His poem of "Adonis." produced in 1623, though begun many years earlier, is his chief work. Its sparkling style, abounding flow, and plethora of fanciful conceits and overstrained images, excited boundless enthusiasm, and set the fashion to nearly a century of Italian poetry. His other poems are very numerous. Marini was singularly tail and thin, and careless of his person; he slept only about two hours out of the twenty-four. He was vain-glorious; and his character, as well as his genius, seems to have been composed of little beyond impulse. The finest act recorded of him is his pleading for and obtaining the pardon of his would-be assassin Murtola.—W. M. R.
MARINONI, Giovanni Giacomo, an Italian mathematician and astronomer, was born at Udine in 1676, and died at Vienna on the 10th of January, 1755. He was for many years court mathematician, and director of a scientific military academy, and he conducted various government surveys. In 1730 he established a well-appointed observatory at Vienna.—W. J. M. R.
MARIOTTE, Edme, an eminent French physicist, was born in the province of Burgundy in the earlier part of the seventeenth century, and died in Paris on the 12th of May, 1684. He was one of the ablest men of his time in the art of investigating physical laws, by the skilful combination of experiment with mathematical reasoning. Amongst other results of his investigations was the discovery of the law (which had, however, been discovered at an earlier date by Boyle and Townley) of the simple proportionality of the density of air to its pressure, when the temperature is uniform. From this law Mariotte deduced the conclusion, that the difference of level between two stations is proportional to the logarithm of the ratio of the pressures of the air at them; and he was the first who proposed to apply that principle to the measurement of heights by means of the barometer. He became one of the members of the Academy of Sciences on its first formation. His collected works were published at the Hague in 1740.—W. J. M. R.
MARIUS, Caius, was born of an obscure family at Arpinum, the birthplace of Cicero, 157 b.c. He first served in the army in Spain, and was present at the siege of Numantia, 134, where he distinguished himself greatly and attracted the notice of Scipio Africanus. At the age of thirty-eight he became tribune of the people. In this office he greatly offended the nobles, and from that time he was continually at enmity with them. Owing to their hostility, he was unable to obtain an ædileship, and it was with the utmost difficulty that he was elected prætor, 115. Soon after he married Julia, the aunt of Julius Cæsar the dictator, by which connection his political influence was considerably strengthened. In 109 he went as legate to Metellus to Africa, to conduct the war against Jugurtha. Here his military talents were displayed to great advantage, while his readiness in sharing the toils and privations of the common soldiers greatly endeared him to the army, and through the soldiers to their friends at Rome. In 107 he came back to stand for the consulship, having obtained leave of absence, not without great difficulty, from Metellus. He was triumphantly elected, and appointed to conduct the Jugurthine war in the room of Metellus his former commander. In the following year Jugurtha was captured and the war ended; but Marius remained in Africa till the close of 105, engaged in settling the government of Numidia. He then returned to Rome, having been elected consul a second time in his absence. He celebrated his triumph with great pomp, Jugurtha being led in chains in the procession. His election as consul had been partly caused by the dread felt of the threatened Gaulish invasion, several Roman commanders having boon already defeated with great loss by the barbarians. The Gauls, however, gave Italy a respite while they invaded Spain, and Marius prepared for them by carrying out an improved system of discipline in the army. Some changes too are ascribed to him in the arms and equipments of the Roman soldiery. Next year he was again chosen consul, but the Gauls did not appear. In 102 b.c. he was elected consul for the fourth time, and this year the enemy came up in vast numbers to the invasion. Marius stationed himself in France, on the Rhone, to guard the Roman province and to defend the Alps. The enemy divided themselves into two great bodies; the Cimbri marching towards the Tyrolese Alps, intending to enter Italy on that side, while the Teutones and Ambrones marched against Marius, intending probably to force a passage by way of Nice. Marius avoided giving them battle at first, in order to accustom his men gradually to these strange and formidable barbarians. After some days a decisive battle was fought at Aquæ Sextiæ, now