is not known, and it does not play any part of importance in either Greek or Roman annals. Its fame begins with Christianity. There St Paul touched on his last journey westward (A.D. 62), and changed into “a ship of Alexandria sailing into Italy.” In the 3rd century the great St Nicholas, born at Patara, was its bishop, and he died and was buried at Myra. His tomb is still shown, but his relics are supposed to have been translated to Bari in Italy in the 11th century. Theodosius II. made Myra the Byzantine capital of Lycia, and as such it was besieged and taken by Harun al-Rashid in 808. The town seems shortly afterwards to have decayed. A small Turkish village occupied the plain at the foot of the acropolis, and a little Greek monastery lay about a mile westward by the church of St Nicholas. The latter has formed the nucleus of modern Dembre, which has been increased by settlers from the Greek island of Castelérizo. Myra has three notable sights, its carved cliff-cemetery, its theatre, and its church of St Nicholas. The first is the most remarkable of the Lycian rock-tomb groups. The western scarp of the acropolis has been sculptured into a number of sepulchres imitating wooden houses with pillared façades, some of which have pediment reliefs and inscriptions in Lycian. The theatre lies at the foot of this cliff and is partly excavated out of it, partly built. It is remarkable for the preservation of its corridors. The auditorium is perfect in the lower part, and the scena still retains some of its decoration—both columns and carved entablature. The church of St Nicholas lies out in the plain, at the western end of Dembre, near a small monastery and new church recently built with Russian money. Its floor is far below the present level of the plain, and until recently the church was half filled with earth. The excavation of it was undertaken by Russians about 1894 and it cost Dembre dear; for the Ottoman government, suspicious of foreign designs on the neighbouring harbour of Kékova, proceeded to inhibit all sale of property in the plain and to place Dembre under a minor state of siege. The ancient church is of the domed basilica form with throne and seats still existent in the tribunal. In the south aisle as a tomb with marble balustrade which is pointed out as that wherein St Nicholas was laid. The locality of the tomb is very probably genuine, but its present ornament, as well as the greater part of the church, seems of later date (end of 7th century?). None the less this is among the most interesting early Christian churches in Asia Minor. There are also extensive ruins of Andriaca, the port of Myra, about 3 m. west, containing churches, baths, and a great grain store, inscribed with Hadrian’s name. They lie along the course of the Andraki river, whose navigable estuary is still fringed with ruinous quays.
See E. Petersen and F. v. Luschan, Reisen in Lykien, &c. (1889). (D. G. H.)
MYRIAPODA (Gr. for “many-legged”), arthropod animals
of which centipedes and millipedes are familiar examples.
Linnaeus included them in his Insecta Aptera together with
Crustacea and Arachnida; in 1796 P. A. Latreille designated
them as Myriopoda, making of them, along with the Crustacean
Oniscus, one of the seven orders into which he divided the
Aptera of Linnaeus. Later on J. C. Savigny, by study of the
mouth-parts, clearly distinguished them from Insects and Crustacea.
In 1814 W. E. Leach defined them and divided them into
Centipedes and Millipedes. In 1825 Latreille carried further
the observations of Leach, and suggested that the two groups
were very distinct, the millipedes being nearer Crustacea and
the centipedes approaching Arachnida and Insecta. Although
Latreille’s suggestion has not been adopted, it is recognized that
centipedes and millipedes are too far apart to be united as
Myriapoda, and they are now treated as separate classes of
the Arthropoda. See Centipede (Chilopoda) and Millipede
(Diplopoda).
MYRMIDONES, in Greek legend, an Achaean race, in Homeric
times inhabiting Phthiotis in Thessaly. According to the ancient
tradition, their original home was Aegina, whence they crossed
over to Thessaly with Peleus, but the converse view is now
more generally accepted. Their name is derived from a supposed
ancestor, son of Zeus and Eurymedusa, who was wooed by the
god in the form of an ant (Gr. μύρμηξ); or from the repeopling
of Aegina (when all its inhabitants had died of the plague) with
ants changed into men by Zeus at the prayer of Aeacus, king of
the island. The word “myrmidon” has passed into the
English language to denote a subordinate who carries out the
orders of his superior without mercy or consideration for others.
See Strabo viii. 375, ix. 433; Homer, Iliad, ii. 681; schol. on Pindar Nem. iii. 21; Clem. Alex., Protrepticon, p. 34, ed. Potter.
MYROBALANS, the name given to the astringent fruits of several species of Terminalia, largely used in India for dyeing
and tanning and exported for the same purpose. They are
large deciduous trees 'and belong to the family Combretaceae.
The chief kinds are the chebulic or black myrobalan, from
Terminalia Chebula, which are smooth, and the beleric, from
T. belerica, which are five-angled and covered with a greyish
down.
MYRON, a Greek sculptor of the middle of the 5th century B.C.
He was born at Eleutherae on the borders of Boeotia and Attica.
He worked almost exclusively in bronze: and though he made
some statues of gods and heroes, his fame rested principally upon
his representations of athletes, in which he made a revolution, by
introducing greater boldness of pose and a more perfect rhythm.
His most famous works according to Pliny (Nat. Hist., 34, 57)
were a cow, Ladas the runner, who fell dead at the moment of
victory, and a discus-thrower. The cow seems to have earned
its fame mainly by serving as a peg on which to hang epigrams,
which tell us nothing about the pose of the animal. Of the
Ladas there is no known copy. But we are fortunate in possessing
several copies of the discobolus, of which the best is in
the Massimi palace at Rome (see Greek Art, Pl. iv. fig. 68).
The example in the British Museum has the head put on wrongly.
The athlete is represented at the moment when he has swung
back the discus with the full stretch of his arm, and is about to
hurl it with the full weight of his body. The head should be
turned back toward the discus.
A marble figure in the Lateran Museum (see Greek Art, Pl. iii. fig. 64), which is now restored as a dancing satyr, is almost certainly a copy of a work of Myron, a Marsyas desirous of picking up the flutes which Athena had thrown away (Pausanias, i. 24, 1). The full group is copied on coins of Athens, on a vase and in a relief which represent Marsyas as oscillating between curiosity and the fear of the displeasure of Athena.
The ancient critics say of Myron that, while he succeeded admirably in giving life and motion to his figures, he did not succeed in rendering the emotions of the mind. This agrees with the extant evidence, in a certain degree, though not perfectly. The bodies of his men are of far greater excellence than the heads. The face of the Marsyas is almost a mask; but from the attitude we gain a vivid impression of the passions which sway him. The face of the discus-thrower is calm and unruffled; but all the muscles of his body are concentrated in an effort.
A considerable number of other extant works are ascribed to the school or the influence of Myron by A. Furtwängler in his suggestive Masterpieces of Greek Sculpture (pp. 168–219). These attributions, however, are anything but certain, nor do the arguments by which Furtwängler supports his attributions bear abridgment.
A recently discovered papyrus from Egypt informs us that Myron made statues of the athlete Timanthes, victorious at Olympia in 456 B.C., and of Lycinus, victorious in 448 and 444. This helps us to fix his date. He was a contemporary, but a somewhat older contemporary, of Pheidias and Polyclitus. (P.G.)
MYRRH (from the Latinized form myrrha of Gr. μύῤῥα; the
Arabic murr, bitter, was applied to the substance from its
bitterness), a gum-resin highly esteemed by the ancients as an
unguent and perfume, used for incense in temples and also in
embalming. It was one of the gifts offered by the Magi, and a
royal oblation of gold, frankincense and myrrh is still annually
presented by the sovereign on the feast of Epiphany
in the Chapel Royal in London, this custom having been in
