Smith, William: A smaller dictionary of Greek and Roman antiquities (London, 1871)

MINA.

256

MONILE.

decent occurrences, and scarcely differed from

comedy except in consisting more of gestures

and mimicry than of spoken dialogue. At

Home such mimes seem originally to have been

exhibited at funerals, where one or more per-
sons {mimi) represented in a burlesque manner

the life of the deceased. If there were several

mimi, one of them, or their leader, was called

arehimimtu. These coarse and indecent per-
formances had greater charms for the Romans

than the regular drama. They were performed

on the stage as farces after tragedies, and

during the empire they gradually supplanted

the place of the Atellanae. It was peculiar to

the actors in these mimes, to wear neither

masks, the cothurnus, nor the soccus, whence

they are sometimes called planipedes.
MINA. [Talentum.]
MIRMILLONES. [Gladiatores.]
M1SSIO. [Exercitus.]
MISSIO. [Gladiatores.]
MITRA (fin-pa), in general a band of any
kind, and specifically, (1) A belt or girdle
worn by warriors round the waist. [Zona.]—

(2) A broad band of cloth worn round the
head, to which the name of anadcma was
sometimes given. [Coma.]

MODI US, the principal dry measure of
the Romans, was equal to one-third of the
amphora, and therefore contained nearly two
gallons English. (See the Tables.) The
modius was one-sixth of the medimnus.

MOLA (fxiiAos), a mill. All mills were an-
ciently made of stone, the kind used being a
volcanic trachyte or porous lava [pyrites,
silices, pumiceas). Every mill consisted of
two essential parts, the upper mill-stone,
which was moveable [catillus, 6i>os, to £7rt-
v.v\iov), and the lower, which was fixed and
by much the larger of the two. Hence a
mill is sometimes called molae in the plural.
The principal mills mentioned by ancient
authors are the following :—I. The hand-
miil, or quern, called mola manuaria, versa-
tile, or trusatilis. The hand-mills were
worked among the Greeks and Romans by
i.aves. Their pistrinum was consequently
proverbial as a place of painful and degrading
labour ; and this toil was imposed principally
on women. II. The cattle-mill, mola asina-
ria, in which human labour was supplied by
the use of an ass or some other animal. III.
The water-mill [mola aquaria, {/SpaAe'njs).
A cogged wheel, attached to the axis of the
water wheel, turned another which was at-
tached to tiro axis of the upper mill-stone :
the corn to be ground fell between the stones
out of a hopper [infundibulum), which was
fixed above them. IV. The floating-mill.
V. The saw-mill. VI. The pepper-mill. Monilia, necklaces. (British Museum.)

MON'ARCIIIA (ftorapxia), a general name
for any form of government in which the su-
preme functions of political administration
are in the hands of a single person. The
term novapx^o- is applied to such governments,
whether they are hereditary or elective, legal
or usurped. In its commonest application,
it is equivalent to fiao-iteia, whether absolute
or limited. But the rule of an aesymnetes
or a tyrant would equally be called a p-ovapxCa.
Hence Plutarch uses it to express the Latin
dictatura. It is by a somewhat rhetorical
use of the w ord that it is applied now and
then to the o^p-os.

MONETA, the mint, or the place where
money was coined. The mint of Rome was
a building on the Capitoline, and attached to
the temple of Juno Moneta, as the aerarium
was to the temple of Saturn. The officers
who had the superintendence of the mint
were the Triumiiri Monetales, who were
perhaps first appointed about B. c. 269.
Under the republic, the coining of money
was not a privilege which belonged exclu-
sively to the state. The coins struck in the
time of the republic mostly bear the names
of private individuals ; and it would seem
that every Roman citizen had the right of
having his own gold and silver coined in the
public mint, and under the superintendence
of its officers. Still no one till the time of
the empire had the right of putting his own
image upon a coin ; Julius Caesar was the
first to whom this privilege was granted.

MOXILE (opu-os), a necklace. Necklaces
were worn by both sexes among the most po-
lished of those nations which the Greeks called
barbarous, especially the Indians, the Egyp-
tians, and the Persians. Greek and Roman
females adopted them more particularly as a
bridal ornament. They were of various forms,
as may be seen by the following specimens:—