318 



CUPELLATION 



CUPPING 



(1535) of Sir David Lyndsay (q.v.). Cupar has a 

 handsome new Free Church ( 1877 ), the Duncan 

 Institute (1870), and a public park (1871-72). 

 Brewing, tanning, &c. are carried on ; and there is 

 a large corn-market. Lord Campbell was a native. 

 The place has been a royal burgh since at least 

 1363, and it unites with St Andrews and five other 

 towns in returning one member to parliament. 

 Pop. (1851) 5605; (1881) 5010; (1891) 4729. 'See 

 also COUPAR-ANGUS. 



Cupellation. See ASSAYING. 



Cupid ( Lat. cupido, ' desire ' ), also AMOR, the 

 Latin name for the Greek Eros, the god of love. 

 Eros is not mentioned in Homer, but occurs first in 

 Hesiod, whose conception of him is that of a cosmo- 

 gonic force uniting, as it were, in harmony and 

 love, the conflicting elements of primal chaos. 

 Thus Plato, in his Symposium, speaks of him as 

 the oldest of the gods. Quite different, however, 

 from this venerable and somewhat impersonal 

 deity is the Eros of the epigrammatic and erotic 

 poets, the Cupid of Horace and Ovid. The gene- 

 alogy of this meddlesome divinity is rather con- 

 fused. He is variously represented as the son of 

 Aphrodite (Venus) by Ares (Mare), Zeus (Jupi- 

 ter), or Hermes (Mercury). He appears as a 

 wanton boy, playful and mischievous, with bow, 

 arrows, sometimes a torch, quiver, and wings. The 

 eyes are often covered, so that he shoots blindly. 

 His darts could pierce the fish at the bottom of the 

 sea, the birds in the air, and even the gods in 

 Olympus. The immensity of space was his home, 

 but like his mother, he specially loved the flowery 

 thickets of Cyprus. Later poets make a number of 

 Erotes (Amores and Cupidines), with the same 

 attributes as the prototype. We find also an 

 Anteros ( ' return love ' ), whose function it is to 

 punish those who do not return the love of others. 

 Thespise in Bceotia was the chief seat of the wor- 

 ship of Eros ; here was held the Erotidia, a quin- 

 quennial festival. Eros or Cupid was a frequent 

 subject for Greek and Roman works of art. The 

 most celebrated statue was that by Praxiteles at 

 Thespiae. 



The beautiful fable of Cupid and Psyche, as 

 given by Apuleius, is a literary version of one of 

 the best-known stories in the world. Of course 

 it is merely an ordinary household tale, with 

 nothing but the names to connect it with the 

 recognised Greek mythology. Here Cupid is 

 merely the invisible bridegroom of scores of stories 

 the world over, with the added name and attri- 

 butes of the winged son of Aphrodite. See a study 

 of the myth by Andrew Lang, in the introduction 

 to his reprint (1887) of Arlington's translation 

 (1566) of the story as told by Apuleius. 



Cup-markings on rocks and CUP-MARKED 

 STONES belong to a peculiar class of archaic sculp- 

 turings which have recently attracted much atten- 

 tion among archreologists. Cup-markings on rocks 

 are chiefly of two varieties circular cavities or 

 'cups' pure and simple, and cups surrounded by 

 circles. The circles round the cups are shallow 

 indentations, varying in number up to five or six. 

