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 clashing of sword and shield preventing his cries from being heard, and thus became the body-guard of the god and the first priests of Zeus and Rhea. In historic times the cult of the Curetes was widely known in Greece in connexion with that of (q.v.). Its ceremonies consisted principally in the performance of the Pyrrhic dance to the accompaniment of hymns and flute music, by the priests, who represented and thus commemorated the original act of the Curetes themselves. The dance was originally distinguished from that of the Corybantes by its comparative moderation, and took on the full character of the latter only after the cult of the Great Mother, Cybele, to which it belonged, spread to Greek soil. The origin of the dance may have lain in the supposed efficacy of noise in averting evil.

The Curetes are represented in art with shield and sword performing the sacred dance about the infant Zeus, sometimes in the presence of a female figure which may be Rhea. Their number in art is usually two or three, but in literature is sometimes as high as ten. Of their names the following have survived: Kures, Kres, Biennos, Eleuther, Itanos, Labrandos, Panamoros, Palaxos; but no complete list of names is possible because of their confusion with the names of the Corybantes and other like deities. Their origin is variously related: they were earth-born, sprung of the rain, sons of Zeus and Hera, sons of Apollo and Danais, sons of Rhea, of the Dactyli, contemporary with the Titans (Diod. Sic. v. 66). Rationalism made them the mortal sons of a mortal Zeus, or originators of the Pyrrhic dance, inventors of weapons, fosterers of agriculture, regulators of social life, &c. A plausible theory is that of Georg Kaibel (Göttinger Nachrichten, 1901, pp. 512-514), who sees in them, together with the Corybantes, Cabeiri, Dactyli, Telchines, Titans, &c., only the same beings under different names at different times and in different places. Kaibel holds that they all had a phallic significance, having once been great primitive deities of procreation, and that having fallen to an indistinct, subordinate position in the course of the development and formalization of Greek religion, they survive in historic times only as half divine, half demonic beings, worshipped in connexion with the various forms of the great nature goddess. The resemblances, especially between Rhea and her Curetes and the Great Mother and her (q.v.), were so striking that their origins were inextricably confused even in the minds of the ancients: e.g. Demetrius of Scepsis (Strabo 469, 12) derives the Curetes and Rhea from the cult of the Great Mother in Asia, while Virgil (Aen. iii. 111) looks upon the latter and the Corybantes as derivations from the former. The worship of both was akin in nature to that of the Dactyli, the Cabeiri, and even of Dionysus, the special visible bond being the orgiastic character of their rites.

Consult Immisch in Roscher’s Lexicon, s.v. “Kureten.”

 CURETON, WILLIAM (1808–1864), English Orientalist, was born at Westbury, in Shropshire. After being educated at the free grammar school of Newport, and at Christ Church, Oxford, he took orders in 1832, became chaplain of Christ Church, sub-librarian of the Bodleian, and, in 1837, assistant keeper of MSS. in the British Museum. He was afterwards appointed select preacher to the university of Oxford, chaplain in ordinary to the queen, rector of St Margaret’s, Westminster, and canon of Westminster. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society and a trustee of the British Museum, and was also honoured by several continental societies. He died on the 17th of June 1864.

