Latin School at Strassburg, and in 1620 began his academic career as a student of jurisprudence. After being for some years tutor in the family of the Graf von Leiningen-Dachsburg, he finally became privy councillor to the landgravine of Hesse-Cassel. He died at Worms on the 4th of April 1669. Under the name of “Der Träumende,” Moscherosch was a member of the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft, a society founded by Prince Ludwig of Anhalt-Cöthen, in 1617, for the purification of the German language and the fostering of German literature. His most famous work is the Wunderliche und warhafftige Gesichte Philanders von Sillewald (anagram of Willstädt) (1642–1643), for which he took as his model the Sueños (visions) of the famous Spaniard Francisco Gomez de Quevedo y Villegas (1580–1645). Hardly inferior to the “visions” is the Insomnis cura parentum, Christliches Vermächtnis eines Vaters, which Was published at Strassburg in 1643 and again in 1647. Noteworthy is also Die Patientia, discovered in 1897 in MS. in the municipal library at Hamburg.
Selections from Moscherosch’s writings have been published by W. Dittmar (1830), F. Bobertag (in Kürschner’s Deutsche Nationalliteratur, xxxii., 1884), and K. Müller (in Reclam’s Universalbibliothek). Reprints of the Insomnis cura parentum and Patientia have been published by L. Pariser (1893 and 1897), who is also the author of Beiträge zu einer Biographie von Moscherosch (1891). See also M. Nickels, Moscherosch als Pädagog (1883); J. Wirth Moscherosch’s Gesichte (1888).
MOSCHOPULUS (“little calf,” probably a nickname), MANUEL, Byzantine commentator and grammarian, lived during the end of the 13th and the beginning of the 14th century. His chief work is Ἐρωτήματα γραμματικά, in the form of question and answer, based upon an anonymous epitome of grammar, and supplemented by a lexicon (συλλογή) of Attic nouns. He was also the author of scholia on the first and second books of the Iliad, on Hesiod, Theocritus, Pindar and other classical and later authors; of riddles, letters, and a treatise on the magic squares. His grammatical treatises formed the foundation of the labours of such promoters of classical studies as Manuel Chrysoloras, Theodorus Gaza, Guarini, and Constantine Lascaris.
A selection from his works under the title of Manuelis Moschopuli opuscula grammatica was published by F. N. Titze (Leipzig, 1822); see also C. Krumbacher, Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur (1897) and M. Treu, Maximi monachi Planudis epistulae (1890), p. 208.
MOSCHUS, Greek bucolic poet and friend of the Alexandrian grammarian Aristarchus, was born at Syracuse and flourished about 150 B.C. He was the author of a short epic poem, Europa, and a pretty little epigram, Love, the Runaway, imitated by Torquato Tasso and Ben Jonson. The epitaph on Bion of Smyrna, wrongly supposed to have been his tutor, was in all probability written about the time of Sulla (see F. Bücheler in Rheinisches Museum, xxx., 1875). The poem on Megara (the wife of Heracles) is probably not his, but a few other pieces, undoubtedly genuine, have been preserved. His poems are nearly all in hexameters. They are usually printed in editions of Bion and Theocritus, and have been translated into many European languages.
The text has been edited by U. von Wilamowitz-Möllendorff, in the Oxford Scriptorum classicorum bibliotheca (1905); there are English translations by J. Banks in Bohn’s Classical Library (1853), and by Andrew Lang (1889), together with Bion and Theocritus. See F. Susemihl, Geschichte der griechischen Litteratur in der Alexandrinerzeit. i. 231 (1891), and article Bion.
