Chapter 5

SeeTransactionsof the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, vols. ii., ix., xviii.

CIRILLO, DOMENICO(1739-1799), Italian physician and patriot, was born at Grumo in the kingdom of Naples. Appointed while yet a young man to a botanical professorship, Cirillo went some years afterwards to England, where he was elected fellow of the Royal Society, and to France. On his return to Naples he was appointed successively to the chairs of practical and theoretical medicine. He wrote voluminously and well on scientific subjects and secured an extensive medical practice. On the French occupation of Naples and the proclamation of the Parthenopean republic (1799), Cirillo, after at first refusing to take part in the new government, consented to be chosen a representative of the people and became a member of the legislative commission, of which he was eventually elected president. On the abandonment of the republic by the French (June 1799), Cardinal Ruffo and the army of King Ferdinand IV. returned to Naples, and the Republicans withdrew, ill-armed and inadequately provisioned, to the forts. After a short siege they surrendered on honourable terms, life and liberty being guaranteed them by the signatures of Ruffo, of Foote, and of Micheroux. But the arrival of Nelson changed the complexion of affairs, and he refused to ratify the capitulation. Secure under the British flag, Ferdinand and his wife, Caroline of Austria, showed themselves eager for revenge, and Cirillo was involved with the other republicans in the vengeance of the royal family. He asked Lady Hamilton (wife of the British minister to Naples) to intercede on his behalf, but Nelson wrote in reference to the petition: “Domenico Cirillo, who had been the king’s physician, might have been saved, but that he chose to play the fool and lie, denying that he had ever made any speeches against the government, and saying that he only took care of the poor in the hospitals” (Nelson and the Neapolitan Jacobins, Navy Records Society, 1903). He was condemned and hanged on the 29th of October 1799. Cirillo, whose favourite study was botany, and who was recognized as an entomologist by Linnaeus, left many books, in Latin and Italian, all of them treating of medical and scientific subjects, and all of little value now. Exception must, however, be made in favour of theVirtù morali dell’ Asino, a pleasant philosophical pamphlet remarkable for its double charm of sense and style. He introduced many medical innovations into Naples, particularly inoculation for smallpox.

See C. Giglioli,Naples in 1799(London, 1903); L. Conforti,Napoli nel 1799(Naples, 1889); C. Tivaroni,L’ Italia durante il dominio francese, vol. ii. pp. 179-204. Also underNaples;NelsonandFerdinand Iv. Of Naples.

CIRQUE(Lat.circus, ring), a French word used in physical geography to denote a semicircular crater-like amphitheatre at the head of a valley, or in the side of a glaciated mountain. The valley cirque is characteristic of calcareous districts. In the Chiltern Hills especially, and generally along the chalk escarpments, a flat-bottomed valley with an intermittent stream winds into the hill and ends suddenly in a cirque. There is an excellent example at Ivinghoe, Buckinghamshire, where it appears as though an enormous flat-bottomed scoop had been driven into the hillside and dragged outwards to the plain. In all cases it is found that the valley floor consists of hard or impervious rock above which lies a permeable or soluble stratum of considerable thickness. In the case of the chalk hills the upper strata are very porous, and the descending water with atmospheric and humous acids in solution has great solvent power. During the winter this upper layer becomes saturated and some of the water drains away along joints in the escarpment. An underground stream is thus developed carrying away a great deal of material in solution, and in consequence the ground above slowly collapses over the stream, while the cirque at the head, where the stream issues, gradually works backward and may pass completely through the hills, leaving a gap of which another drainage system may take possession. In the limestone country of the Cotteswold Hills, many small intermittent tributary streams are headed by cirques, and some of the longer dry valleys have springs issuing from beneath their lower ends, the dry valleys being collapsed areas above underground streams not yet revealed. In this case the pervious limestone is underlain by beds of impervious clay. There are many of these in the Jura Mountains. The Cirque de St Sulpice is a fine example where the impervious bed is a marly clay.

