CIRCUMCISION, the practice of cutting away the foreskin, chiefly of males, as observed by the Jews and the Mohammedans, as well as other nations of remote antiquity; regarded by some as a mark of belonging to the tribe, and by others as a sacrifice in propitiation by blood.

CIRCUMLOCUTION OFFICE, a name employed by Dickens in “Little Dorrit” to designate the wearisome routine of public business.

CISALPINE GAUL, territory occupied by Gauls on the Italian or south side of the Alps.

CISALPINE REPUBLIC, a republic so called on both sides of the Po, formed out of his conquests by Napoleon, 1797; became the Italian Republic in 1802, with Milan for capital, and ceased to exist after the fall of Napoleon.

CISLEITHANIA, Austria proper as distinguished from Hungary, which is called Transleithania, on account of the boundary between them being formed by the river Leitha.

CISTERCIANS, a monastic order founded by Abbot Robert in 1098 at Citeaux, near Dijon; they followed the rule of St. Benedict, who reformed the Order after it had lapsed; became an ecclesiastical republic, and were exempt from ecclesiastical control; contributed considerably to the progress of the arts, if little to the sciences.

CITHAERON, a wood-covered mountain on the borders of Boeotia and Attica; famous in Greek legend.

CITIES OF REFUGE, among the Jews; three on the E. and three on the W. of the Jordan, in which the manslayer might find refuge from the avenger of blood.

CITIES OF THE PLAIN, Sodom and Gomorrah, with adjoining cities under the like doom.

CITIZEN KING, Louis Philippe of France, so called as elected by the citizens of Paris.

CITY OF BELLS, Strasburg.

CITY OF CHURCHES, Brooklyn, now incorporated with New York.

CITY OF DESTRUCTION, Bunyan’s name for the world as under divine judgment.

CITY OF GOD, Augustine’s name for the Church as distinct from the cities of the world, and the title of a book of his defining it.

CITY OF PALACES, Calcutta and Rome.

CITY OF THE PROPHET, Medina, where Mahomet found refuge when driven out of Mecca by the Koreish and their adherents.

CITY OF THE SEVEN HILLS, Rome, as built on seven hills—­viz., the Aventine, Coelian, Capitoline, Esquiline, Palatine, Quirinal, and Viminal.

CITY OF THE SUN, BAALBEK (q. v.); and a work by Campanella, describing an ideal republic, after the manner of Plato and Sir Thomas More.

CITY OF THE VIOLET CROWN, Athens.

CIUDAD REAL (royal city) (13), a Spanish town in a province of the same name, 105 m.  S. of Madrid, where Sebastian defeated the Spaniards in 1809.

CIUDAD RODRIGO (8), a Spanish town near the Portuguese frontier, 50 m.  SW. of Salamanca; stormed by Wellington, after a siege of 11 days, in 1812, for which brilliant achievement he earned the title of Earl in England, and Duke of Ciudad Rodrigo in Spain.