MAELIUS, SPURIUS (d. 439 B.C.), a wealthy Roman plebeian, who during a severe famine bought up a large amount of corn and sold it at a low price to the people. Lucius (or Gaius) Minucius, the patrician praefectus annonae (president of the market), thereupon accused him of courting popularity with a view to making himself king. The cry was taken up. Maelius, summoned before the aged Cincinnatus (specially appointed dictator), refused to appear, and was slain by Gaius Servilius Ahala; his house was razed to the ground, his corn distributed amongst the people, and his property confiscated. The open space called Aequimaelium, on which his house had stood, preserved the memory of his death. Cicero calls Ahala’s deed a glorious one, but, whether Maelius entertained any ambitious projects or not, his summary execution was an act of murder, since by the Valerio-Horatian laws the dictator was bound to allow the right of appeal.
See Niebuhr’s History of Rome, ii. 418 (Eng. trans., 1851); G. Cornewall Lewis, Credibility of early Roman History, ii.; Livy, iv. 13; Cicero, De senectute 16, De amicitia 8, De republica, ii. 27; Floras, i. 26; Dion. Halic. xii. 1.
MAELSTROM (whirlpool), a term originally applied to a strong
current running past the south end of the island of Moskenaes,
a member of the group of Lofoten Islands on the west coast of
Norway. It is known also as the Moskenstrom. Though
dangerous in certain states of wind and tide, the tales of ships
being swallowed in this whirlpool are fables. The word is
probably of Dutch origin, from malen, to grind or whirl, and
strom or stroom, a stream or current. It appears on Mercator’s
Atlas of 1595.
MAENADS (Gr. Μαινάδες, frenzied women), the female
attendants of Dionysus. They are known by other names—Bacchae,
Thyiades, Clodones and Mimallones (the last two
probably of Thracian origin)—all more or less synonymous.
See the exhaustive articles by A. Legrand in Daremberg and Saglio’s Dictionnaire des antiquités and A. Rapp in Roscher’s Lexikon der Mythologie; also editions of Euripides, Bacchae (e.g. J. E. Sandys).
MAENIUS, GAIUS, Roman statesman and general. Having
completed (when consul in 338 B.C.) the subjugation of Latium,
which with Campania had revolted against Rome, he was
honoured by a triumph, and a column was erected to him in
the Forum. When censor in 318, in order that the spectators
might have more room for seeing the games that were
celebrated in the Forum, he provided the buildings in the
neighbourhood with balconies, which were called after him
maeniana.
See Festus, s.v. Maeniana; Livy viii. 13, ix. 34; Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxxiv. 11 (5).
MAERLANT, JACOB VAN (c. 1235–c. 1300), Flemish poet,
was born in the Franc de Burges (tradition says at Damme)
between 1230 and 1240. He was sacristan of Maerlant, in the
island of Ost-Voorne, and afterwards clerk to the magistrates at
Damme. His early works are translations of French romances.
Maerlant’s most serious work in the field of romance was his
Ystorien van Troyen (c. 1264), a poem of some forty thousand
lines, translated and amplified from the Roman de Troie of
Benoît de Sainte-More. From this time Maerlant rejected
romance as idle, and devoted himself to writing scientific and
historical works for the education and enlightenment of the
Flemish people. His Heimelicheit der Heimelicheden (c. 1266)
is a translation of the Secreta secretorum, a manual for the
education of princes, ascribed throughout the middle ages to
Aristotle. Van der Naturen Bloeme is a free translation of
De natura rerum, a natural history in twenty books by a native
of Brabant, Thomas de Cantimpré; and his Rijmbijbel is taken,
with many omissions and additions, from the Historia scholastica
of Petrus Comestor. He supplemented this metrical paraphrase
of Scripture history by Die Wrake van Jherusalem (1271) from
Josephus. Although Maerlant was an orthodox Catholic, he is
said to have been called to account by the priests for translating
the Bible into the vulgar tongue. In 1284 he began his magnum
opus, the Spiegel historiael, a history of the world, derived
chiefly from the third part of the Speculum majus of Vincent de
Beauvais. This work was completed by two other writers,
Philipp Utenbroeke and Lodowijk van Velthem. Maerlant
died in the closing years of the 13th century, his last poem, Van
den lande van oversee, dating from 1291. The greater part of his
work consists of translations, but he also produced poems which
prove him to have had real original poetic faculty. Among
these are Die Clausule van der Bible, Der Kerken Clage, imitated
from the Complaintes of Rutebeuf, and the three dialogues
entitled Martijn, in which the fundamental questions of theology
and ethics were discussed. In spite of his orthodoxy, Maerlant
was a keen satirist of the corruptions of the clergy. He was
one of the most learned men of his age, and for two centuries
was the most celebrated of Flemish poets.