The origin of the glacial cirque is entirely different and is said by W.D. Johnson (Journal of Geology, xii. No. 7, 1904) to be due to basal sapping and erosion under thebergschrundof the glacier. In this he is supported by G.K. Gilbert in the same journal, who produces some remarkable examples from the Sierra Nevada in California, where the mountain fragments have been left behind “like a sheet of dough upon a board after the biscuit tin has done its work”; so that above the head of the glaciers “the rock detail is rugged and splintered but its general effect is that of a great symmetrical arc.” Descending one of the bergschrunds of Mt. Lyell to a depth of 150 ft., Johnson found a rock floor cumbered with ice and blocks of rock and the rock face a literally vertical cliff “much riven, its fracture planes outlining sharp angular masses in all stages of displacement and dislodgment.” Judging from these facts, he interprets the deep valleys with cirques at their head in formerly glaciated regions where at the head there is a “reversed grade” of slope, as due to ice-erosion at valley-heads where scour is impossible at the sides of the mountain but strongest under the glacier head where the ice is deepest. The opponents of ice-erosion nevertheless recognize the very frequent occurrence of glacial cirques often containing small lakes such as that under Cader Idris in Wales, or at the head of Little Timber Creek, Montana, and numerous examples in Alpine districts.

CIRTA(mod.Constantine,q.v.), an ancient city of Numidia, in Africa, in the country of the Massyli. It was regarded by the Romans as the strongest position in Numidia, and was made by them the converging point of all their great military roads in that country. By the early emperors it was allowed to fall into decay, but was afterwards restored by Constantine, from whom it took its modern name.

CISSEY, ERNEST LOUIS OCTAVE COURTOT DE(1810-1882), French general, was born at Paris on the 23rd of September 1810, and after passing through St Cyr, entered the army in 1832, becoming captain in 1839. He saw active service in Algeria, and becamechef d’escadronin 1849 and lieutenant-colonel in 1850. He took part as a colonel in the Crimean War, and after the battle of Inkerman received the rank of general of brigade. In 1863 he was promoted general of division. When the Franco-German War broke out in 1870, de Cissey was given a divisional command in the Army of the Rhine, and he was included in the surrender of Bazaine’s army at Metz. He was released from captivity only at the end of the war, and on his return was at once appointed by the Versailles government to a command in the army engaged in the suppression of the Commune, a task in the execution of which he displayed great rigour. From July 1871 de Cissey sat as a deputy, and he had already become minister of war. He occupied this post several times during the critical period of the reorganization of the French army. In 1880, whilst holding the command of the XI. corps at Nantes, he was accused of having relations with a certain Baroness Kaula, who was said to be a spy in the pay of Germany, andhe was in consequence relieved from duty. An inquiry subsequently held resulted in de Cissey’s favour (1881). He died on the 15th of June 1882 at Paris.

CISSOID(from the Gr.κισσός, ivy, andεἰδος, form), a curve invented by the Greek mathematician Diocles about 180B.C., for the purpose of constructing two mean proportionals between two given lines, and in order to solve the problem of duplicating the cube. It was further investigated by John Wallis, Christiaan Huygens (who determined the length of any arc in 1657), and Pierre de Fermat (who evaluated the area between the curve and its asymptote in 1661). It is constructed in the following manner. Let APB be a semicircle, BT the tangent at B, and APT a line cutting the circle in P and BT at T; takea point Q on AT so that AQ always equals PT; then the locus of Q is the cissoid. Sir Isaac Newton devised the following mechanical construction. Take a rod LMN bent at right angles at M, such that MN = AB; let the leg LM always pass through a fixed point O on AB produced such that OA = CA, where C is the middle point of AB, and cause N to travel along the line perpendicular to AB at C; then the midpoint of MN traces the cissoid. The curve is symmetrical about the axis of x, and consists of two infinite branches asymptotic to the line BT and forming a cusp at the origin. The cartesian equation, when A is the origin and AB = 2a, is y²(2a - x) = x³; the polar equation is r = 2a sin θ tan θ. The cissoid is the first positive pedal of the parabola y² + 8ax = 0 for the vertex, and the inverse of the parabola y² = 8ax, the vertex being the centre of inversion, and the semi-latus rectum the constant of inversion. The area between the curve and its asymptote is 3πa²,i.e.three times the area of the generating circle.

The term cissoid has been given in modern times to curves generated in similar manner from other figures than the circle, and the form described above is distinguished as the cissoid of Diocles.

Acissoid angleis the angle included between the concave sides of two intersecting curves; the convex sides include thesistroid angle.

See John Wallis,Collected Works, vol. i.; T.H. Eagles,Plane Curves(1885).

