Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/639

Rh M A S M A S 609 and done all he could to secure his services for bis country. Masinissa now quitted Spain for a while for Africa, and was again engaged in a war with Syphax, in which he was so decidedly worsted that he found himself at last merely the head of a small band of marauders, and was obliged to confine his movements to the coast. Scipio s arrival in Africa in 204 gave him another chance, and no sooner had he joined the Roman general than he quite crushed his old enemy, Syphax, and captured Cirta (Constantineh), the capital of Syphax. Here occurs the romantic story of Sophonisba, daughter of the Carthaginian Hasdrubal, who had been promised in marriage to Masinissa, but who had subsequently become the wife of Syphax, Masinissa, it is said, wedded her immediately after his victory, but was required by Scipio to dismiss her as a Carthaginian, and consequently an enemy to Rome. To save her from such humiliation he sent her poison, with which she destroyed herself. Masinissa was now accepted as a thoroughly loyal ally of Rome, and was confirmed by Scipio in the possession of his hereditary kingdom. In the decisive battle of Zama, 202 B.C., which witnessed Hannibal s downfall, he com manded the cavalry on Scipio s right wing, and materially assisted the Roman victory. For his services on that great clay he had given him, under a treaty with Rome, the kingdom of Syphax with its capital Cirta, and thus under Roman protection he became master of the whole of Numidia, and his dominions completely enclosed the Carthaginian territories, now straitened and reduced at the close of the Second Punic War. Masinissa was still far from satisfied, and it would seem that he almost had thoughts of annexing Carthage itself with the connivance of Rome. He spared no opportunity to harass and annoy the city by pressing unfair claims to some of its best and oldest possessions, and threatening perpetual encroachments. In a war which soon followed he was successful ; the remonstrances of Carthage with Rome on the behaviour of their ally were answered by deputing Scipio to arbitrate in the quarrel, but, as though intentionally on the part of Rome, no definite settlement was arrived at, and thus the relations between Masinissa and the Carthaginians were still unfriendly. Rome, it is certain, deliberately favoured her ally s unjust claims with the view of keeping Carthage weak. Masinissa too was cunning enough to retain the friendship and good opinion of the Roman people by helping them with liberal supplies in their wars in the East, with Perseus of Macedon and with Antiochus. As soon as Carthage seemed to be recovering herself, and some of Masinissa s partisans were driven from the city into exile, his policy was to alarm the fears of Rome, till at last, in 149, war was declared, the Third Punic War, which ended in the final and utter overthrow of Carthage. The king bore some part in the negotiations which preceded the war, and died soon after its commencement in 148 B.C., after a life of ninety and a reign of sixty years. Masinissa was an able ruler and a decided benefactor to Numidia, the resources of which he developed, while he converted a people which had been little better than a plundering tribe into a settled and civilized population, and out of robbers and marauders made efficient and disciplined soldiers. To his sons he bequeathed a well- stored treasury, a formidable army, and even a fleet. Cirta, his capital, became a famous centre of Phoenician civilization. In fact Masinissa changed for the better the whole aspect of a great part of northern Africa. He had much of the Arab nature, was singularly temperate, and equal to any amount of fatigue. His fidelity to Rome was not the fidelity of principle, but merely that of temporary ex pediency ; it is in the really good work he did for his country that the noblest side of his character comes into display. For Masinissa, Livy and Sallust s Jitgurtha must be specially consulted by scholars. English readers may be referred to a very full article in Smith s Dictionary of Classical _ Rioyraphy ; also to Mommsen s History of Rome and Niebuhr s Lectures. MASK, or MASQUE. See DKAMA, vol. vii. p. 431 sy. MASKELYNE, NEVIL (1732-1811), astronomer-royal at Greenwich for nearly half a century, was born in London October 6, 1732. The great solar eclipse of 1748 seems to have made a deep impression upon him ; and after studying divinity at Trinity College, Cambridge, of which he was elected a fellow in 1756, he determined to devote himself wholly to astronomy. He early became intimate with Bradley, and in 1761 was deputed by the Royal Society to make observations of the transit of Venus at St Helena. During the voyage he introduced into navigation the determination of longitude by lunar distances, a method which Mayer s recently published tables had made practically possible. In 1763 he undertook a voyage to Barbados to test Harrison s watches, which, however, he reported to be inferior to the method of lunars for determining longitude. In 1765 he succeeded Bliss as astronomer-royal, and thereafter devoted himself with singular energy to the duties of his office, which he held till his death, February 9, 1811. Maskelyne s first contribution to astronomical literature was &quot;A Proposal for Discovering the Annual Parallax of Sirius,&quot; published in 1760 in the Philosophical Transactions, in which also most of his later original memoirs appeared e.g., his observations of the transit of Venus (1761 and 1769), observations on the tides at St Helena (1762), astronomical observations at St Helena (1764) and at Barbados (1764). In 1763 he published a small octavo, The British Mariner s Guide, which contains the valuable suggestion that, in order to facilitate the finding of longitude at sea, lunardis- tances should he calculated beforehand for each year and published in a form accessible to navigators. This suggestion, the germ of the Nautical Almanac, was approved of by the Government, and under the care of Maskelyne the Nautical Almanac for 1767 was pub lished in 1766. During the remainder of his life Maskelyne continued to superintend the publication of this invaluable annual, the Nautical Almanac for 1815 being the last which he prepared. Another valuable service which he rendered astronomy was his in ducing the Government to print his observations annually. Flam- steed s and Bradley s observations had been private property, and were published as such. The result of Maskelyne s action was the accumulation and rapid dissemination of a long series of obser vations which from their continuity and accuracy have been of inestimable value to astronomers, and form along with the Nautical Almanac his most lasting monument. The whole work of the ob servatory was carried on by him and his one assistant in a most methodical manner, Greenwich being in point of organization second to none amongst the observatories of the day. He introduced several improvements in the use of the instruments, being, for example, the first astronomer who measured to tenths of a second; and he prevailed upon the Government to replace Bird s mural quad rant, which had become untrustworthy, by a repeating circle of 6 feet in diameter. The new instrument was constructed by Trough- ton ; but Maskelyne did not live to see it completed. In 1772 he suggested to the Royal Society the famous Sehehallion experiment for the determination of the earth s density. Forty years previously Bouguer had demonstrated by experiment that Chiniborazo in South America affected the direction of the plumb-line quite appreciably; but his observations were not made with sufficient care to deduce therefrom any trustworthy result. Maskelyne s experi ments were made in 1774 (see Philoso2&amp;gt;hical Transactions for 1775), the apparent difference of latitude between two stations on opposite sides of the mountain being compared with the real difference of latitude obtained by triangulaticn. From Maskelyne s observations Hutton deduced by laborious calculations that the density of the earth was 4 5 times that of pure water. Playfair subsequently estimated with greater accuracy the mass of Sehehallion, and obtained 4 7 for the earth s mean density. Maskelyne also took a great interest in various geodesical operations, notably the measure ment of the length of a degree of latitude in Maryland and Pennsyl vania (Philosophical Transactions, 1769), which was carried out by Mason and Dixon in 1766-68, and later the determination of the relative longitude of Greenwich and Paris (Philosophical Transac tions, 1787). Cassini, Legendre, and Mechain conducted thetrian- gulation on the French side; on the English side the work was carried on under the superintendence of General Roy. This triangulation was the beginning of the great trigonometrical survey which has since been extended all over the country. A volume of Selections (London, 1812) contains several papers that were published^ by Maskelyne as additions to the Nautical Almanac. His observations fill three large folio volumes, and many of them were reprinted in Vince s Astronomy. MASKINONGE. See PIKE. XV. - 77