MŪRĀLIS CŎRŌNA. [[Corona].]
MURRHĬNA VĀSA, or MURRĔA VĀSA, were first introduced into Rome by Pompey, who dedicated cups of this kind to Jupiter Capitolinus. Their value was very great. Nero gave 300 talents for a capis or drinking cup. These murrhine vessels came from the East, principally from places within the Parthian empire, and chiefly from Caramania. They were made of a substance formed by a moisture thickened in the earth by heat, and were chiefly valued on account of the variety of their colours. Modern writers differ much respecting the material of which they were composed, and some think they may have been true Chinese porcelain.
MŪRUS, MOENĬA (τεῖχος), the wall of a city, in contradistinction to [Paries] (τοῖχος), the wall of a house, and Maceria, a boundary wall. We find cities surrounded by massive walls at the earliest periods of Greek and Roman history. Homer speaks of the chief cities of the Argive kingdom as “the walled Tiryns,” and “Mycenae the well-built city,” attesting the great antiquity of those identical gigantic walls which still stand at Tiryns and Mycenae, and which have been frequently attributed to the Cyclopes and Pelasgians. Three principal species can be clearly distinguished:—1. That in which the masses of stone are of irregular shape and are put together without any attempt to fit them into one another, the interstices being loosely filled in with smaller stones. An example is given in the annexed engraving.
Ancient Wall at Tiryns.
2. In other cases we find the blocks still of irregular polygonal shapes, but their sides are sufficiently smoothed to make each fit accurately into the angles between the others, and their faces are cut so as to give the whole wall a tolerably smooth surface. An example is given in the annexed engraving.
Ancient Wall of Larissa, the Acropolis of Argos.
3. In the third species, the blocks are laid in horizontal courses, more or less regular (sometimes indeed so irregular, that none of the horizontal joints are continuous), and with vertical joints either perpendicular or oblique, and with all the joints more or less accurately fitted. The walls of Mycenae present one of the ruder examples of this sort of structure; and the following engraving of the “Lion Gate” of that fortress (so called from the rudely sculptured figures of lions) shows also the manner in which the gates of these three species of walls were built, by supporting an immense block of stone, for the lintel, upon two others, for jambs, the latter inclining inwards, so as to give more space than if they were upright.—