 Both cups and circles often show the marks of a 

 pointed tool, as if they had been formed by picking, 

 but frequently they appear as if weathered or 

 abraded to a perfectly smooth surface. The 

 cups vary in size from about one inch to three 

 inches or more in diameter. Sometimes they are 

 confluent at the edges, but more usually separate, 

 and occasionally two or more are connected by a 

 shallow groove or duct. They usually occur in 

 groups, sometimes to the number of several hun- 

 dreds. In such groups the majority are plain cups, 

 intermingled with occasional cups and circles. The 

 circles placed concentrically round the cups are occa- 



sionally incomplete at one side, and a radial groove 

 or duct passes from the central cup out through the 

 circles. The circles are only approximately circular, 

 sometimes oval, and occasionally even roughly 

 quadrangular. These groups of cups, mingled with 

 cups and circles, and occasionally with imperfect 

 spirals and other rude and irregular sculpturings, 

 are found on the stones of sepulchral structures of 

 the stone and bronze ages, on rock-surfaces and 

 earth-fast boulders, and on loose stones of small size 

 in the neighbourhood of sites of early habitations 

 or strongholds over nearly all Europe. They are 

 still subjects of superstitious regard in Scandinavia, 

 and while they are found in connection with the 

 megalithic monuments of Europe and India, Mr 

 Rivett Carnac has traced a resemblance to them in 

 the conventional symbols of Siva in the modern 

 temples. On the other hand Dr Veckenstedt found 

 recent cup-markings (but without the characteristic 

 circles) on the walls of churches in Prussia. Dr 

 Rau has described a considerable number of ex- 

 amples from various parts of America, but few with 

 circles. Many of tne smaller cupped stones he 

 attributes to the Indian custom of cracking hickory 

 nuts, by laying them in such cavities and striking 

 them with another stone. The larger-sized cups 

 and basin-shaped cavities in earth-fast boulders and 

 rocks he classes as mortars. But the more elaborate 

 sculpturings on rock-surfaces present the central 

 cup, the surrounding circles and the radial groove 

 of the European and Indian examples, and the 

 inference is that they belong to the religious or 

 ceremonial symbolism of primeval man. The most 

 remarkable examples of rock-surfaces sculptured 

 with cups and circles in Scotland are those at 

 Achnabreac in Argyllshire, described by Professor 

 Sir J. Y. Simpson, and at High Banks in Kirkcud- 

 brightshire, discovered in 1887 and 1888, and de- 

 scribed by Mr George Hamilton in the Proceedings 

 of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. 



See Archaic Sculpturinr/s of Cups and Circles, tfcc., by 

 Sir J. Y. Simpson (Edinburgh, 1867) ; Inci.ied Markings 

 on Stone, &c., from drawings made for the Duke of 

 Northumberland ( Lond. 1869); Skandinavien's Hallrist- 

 ningar af A. E. Holm berg (Stockholm, 1848) ; and Obser- 

 vations on Cup-shaped and other Lapidarian Sculptures 

 in the Old World and in America, by Charles Eau (Wash- 

 ington, 1881 ). 



Cu'pola ( Ital. , from the root of cup ), a spherical 

 vault, or concave ceiling, on the top of a building ; 

 the internal part of a Dome (q.v.). The term is 

 also sometimes used for a dome which is ogival 

 (not hemispherical or semi-elliptical) in outline, 

 or for a small dome. Cupolas are often wholly or 

 partially of glass. There are cupola-furnaces ; see 

 IRON. 



Cupping is one of the simplest and most popu- 

 lar methods of producing local depletion, by the 

 application of partially exhausted cupping- glasses 

 to the surface of the skin. By this means the blood 

 is diverted from deeper structures to the surface of 

 an affected part, whence it may be removed by 

 scarifying the skin (wet cupping), or where it 

 may be allowed to remain exuded in the subcutane- 

 ous tissues like a Bruise (q.v.), until it be removed 

 by absorption ( dry cupping ). 



Cupping has been a part of surgical practice from 

 the earliest times, and instruments for performing 

 it have been found in use among the least civilised 

 nations. Of old, the cups were either small horns, 

 open at both ends, from which the air was with- 

 drawn by suction at the narrow extremity, or 

 glasses of various shapes, with a small hole in the 

 bottom of each. This hole was plugged with wax, 

 the air exhausted by heat, and when the operator 

 wished to remove them, he withdrew the plug, and 

 allowed the air to enter. Thti modem cupping- 

 glass is a beaker containing 3 to 6 fluid ounces, 



