Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume IV.djvu/595

 CIMICIFUGA CIMOX 583 and before they returned the victor of Jugur- tha, Marius, who was regarded as the last hope of Rome, and had been three times successively elected consul, formed an army, with which he advanced into Gaul to meet the approaching Teutons, while the other consul, Catulus, op- posed the Cimbri, who separately passed the Alps and awaited their allies in the valleys of Italy. In 102, in a battle which lasted several days at Aquae Sextiae (Aix in Provence), Marius routed the Teutons, and their allies the Am- brones, with immense slaughter, and hastened to the aid of his less successful colleague in Italy. The terrible Cimbri had passed the Rhaetian Alps, gliding down, it was said, on their shields, had turned the course of the Adige to pass its valley more easily, and com- pelled the legions of Catulus to retreat. In 101 Marius fought a battle on the Raudian fields, near Vercelli. The battle array of the barbarians formed an immense square, covered with their shields, linked together with chains ; they were armed with helmets, cuirasses, and spears, and had 15,000 horse; their attack was formidable. But the heat of Italy, the sun and the dust, and the tactics of the Romans, led by Marius, Catulus, and Sulla, overcame them; they were not only defeated, but exterminated : 140,000 men were killed. Still their women fiercely defended their wagons and carts, which formed a kind of fortification. When further resistance became impossible, they killed their children, and then themselves. Some slight remnants of the Cimbric nation reappear after- ward, mentioned by Caesar as inhabiting Bel- gium, and by Tacitus, who speaks of a Cimbric embassy to Augustus from what is now called Jutland, who in their address to the emperor referred to the wars their ancestors had made on the Romans. CIMICIFUGA (bugbane ; Lat. cimex, bug, and fugare, to drive away), a tall herb of the order ranunculacece, with incisely toothed leaflets and white flowers. C. racemosa (black snakeroot) is found from Maine to Michigan and south- ward. The root is used medicinally in the sub- stance and in the form of decoction, tincture, and extract. A pint of the decoction may be taken daily, but the tincture and extract should be given in the dose of about half a teaspoonful. In small doses it stimulates the secretion of the mucous membrane, and allays nervous irrita- bility. In large doses it is said to produce vertigo, dimness of vision, and depression of pulse. It has been used with apparent success in chorea, rheumatism, and chronic bronchitis. CDIMERII, a nomadic race of extreme anti- quity, concerning whom there are numerous theories of more or less plausibility, but noth- ing has been established that seems even to ap- proach to certainty or truth. From the slight descriptions that remain of their habits it may be inferred that they were Tartars. They lived in tents, used wagons, and were " milkers of mares." Modern criticism is nevertheless inclined to connect them with the Celtic race. (See GOMEE.) They appear in a mythical form in the Odyssey, as dwellers beyond the ocean- stream, plunged in eternal darkness. The his- torical Cimmerians seem to have been first known or heard of in Asia Minor and on the shores of the Black sea, where the strait of Yenikale, between the Asiatic mainland and the Tauric Chersonese, or Crimea, was early desig- nated as the Cimmerian Bosporus. According to Herodotus, they were driven from their abodes in the Crimea by the Scythians, entered Asia Minor by migrating along the shores of the Euxine to the eastward, ravaged it during the reign of Ardys, the successor of Gyges, king of Lydia, and either remained there until the times of Alyattes and Cyaxares (616 B. C.), when they were finally expelled, or were suc- ceeded by a second horde at that period, when both were driven out together. IMON, an Athenian general and statesman, born about 510 B. C., died in 449. He was the son of Miltiades, and his mother was Hegesi- pyle, the daughter of Olorus, a Thracian king. He is said to have married his half sister El- pinice, but as there is no other instance of such a marriage in Athenian history, the truth of this assertion has been doubted. Diodorus says that on the death of his father, in order to obtain the paternal corpse for burial, he took his father's place in prison as guarantee for the payment of a fine of 50 talents inflicted on Miltiades ; but other authorities say that the imprisonment was compulsory, as the debt de- scended to the heir by the Athenian law. Ac- cording to Cornelius Nepos, he obtained his liberation by the aid of Callias, a man of low birth but of great wealth, who desired to marry Elpinice, and offered to pay the debt of Cimon if the latter would put her away and consent to her nuptials with himself. Cimon at first reject- ed these proposals, but afterward yielded to the pressing entreaties of his sister. At the battle of Salamis (480) he distinguished himself, and attracted the regard of Aristides, who recog- nized in the son of Miltiades natural and ad- ventitious advantages which might redound to the future benefit of the conservative party of Athens, and counterbalance the influence of Themistocles. In 477 Cimon and Aristides were placed at the head of the Athenian con- tingent to the Greek naval armament, under the supreme command of Pausanias, the Spar- tan regent. They so ingratiated themselves with the confederate Greeks, that on the dis- grace of Pausanias the supreme command was transferred to them, and the hegemony of Greece passed thereby from Sparta to Athens. Cimon's first use of his newly ac- quired power was to destroy the Persian gar- rison of Ei'on at the mouth of the Strymon, to capture Amphipolis, and to open that whole country to Athenian colonization. In 476 Cimon expelled the Dolopian pirates from the island of Scyros, and planted an Athenian col- ony in their place. His next feat of arms was to reduce Carystus, a city of Euboea, and the