CYRENA’IC SHELL (The), the lyre or strain of Callini’achos, a Greek poet of Alexandria, in Egypt.  Six of his hymns in hexameter verse are still extant.

  For you the Cyrenaic shell
  Behold I touch revering.

  Akenside, Hymn to the Naiads.

CYR’IC (St.), the saint to whom sailors address themselves.  The St. Elmo of the Welsh.

  The weary mariners
  Called on St. Cyric’s aid. 
  Southey, Madoc, i. 4 (1805).

CYRUS AND TOM’YRIS.  Cyrus, after subduing the eastern parts of Asia, was defeated by Tomyris queen of the Massage’tae, in Scythia.  Tomyris cut off his head, and threw it into a vessel filled with human blood, saying, as she did so, “There, drink thy fill.”  Dante refers to this incident in his Purgatory, xii.

  Consyder Syrus ... 
  He whose huge power no man might overthrowe,
  Tom’yris Queen with great despite hath slowe,
  His head dismembered from his mangled corps
  Herself she cast into a vessel fraught
  With clotted bloud of them that felt her force. 
  And with these words a just reward she taught—­
  “Drynke now thy fyll of thy desired draught.” 
  T. Sackville, A Mirrour for Magistraytes
  ("The Complaynt,” 1587).

CYTHERE’A, Venus; so called from Cythe’ra (now Cerigo), a mountainous island of Laco’nia, noted for the worship of Aphrodite (or Venus).  The tale is that Venus and Mars, having formed an illicit affection for each other, were caught in a delicate net made by Vulcan, and exposed to the ridicule of the court of Olympus.

  He the fate [May sing]
  Of naked Mars with Cytherea chained. 
  Akenside, Hymn to the Naiads.

CYZE’NIS, the infamous daughter of Diomed, who killed every one that fell into her clutches, and compelled fathers to eat their own children.

CZAR (Casar), a title first assumed in Russia by Ivan III., who, in 1472, married a princess of the imperial Byzantine line.  He also introduced the double-headed black eagle of Byzantium as the national symbol.  The official style of the Russian autocrat is Samoderjetz.  D’ACUNHA (Teresa), waiting-woman to the countess of Glenallan.—­Sir W. Scott, Antiquary (time, George III.).

DAFFODIL.  When Perseph’one, the daughter of Deme’ter, was a little maiden, she wandered about the meadows of Enna in Sicily, to gather white daffodils to wreathe into her hair, and being tired she fell asleep.  Pluto, the god of the infernal regions, carried her off to become his wife, and his touch turned the white flowers to a golden yellow.  Some remained in her tresses till she reached the meadows of Acheron, and falling off there grew into the asphodel, with which the meadows thenceforth abounded.

  She stepped upon Sicilian grass,
  Demeter’s daughter, fresh and fair,
  A child of light, a radiant lass,
  And gamesome as the morning air. 
  The daffodils were fair to see,
  They nodded lightly on the lea;
  Persephone!  Persephone!