Cureton’s most remarkable work was the edition with notes and an English translation of the Epistles of Ignatius to Polycarp, the Ephesians and the Romans, from a Syriac MS. that had been found in the monastery of St Mary Deipara, in the desert of Nitria, near Cairo. He held that the MS. he used gave the truest text, that all other texts were inaccurate, and that the epistles contained in the MS. were the only genuine epistles of Ignatius that we possess—a view which received the support of F. C. Baur, Bunsen, and many others, but which was opposed by Charles Wordsworth and by several German scholars, and is now generally abandoned (see ). Cureton supported his view by his Vindiciae Ignatianae and his Corpus Ignatianum,—a Complete Collection of the Ignatian Epistles, genuine, interpolated and spurious. He also edited a partial Syriac text of the Festal Letters of St Athanasius, which was translated into English by Henry Burgess (1854), and published in the Library of Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church; Remains of a very Ancient Recension of the Four Gospels in Syriac, hitherto unknown in Europe; Spicilegium Syriacum, containing Remains of Bardesan, Meliton, Ambrose, Mara Bar Serapion; The third Part of the Ecclesiastical History of John, Bishop of Ephesus, which was translated by Payne Smith; Fragments of the Iliad of Homer from a Syriac Palimpsest; an Arabic work known as the Thirty-first Chapter of the Book entitled The Lamp that guides to Salvation, written by a Christian of Tekrit; The Book of Religious and Philosophical Sects, by Muhammed al Sharastani; a Commentary on the Book of Lamentations, by Rabbi Tanchum; and the Pillar of the Creed of the Sunnites. Cureton also published several sermons, among which was one entitled The Doctrine of the Trinity not Speculative but Practical. After his death Dr W. Wright edited with a preface the Ancient Syriac Documents relative to the earliest Establishment of Christianity in Edessa and the neighbouring Countries, from the Year of our Lord’s Ascension to the beginning of the Fourth Century; discovered, edited and annotated by the late W. Cureton.

 CURETUS, a tribe of South American Indians, inhabiting the country between the rivers of Japura and Uaupés, north-western Brazil. They are short but sturdy, wear their hair long, and paint their bodies. Their houses are circular, with walls of thatch and a high conical roof. They are a peaceable people, living in small villages, each of which is governed by a chief.

 CURFEW, or, a signal, as by tolling a bell, to warn the inhabitants of a town to extinguish their fires or cover them up (hence the name) and retire to rest. This was a common practice throughout Europe during the middle ages, especially in cities taken in war. In the law Latin of those times it was termed ignitegium or pyritegium. In medieval Venice it was a regulation from which only the Barbers’ Quarter was exempt, doubtless because they were also surgeons and their services might be needed during the night. The curfew originated in the fear of fire when most cities were built of timber. That it was a most useful and practical measure is obvious when it is remembered that the household fire was usually made in a hole in the middle of the floor, under an opening in the roof through which the smoke escaped. The custom is commonly said to have been introduced into England by William the Conqueror, who ordained, under severe penalties, that at the ringing of the curfew-bell at eight o’clock in the evening all lights and fires should be extinguished. But as there is good reason to believe that the curfew-bell was rung each night at Carfax, Oxford (see Peshall, Hist. of Oxford), in the reign of Alfred the Great, it would seem that all William did was to enforce more strictly an existing regulation. The absolute prohibition of lights after the ringing of the curfew-bell was abolished by Henry I. in 1100. The practice of tolling a bell at a fixed hour in the evening, still extant in many places, is a survival of the ancient curfew. The common hour was at first seven, and it was gradually advanced to eight, and in some places to nine o’clock. In Scotland ten was not an unusual hour. In early Roman times curfew may possibly have served a political purpose by obliging people to keep within doors, thus preventing treasonable nocturnal assemblies, and generally assisting in the preservation of law and order. The ringing of the “prayer-bell,” as it is called, which is still practised in some Protestant countries, originated in that of the curfew-bell. In 1848 the curfew was still rung at Hastings, Sussex, from Michaelmas to Lady-Day, and this was the custom too at Wrexham, N. Wales.

 CURIA, in ancient Rome, a section of the Roman people, according to an ancient division traditionally ascribed to Romulus. He is said to have divided the people into three tribes, and to have subdivided each of these into ten curiae, each of which contained a number of families (gentes). It is more probable that the curiae were not purely artificial creations, but represent natural associations of families, artificially regulated and distributed to serve a political purpose. The local names of curiae which have come down to us suggest a local origin for the groups; but as membership was hereditary, the local tie doubtless grew weak with successive generations. Each curia was organized as a political and religious unit. As a political corporation it had no recognized activities beyond the command of a vote in the Comitia Curiata (see ), a vote whose nature was determined by a majority in the votes of the individual members