Page:EB1911 - Volume 18.djvu/714

 whole was executed under his immediate supervision and with the co-operation of scholars whom he had himself trained.

Enormous as was the labour, this task occupied only a small part of his extraordinary intellectual energy. He found time to write two larger works, the History of the Roman Coinage and the Römisches Staatsrecht, a profound analysis of Roman constitutional law, and Römisches Strafrecht, on Roman criminal jurisdiction. His Roman Provinces already mentioned gives a singularly interesting picture of certain aspects of social life under the empire. His smaller papers amount to many hundreds in number, and there is no department of Roman life and learning, from the earliest records of the Roman law to the time of Jornandes, which he has not illuminated. As secretary to the Berlin Academy for over twenty years he took a leading part in their deliberations, and was their spokesman on great occasions. His interest in political problems of the present was as keen as in those of the past. He was one of the founders of the Preussische Jahrbücher, the most influential of German political periodicals. For many years he was a member of the Prussian Parliament. His political opinions were strong but ill-regulated. Intensely nationalist, he acquiesced in the annexation of his native land to Prussia, and in a public letter to the Italian nation in 1870 defended the German cause before the nation which had become to him a second fatherland; but he was of too independent a character ever to be quite at ease under Prussian government. Loving liberty, he hated its consequences; a democrat, he had and always expressed a profound contempt for the mob. Like many idealists, he was a severe critic of the faults of his own and other countries, and he added something to the increasing Chauvinism in Germany.

It was, however, above all, German scholarship which remained his first interest. There is probably no other instance in the history of scholarship in which one man has established so complete an ascendancy in a great department of learning. Equally great as antiquary, jurist, political and social historian, he lived to see the time when among students of Roman history he had pupils, followers, critics, but no rivals. He combined the power of patient and minute investigation with a singular faculty for bold generalization and the capacity for tracing out the effects of thoughts and ideas on political and social life. Partly, perhaps, owing to a philosophical and legal training, he had not the gift of clear and simple narrative, and he is more successful in discussing the connexion between events than in describing the events themselves. Though his History ends with the fall of the republic, his most enduring work has been that on the empire; and if he has not written the history of the empire, he has made it possible for others to do so.

Mommsen died at Charlottenburg on the 1st of November 1903. His brothers, Carl Johann Tycho (1819–1900), a great authority on Pindar and Shakespeare, and August (b. 1821), who wrote chiefly on ancient chronology and Greek festivals, were also prominent among German scholars in their day.

The History of Rome (including the volumes of the provinces) has been translated into English by W. P. Dickson (the Provinces, revised by F. Haverfield, 1909); there is a French edition of his work on Roman Coinage. Many of his pamphlets and articles have been collected under the title Römische Forschungen. Of his other works, the more important are the Roman Chronology to the Time of Caesar (1858), a work written in conjunction with his brother August; his editions of the Monumentum Ancyranum and of the Digest in the Corpus juris civilis, and of the Chronica of Cassiodorus in Monumenta Germaniae historica, the Auctores antiquissimi section of which was under his supervision. A great part of his work is to be found in the German learned publications such as Hermes, Rheinisches Museum, &c. His Reden und Aufsätze and Gesammelte Schriften, i. ii., were published after his death. A full list of his works is given by Zangemeister, Mommsen als Schriftsteller (1887; continued by Jacobs, 1905). See also monographs by C. Bardt (1903) and Gradenwitz (1904, in the Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte), and O. Hirschfeld, Gedächtnisrede auf Theodor Mommsen (1904).

MOMORDICA, in botany, a genus of annual or perennial climbing herbs belonging to the natural order Cucurbitaceae, natives of the tropics, especially Africa, and known in cultivation chiefly as hothouse plants. They are grown for their ornamental fleshy fruits, which are oblong to cylindrical in shape, orange to red in colour, prickly or warted externally, and burst when ripe, generally with elastic force, into irregular valves. M. Balsamina, known as balsam apple, is a very pretty annual, well adapted for trellises, &c., in warm outside situations.

 MOMUS, in Greek mythology, the son of  (Night), the personification of censoriousness. He is frequently mentioned in Lucian as the lampooner of the gods. It is said that Pallas, Hephaestus, and Poseidon entered into a competition as to which of them could create the most useful thing. Hephaestus made a man, Poseidon an ox, Pallas a house. Momus, being called upon to pronounce an opinion as to the merits of these productions, expressed dissatisfaction with all: with the man, because a window ought to have been made in his breast, through which his heart could be seen; with the ox, because its horns were in the wrong place; with the house, because it ought to have been portable, so as to be easily moved to avoid unpleasant neighbours. Momus is reported to have burst with chagrin at being unable to find any but the most trifling defects in Aphrodite. He is represented sometimes as a young, sometimes as an old man, wearing a mask, and carrying a fool's bauble.

 MONA, the name used by classical writers, and in particular by Tacitus, to denote (q.v.). This island was raided by the Roman general Suetonius about 60 and conquered by Agricola about  79. The Romans probably mined copper there, but no trace has yet been found of any Roman military post, and the villages of the inhabitants which have been recently excavated show only mediocre traces of Roman civilization. The name Mona seems also to have been occasionally used, perhaps from ignorance, for the other large island lying between England and Ireland, Man. The ancient name of this latter was probably not unlike that of Mona, but is not accurately known to us (? Monapia, Manavia).

 MONACO, a territory of south-eastern France, the smallest of the sovereign principalities of Europe. Area about 8 sq. m., the length being 2 m. and the width varying from 165 to 1100 yds. Pop. (1900), 15,180. Monaco is situated on the coast of the Mediterranean, 9 m. east of Nice, and is bounded on all sides by the French department of Alpes-Maritimes. It includes the towns of Monaco (3292), Condamine (6218) and Monte Carlo (3794). The principality at one time included Mentone and Roccabruna, now known as Roquebrune, which towns, however, were ceded to France in 1861 for a sum of four million francs. The town of Monaco occupies the level summit of a rocky headland, rising about 200 ft. from the shore, and still defended by ramparts. Though largely modernized, the palace is an interesting specimen of Renaissance architecture; the “cathedral” (Romanesque-Byzantine style), and the oceanographical museum may also be mentioned. For this museum a fine building, appropriately decorated, was opened in March 1910 by the prince of Monaco. It stands on the edge of the cliff rising from the sea at the gardens of St Martin, and was designed to house the collections made by the prince during twenty-five years of oceanographical research, and others. Behind the rock, between Mont Tête de Chien and Mont de la Justice, the high grounds rise towards La Turbie, the village on the hill which takes its name from the tropaea with which Augustus marked the boundary between Gaul and Italy. On the north lies the bay of Monaco; along the lower ground on the west of the bay stretches the health and bathing resort of Condamine, with orange-gardens, manufactures of perfumes and liqueurs, and the chapel of Ste Dévote, the patron saint of Monaco; to the north of the bay on the rocky slopes of the Spélugues (speluncae) are grouped the various buildings of the Casino of Monte Carlo with the elaborate gardens and the numerous villas and hotels which it has called into existence. Adjoining the Casino terrace and overlooking the sea is the pigeon-shooting ground, the competitions on which are celebrated.

There appear to have been gambling-tables at Monte Carlo