CIS-SUTLEJ STATES, the southern portion of the Punjab, India. The name, now obsolete, came into use in 1809, when the Sikh chiefs south of the Sutlej passed under British protection, and was generally applied to the country south of the Sutlej and north of the Delhi territory, bounded on the E. by the Himalayas, and on the W. by Sirsa district. Before 1846 the greater part of this territory was independent, the chiefs being subject merely to control from a political officer stationed at Umballa, and styled the agent of the governor-general for the Cis-Sutlej states. After the first Sikh War the full administration of the territory became vested in this officer. In 1849 occurred the annexation of the Punjab, when the Cis-Sutlej states commissionership, comprising the districts of Umballa, Ferozepore, Ludhiana, Thanesar and Simla, was incorporated with the new province. The name continued to be applied to this division until 1862, when, owing to Ferozepore having been transferred to the Lahore, and a part of Thanesar to the Delhi division, it ceased to be appropriate. Since then, the tract remaining has been known as the Umballa division. Patiala, Jind and Nabha were appointed a separate political agency in 1901. Excluding Bahawalpur, for which there is no political agent, and Chamba, the other states are grouped under the commissioners of Jullunder and Delhi, and the superintendent of the Simla hill states.

CIST(Gr.κίστη, Lat.cista, a box; cf. Ger.Kiste, Welshkistvaen, stone-coffin, and also the other Eng. form “chest”), in Greek archaeology, a wicker-work receptacle used in the Eleusinian and other mysteries to carry the sacred vessels; also, in the archaeology of prehistoric man, a coffin formed of flat stones placed edgeways with another flat stone for a cover. The word is also used for a sepulchral chamber cut in the rock (seeCoffin).

“Cistern,” the common term for a water-tank, is a derivation of the same word (Lat.cisterna; cf. “cave” and “cavern”).

CISTERCIANS, otherwiseGreyorWhite Monks(from the colour of the habit, over which is worn a black scapular or apron). In 1098 St Robert, born of a noble family in Champagne, at first a Benedictine monk, and then abbot of certain hermits settled at Molesme near Châtillon, being dissatisfied with the manner of life and observance there, migrated with twenty of the monks to a swampy place called Cîteaux in the diocese of Châlons, not far from Dijon. Count Odo of Burgundy here built them a monastery, and they began to live a life of strict observance according to the letter of St Benedict’s rule. In the following year Robert was compelled by papal authority to return to Molesme, and Alberic succeeded him as abbot of Cîteaux and held the office till his death in 1109, when the Englishman St Stephen Harding became abbot, until 1134. For some years the new institute seemed little likely to prosper; few novices came, and in the first years of Stephen’s abbacy it seemed doomed to failure. In 1112, however, St Bernard and thirty others offered themselves to the monastery, and a rapid and wonderful development at once set in. The next three years witnessed the foundation of the four great “daughter-houses of Cîteaux”—La Ferté, Pontigny, Clairvaux and Morimond. At Stephen’s death there were over 30 Cistercian houses; at Bernard’s (1154) over 280; and by the end of the century over 500; and the Cistercian influence in the Church more than kept pace with this material expansion, so that St Bernard saw one of his monks ascend the papal chair as Eugenius III.

The keynote of Cistercian life was a return to a literal observance of St Benedict’s rule—how literal may be seen from the controversy between St Bernard and Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny (see Maitland,Dark Ages, § xxii.). The Cistercians rejected alike all mitigations and all developments, and tried to reproduce thelifeexactly as it had been in St Benedict’s time, indeed in various points they went beyond it in austerity. The most striking feature in the reform was the return to manual labour, and especially to field-work, which became a special characteristic of Cistercian life. In order to make time for this work they cut away the accretions to the divine office which had been steadily growing during three centuries, and in Cluny and the other Black Monk monasteries had come to exceed greatly in length the regular canonical office: one only of these accretions did they retain, the daily recitation of the Office of the Dead (Edm. Bishop,Origin of the Primer, Early English Text Society, original series, 109, p. xxx.).