Aix, in which the barbarians were totally routed, and in fact destroyed. Almost immediately after the battle, Marius learned that he had been elected consul for the fifth time. Meanwhile the Cimbri, a Celtic nation, had forced their way into Italy and were plundering Lombardy; Marius' colleague, the consul Catulus, not venturing a battle. Marius and he now united their forces, and a decisive victory was obtained, July 30th, 101 b.c., near Milan. The Cimbri were annihilated, as the Teutones had been. Catulus obtained some distinction; but the main glory of the day was ascribed to Marius, who celebrated a magnificent triumph for his double victory. The war being ended, Marius still insatiably greedy of power and eminence, desired to be consul for the sixth time; but in order to gain his object he joined himself to Saturninus and Glaucia, two mischievous demagogues, by whose aid his election was secured. He supported Saturninus in an agrarian law which the latter proposed and carried; but Saturninus having committed murder, and alienated the people by his outrages, was driven to shut himself up with his adherents in the capitol, and Marius as consul was directed by the senate to use military force against him. Marius soon compelled them to surrender, and they were put to death by the people without trial. The popularity of Marius, however, was greatly injured by these transactions, and for the next ten years he disappears almost wholly from history. In 90 b.c. the social war broke out, and Marius again had command of a Roman army against the Marsi. Though he gained a victory, however, he obtained much less distinction in this war than his rival Sulla. In 88 b.c. Marius endeavoured to obtain the command in the war against Mithridates, but in vain; Sulla was elected consul, and the senate assigned to him the command in the East. Enraged at this, Marius and the tribune Sulpicius had recourse to violent measures, and succeeded in obtaining from the people a reversal of the decree of the senate, and the appointment of Marius to the command in the Mithridatic war. But Sulla induced his troops to refuse obedience to the commands of Marius, and marched at once at their head from Campania against Rome, while Marius was obliged to fly in haste from the city. He fled by sea along the Italian coast to Circeii, where he landed to obtain provisions. Meanwhile a price had been set on his head, and at Minturnæ he was taken and put in prison. The people, however, relented, and not only released him, but put him on board ship safely, and he sailed over to Africa and landed at Carthage. From hence, after some further narrow escapes, he returned to Italy and landed in Etruria. Sulla had now left Italy for the East, and Cinna, one of the consuls, having been driven from Rome, was collecting an army against the other consul who belonged to Sulla's party. Marius now joined Cinna, and after a successful campaign in Etruria and Campania, they marched upon Rome at the head of an overpowering force. The city surrendered, and Marius took a cruel revenge on his adversaries. He had a body-guard of slaves whom he sent to murder all whom he wished to get rid of. In this manner, the most distinguished persons of the opposite party, the flower of the senate, were dispatched by his command. Among those who perished were Antonius and Crassus the celebrated orators, and Catulus the former colleague of Marius. After satiating himself with slaughter, Marius caused himself to be proclaimed consul for the seventh time, along with Cinna, without any elections. No other Roman during the republic was seven times consul. A few days afterwards, in the middle of January, 86 b.c., Marius died of an attack of pleurisy at the age of seventy His body was afterwards exhumed by command of Sulla, and flung into the Anio. His character has been fully drawn by Niebuhr.—G.
MARIVAUX, Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de, novelist and dramatist, was born at Paris in 1688. His life was long, but uneventful. He married in 1721; his wife died two years afterwards; his only child took the veil; and he lived a calm and blameless life until 1763, in which he expired at Paris. Few men with so small an income have spent so much of it in charity as he. Amongst his earliest productions was a burlesque of Homer; he subsequently attempted heroic tragedy, in which he failed, but at last hit upon his real vein, which was for fiction and sentimental comedy. Distinguished by much subtlety and acuteness of analysis, many of his plays are still occasionally produced on the French stage. His chief novels were "Marianne," and "Le Paysan Parvenu."—W. J. P.
MARKHAM, Gervase, an English officer of the seventeenth century, took part in the civil wars of that period, and acquitted
