Maecenas

• Mæcenas (archaic)

From Middle French mecenas, and its source, Latin Maecēnās (“literary patron”), from the name of Gaius Maecenas (c. 70–8 BCE), Roman statesman and patron of Horace and Virgil.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /mʌɪˈsiːnəs/

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Maecenas (plural Maecenases)

1. A generous benefactor; specifically, a patron of literature or art.
   • 1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Printed by John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC:

     […] thou art his dear and loving friend, good and gracious Lord and Master, his Maecenas.

   • 1751, [Tobias] Smollett, chapter 103, in The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle […], volume IV, London: Harrison and Co., […], →OCLC, page 367:

     [O]ur young gentleman was shewn into another room, where half a dozen of his fellow-adherents waited for their Mæcenas, who in a few minutes appeared, with a most gracious aspect, received the compliments of the morning, and sat down to breakfast, in the midst of them, without any further ceremony.

   • 2002, Colin Jones, The Great Nation, Penguin, published 2003, page 329:

     The government […] maintained one of the largest armies in Europe; it developed what became, by the 1780s, a navy as big as the British; and it played the role of cultural Maecenas.

   • 2010 November 5, Katherine Knorr, “For November, Paris Is the City of Lenses”, in The International Herald Tribune‎, →ISSN:

     The contemporary art space created within the Palais de Tokyo (also home to the Paris Museum of Modern Art) is a pretty sad example of government as Maecenas.

• Maecenatism

• Macanese

Ultimately from Etruscan.

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /mae̯ˈkeː.naːs/, [mäe̯ˈkeːnäːs̠]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /meˈt͡ʃe.nas/, [meˈt͡ʃɛːnäs]

Maecēnās m (genitive Maecēnātis); third declension

1. A Roman cognomen — famously held by:
   1. Gaius Cilnius Maecenas, a Roman patron
2. (by extension) Maecenas (any person who is a generous benefactor, particularly of the arts)

Third-declension noun.

• → Dutch: mecenas
• → French: mécène
• → German: Mäzen