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 479 B.C. was considerably affected by the fact that it was necessary for the Greeks to keep their communications open by the passes (see [Plataea]). 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.)
| Fig. 1.—Nero Citharoedus (Mus. Pio-Clementino), showing back of a Roman Cithara. |
CITHARA (Assyrian chetarah; Gr. κιθάρα; Lat. cithara; perhaps Heb. kinura, kinnor), one of the most ancient stringed instruments, traced back to 1700 B.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 Greek kithara, 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. This characteristic box 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,[1] whereas 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 see [Lyre].)
| Fig. 2.—Ancient Egyptian Cithara from Thebes. Museum of Antiquities, Leiden. |