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 took a paternal interest in the duchess. Don Alonso, though he bore the name of El Bueno, was a man of mean spirit. He made no serious effort to save his mother-in-law from the persecution she suffered at the hands of Philip II. His correspondence is full of whining complaints of poverty, and appeals to the king for pecuniary favours. In 1581 he was created a knight of the Golden Fleece, and was named captain-general of Lombardy. By pressing supplications to the king he got himself exempted on the ground of poverty and poor health. Yet when the (q.v.) died, on the 9th of February 1588, Philip insisted on appointing him to the command of the Armada. He was chosen even before Santa Cruz was actually dead, and was forced to go in spite of his piteous declarations that he had neither experience nor capacity, and was always sick at sea. His conduct of the Armada justified his plea. He was even accused of showing want of personal courage, and was completely broken by the sufferings of the campaign, which turned his hair grey. The duke retained his posts of “admiral of the ocean” and captain-general of Andalusia in spite of the contempt openly expressed for him by the whole nation. When an English and Dutch armament assailed Cadiz in 1596 his sloth and timidity were largely responsible for the loss of the place. He was held up to ridicule by Cervantes in a sonnet. Yet the royal favour continued unabated even under the successor of Philip II. In 1606 the obstinacy and folly of the duke caused the loss of a squadron which was destroyed near Gibraltar by the Dutch. He died in 1615.

MEDINA SIDONIA, or, a town of southern Spain, in the province of Cadiz, 21 m. by road E.S.E. of Cadiz. Pop. (1900), 11,040. Medina Sidonia is built on an isolated hill surrounded by a cultivated plain. It contains a fine Gothic church, several convents, and the ancestral palace of the dukes of Medina Sidonia. It has a small agricultural trade, chiefly in wheat, olives and oats.

Medina Sidonia has been identified by some with the Asido of Pliny, but this is uncertain. Under the Visigoths the place was erected into a bishopric (Assidonia), and attained some importance; in the beginning of the 8th century it was taken by Tariq. In the time of Idrisi (12th century) the province of Shadūna or Shidona included, among other towns, Seville and Carmona; later Arab geographers place Shadūna in the province of Seville.

 MEDIOLANUM, or (mod., q.v.), an ancient city of Italy, and the most important in Gallia Transpadana. Livy attributes its foundation to the Galli Insubres under Bellovesus after their defeat of the Etruscans, in the time of the older Tarquin. According to other authorities, the Etruscan city of Melpum which preceded it was destroyed in 396 Objects of the Bronze age have been found outside the city on the south. The name itself is Celtic. The Romans defeated the Insubres in 225–222, and stormed Mediolanum itself in the latter year. Its inhabitants rebelled some twenty years later in the Hannibalic War, but were defeated and finally reduced to obedience in 196 They probably acquired Latin rights in 89, and full civic rights in 49, as did those of the other towns of Gallia Transpadana. It appears later on (but not before the 2nd century ) to have become a colony. It acquired a certain amount of literary eminence, for we hear of youths going from Comum to Mediolanum to study. In Strabo’s time it was on an equality with Verona, but smaller than Patavium, but in the later times of the empire its importance increased. At the end of the 3rd century it became the seat of the governor of Aemilia and Liguria (which then included Gallia Transpadana also, thus consisting of the 9th and 11th regions of Augustus), and at the end of the 4th, of the governor of Liguria only, Aemilia having one of its own thenceforth. From Diocletian’s time onwards the praefectus praetorio and the imperial vicar of Italy also had their seat here: and it became one of the principal mints of the empire. The emperors of the West resided at Mediolanum during the 4th century, until Honorius preferred Ravenna, and in 402 transferred his court there. Its importance, described in the poems of Ausonius, is demonstrated by its many inscriptions, and the interest and variety of their contents. In these the rarity of the mention of its chief magistrates is surprising: and it is not impossible that owing to its very importance the right of appointing them had been taken from it (as Mommsen thinks). The case of Ravenna is not dissimilar. The inscriptions indicate a strong Celtic character in the population. Procopius speaks of it as the first city of the West, after Rome, and says that when it was captured by the Goths in 539, 300,000 of the inhabitants were killed. It was an important centre of traffic, from which roads radiated in several directions—as railways do to-day—to Comum, to the foot of the Lacus Verbanus (Lago Maggiore), to Novaria and Vercellae, to Ticinum, to Laus Pompeia and thence to Placentia and Cremona, and to Bergomum. None of these roads had an individual name, so far as we know. To its secular power corresponds the independent position which its Church took in the time of (q.v.), bishop of Milan in 374–397, who founded the church which bears his name, and here baptized St Augustine in 387, and whose rite is still in use throughout the diocese. Theodosius indeed did penance here at Ambrose’s bidding for his slaughter of the people of Thessalonica. After his death the period of invasions begins; and Milan felt the power of the Huns under Attila (452), of the Heruli under Odoacer (476) and of the Goths under Theodoric (493). When Belisarius was sent by Justinian to recover Italy, Datius, the archbishop of Milan, joined him, and the Goths were expelled from the city. But Uraia, nephew of Vitigis the Gothic king, subsequently assaulted and retook the town, after a brave resistance. Uraia destroyed the whole of Milan in 539; and hence it is that this city, once so important a centre of Roman civilization, possesses so few remains of antiquity. Narses, in his campaigns against the Goths, had invited the Lombards to his aid. They came in a body under Alboin, their king, in 568, and were soon masters of north Italy. They entered Milan in the next year, but Pavia became the Lombard capital.

Of Roman remains little is to be seen above ground, but a portico of sixteen Corinthian columns near S. Lorenzo, which may belong to the baths of Hercules, mentioned by Ausonius, or to the palace of Maximian. Close to the Torre del Carrobio remains of an ancient bridge and (possibly) of the walls of Maximian were found: and many remains of ancient buildings, including a theatre, have been discovered below ground-level. The objects found are preserved in the archaeological museum in the Castello Sforzesco. (See .),

 MEDITERRANEAN SEA. The Mediterranean is all that remains of a great ocean which at an early geological epoch, before the formation of the Atlantic, encircled half the globe along a line of latitude. This ocean, already diminished in area, retreated after Oligocene times from the Iranian plateau, Turkestan, Asia Minor and the region of the north-west Alps. Next the plains of eastern Europe were lost, then the Aralo-Caspian region, southern Russia and finally the valley of the Danube. The “Mediterranean region,” as a geographical unit, includes all this area; the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmora are within its submerged portion, and the climate of the whole is controlled by the oceanic influences of the Mediterranean Sea. Professor Suess, to whom the above description is due, finds that the Mediterranean forms no exception to the rule in affording no evidence of elevation or depression within historic times; but it is noteworthy that its present basin is remarkable in Europe for its volcanic and seismic activity. Submarine earthquakes are in some parts sufficiently frequent and violent as seriously to interfere with the working of telegraph cables. Suess divides the Mediterranean basin into four physical regions, which afford probably the best means of description: (1) The western Mediterranean, from Gibraltar to Malta and Sicily,