A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology. By various writers. Ed. by William Smith. Illustrated by numerous engravings on wood.

MIARGITES. MARIAMNE. 949
of a tributary of the Asopus, which Herodotus heighten the comic effect of the'poem. The chacalls by the name of the main stream. After racter of the hero, which was highly comic and
waiting ten days, during which the enemy's force ludicrous, was that of a conceited but ignorant
was receiving continual additions, Mardonius de- person, who on all occasiens exhibited his igtermined on an engagement in spite of the warn- norance: the gods had not made him fit even for
illgs of the soothsayers and the advice of Artabazus, digging or ploughing, or any other ordinary craft.
who recommended him to fall back on Thebes, His parents were very wealthy; and the poet unwhere plenty of provisions had been collected, and doubtedly intended to represent some ludicrous
t-) try the effect of Persian gold on the chief men personage of Colophon. The work seems to have
in the several Grecian states; and his resolution been neither a parody nor a satire; but the author
of fighting was further confirmed when, the Per- with the most naive humour represented the follies
sian cavalry having taken and choked up the and absurdities of Margites in the most ludicrous
spring on which the Greeks depended for water, light, and with no other object than to excite
Pausanias again decamped and moved with his laughter. (Falbe, de JMiargite Homerico, 1798:;
forces still nearer to Plataea. Mardonius then Lindemann, Die Lyra, vol. i. p.79, &c.; Welcker,
crossed the river and pursued him. In the battle der Ep. Cycl. p. 184, &c.) [L. S.]
of Plataea which ensued (September, B. C. 479), MARIA, the wife of the emperor Michael VII.
he fought bravely in the front of danger with 1000 Parapinales, some of whose coins have the head of
picked Persians about him, but was slain by both Michael and Maria. (MICHAEL VII.; Eckhel,
Aeimne#tus or Arimnestus, a Spartan, and his fall vol. viii. p. 259.) [W. P.]
was the signal for a general rout of the barbarians. MA'RIA GENS, plebeian. The name of Ma(Herod. vi. 43-45, 94, vii. 5, 9, 82, viii. 100, rius was not of unfrequent occurrence in the towns
&c. 113, &c. 133-144, ix. 1-4, 12-15, 38- of Italy: thus, we find as early as the second
65; Plut. Arist. 10 —19; Diod. xi. 1, 28-31; Punic war a Marius Blosius and a Marius Alfius at
Just. ii. 13, 14x; Strab. ix. p. 412; C. Nep. Paus. Capua (Liv. xxiii. 7, 35), and a Marius at Praeneste
1.) [E. E.] (Sil. Ital. ix. 401). But no Roman of this name
MARDONTES (MapUJTvn7s), a Persian noble- is mentioned till the celebrated C. Marius, the
man, son of Bagaeus (see Herod. iii. 128), cor- conqueror of the Cimbri and Teutones, who may
manded, in the expedition of Xerxes against be regarded as the founder of the gens. It was
Greece, the forces from the islands in the Persian never divided into any families, though in course of
gulf, (Herod. iii. 93, vii. 80.) On the retreat of' time, more especially under the emperors, several of
Xerxes, he was left behind as one of the admirals the Marii assumed'surnames, of which an alphabeof the fleet, and he fell at the battle of Mycale, in tical list is given below. [MARIUS.] On coins we
B. C. 479. (Herod. viii. 130, ix. 102.) [E. E.] find the cognomens Capito and Trogus, but who they
MARGI'TES (Map-yiT7fS), the hero of a comic were is quite uncertain. [CAPITO; TROGUs.]
epic poem, which most of the ancients regarded as MARIAMNE or MARIAMME (Mapstadw7,
a work of Homer. The inhabitants of Colophon, Mapidsunu), a Greek form of Mariam or Miriam.
where the Margites must have been written (see 1. Daughter of Alexander, the son of Aristothe first lines of the poem in Lindemann's Lyra, bulus II., and Alexandra, the daughter of Hyrcavol. i. p. 82; Schol. ad Aristophl. Av. 914) believed nus II., was betrothed to Herod the Great, by her
that Homer was a native of the place (Herod. Vit. grandfather Hyrcanus, in B. C. 41. Their actual
Hom. 8), and showed the spot in which he had union, however, did not take'place till B. C. 38. At
composed the Margites (Hesiod. et Horn. Certan. this period Herod was besieging Antigonus, son of
in Gittling's edit. of Hes. p. 241). The poem was Aristobulus II., in Jerusalem, and, leaving the
considered to be a Homeric production by Plato operations there to be conducted for a time by
and Aristotle (Plat. Alcib. ii. p. 147, c.; Aristot. trust-worthy officers, he went to Samaria for the
Ethic. Niconr. vi. 7, I1fagn. Moral. ad Euldem. v. purpose of consummating his marriage,-a step to
7), and was highly esteemed by Callimachus, and which he would be urged, not by passion only, but
its hero Margites as early as the time of Demo- by policy and a sense of the importance to his
sthenes had become proverbial for his extraordinary cause of connecting his blood with that of the
stupidity. (Harpocrat. s. v. MapyiLqs; Phot. Lex. Asmonean princes. In B.c. 36, Herod, moved
p. 24'', ed. Porson; Plut. Demosth. 23; Aeschin. partly by the entreaties of Mariamne, deposed
adv. Ctesiph. p. 297.) Suidas does not mention Ananel from the priesthood and conferred it on
the Margites among the works of Homer, but states her brother, the young Aristobulus. The murder
that it was the production of the Carian Pigres, a of the latter, however, in-B. C. 35, would naturally
brother of queen Artemisia, who was at the same alienate from Herod any affection which Mariamne
time the author of the Batrachomyomachia. (Suid. may have felt for him; and this alienation was ins.v. iliyplrs; Plut. de Malign. Herod. 43.) The creased when she discovered that, on being sumpoem, which was composed in hexameters, mixed, moned to,meet Antony at Laodiceia (B. C. 34) to
though not in any regular succession, with Iambic answer for his share in the fate of Aristobulus, he
trimeters (Hephaest. Enchir. p. 16; Mar. Victorin. had left orders with his uncle Josephus, that, if he
p. 2524, ed. Putsch.), is lost, but it seems to have were condemned, his wife should not be permitted
enjoyed great popularity, and to have been one of to survive him. The object of so atrocious a comthe most successful productions of the Homerids at mand was to prevent her falling into the hands of
Colophon. The time at which the Margites was Antony, who had conceived a passion for her from
written is uncertain, though it must undoubtedly the mere sight of her picture, which her mother
have been at the time when epic poetry was most Alexandra, by the advice of DELLIUS, had sent to
flourishing at Colophon, that is, about or before him two years before, in the hope of gaining his
B. C. 700. It is, however, not impossible that favour. On Herod's return in safety, his mother
afterwards Pigres may have remodelled the poem, Cypros and his sister Salome, whom Mariamne,
and introduced the Iambic trimeters, in order to proud of her descent from the Maccabees, had
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