CURSING 



CUHVI-; 



610 



I.. -mill _-. 'or, on a saltire azure, nine lozengea of 



tin- lii-l.l,' IK>IC u fanciful rt'Mi'inblance to the nine of 

 diamond-. 



See SWEARING. 

 4'ursilor, an >1<1 name for clerks of the^ Court 

 of Chain-cry who made out write. The Curator 

 H'tniii used to administer oat IIH to sheriffs, bailiffs, 



< urlain. in Fortification, is the portion of rara- 

 p:-n ciinnecting one Bastion (q.v.) with another. 



I urtesy. See COURTKSY. 



4 ' ii r I is, GEORGE WILLIAM, American author, 

 born in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1H'24; in 1850 

 joined the stall' of the New York Tribune, and was 

 one of the editors of Putnam's Monthly from 1852 

 t ' ) I S(59. He commenced the ' Editor's Easy Chair ' 

 papers in il<tr/>< /-'.v Mn/if/ifi/ in 1853, and became 

 principal leader-writer for Harper's Weekly on its 

 establishment in 1857. A novel, Trumps (1862), 

 and most of his books appeared first in these jour- 

 nals. Until 1884 he was a Republican ; then he 

 supported Cleveland. He died at New York, 31st 

 An-nisi ISit-J. Sec l.ifo by E. Cary ( 1894). 



4 'urt ins. ERNST, a distinguished German classi- 

 cal ardia-ologist and historian, born September 2, 

 1814, at Liibeck. He studied philology at Bonn, 

 (iottingen, and Berlin, visited Athens with Brand is 

 in 1837, and next accompanied his teacher, Ottfried 

 Miiller, in his travels through Greece. For some 

 time he taught in two Berlin gymnasiums, next 

 became extraordinary professor at the university 

 there, and ( 1844-49) tutor to the Crown Prince of 

 Prussia. In 1856 he succeeded Hermann as pro- 

 fessor at Gottingen, whence he was recalled in 1868 

 to become ordinary professor at Berlin. From 

 1853 a member of the Rwyal Academy of Sciences, 

 he was in 1871-93 one of its permanent secretaries. 

 His earlier works were Klassische Studien (1840), 

 Anecdota Delphica (1843), Inacriptiones Atticce 

 Duodecim (1843), and Die Akropolis von At/ten 

 (1844). The fruits of his repeated visits to 

 Greece and Asia Minor last in the spring of 

 1874, to make preparations for the intended ex- 

 cavations at Olympia at the instance of the 

 German government appear partly in the memoirs 

 of the Gottingen Society of Sciences and of the 

 Berlin Academy, and partly in his books, Naxos 

 (1846), Olympia (1852), Die lonier (1855), Die 

 Topographic Kleinasiens ( 1 872 ), and Ephesos ( 1874 ). 

 His orations, delivered at Gottingen in the capacity 

 of ' Professor Eloquentire,' were collected in 1864 ; 

 those at Berlin, under the title, Altertum und 

 Gegenwart (2 vols. 1875-82). Besides these and 

 numerous papers in the special archaeological and 

 philological journals, Curtius published Pelopon- 

 nesos (2 vols. 1851-52), a luminous description of 

 that part of Greece, and <lrii-i-hisi-he Gesc/itf/ttf 

 (3 vols. 1857-61 ; 6th ed. 1887-89; trans, by A. W. 

 Ward, 1868-76), a work un*(iuall<d for its' insight 

 into the artistic growth and development of the 

 Greek race. With Kaupert he prepared the Atlas 

 von Athen (1878) ; earlier, with Adler and Hirsch- 

 feld, Die A itsgrabungen zu O/i/nti/ia, the otlicial 

 account of the excavations at Olympia (3 vols. 

 1877-78). He died 1 1th July 1896. * 



4 urliiis. GEORG, a distinguished classical 

 scholar, the brother of the preceding, was born at 

 Liibeck, April 16, 1820, and studied at Bonn and 

 Berlin. After teaching some time at Dresden and 

 Berlin, he became in 1849 extraordinary, in 1851 

 ordinary, professor of Classical Philology at Prague, 

 and settlea as such at Kiel in 1854, at Leipzig in 

 1862. He died August 12, 1885. One of the 

 soundest Greek scholars in Germany, Curtius was 

 the first philologist of the generation that succeeded 

 the giants Bopp and Benfey. His most important 

 144 



\\ in ks were Griechwche Schulgrammatik ( 1K52 ; 20th 

 c.l. 1*90), translated into many language* (into 

 English in I >r Smith's series in 180.'} ) ; next the Er- 

 Iduterungen to the foregoing (1863; 3d ed. 1875), 

 translated into English by Abliott in 1870; Grund- 

 iler Griechixchen htymoloyie (1858; 5th ed., 

 with the collaboration of A. Wintlinch, 1879), trans- 

 lated into English by A. S. Wilkins and E. B. 