It was as agriculturists and horse and cattle breeders that, after the first blush of their success and before a century had passed, the Cistercians exercised their chief influence on the progress of civilization in the later middle ages: they were the great farmers of those days, and many of the improvements in the various farming operations were introduced and propagated by them; it is from this point of view that the importance of their extension in northern Europe is to be estimated. The Cistercians at the beginning renounced all sources of income arising from benefices, tithes, tolls and rents, and depended for their income wholly on the land. This developed an organized system for selling their farm produce, cattle and horses, and notably contributed to the commercial progress of the countries of western Europe. Thus by the middle of the 13th century the export of wool by the English Cistercians had become a feature in the commerce of the country. Farming operations on so extensive a scale could not be carried out by the monks alone, whose choir and religious duties took up a considerable portion of their time; and so from the beginning the system of lay brothers was introduced on a large scale. The lay brothers were recruited from the peasantry and were simple uneducated men, whose function consisted in carrying out the various field-works and plying all sorts of useful trades; they formed a bodyof men who lived alongside of the choir monks, but separate from them, not taking part in the canonical office, but having their own fixed round of prayer and religious exercises. A lay brother was never ordained, and never held any office of superiority. It was by this system of lay brothers that the Cistercians were able to play their distinctive part in the progress of European civilization. But it often happened that the number of lay brothers became excessive and out of proportion to the resources of the monasteries, there being sometimes as many as 200, or even 300, in a single abbey. On the other hand, at any rate in some countries, the system of lay brothers in course of time worked itself out; thus in England by the close of the 14th century it had shrunk to relatively small proportions, and in the 15th century the régime of the English Cistercian houses tended to approximate more and more to that of the Black Monks.

The Cistercian polity calls for special mention. Its lines were adumbrated by Alberic, but it received its final form at a meeting of the abbots in the time of Stephen Harding, when was drawn up theCarta Caritatis(Migne,Patrol. Lat.clxvi. 1377), a document which arranged the relations between the various houses of the Cistercian order, and exercised a great influence also upon the future course of western monachism. From one point of view, it may be regarded as a compromise between the primitive Benedictine system, whereby each abbey was autonomous and isolated, and the complete centralization of Cluny, whereby the abbot of Cluny was the only true superior in the body. Cîteaux, on the one hand, maintained the independent organic life of the houses—each abbey had its own abbot, elected by its own monks; its own community, belonging to itself and not to the order in general; its own property and finances administered by itself, without interference from outside. On the other hand, all the abbeys were subjected to the general chapter, which met yearly at Cîteaux, and consisted of the abbots only; the abbot of Cîteaux was the president of the chapter and of the order, and the visitor of each and every house, with a predominant influence and the power of enforcing everywhere exact conformity to Cîteaux in all details of the exterior life—observance, chant, customs. The principle was that Cîteaux should always be the model to which all the other houses had to conform. In case of any divergence of view at the chapter, the side taken by the abbot of Cîteaux was always to prevail (see F.A. Gasquet,Sketch of Monastic Constitutional History, pp. xxxv-xxxviii, prefixed to English trans, of Montalembert’sMonks of the West, ed. 1895).

By the end of the 12th century the Cistercian houses numbered 500; in the 13th a hundred more were added; and in the 15th, when the order attained its greatest extension, there were close on 750 houses: the larger figures sometimes given are now recognized as apocryphal. Nearly half of the houses had been founded, directly or indirectly, from Clairvaux, so great was St Bernard’s influence and prestige: indeed he has come almost to be regarded as the founder of the Cistercians, who have often been called Bernardines. The order was spread all over western Europe,—chiefly in France, but also in Germany, England, Scotland, Ireland, Sweden, Poland, Hungary, Italy and Sicily, Spain and Portugal,—where some of the houses, as Alcobaça, were of almost incredible magnificence. In England the first foundation was Furness (1127), and many of the most beautiful monastic buildings of the country, beautiful in themselves and beautiful in their sites, were Cistercian,—as Tintern, Rievaulx, Byland, Fountains. A hundred were established in England in the next hundred years, and then only one more up to the Dissolution (for list, see table and map in F.A. Gasquet’sEnglish Monastic Life, orCatholic Dictionary, art. “Cistercians”).

