MARAT, JEAN PAUL, a fanatical democrat, born in Neuchatel, his father an Italian, his mother a Genevese; studied and practised medicine, came to Paris as horse-leech to Count d’Artois; became infected with the revolutionary fever, and had one fixed idea:  “Give me,” he said, “two hundred Naples bravoes, armed each with a good dirk, and a muff on his left arm by way of shield, and with them I will traverse France and accomplish the Revolution,” that is, by wholesale massacre of the aristocrats; he had more than once to flee for his life, and one time found shelter in the sewers of Paris, contracting thereby a loathsome skin disease; he was assassinated one evening as he sat in his bath by CHARLOTTE CORDAY (q. v.), but his body was buried with honours in the Pantheon by a patriot people, “that of Mirabeau flung out to make room for him,” to be some few months after himself cast out with execration (1743-1793).

MARATHON, a village, 22 m.  NE. of Athens, on the sea border of a plain where the Greeks under Miltiades on a world-famous occasion defeated the Persians under Darius in 480 B.C.; the plain on which the battle was fought extends between mountains on the W. and the sea on the E.

MARBURG (13), quaint university town of Hesse-Nassau, on the Lahn, 40 m.  NE. of Limburg; has many old buildings; its Gothic church contains St. Elizabeth’s tomb; Luther and Zwingli held a conference in the castle, 1529; William Tyndale and Patrick Hamilton were students at its university, which has now 97 teachers, 1000 students, and a fine library.

MARCEAU, French general, born at Chartres; distinguished himself in the Republican army in La Vendee and Fleurus, and was killed at Altenkirchen when covering a retreat of the French army (1760-1796).

MARCELLO, BENEDETTO, an Italian musical composer; composed music for an Italian version of the Psalms (1686-1739).

MARCELLUS, CLAUDIUS, Roman general; in a war with the Gauls killed their chief Viridomarus with his own hands, whose spoils he dedicated as SPOLIA OPIMA (q. v.) to Jupiter; took Syracuse, which long baffled him through the skill of Archimedes, and fell fighting against Hannibal 208 B.C.; he was five times consul though but of plebeian birth.

MARCELLUS, MARCUS, son of Octavia, the sister of Augustus, who had named him his heir; his decease at 20 was mourned as a public calamity, and inspired Virgil to pen his well-known lament over his death in the sixth book of the “AEneid.”

MARCET, MRS. JANE, authoress, born at Geneva; married a Swiss doctor settled in London; wrote elementary text-books on chemistry (from which Faraday gained his first knowledge), political economy, natural philosophy, &c., under the title “Conversations,” and her best work, “Stories for very Little Children” (1769-1858).

MARCH, the third month of our year; was before 1752 reckoned first month as in the Roman calendar, the legal year beginning on the 25th; it is proverbially dusty and stormy, and is the season of the spring equinox; it was dedicated to the Roman god Mars, whence the name.