Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 1.djvu/725

 darcha, and his merits were so great, that as early as 1295 Andronicus asked the hand of his daughter, Irene, for one of his sons, John Palaeologus, to whom she was married in the same year. During the unfortunate civil contest between Andronicus the elder and his grandson, Andronicus the younger, Chumnus remained faithful to his imperial patron, and for some time defended the town of Thessalonica, of which he was praefect, against the troops of Andronicus the younger, whom he compelled to raise the siege. It seems that Chumnus had more influence and did more for the support of Andronicus the elder, than any other of the ministers of this unfortunate emperor. Towards the end of his life Chumnus took orders and retired into a convent, where he lived under the name of Nathanael, and occupied himself with literary pursuits. The time of his death has not been ascertained, but we must presume that he died after 1330, during the reign of Andronicus the younger.

Nicephorus Chumnus is the author of numerous works and treatises on philosophical, religious, ecclesiastical, rhetorical, and legal subjects, none of which have ever been printed ; they are extant in MS. in the principal libraries of Rome, Venice, and Paris. We give the titles of some of them as they stand in Latin in the catalogues of those libraries : " Confutatio Dogmatis de Processione Spiritus Sancti ;" " Sermo in Christi Transfigurationem ;" " Symbuleuticus de Justitia ad Thessalonicenses, et Urbis Encomium ;" " Ex Imperatoris Decreto, ut Judices jurejurando obligentur, ad Munus sancte obeundum ;" " Encomium ad Imperatorem " (Andronicum II.) ; " Querela adversus Niphonem ob male administratam Patriarchatus sui Provinciam ;" " Oratio funebris in Theoleptum Metropolitam Philadelphiae ;" " Ad Imperatorem de Obitu Despotae et Filii ejus," a letter to Andronicus II. the elder, on the death of his son, the despot John, who had married Irene, the daughter of Chumnus ; " De Charitate, erga Proximum, et omnia reliquenda ut Christum sequamur, &c. ;" " De Mundi Natura ;" " De Primis et Simplicibus Corporibus ;" " Quod Terra quum in Medio sit, infra se nihil habeat ;" " Quod neque Materia ante Corpora, neque Formae seorsim, sed haec ipsa simul constent;" "Contra Plotinum de Anima rationali Quaestiones variae, ubi de Metempsychosi, de Belluis, utrum Intellectu praeditae sint, nec ne, de Corporum Resurrectione, et aliis disseritur ;" " De Anima sensitiva et vegetiva ;" "Quod non impossibile sit, etiam secundum physices Rationes, collocatam esse Aquam in Firmamento, tum, quum Orbis Terrarum creatus sit, eamque ibi esse et perpetuo manere," &c. There are also extant " Oratio in Laudem Imperatoris Andronici Senioris," and a great number of letters on various subjects, several of which seem to be of great interest for history, while others, as well as the works cited above, appear to be of considerable importance for the history of Greek civilization in the middle ages. (Fabric. Bibl. Graec. vol. vii, pp, 675, 676 ; Cave, Hist. Liter. vol. ii. p. 494, ad an. 1320 ; Nicephorus Gregoras, lib. vii. p. 168, ed. Paris; Cantacuzenus, lib. i. p. 45, ed. Paris.)

 , the secretary (scriba) of the elder Scipio Africanus, was a candidate for the praetorship in 174 along with Scipio's son, but when he saw that he was obtaining more votes than the latter, he resigned in his favour. (Val. Max. iv. 5. § 3, iii. 5. § 2.) Cicereius was, however, elected praetor in the following year ( 173), and he obtained the province of Sardinia, but was ordered by the senate to go to Corsica first, in order to conduct the war against the inhabitants of that island. After defeating the Corsicans in battle, he granted them peace on the payment of 200,000 pounds of wax, and then passed over to Sardinia. On his return to Rome next year ( 172) he sued for a triumph on account of his victory in Corsica, and when this was refused by the senate, he celebrated on his own authority a triumph on the Alban mount, a practice which had now become not unfrequent. In the same year he was one of the three ambassadors sent to the Illyrian king, Gentius ; and in 167 he was again despatched on the same mission. In the year before ( 168) he dedicated on the Alban mount the temple to Juno Moneta, which he had vowed in his battle with the Corsicans five years before. (Liv. xli. 33, xlii. 1, 7, 21, 26 xlv. 17, 15.)

 , the name of a family, little distinguished in history, belonging to the plebeian Claudia gens, the only member of which mentioned is C. Claudius Cicero, tribune of the plebs in 454. (Liv. iii. 31.) The word seems to be connected with deer, and may have been originally applied by way of distinction to some individual celebrated for his skill in raising that kind of pulse, by whom the epithet would be transmitted to his descendants. Thus the designation will be precisely analogous to Bulbus, Fabius, Lentulus, Piso, Tubero, and the like.

 , the name of a family of the Tullii. The Tullii Cicerones had from time immemorial been settled at Arpinum, which received the full franchise in 188; but they never aspired to any political distinction until the stock was raised by the great orator from that obscurity into which it quickly relapsed after his death. His genealogy, so far as it can be traced, is repre­sented in the following table.

