A Smaller Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities - William Smith

MITRA (μίτρα), in general a band of any kind, and specifically, (1) A belt or girdle worn by warriors round the waist. [[Zona].]—(2) A broad band of cloth worn round the head, to which the name of anadema was sometimes given. [[Coma].]

MODĬUS, the principal dry measure of the Romans, was equal to one-third of the amphora, and therefore contained nearly two gallons English. (See the [Tables].) The modius was one-sixth of the medimnus.

MŎLA (μύλος), a mill. All mills were anciently made of stone, the kind used being a volcanic trachyte or porous lava (pyrites, silices, pumiceas). Every mill consisted of two essential parts, the upper mill-stone, which was moveable (catillus, ὄνος, τὸ ἐπιμύλιον), and the lower, which was fixed and by much the larger of the two. Hence a mill is sometimes called molae in the plural. The principal mills mentioned by ancient authors are the following:—I. The hand-mill, or quern, called mola manuaria, versatilis, or trusatilis. The hand-mills were worked among the Greeks and Romans by slaves. Their pistrinum was consequently proverbial as a place of painful and degrading labour; and this toil was imposed principally on women. II. The cattle-mill, mola asinaria, in which human labour was supplied by the use of an ass or some other animal. III. The water-mill (mola aquaria, ὑδραλέτης). A cogged wheel, attached to the axis of the water wheel, turned another which was attached to the axis of the upper mill-stone: the corn to be ground fell between the stones out of a hopper (infundibulum), which was fixed above them. IV. The floating-mill. V. The saw-mill. VI. The pepper-mill.

MŎNARCHĬA (μοναρχία), a general name for any form of government in which the supreme functions of political administration are in the hands of a single person. The term μοναρχία is applied to such governments, whether they are hereditary or elective, legal or usurped. In its commonest application, it is equivalent to βασιλεία, whether absolute or limited. But the rule of an aesymnetes or a tyrant would equally be called a μοναρχία. Hence Plutarch uses it to express the Latin dictatura. It is by a somewhat rhetorical use of the word that it is applied now and then to the δῆμος.

MŎNĒTA, the mint, or the place where money was coined. The mint of Rome was a building on the Capitoline, and attached to the temple of Juno Moneta, as the aerarium was to the temple of Saturn. The officers who had the superintendence of the mint were the Triumviri Monetales, who were perhaps first appointed about B.C. 269. Under the republic, the coining of money was not a privilege which belonged exclusively to the state. The coins struck in the time of the republic mostly bear the names of private individuals; and it would seem that every Roman citizen had the right of having his own gold and silver coined in the public mint, and under the superintendence of its officers. Still no one till the time of the empire had the right of putting his own image upon a coin; Julius Caesar was the first to whom this privilege was granted.

MŎNĪLE (ὅρμος), a necklace. Necklaces were worn by both sexes among the most polished of those nations which the Greeks called barbarous, especially the Indians, the Egyptians, and the Persians. Greek and Roman females adopted them more particularly as a bridal ornament. They were of various forms, as may be seen by the following specimens:—