See monographs by J. van Beers (Ghent, 1860); C. A. Serrure (Ghent, 1861); K. Versnaeyen (Ghent, 1861); J. te Winkel (Leiden, 1877, 2nd ed., Ghent, 1892); and editions of Torec (Leiden, 1875) by J. te Winkel; of Naturen Bloeme, by Eelco Verwijs; of Alexanders Geesten (Groningen, 1882), by J. Franck; Merlijn (Leiden, 1880–1882), by J. van Bloten; Heimelicheit der Heimelicheden (Dordrecht, 1838), by Clarisse; Der Naturen Bloeme (Groningen, 1878), by Verwijs; of Rijmbijbel (Brussels, 1858–1869), by David; Spiegel historiael (Leiden 1857–1863), by Verwijs and de Vries; selections from the Ystorien van Troyen (1873), by J. Verdam.
MAES, NICOLAS (1632–1693), Dutch painter, was born at
Dordrecht, and went about 1650 to Amsterdam, where he entered
Rembrandt’s studio. Before his return to Dordrecht in 1654
Maes painted a few Rembrandtesque genre pictures, with
life-size figures and in a deep glowing scheme of colour, like
the “Reverie” at the Ryks Museum in Amsterdam, the “Card
Players” at the National Gallery, and the “Children with a
Goat Carriage,” belonging to Baroness N. de Rothschild. So
closely did his early style resemble that of Rembrandt, that
the last-named picture, and other canvases in the Leipzig and
Budapest galleries and in the collection of Lord Radnor, were
or are still ascribed to Rembrandt. In his best period, from 1655
to 1665, Maes devoted himself to domestic genre on a smaller
scale, retaining to a great extent the magic of colour he had
learnt from Rembrandt. Only on rare occasions did he treat
scriptural subjects, as in the earl of Denbigh’s “Hagar’s
Departure,” which has been ascribed to Rembrandt. His
favourite subjects were women spinning, or reading the Bible, or
preparing a meal. In 1665 he went to Antwerp, where he
remained till 1678, in which year he probably returned to
Amsterdam. His Antwerp period coincides with a complete
change in style and subject. He devoted himself almost
exclusively to portraiture, and abandoned the intimacy and
glowing colour harmonies of his earlier work for a careless
elegance which suggests the influence of Van Dyck. So great
indeed was the change, that it gave rise to the theory of the
existence of another Maes, of Brussels. Maes is well represented
at the National Gallery by five paintings: “The Cradle,” “The
Dutch Housewife,” “The Idle Servant,” “The Card Players,”
and a man’s portrait. At Amsterdam, besides the splendid
examples to be found at the Ryks Museum, is the “Inquisitive
Servant” of the Six collection. At Buckingham Palace is
“The Listening Girl” (repetitions exist), and at Apsley House
“Selling Milk” and “The Listener.” Other notable examples
are at the Berlin, Brussels, St Petersburg, the Hague, Frankfort,
Hanover and Munich galleries.
MAESTRO, a north-westerly wind observed in the Adriatic
and surrounding regions, chiefly during summer. The maestro
is a “fine weather” wind, and is the counterpart of the sirocco.
MAETERLINCK, MAURICE (1862–), Belgian-French
dramatist and poet, of Flemish extraction, was born at Ghent
on the 29th of August 1862. He was educated at the Collège
Sainte-Barbe, and then at the university of his native city,
where, at the age of twenty-four, he was enrolled as a barrister.
In 1887 he settled in Paris, where he immediately became
acquainted with Villiers de l’Isle-Adam and the leaders of the
symbolist school of French poetry. At the death of his
father, Maeterlinck returned to Belgium, where he thenceforth
mainly resided: in the winter at Ghent, in the summer on an