126 



CENTRIFUGAL FORCE CERBERUS. 



members ot all parties are distributed all over the 

 house. 



CENTRIFUGAL FORCE. See Central Forces. 



CENTRIPETAL FORCE. See Central Forces. 



CENTURIES OF MAGDEBURG. The first com- 

 prehensive work of the Protestants on the history of 

 the Christian church was so called, because it was 

 divided into centuries, earli volume containing a hun- 

 dred years, and was first written at Magdeburg. 

 Mutt hia-. Flacius (q. v.) formed the plan of it in 1552, 

 in order to prove the agreement of the Lutheran 

 doctrine with that of the primitive Christians, anil 

 the difference between the latter and that of the 

 Catholics. Joh. Wigand, Matth. .Index, Basilius 

 Faber, Andreas Corvmus, and Thomas Holzhuter, 

 were, after Flacius, the chief writers and editors. 

 Some Lutheran princes and nobles patronized it, ;nul 

 many learned men assisted in the work, which was 

 drawn, with great care and fidelity, from the original 

 sources, compiled with sound judgment, and written 

 in Latin. It was continued by the centuriatores (as 

 the editors were called) only to 1300. It was pub- 

 lished at Bale, from 1559 to 1574, in Uiirteen vols. 

 fol., at great expense. A good modern edition, by 

 13aumgarten and Sender, which reaches, however, 

 only to the year 500, appeared at Nuremburg, from 

 1757 to 1765, in six vols. 4to. A good abridgment 

 was prepared by Lucas Osiander ('1 ubingen, 1592 

 1604, 9 vols. 4to), of which the Tubingen edition, 

 1607 and 1608 (usually in four thick vols. 4to), com- 

 prehends also the period from the fourteenth to the 

 sixteenth century. The Catholics finding themselves 

 attacked in this alarming way, and confuted by mat- 

 ters of feet, Baronius (q. v.) wrote his Annals, in 

 opposition to the Centuries. 



CENTURY (Latin centuria) ; a division of 100 

 men. Tliis kind of division was very common with 

 the Romans, and was used, in general, to denote a 

 particular body, although this might not contain ex- 

 actly 100 men. Thus centuries, in the army, were 

 the companies into which the Roman legions were 

 divided. This name was also given to the divisions 

 of the six classes of the people, introduced by Servius 

 Tullius. The first class contained eighty, to which 

 were added the eighteen centuries of the knights ; 

 the three following classes had each twenty centu- 

 ries, the fifth thirty, and the sixth only one century. 

 The people voted in the public elections by centu- 

 ries. See Census. 



CEPHALONIA, or CEFALONIA ; the largest 

 of the islands in the Ionian sea, west of the Morea, 

 at the entrance of the golfo di Patrassa, or gulf of 

 Lepanto, about forty miles in length, and from ten 

 to twenty in breadth ; Ion. 20 40* to 21 18' E. ; lat. 

 38 to 38 28' N. ; square miles 340, with 63,200 in- 

 Iiabitants, who own 400 vessels of different kinds. 

 The island has 203 towns and villages, three ports, 

 and excellent anchoring places and bays. The cli- 

 mate is warm and delightful, the landscape is adorned 

 with flowers during the whole year, and the trees 

 yield two crops of fruit annually. A great part of 

 the soil is devoted to the production of raisins, cur- 

 rants, wine, oil, citrons, melons, pomegranates, and 

 cotton. The raisins are preferred to those of any 

 other of the Grecian islands, and even to those of 

 the Morea. About 2500 tons are produced annually. 

 Between 25 and L ),000 casks of oil, and 50,000 of 

 wine, 5 or 6,000,000 pounds of currants, and 100,000 

 pounds of cotton, are likewise obtained yearly. Silks, 

 medicinal herbs, oranges, and lemons are also raised. 

