for a few days after potting; then gradually reduce shade and increase ventilation. By the end of July the elegance of the foliage alone should well repay the care bestowed on them. From this time onwards very little shading will be needed, the object of the cultivator being to harden the growth already made. With the advent of cool weather in September, remove to flowering quarters in a warm greenhouse. Flowering will begin in November and will continue through the winter and spring. The damping off of the flower-buds may occasionally prove troublesome during winter. This may generally be traced to checks, such as sudden changes in temperature, too low a temperature, careless watering, &c. During spring plants that are flowering freely will require weak manure water about twice a week.
Plants selected to bear seed should be set aside for that purpose, and as soon as the capsules are found to be developing properly they should be reduced to six or seven per plant, and all flower-buds picked off as soon as they are large enough to handle. The production of strong seeds is of the utmost importance.
Plants grown for market purposes, either for decoration or for seed, are sown later than the above, are kept cooler, and during summer receive more ventilation and less shade. This results in the production of plants with much smaller and more erect leaves, which travel well. They are flowered in spring and early summer. The species grown for this purpose is C. persicum.
A few species are hardy in dry sheltered positions, such as rockeries, under walls and old trees, provided the positions are well drained. Such are C. europaeum, with reddish-purple flowers in summer; C. hederifolium in autumn; and C. neapolitanum, with large leaves marbled with silver and rosy-pink flowers.
CYCLE (Gr. κύκλος, a circle), in astronomy, a period of time
at the end of which some aspect or relation of the heavenly bodies
recurs. The more important cycles are discussed in the articles
Calendar and Eclipse. In physics, the term is applied to a
series of operations which, performed upon a system, brings it
back to its original state; “Carnot’s Cycle” is an example (see
Thermodynamics). From the use of the word for any period
at the end of which the same events recur in the same order or
for any complete series of phenomena, it is used loosely of any
long period of time. The name ὁ ἐπικὸς κύκλος, the epic
cycle, was given to the poems which complete the Homeric
account of the Trojan War (see below). It is this use which has
given rise to the application of the term “cycle” to a series of
prose or poetical romances which have for a centre one subject,
whether a person, as in the Alexander, Arthurian or Charlemagne
cycles, or an object, such as the ring of the Nibelungenlied.
In music “Song-cycle” (Ger. Liederkreis) is similarly used of
a series of songs written round one subject or set to poems by
the same author. Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte (Op. 98),
published in 1816, is the earliest instance. Schubert’s Die schöne
Müllerin, Schumann’s Dichterliebe and Brahms’s Magelone-Lieder
are well-known instances.
Epic Cycle.—This is a collection or corpus of lays written about 776–580 B.C. by poets of the Ionian School, introductory or complementary to the Homeric poems, dealing with the legends of the Trojan and Theban wars. At a later date they were arranged so as to form a continuous narrative (the Iliad and the Odyssey included), perhaps after certain alterations had been made, to fill up gaps and remove inconsistencies and repetitions. By whom, and when, they were so arranged, cannot be decided; it is possible that it was the work of Zenodotus of Ephesus, who had the care of the epic section of the Alexandrian library. In order to furnish the general reader with a comprehensive sketch of mythological history, Proclus—according to Welcker and Valesius (Valois), not the neo-Platonist, but an unknown 2nd or 3rd century grammarian, perhaps Eutychius Proclus of Sicca[1] in Africa, one of the tutors of Marcus Aurelius (see Proclus)—compiled a prose summary (Γραμματικὴ Χρηστομάθεια) of the contents of the poems, to serve as a sort of primer to Greek literature. Extracts from this are preserved in the Codex Venetus of Homer and Photius (cod. 239), according to which the epic cycle began with the union of Uranus and Ge and ended with the death of Odysseus on his return to Ithaca at the hands of his son Telegonus. The cycle was in existence in his (Proclus’s) time, and was in request not so much for its artistic merit, as for the “sequence of the events described in it.” Further light is thrown on the subject by pictorial representations, intended for school use during the Roman imperial period, the most famous of which is the Tabula Iliaca in the Capitoline museum.
