M-SICENAS. 665 MAERLANT. peror than his mere position as a public servant. This intimacy — friendship, it might, perhaps, be called — continued uninterrupted for many years; but some time before li.c. 16 it was ruptured from causes which cannot now be ascertained. Xo enmity, however, ensued. JIaecenas was a tlior- oughly sincere Imperialist. He had a belief in the value of an established government ; and, when he found that he no longer retained the confi- dence of his sovereign, he did not lapse into a conspirator, but, as a modern minister might do, retired into the obscurity of private life. Literature and the society of literary men now occupied all his time. He was immensely rich, and kept an o|}en table for men of parts at his fine house on the Ksquiline Hill. Maecenas's intercourse with Horace especially was of the most cordial nature and equally honorable to both. It was he that gave to the poet the famous Sabine farm of which Horace sings so exquisitely in his Odes. It was he, too, that re- quested Vergil to write his Georgics. The poet Propertius was also one of Maecenas's more inti- mate friends. As far as personal morality went, MiEcenas was a thorough pagan : lie .dressed ef- feminately, had a passion for theatrical entertain- ments, and gave great attention to cookery and gardening. It does not surprise us to find that he was a valetudinarian and a hypochondriac. He died childless in B.C. 8. For the preserved fragments of his verses, see: Baehrens, Frag- menta Poelnrum Romanorum (Leipzig, 188fi) ; Harder, Frai/Dioitd des Miicenas (Berlin, 1889). MAECENAS, G.RDEXs of (Lat. Borti Mwcena- tiani) . A magnificent pleasure ground laid out under Augustus by his minister Mffcenas, who planned the work in order to do away with the pestilential condition of the popular cemetery on the Esquiline (q.v. ). JIaecenas covered the whole district with a layer of pure earth twenty-five feet deep and made the new ground into a garden. The effect on the city's health was marked, and is celebrated by Horace in his "First Satire." In the gardens were a palace and a tower, from which, according to Suetonius, Nero watched the burning of the city in 64. The extant remains consist of some rooms paved with mosaic, and a fine building on the Via Jlerulana, once called an auditorium, but probably a conservatory. The hall is half underground and has seven curved steps in the apse. Each wall is pierced by six niches, both covered with finely executed landscapes, which have now faded away. Many works of art. in great part portrait busts, have been found on the site of the gardens, and are preserved in the Conservatory iluseum. . M^CIL'IUS AVI'TUS, JIarcus. Roman Emperor, of the West. He was a native of Gaul, and was sent by Aetius as an emissary to Theodoric the Visigoth to persuade that mon- arch to make common cause against Atlila. In the ensuing battle of the Catalaunian Fields (.-i.i). 4.11). he fought under Aetius. After the murder of Maximus, he was proclaimed Emperor ( 4.1.1 ). In the following year he was deposed iy Rieimer and died of starvation in a sanctuary in which he had been blockaded. MAELAR, iiiri'Iiir. ALiiLAR. A lake of Sweden. See MJELDtTNE, mal'doon. See Mailditn. MAELSTROM, mal'strom. See Malstrom. M^'NADS ((;k. Maii-aoes, Mriimides. from ^aiVo^oai, iiKiinoiiiai, to rave). A name given to the Bacchantes (q.v. ), from their frenzied state in the Dionysian worshij), M^ONIDES^ me-On'i-dez. or M-ffiONIAN SWAN. A name given to Homer from his sup- po.sed birthplace in Maeonia. M.ffiO'TIS PAOiUS. An ancient name of the Sea of Azov, also called Cimnierium and Bo.spori- cum ^lare. MAERCKER, mer'ker, JIaximiliax (1842- lUOlJ. A (jerman agricultural cliemist, born at Kalbe-an-der-Saale, He studied at Greifswald and Tubingen, in 1860 was appointed assistant at the Brunswick agricultural experiment sta- tion, in 1867 at that of Weende-Gottingen. In 1871 he became director of the experiment station of the Central Agricultural Union (later the Chamber of Agriculture) for the Province of Sax- ony at Halle, and, in 1872, professor of agri- cultural chemistry in the university. He elTccted improvements in methods of tillage, and organ- ized among agriculturists a system of practical exjierinienlntion regarding the fertilization of land and the feeding of stock. To the further- ance of sugar manufacturing, an important in- dustry in the province, he also greatly con- tributed. In 1803, under commission from the Ministry for Agriculture, he studied American agricultural methods as displayed at the Chi- cago Exposition. Partial results of his in- vestigations appeared in the essay, "Die Land- wirtschaft in Deutschland und Amerika." pub- lished in Jlentzel and Lengerke, Laiidirirffichdll- lichcr Kalcndcr for 189.5. In this essay he recommended the establishment of an experimen- tal farm of the American type, and such a farm, the first in Germany, was instituted under his direction iu 1895 at Lauchstiidt. near Halle. He also wrote, besides contributions to periodicals. Die Kalisahe und Hire Aiiircndung in der Lciiidicirtschaft (1880). Comsult Behrend-Hohen- heim. Max Maercker, Ein RUckblick (in the LiiiuUcirtttehdflliche Jahrhiicher, vol. xxxi., part i., Berlin. 19II2|. MAERLANT, miir'lant, Jacob de Coster van (c.l235-c.l2'.ll ) . A Flemish poet, called, not un- justly, the father of Dutch literature, for in him are combined its learning, its practical sense, its didactic zeal, and its aversion to chivalrous ideals. He was born near Bruges and died at Damme, near Bruges. At first Maerlant yielded to the universal vogue of the romance of chiv- alry. He was parish clerk at Maerlant when he adapted from the French an Alexander (1257: printed 1 860-0 1 and 1882) and a Uislory of Troy (1204. printed in part, 1874 and 1880). He also rendered into Dutch a ni-itor;/ of the Graal and the Book of Merlin. Then, moving to Damn;e and becoming chancellery clerk, he first turned his mind to present social conditions in three strophic poems, called the First, Second, and Third Martin (printed 1880), and then began the series of didactic works with which his name is especially associated by The Secret of Secrets, a treatise on government (printed 1838). Floir- ers of yatiire (printed 1878) followed, an adaptation of Cantimpre's Latin De Rermn Xa- tnra. Then came the most famous of his books. The Rhgmed Bible, based on the Scholn.ifien of Comestor with an addition from .Tosephus on the fall of Jerusalem (1271; printed 1858-69), a
