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CITIUM—CITRIC ACID
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the middle ages must be sought among the unconverted barbarians of northern and western Europe, who kept alive the traditions taught them by conquerors and colonists; but as civilization was in its infancy with them the instruments sent out from their workshops must have been crude and primitive. Asia, the cradle of the cithara, also became its foster-mother; it was among the Greeks of Asia Minor that the several steps in the transition from cithara into guitar[1] (q.v.) took place.

Fig. 5.—Asiatic Cithara in
transition (or rotta). From a
fresco at Beni-Hasan
(c. 1700 B.C.).
Fig. 6.—Roman Cithara in
transition, of the Lycian
Apollo (Rome Mus. Capit.).
 

The first of these steps produced the rotta (q.v.), by the construction of body, arms and transverse bar in one piece. The Semitic races used the rotta at a very remote period (1700 B.C.), as we know from a fresco at Beni-Hasan, dating from the reign of Senwosri II., which depicts a procession of strangers bringing tribute; among them is a bearded musician of Semitic type bearing a rotta which he holds horizontally in front of him in the Assyrian manner, and quite unlike the Greeks, who always played the lyre and cithara in an upright position. A unique specimen of this rectangular rotta was found in an Alamannic tomb of the 5th or 6th century at Oberflacht in the Black Forest. The instrument was clasped in the arms of an armed knight; it is now preserved in the Völker Museum in Berlin. This old German rotta is an exact counterpart of instruments pictured in illuminated MSS. of the 8th century, and is derived from the cithara with rectangular body, while from the cithara with a body having the curve of the lower half of the violin was produced a rotta with the outline of the body of the guitar. Both types were common in Europe until the 14th century, some played with a bow, others twanged by the fingers, and bearing indifferently both names, cithara and rotta. The addition of a finger-board, stretching like a short neck from body to transverse bar, leaving on each side of the finger-board space for the hand to pass through in order to stop the strings, produced the crwth or crowd (q.v.), and brought about the reduction in the number of the strings to three or four. The conversion of the rotta into the guitar (q.v.) was an easy transition effected by the addition of a long neck to a body derived from the oval rotta. When the bow was applied the result was the guitar or troubadour fiddle. At first the instrument called cithara in the Latin versions of the Psalms was glossed citran, citre in Anglo-Saxon, but in the 11th century the same instrument was rendered hearpan, and in French and English harpe or harp, and our modern versions have retained this translation. The cittern (q.v.), a later descendant of the cithara, although preserving the characteristic features of the cithara, the shallow sound-chest with ribs, adopted the pear-shaped outline of the Eastern instruments of the lute tribe.  (K. S.) 


CITIUM (Gr. Kition), the principal Phoenician city in Cyprus, situated at the north end of modern Larnaca, on the bay of the same name on the S.E. coast of the island. Converging currents from E. and W. meet and pass seawards off Cape Kiti a few miles south, and greatly facilitated ancient trade. To S. and W. the site is protected by lagoons, the salt from which was one of the sources of its prosperity. The earliest remains near the site go back to the Mycenaean age (c. 1400–1100 B.C.) and seem to mark an Aegean colony:[2] but in historic times Citium is the chief centre of Phoenician influence in Cyprus. That this was still a recent settlement in the 7th century is suggested by an allusion in a list of the allies of Assur-bani-pal of Assyria in 668 B.C. to a King Damasu of Ķartihadasti (Phoenician for “New-town”), where Citium would be expected. A Phoenician dedication to “Baal of Lebanon” found here, and dated also to the 7th century, suggests that Citium may have belonged to Tyre. The biblical name Kittim, derived from Citium, is in fact used quite generally for Cyprus as a whole[3] later also for Greeks and Romans in general.[4] The discovery here of an official monument of Sargon II. suggests that Citium was the administrative centre of Cyprus during the Assyrian protectorate (700–668 B.C.).[5] During the Greek revolts of 500, 386 foll. and 352 B.C., Citium led the side loyal to Persia and was besieged by an Athenian force in 449 B.C.; its extensive necropolis proves that it remained a considerable city even after the Greek cause triumphed with Alexander. But like other cities of Cyprus, it suffered repeatedly from earthquake, and in medieval times when its harbour became silted the population moved to Larnaca, on the open roadstead, farther south. Harbour and citadel have now quite disappeared, the latter having been used to fill up the former shortly after the British occupation; some gain to health resulted, but an irreparable loss to science. Traces remain of the circuit wall, and of a sanctuary with copious terra-cotta offerings; the large necropolis yields constant loot to illicit excavation.

Bibliography.—W. H. Engel, Kypros (Berlin, 1841), (classical allusions); J. L. Myres, Journ. Hellenic Studies, xvii. 147 ff. (excavations); Cyprus Museum Catalogue (Oxford, 1899), p. 5-6; 153-155; Index (Antiquities); G. F. Hill, Brit. Mus. Cat. Coins of Cyprus (London, 1904), (Coins).  (J. L. M.) 


CITIZEN (a form corrupted in Eng., apparently by analogy with “denizen,” from O. Fr. citeain, mod. Fr. citoyen), etymologically the inhabitant of a city, cité or civitas (see City), and in England the term still used primarily of persons possessing civic rights in a borough; thus used also of a townsman as opposed to a countryman. The more extended use of the word, however, corresponding to civitas, gives “citizen” the meaning of one who is a constituent member of a state in international relations and as such has full national rights and owes a certain allegiance (q.v.) as opposed to an “alien”; in republican countries the term is then commonly employed as the equivalent of “subject” in monarchies of feudal origin. For the rules governing the obtaining of citizenship in this latter sense in the United States and elsewhere see Naturalization.


CITOLE, also spelled Systole, Cythole, Gytolle, &c. (probably a Fr. diminutive form of cithara, and not from Lat. cista, a box), an obsolete musical instrument of which the exact form is uncertain. It is frequently mentioned by poetical writers of the 13th to the 15th centuries, and is found in Wycliffe’s Bible (1360) in 2 Samuel vi. 5, “Harpis and sitols and tympane.” The Authorized Version has “psaltiries,” and the Vulgate “lyrae.” It has been supposed to be another name for the psaltery (q.v.), a box-shaped instrument often seen in the illuminated missals of the middle ages.


CITRIC ACID, Acidum citricum, or Oxytricarballylic Acid, C3H4(OH) (CO·OH)3, a tetrahydroxytribasic acid, first obtained in the solid state by Karl Wilhelm Scheele, in 1784, from the juice of lemons. It is present also in oranges, citrons, currants, gooseberries and many other fruits, and in several bulbs and tubers. It is made on a large scale from lime or lemon juice, and also by the fermentation of glucose under the influence of Citromycetes pfefferianus, C. glaber and other ferments. Lemon juice is fermented for some time to free it from mucilage, then boiled

  1. For a discussion of this question see Kathleen Schlesinger, The Instruments of the Orchestra, part ii., and especially chapters on the cithara in transition during the middle ages, and the question of the origin of the Utrecht Psalter, in which the evolution of the cithara is traced at some length.
  2. Cf. the name Kathian in a Ramessid list of cities of Cyprus, Oberhummer, Die Insel Cypern (Munich, 1903), p. 4.
  3. Gen. x. 4; Num. xxiv. 24; Is. xxiii. 1, 12; Jer. ii. 10; Ezek.
  4. Dan. xi. 30; I Macc. i. 1; viii. 5.
  5. Schrader, “Die Sargonstele des Berliner Museums,” in Abh. d. k. Preuss. Akad. Wiss. (1881); Zur Geogr. d. assyr. Reiches (Berlin, 1890), pp. 337-344.