The expression “epic cycle” in the sense of a poetical collection does not occur before the Christian era; the word κύκλος (“cycle,” “circle”) is used of a special kind of short poem and also of a prose abstract of mythological history; the adjective has the general sense of “hackneyed,” “conventional,” and is applied contemptuously (by Callimachus and Horace) to a particular Alexandrian school of poetry.
The most important poems of the Trojan legendary cycle are the Cypria of Stasinus (q.v.); the Aethiopis and Iliou Persis (Sack of Troy) of Arctinus (q.v.); the Little Iliad of Lesches (q.v.); the Nosti of Hagias or Agias; the Telegonia of Eugammon. To the Theban cycle belong: the Thebais or Expedition of Amphiaraus and the Epigoni of Antimachus. The Oechalias Halosis (capture of Oechalia) of Creophylus (q.v.); the Phocais (or Minyas) of Prodicus; and the Danais of Cercops, although belonging to the old Homeric epos, cannot with certainty be included in the epic cycle. The names of the authors are in several cases exceedingly doubtful.
Bibliography.—The standard work on the subject is F. G. Welcker, Der epische Cyclus (1865–1882); see also T. W. Allen, “The Epic Cycle,” in Classical Quarterly, Jan. and April 1908 (summary of sources and authorities); Wilamowitz-Möllendorff, Homerische Untersuchungen (1884), who regards the traditional names and personalities of the poets of the cycle with great scepticism; D. B. Monro, Journal of Hellenic Studies, iv. (1883), appendix to his edition of the Odyssey, xiii.-xxiv. (1900), and on the Codex Venetus fragment of Proclus; J. E. Sandys, Hist. of Class. Schol. (2nd ed., 1906), vol. i. ch. 2; J. B. Bury, Ancient Greek Historians (1909), pp. 2-8 on the epics as history; articles by H. Flach in Ersch and Gruber, Allgemeine Encyklopädie, and by E. Schwartz and others in Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopädie.
CYCLING, the clipped term now given comprehensively to
the sport or exercise of riding a bicycle (q.v.) or tricycle (q.v.).
Suggestions of vehicles having two or more wheels and propelled by the muscular effort of the rider or riders are to be found in very early times, even on the bas-reliefs of Egypt and Babylon and the frescoes of Pompeii; but though History. sporadic examples of such contrivances are recorded in the 17th and 18th centuries, it was apparently not till the beginning of the 19th century that they were used to any considerable extent. A “velocipede” invented by Blanchard and Magurier, and described in the Journal de Paris on the 27th of July 1779, differed little from the célérifère proposed by another Frenchman, de Sivrac, in 1690; it consisted of a wooden bar rigidly connecting two wheels placed one in front of the other, and was propelled by the rider, seated astride the bar, pushing against the ground with his feet. The next advance was made in the draisine of Freiherr Karl Drais von Sauerbronn (1785–1851), described in his Abbildung und Beschreibung seiner neu erfundenen Laufmaschine (Nuremberg, 1817). In this the front wheel was pivoted on the frame so that it could be turned sideways by a handle, thus serving to steer the machine (figs. 1 and 2). A similar machine, the “celeripede,” also with a movable front wheel, is said to have been ridden by J. N. Niepce in Paris some years before. In England the draisine achieved a great, though temporary, vogue under various names, such as velocipede, patent accelerator, bivector, bicipedes, pedestrian curricle (patented by Dennis Johnson in 1818), dandy horse, hobby horse, &c., and for a time it was popular in America also. The propulsion of the draisine by pushing with the feet being alleged to give rise to diseases of the legs, arrangements were soon suggested, as by Louis Gompertz in England in 1821, by which the front wheel could be rotated by the hands with the aid of a system
- ↑ An objection to this view is that according to the Augustan historian Capitolinus (Antoninus, 2) Eutychius of Sicca was a Latin not a Greek grammarian.