MOSCOW (Russian Moskva), a government of Central Russia, bounded by the governments of Tver on the N.W., Vladimir and Ryazan on the E., Tula and Kaluga on the S., and Smolensk on the W., and having an area of 12,855 sq. m. The surface is undulating, with broad depressions occupied by the rivers, and varies in elevation from 500 to 850 ft. The government is situated in the centre of the Moscow coal-basin, which extends into the neighbouring governments. Its geology has been carefully studied, and it appears that in the Tertiary period the surface of this province was already continental; but during the Cretaceous period it was to some extent overflowed by the sea. Jurassic deposits are represented by their upper divisions only; the lower ones, as well as Triassic and Permian deposits, are wanting. The Carboniferous deposits are of a deep-sea origin, and are only represented by the upper division which lies upon Devonian deposits, discovered in an artesian well at Moscow at a depth of 1508 ft. The pendulum anomaly, mentioned by Kaspar Gottfried Schweitzer (1816–1873), has been investigated. It appears in a zone 10 m. wide and about 95 m. long from west to east, and is positive (+10·6″) to the north of Moscow and negative (−2·7″) to the south.
The government is drained by the Volga, which skirts it for a few miles on its northern boundary, by the navigable Sestra, which brings it into communication with the canals leading to St Petersburg, by the Oka, and by the Moskva. The Oka and Moskva from a remote period have been important channels of trade, and continue to be so notwithstanding the development of the railways. The Oka brings the government into water communication with the Volga. Extensive forests (39% of the entire area) still exist. The soil is somewhat unproductive; agriculture is carried on everywhere, but only two districts export corn, all the others being more or less dependent on extraneous supplies. The principal crops are rye, oats, barley, potatoes, with some flax, hemp and hops.
The population, 1,913,700 in 1873, numbered 2,430,549 in 1897, and 2,733,300 in 1906. They are nearly all Great-Russians and belong to the Greek Church (4% Nonconformists). The importance of the Moscow government as a manufacturing centre is steadily increasing, and it now stands first in Russia. The chief factories are for cottons, woollens, silks, clothing, chemicals, sugar refineries, distilleries, iron-works. There is besides a very great variety of minor industries—such as those concerned with gold thread and gold brocades, gold and silver jewelry, bronze, perfumery, sweets, tobacco, tanneries, gutta-percha, furniture, carriages, wall-paper, toys, baskets, lace, and papier-mâché. The government is divided into 13 districts.
The prehistoric archaeology of Moscow has been carefully studied. This district has been inhabited since the Stone Age. Bronze implements are rare, and there are places where instruments of stone, bone and iron are found together. The inhabitants who constructed the burial mounds in the 10th to 12th centuries seem to have been of Finnish origin, and were poorer, as a rule, than their contemporaries on the Volga.
MOSCOW, (Russian Moskva), the second capital of the Russian empire, and chief town of the government of the same name, in 55° 45′ N. and 37° 37′ E., on both banks of the river Moskva, a tributary of the Oka. It is by rail 400 m. from St Petersburg, 1017 from Odessa, and 814 from Warsaw. It lies to the north of the most densely peopled parts of Russia (the “black-earth region”), whilst the country to the north of it is rather thinly peopled as far as the Volga, and very sparsely beyond that. The space between the middle Oka and the Volga, however, was the cradle of the Great-Russian nationality (Novgorod and Pskov excluded); and four or five centuries ago Moscow had a quite central position with regard to that region.
The present city covers an area of 32 sq. m. (about 40 when the suburbs are included). In the centre, on the left bank of the Moskva, stands the Kreml or Kremlin, occupying the Borovitsky hill. To the east of the Kremlin is the Kitay-Gorod, formerly the Great Posad, the chief centre of trade. The Byelyi-Gorod, which was formerly enclosed by a stone wall (whence the name), surrounds the Kremlin and the Kitay-Gorod on the west, north, and north-east. A line of boulevards now occupies the place of its wall (destroyed in the 18th century), and forms a first circle of streets round the centre of Moscow. The Zemlyanoy-Gorod (earthen enclosure) surrounds the Byelyi-Gorod, including the Zamoskvoryechie on the right bank of the Moskva. The earthen wall and palisade that formerly enclosed it no longer exist, their place being taken by a series of broad streets with gardens on both sides—the Sadovaya, or Gardens Street. The fourth enclosure (the Kamer College earthen wall) was made during the reign of Catherine II.; it is of irregular shape, and encloses the outer parts of Moscow,