For a hundred years, till the first quarter of the 13th century, the Cistercians supplanted Cluny as the most powerful order and the chief religious influence in western Europe. But then in turn their influence began to wane, chiefly, no doubt, because of the rise of the mendicant orders, who ministered more directly to the needs and ideas of the new age. But some of the reasons of Cistercian decline were internal. In the first place, there was the permanent difficulty of maintaining in its first fervour a body embracing hundreds of monasteries and thousands of monks, spread all over Europe; and as the Cistercian veryraison d’êtreconsisted in its being a “reform,” a return to primitive monachism, with its field-work and severe simplicity, any failures to live up to the ideal proposed worked more disastrously among Cistercians than among mere Benedictines, who were intended to live a life of self-denial, but not of great austerity. Relaxations were gradually introduced in regard to diet and to simplicity of life, and also in regard to the sources of income, rents and tolls being admitted and benefices incorporated, as was done among the Benedictines; the farming operations tended to produce a commercial spirit; wealth and splendour invaded many of the monasteries, and the choir monks abandoned field-work.

The later history of the Cistercians is largely one of attempted revivals and reforms. The general chapter for long battled bravely against the invasion of relaxations and abuses. In 1335 Benedict XII., himself a Cistercian, promulgated a series of regulations to restore the primitive spirit of the order, and in the 15th century various popes endeavoured to promote reforms. All these efforts at a reform of the great body of the order proved unavailing; but local reforms, producing various semi-independent offshoots and congregations, were successfully carried out in many parts in the course of the 15th and 16th centuries. In the 17th another great effort at a general reform was made, promoted by the pope and the king of France; the general chapter elected Richelieu (commendatory) abbot of Cîteaux, thinking he would protect them from the threatened reform. In this they were disappointed, for he threw himself wholly on the side of reform. So great, however, was the resistance, and so serious the disturbances that ensued, that the attempt to reform Cîteaux itself and the general body of the houses had again to be abandoned, and only local projects of reform could be carried out. In 1598 had arisen the reformed congregation of the Feuillants, which spread widely in France and Italy, in the latter country under the name of “Improved Bernardines.” The French congregation of Sept-Fontaines (1654) also deserves mention. In 1663 de Rancé reformed La Trappe (seeTrappists).

The Reformation, the ecclesiastical policy of Joseph II., the French Revolution, and the revolutions of the 19th century, almost wholly destroyed the Cistercians; but some survived, and since the beginning of the last half of the 19th century there has been a considerable recovery. They are at present divided into three bodies: (1) the Common Observance, with about 30 monasteries and 800 choir monks, the large majority being in Austria-Hungary; they represent the main body of the order and follow a mitigated rule of life; they do not carry on field-work, but have large secondary schools, and are in manner of life little different from fairly observant Benedictine Black monks; of late years, however, signs are not wanting of a tendency towards a return to older ideas; (2) the Middle Observance, embracing some dozen monasteries and about 150 choir monks; (3) the Strict Observance, or Trappists (q.v.), with nearly 60 monasteries, about 1600 choir monks and 2000 lay brothers.

In all there are about 100 Cistercian monasteries and about 4700 monks, including lay brothers. There have always been a large number of Cistercian nuns; the first nunnery was founded at Tart in the diocese of Langres, 1125; at the period of their widest extension there are said to have been 900 nunneries, and the communities were very large. The nuns were devoted to contemplation and also did field-work. In Spain and France certain Cistercian abbesses had extraordinary privileges. Numerous reforms took place among the nuns. The best known of all Cistercian convents was probably Port-Royal (q.v.), reformed by Angélique Arnaud, and associated with the story of the Jansenist controversy. After all the troubles of the 19th century there still exist 100 Cistercian nunneries with 3000 nuns, choir and lay; of these, 15 nunneries with 900 nuns are Trappist.

Accounts of the beginnings of the Cistercians and of the primitive life and spirit will be found in the lives of St Bernard, the bestwhereof is that of Abbé E. Vacandard (1895); also in the Life of St Stephen Harding, in theEnglish Saints. See also Henry Collins (one of the Oxford Movement, who became a Cistercian),Spirit and Mission of the Cistercian Order(1866). The facts are related in Helyot,Hist. des ordres religieux(1792), v. cc. 33-46, vi cc. 1, 2. Useful sketches, with references to the literature, are supplied in Herzog,Realencyklopädie(ed. 3), art. “Cistercienser”; Wetzer und Welte,Kirchenlexikon(ed. 2), art. “Cistercienserorden”; Max Heimbucher,Orden und Kongregationen(1896), i. §§ 33, 34. Prof. Brewer’s discriminating, yet on the whole sympathetic, Preface to vol. iv. of the Works of Giraldus Cambrensis (Rolls Series ofChronicles and Memorials) is very instructive. Denis Murphy’sTriumphalia Monasterii S. Crucis(1891) contains a general sketch, with a particular account of the Irish Cistercians.

