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

MONUMENTUM.

257

MURUS.

MONUMENTUM. [Funus.]
MORA. [Exercitus.]
MORTARIUM, also called PILA and PI-
LUM (oAfio;, lySrj, tySt;), a mortar. Before
the invention of mills [Mola] corn was
pounded and rubbed in mortars (pistum),
and hence the place for making bread, or the
bake-house, was called pistrinum. Also long
after the introduction of mills this was an
indispensable article of domestic furniture.
Those used in pharmacy were sometimes
made of Egyptian alabaster. The mortar
was also employed in pounding charcoal, rub-
bing it with glue, in order to make black
paint [atramentum), in making plaster for
the walls of apartments, in mixing spices and
fragrant herbs and flowers for the use of the
kitchen, and in metallurgy, as in triturating
cinnabar to obtain mercury from it by sub-
limation.

MULSUM. [Vintm.]
MUXERATOR. _ [Gladiatores.]
MUXICEPS, MUNICIPIUM. [Colonia ;

foederatae ClVITATES.]
MUXUS. [honores.]

MUXUS. [Gladiatores.]
MURALIS CORONA. [Corona.]
MURRHIXA VASA, or MURREA VASA,
were first introduced into Rome by Pompey,
who dedicated cups of this kind to Jupiter
Capitolinus. Their value was very great.
Nero gave 300 talents for a capis or drinking
cup. These murrhine vessels came from the
East, principally from places within the Par-
thian empire, and chiefly from Caramania.
They were made of a substance formed by a
moisture thickened in the earth by heat, and
were chiefly valued on account of the variety
of their colours. Modern writers differ much
respecting the material of which they were
composed, and some think they may have
been true Chinese porcelain.

MURUS, MOENIA (re^os), the wall of a
city, in contradistinction to Paries (roixos),
the wall of a house, and Maceria, a boundary
wall. AVe find cities surrounded by massive
walls at the earliest periods of Greek and
Roman history. Homer speaks of the chief
cities of the Argive kingdom as " the walled
Tiryns," and " Mycenae the well-built city,"
attesting the great antiquity of those identical
gigantic walls which still stand at Tiryns and
Mycenae,and which have been frequently attri-
buted to the Cyclopes and Pelasgians. Three
principal species can be clearly distin-
guished :—1. That in which the masses of
stone are of irregular shape and are put to-
gether without any attempt to fit them into
one another, the interstices being loosely
filled in with smaller stones. An example is
given in the annexed engraving. 2. In other

(ases we find the blocks still of irregular
polygonal shapes, but their sides are sufEci-

Anclent Wall at Tiryns.

ently smoothed to make each fit accurately
into the angles between the others, and their
faces are cut so as to give the whole wall a
tolerably smooth surface. An example is given
in the annexed engraving. 3. In the third spe-

Ancient Wall of Larissa, the Acropolis o! Ar^os.

cies, the blocks are laid in horizontal courses,
more or less regular (sometimes indeed so
irregular, that none of the horizontal joints
are continuous), and with vertical joints
either perpendicular or oblique, and with all
the joints more or less accurately fitted. The
walls of Mycenae present one of the ruder
examples of this sort of structure ; and the
following engraving of the " Lion Gate" of
that fortress (so called from the rudely sculp-
tured figures of lions) shows also the manner
in which the gates of these three species of
walls were built, by supporting an immense
block of stone, for the lintel, upon two others,
for jambs, the latter inclining inwards, so as
to give more space than if they were up-
right.-—The materials employed in walls
about the time of Pericles were various sorts
of stone, and, in some of the most magnifi-
cent temples, marble. The practice of put-
ting a facing of marble over a wall of a com-
moner material was introduced in the next

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