 England, 1875-76; and Dot Verbum der Griechitch- 

 en Sprache (1873-76; 2d ed. 1877-80), translated 

 l.y \N ilkins and England, 1880. Other works were 

 De Nominum Grcecorum Formatione (1842), Die 

 Sprachveraleichung in ihrem Verlialtnixa zur Klas- 

 mschen Pniloloaie (1845), Sprachvergleichende Bei- 

 trage zur Griecnischen und Lateiniscnen Grammatik 

 (1846), Philologie und Sprachwiwemschaft (1862), 

 Zur Chronologie der Jnaogermanischen Sprachfor- 

 schung (1867; 2d ed. 1873), and Zur Kritik der 

 netiesten Sprachforschung ( 1885 ), his last work, in 

 which he vigorously assails the theories of the ' new 

 grammarians,' and to explain the word -changes in 

 a language maintains the necessity of a thinf prin- 

 ciple of varying or sporadic change, in addition to 

 invariable 'phonetic law and the operation of 

 analogy. In the famous Studien zur Griecfi. und 

 Lat. Grammatik (10 vols. Leip. 1868-77) Curtius 

 united his own papers with those of his pupils and 

 others, including Brugmann, Fick, G. Meyer, and 

 Windisch. The ninth volume contained Brug- 

 mann's famous paper on the ' nasalis sonans,' which 

 first marked the revolt of the ' neogrammatici ' 

 against the master and traditional philology. 

 Curtius founded in 1878, with L. Lange, O. 

 Ribl>eck, and H. Lipsius, the Leipziger Studien 

 zur Klassischen Philologie. 



Curtius, METTUS or METTIUS, a noble Roman 

 youth who heroically sacrificed his life for the wel- 

 fare of his country, 362 B.C. A yawning chasm had 

 opened in the forum, and the soothsayers declared 

 it could only be filled by throwing into it the most 

 precious treasure of Rome ; whereupon Cnrtius 

 appeared on horseback in full armour, and exclaim- 

 ing : ' Rome has no greater riches than courage and 

 arms,' leaped into the abyss, which at once closed 

 over him. 



4 ill-till'-. QUINTUS (Qnintus Curtius Rufus), 

 author of the work De Eebus Gestis Alexandra 

 Magni, in ten books, of which the first two have 

 been lost, and the text of the remainder has come 

 down to us in an imperfect condition. Some critics 

 have placed him in the reign of Augustus against 

 the evidence of his style, which is moulded on that 

 of Seneca, and would naturally suggest a writer 

 contemporary with Claudius and Nero ; others, as 

 Niebuhr, under Severus ; and others again much 

 later. Curtius was poorly equipped as a historian, 

 and his book lias but little value as history ; but its 

 style, if mannered and declamatory, is elegant and 

 pleasing. The editio princeps was published at 

 Venice about 1471. Modern editions are those of 

 Miitzell ( 1841 ), Zumpt ( 1849), and Vogel ( 1875-80). 



Clirule Chair (sella citrtllix}, the chair of 

 honour of the old Roman kings, and later of con- 

 suls, pra'tors, 'curule a-diles, and some of the 

 other higher magistrates of tht- republic having 

 senatorial rank. It was a fold ing -stool originally 

 of ivory, then of metal, with curved legs crossing. 



Curvature. For Curvature of Strata, see 

 ANTICLINE, GEOLO<;Y. MOINTAINS; for Curva- 

 ture of Spine, see SPINAL COLUMN. 



Curve, a line descril>ed by a point moving so 

 that the direction changes at ever)- instant ; and in 

 mathematics the term curvature is restricted to 

 lines that follow some law in their change of direc- 

 tion. Thus, the law of the circle is, that all points 

 of it are equally distant from a fixed point, called 

 the centre. The law of a plane curve is generally 