(E. C. B.)

CITATION(Lat.citare, to cite), in law, a summons to appear, more particularly applied in England to process in the probate and divorce division of the high court. In the ecclesiastical courts, citation was a method of commencing a probate suit, answering to a writ of summons at common law, and it is now in English probate practice an instrument issuing from the principal probate registry, chiefly used when a person, having the superior right to take a grant, delays or declines to do so, and another having an inferior right desires to obtain a grant; the party having the prior right is cited to appear and either to renounce the grant or show cause why it should not be decreed to the citator. In divorce practice, when a petitioner has filed his petition and affidavit, he extracts a citation,i.e.a command drawn in the name of the sovereign and signed by one of the registrars of the court, calling upon the alleged offender to appear and make answer to the petition. In Scots law, citation is used in the sense of a writ of summons. The word in its more general literary sense means the act of quoting, or the referring to an authority in support of an argument.

CÎTEAUX, a village of eastern France, in the department of Côte d’Or, 16 m. S.S.E. of Dijon by road. It is celebrated for the great abbey founded by Robert, abbot of Molesme, in 1098, which became the headquarters of the Cistercian order. The buildings which remain date chiefly from the 18th century and are of little interest. The church, destroyed in 1792, used to contain the tombs of the earlier dukes of Burgundy.

CITHAERON, now called from its pine forests Elatea, a famous mountain range (4626 ft.) in the south of Boeotia, separating that state from Megaris and Attica. It was famous in Greek mythology, and is frequently mentioned by the great poets, especially by Sophocles. It was on Cithaeron that Aetaeon was changed into a stag, that Pentheus was torn to pieces by the Bacchantes whose orgies he had been watching, and that the infant Oedipus was exposed. This mountain, too, was the scene of the mystic rites of Dionysus, and the festival of the Daedala in honour of Hera. The carriage-road from Athens to Thebes crosses the range by a picturesque defile (the pass of Dryoscephalae, “Oak-heads”), which was at one time guarded on the Attic side by a strong fortress, the ruins of which are known as Ghyphto-kastro (“Gipsy Castle”). Plataea is situated on the north slope of the mountain, and the strategy of the battle of 479B.C.was considerably affected by the fact that it was necessary for the Greeks to keep their communications open by the passes (seePlataea). The best known of these is that of Dryoscephalae, which must then, as now, have been the direct route from Athens to Thebes. Two other passes, farther to the west, were crossed by the roads from Plataea to Athens and to Megara respectively.

(E. GR.)

CITHARA(Assyrianchetarah; Gr.κιθάρα; Lat.cithara; perhaps Heb.kinura, kinnor), one of the most ancient stringed instruments, traced back to 1700B.C.among the Semitic races, in Egypt, Assyria, Asia Minor, Greece and the Roman empire, whence the use of it spread over Europe. The main feature of the Greekkithara, its shallow sound-chest, being the most important part of it, is also that in which developments are most noticeable; its contour varied considerably during the many musical ages, but the characteristic in respect of which it fore-shadowed the precursors of the violin family, and by which they were distinguished from other contemporary stringed instruments of the middle ages, was preserved throughout in all European descendants bearing derived names. Thischaracteristicbox sound-chest (fig. 1) consisted of two resonating tables, either flat or delicately arched, connected by ribs or sides of equal width. The cithara may be regarded as an attempt by a more skilful craftsman or race to improve upon the lyre (q.v.), while retaining some of its features. The construction of the cithara can fortunately be accurately studied from two actual specimens found in Egypt and preserved in the museums of Berlin and Leiden. The Leiden cithara (fig. 2), which forms part of the d’Anastasy Collection in the Museum of Antiquities, is in a very good state of preservation. The sound-chest, in the form of an irregular square (17 cm. × 17 cm.), is hollowed out of a solid block of wood from the base, which is open; the little bar, seen through the open base and measuring 2½ cm. (1 in.), is also of the same piece of wood. The arms, one short and one long, are solid and are fixed to the body by means of wooden pins; they are glued as well for greater strength. W. Pleyte, through whose courtesy the sketch was revised and corrected, states that there are no indications on the instrument of any kind of bridge or attachment for strings except the little half-hoop of iron wire which passes through the base from back to front. To this the strings were probably attached, and the little bar performed the double duty of sound-post and support for strengthening the tail-piece and enabling it to resist the tension of the strings. The oblique transverse bar, rendered necessary by the increasing length of the strings, was characteristic of the Egyptian cithara,1whereas the Asiatic and Greek instruments were generally constructed with horizontal bars resting on arms of equal length, the pitch of the strings being varied by thickness and tension, instead of by length. (For the Berlin cithara seeLyre.)

