CELLINI, BENVENUTO, a celebrated engraver, sculptor, and goldsmith, a most versatile and erratic genius, born at Florence; had to leave Florence for a bloody fray he was involved in, and went to Rome; wrought as a goldsmith there for 20 years, patronised by the nobles; killed the Constable de Bourbon at the sack of the city, and for this received plenary indulgence from the Pope; Francis I. attracted him to his court and kept him in his service five years, after which he returned to Florence and executed his famous bronze “Perseus with the Head of Medusa,” which occupied him four years; was a man of a quarrelsome temper, which involved him in no end of scrapes with sword as well as tongue; left an autobiography, from its self-dissection of the deepest interest to all students of human nature (1500-1571).

CELSIUS, a distinguished Swedish astronomer, born at Upsala, and professor of Astronomy there; inventor of the Centigrade thermometer (1701-1744).

CELSUS, a celebrated Roman physician of the age of Augustus, and perhaps later; famed as the author of “De Medicina,” a work often referred to, and valuable as one of the sources of our knowledge of the medicine of the ancients.

CELSUS, a philosopher of the 2nd century, and notable as the first assailant on philosophic grounds of the Christian religion, particularly as regards the power it claims to deliver from the evil that is inherent in human nature, inseparable from it, and implanted in it not by God, but some inferior being remote from Him; the book in which he attacked Christianity is no longer extant, only quotations from it scattered over the pages of the defence of Origen in reply.

CELTIBE`RI, an ancient Spanish race occupying the centre of the peninsula, sprung from a blending of the aborigines and the Celts, who invaded the country; a brave race, divided into four tribes; distinguished in war both as cavalry and infantry, and whom the Romans had much trouble in subduing.

CELTS.  The W. of Europe was in prehistoric times subjected to two invasions of Aryan tribes, all of whom are now referred to as Celts.  The earlier invaders were Goidels or Gaels; they conquered the Ivernian and Iberian peoples of ancient Gaul, Britain, and Ireland; their successors, the Brythons or Britons pouring from the E., drove them to the westernmost borders of these countries, and there compelled them to make common cause with the surviving Iberians in resistance; in the eastern parts of the conquered territories they formed the bulk of the population, in the W. they were in a dominant minority; study of languages in the British Isles leads to the conclusion that the Irish, Manx, and Scottish Celts belonged chiefly to the earlier immigration, while the Welsh and Cornish represent the latter; the true Celtic type is tall, red or fair, and blue-eyed, while the short, swarthy type, so long considered Celtic, is now held to represent the original Iberian races.