Megin-giord.—A magic belt worn by the god Thor. He once proposed to show his strength by lifting great weights, but when challenged to pick up the giant’s cat, he tugged and strained, only to succeed in raising one paw from the floor, although he had taken the precaution to enhance his strength as much as possible by tightening his belt Megin-giord.
Meleager (mel-e-ā´ger).—Son of Œneus, king of Calydon; was one of the Argonauts, and also the leader of the heroes who took part in the celebrated Calydonian boar hunt. See “[Calydon].”
Melicerta (mel-i-ser’ta), or Melicertes.—Son of Ino and Athamas. When Athamas was seized with madness he pursued Ino and Melicertes, who in order to escape had to throw themselves into the sea, whereupon both were changed into marine deities. Ino becoming Leucothea, and Melicertes a sea-god, called by the Greeks Palaemon, and by the Romans Portunus.
Melos (mē´los).—An island in the Ægean Sea, and the most southwesterly of the Cyclades. It is now called Milo, and here was found the celebrated statue known as the “Venus of Milo.” See “[Venus].”
Melpomene (mel-pom’en-ā).—The muse of tragedy. See “[Musæ].”
Memnon (mem’nōn).—The handsome son of Tithonus and Aurora; was king of the Ethiopians. He went to the aid of Priam, king of Troy, towards the end of the Trojan war, but was slain by Achilles. His colossal marble statue at Thebes (which, however, in reality represented the Egyptian king Amenophis) when struck by the first rays of the rising sun was said to emit a sound resembling that of a plucked string.
Menelaus (men-e-lā´us).—Son of Atreus, the husband of the beautiful Helen and father of Hermione; king of Lacedæmon (or Sparta), younger brother of Agamemnon. [Paris] (q.v.), having been promised the most beautiful woman in the world for his wife, sailed to Greece under the protection of Venus, and was hospitably received in the palace of Menelaus at Sparta. Here he succeeded in carrying off Helen, and thus arose the Trojan war, the object of which was to recover Helen. In the Trojan war Menelaus met Paris in single combat, and would have killed him had he not been carried off in a cloud by Venus. After the death of Paris, Helen married his brother Deiphobus, who was barbarously put to death by Menelaus at the taking of Troy. Helen secretly introduced Menelaus into the chamber of Deiphobus, and thus became reconciled to him. Menelaus and Helen then sailed away from Troy, and after eight years’ wandering about the shores of the Mediterranean finally reached Sparta, where they passed the rest of their lives in peace and wealth.
Mentor (men’tor).—The faithful friend of Ulysses.
Mephistopheles.—One of the seven chief devils in the old demonology, the second of the fallen archangels, and the most powerful of the infernal legionaries after Satan. He figures in the old legend of Dr. Faustus as the familiar spirit of that magician. To modern readers he is chiefly known as the cold, scoffing, relentless fiend of Goethe’s Faust, and the attendant demon in Marlowe’s Faustus.
Mercurius (mer-kū´ri-us), or Mercury (mer´kū-ri), called Hermes (her´mēz) by the Greeks.—Son of Jupiter and Maia; the messenger of the gods, and the god of commerce and gain. As the herald of the gods, he was the god of eloquence. He was the god of prudence and cunning, also of fraud and theft. Being the messenger of the gods, he was likewise looked upon as the god of roads who protected travelers; and was the god of music and of chemistry, hence the words hermetic, hermetically (sealed). He was employed by the gods to conduct departed souls to the lower world. He invented the lyre, which he first made by stretching strings across the shell of a tortoise. The palm tree, the tortoise, the number 4, and several kinds of fish were sacred to him. He is generally represented with a hat having two wings; a pair of winged sandals, which carried him with the speed of wind across land and sea; and, as messenger of the gods, he carries in his hand a wand or caduceus (ka-dū´se-us), having two serpents intertwined at one end of it.