Part 126 (2/2)

CIBBER, COLLEY, actor and dramatist, of German descent; was manager and part-proprietor of Drury Lane; wrote plays, one in particular, which procured for him the post of poet-laureate, which he held till his death; was much depreciated by Pope; wrote an ”Apology for his Life,” the most amusing autobiography in the language (1671-1757).

CIBRARIO, LUIGI, an Italian historian and statesman, born at Turin; he held office under Charles Albert of Sardinia (1802-1870).

CICERO, MARCUS TULLIUS, a Roman orator, statesman, and man of letters, born near Arpinum, in Latium; trained for political life partly at Rome and partly at Athens; distinguished himself as the first orator at the Roman bar when he was 30, and afterwards rose through the successive grades of civic rank till he attained the consuls.h.i.+p in 63 B.C.; during this period he acquired great popularity by his exposure and defeat of the conspiracy of Catiline, by which he earned the t.i.tle of _Father of his Country_, though there were those who condemned his action and procured his banishment for a time; on his recall, which was unanimous, he took sides first with Pompey, then with Caesar after Pharsalia, on whose death he delivered a Philippic against Antony; was proscribed by the second triumvirate, and put to death by Antony's soldiers; he was the foremost of Roman orators, the most elegant writer of the Latin language, and has left behind him orations, letters, and treatises, very models of their kind; he was not a deep thinker, and his philosophy was more eclectic than original (100-43 B.C.).

CICERO OF GERMANY, John III., Elector of Brandenburg, ”could speak 'four hours at a stretch, in elegantly flowing Latin,' with a fair share of meaning in it too” (1455-1499).

CICOGNARA, COUNT, an Italian writer, born at Ferrara; author of a ”History of Sculpture” (1767-1834).

CID CAMPEADOR, a famed Castilian warrior of the 11th century, born at Burgos; much celebrated in Spanish romance; being banished from Castile, in the interest of which he had fought valiantly, he became a free-lance, fighting now with the Christians and now with the Moors, till he made himself master of Valencia, where he set up his throne and reigned, with his faithful wife Ximena by his side, till the news of a defeat by the Moors took all spirit out of him, and he died of grief.

Faithful after death, his wife had his body embalmed and carried to his native place, on the high altar of which it lay enthroned for 10 years; his real name was Don Rodrigo Diaz of Bivar, and the story of his love for Ximena is the subject of Corneille's masterpiece, ”The Cid.”

CIGOLI, a Florentine painter, called the Florentine Correggio, whom he specially studied in the practice of his art; ”The Apostle Healing the Lame,” in St. Peter's, is by him, as also the ”Martyrdom of St. Stephen,”

in Florence (1559-1613).

CILICIA, an ancient province in S. of Asia Minor.

CILICIAN GATES, the pa.s.s across Mount Taurus by which Alexander the Great entered Cilicia.

CIMABU'E, a Florentine painter, and founder of the Florentine school, which ranked among its members such artists as Michael Angelo, Raphael, and Leonardo da Vinci; was the first to leave the stiff traditional Byzantine forms of art and copy from nature and the living model, though it was only with the advent of his great disciple Giotto that art found beauty in reality, and Florence was made to see the divine significance of lowly human worth, at sight of which, says Ruskin, ”all Italy threw up its cap”; his ”Madonna,” in the Church of Santa Maria, has been long regarded as a marvel of art, and of all the ”Mater Dolorosas”

of Christianity, Ruskin does not hesitate to p.r.o.nounce his at a.s.sisi the n.o.blest; ”he was the first,” says Ruskin, ”of the Florentines, first of European men, to see the face of her who was blessed among women, and with his following hand to make visible the Magnificat of his heart”

(1240-1302).

CIMAROSA, DOMENICO, a celebrated Italian composer; composed between 20 and 30 operas, mostly comic, his masterpiece being ”II Matrimoneo Segreto”; he was imprisoned for sympathising with the principles of the French Revolution, and treated with a severity which shortened his life; said by some to have been poisoned by order of Queen Caroline of Naples (1754-1801).

CIMBER, a friend of Caesar's who turned traitor, whose act of presenting a pet.i.tion to him was the signal to the conspirators to take his life.

CIMBRI, a barbarian horde who, with the Teutons, invaded Gaul in the 2nd century B.C.; gave the Romans no small trouble, and were all but exterminated by Marius in 101 B.C.; believed to have been a Celtic race, who descended on Southern Europe from the N.

CIMERIANS, an ancient people N. of the sh.o.r.es of the Black Sea, fabled to inhabit a region unvisited by a single ray of the sun.

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