The number of strings with which the cithara was strung varied from 4 to 19 or 20 at different times; they were added less for the purpose of increasing the compass in the modern sense than to enable the performer to play in the different modes of the Greek musical system. Terpander is credited with having increased the number of strings to seven; Euclid, quoting him as his authority, states that “loving no more the tetrachordal chant, we will sing aloud new hymns to a seven-toned phorminx.”

What has been said of the scale of the lyre applies also to the cithara, and need therefore not be repeated here. The strings were vibrated by means of the fingers or plectrum (πλῆκτρον, fromπλήσσειν, to strike; Lat.plectrum, fromplango, I strike). Twanging with the fingers for strings of gut, hemp or silk was undoubtedly the more artistic method, since the player was able to command various shades of expression which are impossiblewith a rigid plectrum.2Loudness of accent and great brilliancy of tone, however, can only be obtained by the use of the plectrum.

Quotations from the classics abound to show what was the practice of the Greeks and Romans in this respect. The plectrum was held in the right hand, with elbow outstretched and palm bent inwards, and the strings were plucked with the straightened fingers of the left hand.3Both methods were used with intention according to the dictates of art for the sake of the variation in tone colour obtainable thereby.4

The strings of the cithara were either knotted round the transverse tuning bar itself (zugon) or to rings threaded over the bar, which enabled the performer to increase or decrease the tension by shifting the knots or rings; or else they were wound round pegs,5knobs6or pins7fixed to the zugon. The other end of the strings was secured to a tail-piece after passing over a flat bridge, or the two were combined in the curious high box tail-piece which acted as a bridge. Plutarch8states that this contrivance was added to the cithara in the days of Cepion, pupil of Terpander. These boxes were hinged in order to allow the lid to be opened for the purpose of securing the strings to some contrivance concealed therein. It is a curious fact that no sculptured cithara provided with this box tail-piece is represented with strings, and in many cases there could never have been any, for the hand and arm9are visible across the space that would be filled by the strings, which are always carved in a solid block.

Like the lyre the cithara was made in many sizes, conditioned by the pitch and the use to which the instrument was to be put. These instruments may have been distinguished by different names; thepectis, for instance, is declared by Sappho (22nd fragment) to have been small and shrill; thephorminx, on the other hand, seems to have been identical with the cithara.10

The Greekkitharawas the instrument of the professional singer or citharoedus (κιθαρῳδός) and of the instrumentalist or citharista (κιθαριστής), and thus served the double purpose of (1) accompanying the voice—a use placed by the Greeks far above mere instrumental music—in epic recitations and rhapsodies, in odes and lyric songs; and (2) of accompanying the dance; it was also used for playing solos at the national games, at receptions and banquets and at trials of skill. The costume of the citharoedus and citharista was rich and recognized as being distinctive; it varied but little throughout the ages, as may be deduced from a comparison of representations of the citharoedus on a coin and on a Greek vase of the best period (fig. 4). The costume consisted of apallaor long tunic with sleeves embroidered with gold and girt high above the waist, falling in graceful folds to the feet. Thispallamust not be confounded with the mantle of the same name worn by women. Over one shoulder, or hanging down the back, was the purplechlamysor cloak, and on his brow a golden wreath of laurels. All the citharoedi bear instruments of the type here described as the cithara, and never one of the lyre type. The records of the citharoedi extend over more than thirteen centuries and fall into two natural divisions: (1) The mythological period, approximately from the 13th centuryB.C.to the first Olympiad, 776B.C.; and (2) the historical period to the days of Ptolemy,A.D.161. One of the very few authentic Greek odes extant is a Pythian ode by Pindar, in which the phorminx of Apollo is mentioned; the solo is followed by a chorus of citharoedi. The scope of the solemn games and processions, calledPanathenaea, held every four years in honour of the goddess Athena, which originally consisted principally of athletic sports and horse and chariot races, was extended under Peisistratus (c. 540B.C.), and the celebration made to include contests of singers and instrumentalists, recitations of portions of theIliadandOdyssey, such as are represented on the frieze of the Parthenon (in the Elgin Room at the British Museum) and later on friezes by Pheidias. It was at the same period that the first contests for solo-playing on the cithara (κιθαριστύς) and for soloaulos-playing were instituted at the 8th Pythian Games.11One of the principal items at these contests for aulos and cithara was theNomos Pythikos, descriptive of the victory of Apollo over the python and of the defeat of the monster.12

