Acta sanctorum, July, v. 24-45; Bibliotheca hagiographica. Latina (Brussels, 1899), n. 5303-5313; Frances Arnold-Forster, Studies in Church Dedications (London, 1899), i. 131-133 and iii. 19.

(H. De.)

MARGARET, ST (c. 1045-1093), the queen of Malcolm III. Canmore king of Scotland, was the daughter of the English prince Edward, son of Edmund Ironside, and sister of Edgar Ætheling, and was probably born in Hungary. In 1067 the widow and children of Edward fled from Northumberland with a large number of followers and sought the protection of the Scottish king. The marriage of Malcolm and Margaret soon took place and was followed by several invasions of Northumberland by the Scottish king, probably in support of the claims of his brother-in-law Edgar. These, however, had little result beyond the devastation of the province. Far more important were the effects of this alliance upon the history of Scotland. A considerable portion of the old Northumbrian kingdom had been reduced by the Scottish kings in the previous century, but up to this time the English population had little influence upon the ruling element of the kingdom. Malcolm’s marriage undoubtedly improved the condition of the English to a great extent, and under Margaret’s sons, Edgar, Alexander I. and David I., the Scottish court practically became anglicized. Margaret died on the 17th of November 1093, four days after her husband and her eldest son Edward, who were slain in an invasion of Northumberland. She rebuilt the monastery of Iona, and was canonized in 1251 on account of her great benefactions to the Church.

See Chronicles of the Picts and Scots (Edinburgh, 1867), edited 1876, by W. F. Skene; and W. F. Skene, Celtic Scotland (Edinburgh).

MARGARET (1489-1541), queen of Scotland, eldest daughter of Henry VII., king of England, by his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV., was born at Westminster on the 29th of November 1489. Before she was six years old negotiations were opened, which dragged on for several years, for marrying the princess to James IV. of Scotland, whose support of the pretender Perkin Warbeck it was hoped to avert by such an alliance. Eventually the marriage was celebrated in Edinburgh on the 8th of August 1503. The avaricious Henry VII. gave his daughter a scanty dowry and quarrels on this head embittered the relations between the two kingdoms, which the marriage, although accompanied by a treaty of perpetual peace, did nothing to heal. The whole of Margaret’s life after her marriage with James IV. was an unending series of intrigues, first with one political faction then with another; at one time in favour of her native country, at another in hostility to it, her conduct being mainly influenced at all times by considerations affecting her pocket.

Margaret was crowned at Edinburgh in March 1504. Until 1507 she had no children; between that date and 1510 two sons and a daughter were born, all of whom died in infancy; in 1512 she gave birth to a son who succeeded his father as James V.; in 1514 she bore a posthumous son, Alexander, created duke of Ross, who died in the following year. A dispute with her brother Henry VIII. over a legacy claimed by Margaret was a contributory cause of the war which ended at Flodden, where James IV. was killed on the 9th of September 1513, having by his will appointed Margaret sole guardian of her infant son, now King James V. Scotland was divided mainly into two parties, one in favour of alliance with England, and the other with France. The leader of the latter was John Stewart, duke of Albany, next heir to the crown of Scotland after Margaret’s sons; Margaret herself for the most part inclined to the English faction; and when Albany returned to Scotland from France on the invitation of the Scottish parliament in the spring of 1514, the conflict grew almost to civil war. Various projects for Margaret’s remarriage had already been started, Louis XII. of France and the emperor Maximilian being proposed as suitable husbands for the young widow, when the queen privately married Archibald Douglas, earl of Angus, on the 6th of August 1514. The consequences of this marriage were to alienate many of the most powerful of the nobility, especially the earls of Arran and Home, and to make Margaret entirely dependent on the house of Douglas; while it furnished the council with a pretext for removing her from the regency and guardianship of the king in favour of Albany in July 1515. Albany had to blockade Margaret in Stirling Castle before she would surrender her sons. After being obliged to capitulate, Margaret returned to Edinburgh, and being no longer responsible for the custody of the king she fled to England in September, where a month later she bore to Angus a daughter, Margaret, who afterwards became countess of Lennox, mother of Lord Darnley and grandmother of James I. of England.