 The system of agriculture adopted by the great land 

 owners requires that a large proportion of the grain 

 and meat consumed in the island should be imported 

 from the Morea. The island is subject to frequent 

 earthquakes. Cephalonia belonged to the Veneti- 



ans until 1797, when the French took possession of 

 it. Since 1815, it lias belonged to the republic of 

 the united Ionian islands (q. v.). (See Napier's 

 Statistical Account of the Island of Cefalonia, Lon- 

 don, 1&JJ4.) The ancient name of the island was 

 Cephallenia, from the mythological Cephalus, hus- 

 band of Procris. It was tributary to Thebes, the Ma- 

 cedonians, and the ^Etolians, till the Romans took it. 

 In the time of Thucydides, it had four cities; Same, 

 Prone, Cranii, and Pale. Strabo only knew of two. 



CEPHALUS ; the son of Creusa ; according to 

 some, the son of Deioneus, king of Phocis, and of 

 Diomede. H e was the husband of Procris. Shortly 

 after his marriage, Aurora carried off the beautiful 

 youth while he was hunting on mount Ilymettus. 

 He refused the love of the goddess, who induced 

 him to put the virtue of his wife to a trial which it 

 could not witlistand. Procris, in return, tempted 

 him likewise, and he yielded also. Learning their 

 mutual weakness, they became reconciled. But 

 Procris subsequently became jealous of her husband, 

 and concealed herself in a wood to watch him. He 

 mistook her, among the leaves, for a wild animal, 

 and killed her. On this, he was banished from 

 Greece by the court of Areopagus, or, as some relate 

 killed himself with the same dart which had destroy- 

 ed Procris. 



CERACCHI, JOSEPH, born at Rome, was an emi- 

 nent statuary, when the revolution in his native city 

 induced him to give up the practice of his art, and 

 engage in politics. In 1799, he was among the 

 warmest partisans of the new republic. On the re- 

 establishment of the papal authority, he was obliged 

 to leave Rome, and went to Paris, where he was 

 employed in making a bust of the first consul. Never- 

 theless, he joined the young French artists whom he 

 had known at Rome, and whose ardent republican 

 opinions coincided with his own, in a conspiracy 

 against Bonaparte, in whom he saw only the oppres- 

 sor of his country. In October, 1800, he was arrested 

 at the opera, with Arena, Damerville, and Topino 

 Lebrun. Before the tribunal, he answered only in 

 monosyllables to the questions put to liim. He was 

 sentenced to death, together with his accomplices, 

 and ascended the scaffold, Feb. 1801, with great 

 firmness. The death of this disciple, and almost 

 rival, of Canova, was a great loss to sculpture. 



CERBERUS; a three-headed dog, with snakes 

 for hair, the offspring of Echidna by Typhon, the 

 most terrible of the giants that attempted to storm 

 heaven. At his bark, hell trembled, and, when he 

 got loose from his hundred cliains, even the Furies 

 could not tame him. He watched the entrance of 

 Tartarus, or the regions of the dead, and fawned on 

 those who entered, but seized and devoured those 

 who attempted to return. Hercules only subdued 

 him. Thus says the Greek mythology. In the ar- 

 ticle Cemetery, the reader will find that it was cus- 

 tomary, among the Egyptians, after a corpse had 

 been solemnly Tjuried, to bid farewell to the deceased 

 three times, with a loud voice. To express the cir- 

 cumstance tliat the deceased had been honoured with 

 the rites of burial and the lamentations of liis friends, 

 they represented, in the legend imprinted on the 

 mummy, or engraved on the tomb, the figure of the 

 horse of the Nile, which the Greeks mistook for a 

 dog, and represented it with three heads, in order to 

 express the three cries or farewells. The Egyptians 

 called this hieroglyphic oms, and the Greeks cerber, 

 from the Egyptian ceriber, a word that means the cry 

 of the tomb. It is natural, therefore, to suppose the 

 Egyptian oms the basis of the Greek mythos of Cer- 

 berus. See page 148 in Lectures on Hieroglyphic! 

 and Egyptian Antiquities, by the marquis Spineto, 

 London, 1829, 8vo. 