The Pythian Games survived the classic Greek period and were continued under Roman sway until aboutA.D.394. Not only were these games held at Delphi, but smaller contests, called Pythia, modelled on the great Pythian, were instituted in various provinces of the empire, and more especially in Asia Minor. The games lasted for several days, the first being devoted to music. To the games at Delphi came musicians from all parts of the civilized world; and the Spaniards, at the beginning of our era, had attained to such a marvellous proficiency in playing the cithara, an instrument which they had learnt to know from the Phoenician colonists before the conquest by the Romans, that some of their citharoedi easily carried off the honours at the musical contests. The consul Metellus was so charmed with the music of the Spanish competitors that he sent some to Rome for the festivals, where the impression created was so great that the Spanish citharoedi obtained a permanent footing in Rome. Aulus Gellius (Noct. Att.) describes an incident at a banquet which corroborates this statement.

The degeneration of music as an art among the Romans, and its gradual degradation by association with the sensual amusements of corrupt Rome, nearly brought about its extinction at the end of the 4th century, when the condemnation of the Church closed the theatres, and the great national games came to an end. Instrumental music was banished from civil life and from religious rites, and thenceforth the slender threads which connect the musical instruments of Greeks and Romans with those ofthe middle ages must be sought among the unconverted barbarians of northern and western Europe, who kept alive the traditions taught them by conquerors and colonists; but as civilization was in its infancy with them the instruments sent out from their workshops must have been crude and primitive. Asia, the cradle of the cithara, also became its foster-mother; it was among the Greeks of Asia Minor that the several steps in the transition from cithara into guitar13(q.v.) took place.

The first of these steps produced the rotta (q.v.), by the construction of body, arms and transverse bar in one piece. The Semitic races used the rotta at a very remote period (1700B.C.), as we know from a fresco at Beni-Hasan, dating from the reign of Senwosri II., which depicts a procession of strangers bringing tribute; among them is a bearded musician of Semitic type bearing a rotta which he holds horizontally in front of him in the Assyrian manner, and quite unlike the Greeks, who always played the lyre and cithara in an upright position. A unique specimen of this rectangular rotta was found in an Alamannic tomb of the 5th or 6th century at Oberflacht in the Black Forest. The instrument was clasped in the arms of an armed knight; it is now preserved in the Völker Museum in Berlin. This old German rotta is an exact counterpart of instruments pictured in illuminated MSS. of the 8th century, and is derived from the cithara with rectangular body, while from the cithara with a body having the curve of the lower half of the violin was produced a rotta with the outline of the body of the guitar. Both types were common in Europe until the 14th century, some played with a bow, others twanged by the fingers, and bearing indifferently both names, cithara and rotta. The addition of a finger-board, stretching like a short neck from body to transverse bar, leaving on each side of the finger-board space for the hand to pass through in order to stop the strings, produced the crwth or crowd (q.v.), and brought about the reduction in the number of the strings to three or four. The conversion of the rotta into the guitar (q.v.) was an easy transition effected by the addition of a long neck to a body derived from the oval rotta. When the bow was applied the result was the guitar or troubadour fiddle. At first the instrument calledcitharain the Latin versions of the Psalms was glossedcitran, citrein Anglo-Saxon, but in the 11th century the same instrument was renderedhearpan, and in French and Englishharpeorharp, and our modern versions have retained this translation. Thecittern(q.v.), a later descendant of the cithara, although preserving the characteristic features of the cithara, the shallow sound-chest with ribs, adopted the pear-shaped outline of the Eastern instruments of the lute tribe.

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