tfanely open, and all evidently ancient (Bobinson, new ed. iii, 137). Dr. Olin (Traveli^ ii, 84) describes some- thing of a better sort near Hebron : ** Just vrithout the city are some cisterns, which probably belong to a very early age. A large basin, forty-seven paces square, stands outside the gate by which we entered the city. It was nearly full of greenish water, and has been repaired at a period apparently not very re- mote. It is of very solid workmanship, built of hewn limestone, and may be eighteen or twenty feet deep. The descent is by flights of stairs situated at the four comers, by which the water is brought up in vessels and skins, and poured into troughs for the flocks, or carried away for domestic uses. It was not at this time fit for drinking. Another pool, of smaller dimen- sions, occupies higher ground on the north side of the city. These reservoirs are filled by the rains, and are unconnected with an^ perennial fountain." Yitruvius (viii, 7) describes the method in use in his day for con- structing water-tanks, but the native rock of Palestine usually superseded the necessity of more art in this work than is sufficient to excavate a basin of the re- quired dimensions. The city of Alexandria is sup- plied with water contained in arched cisterns support- ed by pillars, extending under a great part of the old city (Van Egmont, Travels^ ii, 134). See Pool.
Empty cisterns were sometimes used as prisons and places of confinement. Joseph was cast into a " pit" (*liSl, Gren. xxxvii, 22), and his ** dungeon" is called by the same name (xli, 14). Jeremiah was tlirown into a miry though empty cistern, whose depth is in- dicated by the cords used to let him down (Jer. xxxvili, 6). To this prison tradition has assigned a locality near the gate called Herod*s gate (Hasselquist, p. 140 ; Maundrell, Bohn's ed. of Ear^ Traoelt, p. 448). See Prison. According to Thomson (Land and Book, ii, 262-4), dry cisterns are often used in Palestine for granaries, and are very liable to be plundered pf their wheat by ants. See Gbanabt.
Various allusions by way of figure are made to ds- tems in Scripture. The breaking of the wheel at the cistern — the wheel that was used to send down and pull up again the bucket which drew water trom the larger cisterns — is used in Eccles. xii, 6, as an image . of the breaking up of the animal economy, which per- petually sends, while it is at work, the flow of vital blood from the heart to the extremities. To drink waters out of one's own cistern is a proverbial expres- sion (Prov. V, 15) for confining one's self to the legiti- mate sources of pleasure which God has associated with our state, as contradistinguished from those which are tlie property of others. But the merely human and artificial nature of cisterns, which are of man's workmanship, and have no living spring with- in them, serve as a fit emblem of the insufficiency of creature confidenoes, and of the foUy of preferring these to the infinite and overflowing fulness of God — as in the solemn charge of the prophet, " My people have committed two evils : they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out dstems, broken cisterns that can hold no water" (Jer. ii, 13).— Smith, s. v. ; Kitto, s. v. ; Fairbaim, s. v. See Water.
ClstertiaiiB. See CisTEBciAira.
Citeanx. See Cistbrciahs.
Cithern (KiBdpa, 1 Mace, iv, 54, L e. citkara or guitar), a musical instrament most probably of Greek origin, employed by the Chaldasans at balls and routs, and introduc^ by the Hebrews into Palestine on their retam thither after the Babylonian captivity. The cithern was of the guitar species, and was known at a later period as the cittern, under which name it is mentioned by the old dramatists as having constituted part of the furniture of a barber's shop. Of the same species is the CithBr or Zither of Southern Germany, the Tyrol, and Switzerland.
CITIES
S56
CITIZENSHIP
With respect to the shape of the cithern or dthara mentioned in the Apocrypha, the opinion of the learn- ed is divided : according to some, it resembled in form the Gi^ek delta, A ; others represent it as a half- moon ; and others, again, like the modem guitar. In many Eastern countries it is still in use with strings, varying in number from three to twenty-four. Under the name of Koothir, travellers describe it as a wood- en plate or dish, with a hole beneath, and a piece of skin stretched above ^ like a drum. Two sticks. Joined after , the manner of a fan, pass through the skin at the end, and where the two sticks stand apart, they are connected by a transversal piece of wood. From the upper end of this wooden triangle to the point below are Ikstened five chords, which, at a little distance above their junction, pass over a bridge, like the strings of a violin. The chords ^<x*f"'^'^ental are made to vibrate by means of a Cithara. leather thong festened to one of the lateral sticks of the triangle (see Mendelssohn *8 edition of the Ptalnu, 2d Pref.).
The cithara, if it be not the same with, resembles very closely the instruments mentioned in the book of Psalms, under the denominations of ^iss, 7^9, 3Si9, respectively rendered in the A.V. "harp," "psal- tery, " " organ. ' ' In Chaldee, cithara is transferred as Di-inp, the Keri for DI'lH-'P (Dan. iii, 6), in the A. y. rendered "harp," and the same Engl, word is em- ployed instead of cithern (1 Mace, iv, 54) in Robert Barker's edition of the English Bible (London, 1615). Gesenius {Thes. Heb. p. 215) considers cithara as the same with harp; but Luther translates KiOapaiq by ntU Pfeifen, " with pipes."— Smith, s. v. See Habf. Cities. See Citt.