CYAXAEES I. 702 CYCADACEiE. the Medes some tventy-eight years. Media at last, threw off the Scythian yoke, and Cyaxares once more successfully engaged the Assyrians and conquered Nineveh and the surrounding provinces with the exception of Babylon. The reign of Cyaxares lasted forty years, including the Scythian domination, and his name is often mentioned in the Old Persian inscriptions as the one to whom the rebel princes of iledia, who revolted against Darius, traced back their lin- eage in claiming the throne. See Media. CYAXAEES II. According to Xenophon (Cyrop. i. 5.2), a grandson of Cyaxares I. (q.v. ) and son of Astyages, and maternal uncle of Cyrus the Great. On the authority of Herodo- tus, however, it is generally believed that Asty- ages had no son. and it has been suggested that Cyaxares II. may have been the brother of Asty- ages and son of Cj'axares I. His identity with Ahasuerus of the Bible has likewise, but with uncertainty, been suggested. In this way it has been thought that Cyaxares II. may perhaps be the same as Darius the jNIede in the Book of Daniel, or even be identical with Gobryas. But the whole matter is complicated and imcertain. See D.Rius the IMede. CYBELE, slb's-le (Gk. KvjSari, Kyhelc.'Via, lihea ) . or EiiE.i Cybele. or the Great Motheb OF THE Gods. A divinity whose worship spread far and wide through the ancient world, though its early seats seem to have been Crete and Asia Minor. According to the myth which belonged to the worship of Zeus on Mount Ida, Ehea was tlie wife of Cronus and nifither of Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades, i.e. of the ruling race of gods. In Asia Minor we find widespread worship of a na- ture goddess, regarded as the motlier and source of all life, and honored with orgiastic rites upon the mountains and among the wild woods and caves. T)ie wild beasts attended upon her, espe- cially the lion, by whom her throne was watched and her car drawn. Her priests were called Cory- bantes. The Asiatic worship of Cybele had its origin apparently and certainly its chief centre at Pessinus in Phrygia, whence it passed into Lydia. United with the similar but less orgiastic Cretan cult of Rhea, it was early adopted by the Greeks of the mainland, and connected with local cults of a similar goddess. In Rome the worship of Cybele was introduced from Pessinus in B.C. 204, in consequence of the Sibylline prophecy, and the annual Megalensian games were established in her honor. From the first century B.C. this cult of the great Eastern goddess in various forms and imder many names was spread among the people by wandering bands of begging priests and priestesses, professing to work wonders, pre- dict the future, and by initiation into their mys- teries to bring relief from sin. The priests of Cy- bele in Asia Minor were eunuchs, in imitation of the mutilation of Attis (q.v.), the original servant of the goddess. In works of art she is usually represented as seated on a tlirone, adorned with a mural crown, from which a veil is suspended. At either side of the throne are lions, or perhaps a lion lies on her lap or imder her feet. Sometimes she is seen riding in a chariot drawn by lions. CYC'ADA'CEiE (Neo-Lat. nom. pi., from Neo-Lat. cjicas. Gk. W'Knr, kykas, African cocoa- palm). One of the four living groups of gym- nosperms. In the present flora nine genera of cycads are recognized, which contain about eighty species. They are exclusively tropical, and are about equally distributed between the eastern and western tropics. The stems are either col- umnar shafts, crowned with a rosette of huge fern-like foliage leaves, having the general habit of tree-ferns and palms; or they are like great tubers, completely invested by an anuor of thick leaf-bases and scale leaves, and crowned with fern-like leaves as in the other case. The group is of especial interest on account of its fern-like characters, and there, .seems to be general con- sent that it is a group which has lieen derived from the ferns. Although fern-like in appear- ance and in many structures, the cycads pro- duce seeds and must be associated with seed- jjlants, and since the seeds are exposed, they are gynmosperms. A discovery recently made emphasizes strik- ingly their fern-like character. In fertilization the male cells bear many cilia and are free- swimming, while in all other known seed-plants they have no power of motion. This retention of the old ciliated sperm habit by undoubted seed-plants is a veiy interesting transition con- dition. The group is also of interest in showing that the pollen-tube, which is connected in other seed-plants with the transfer of the male cells to the egg, may not have been originally devel- oped for this purpose. In the cycads the tube is developed by the pollen-grain, but it branches freely through the o'ule and acts as an absorbing system, the male cells never entering it. It was probably later in the evolution of plants that this absorbing system came to be used as a means of transferring the male cells. Another charac- teristic feature of the group is that the seed- coat, instead of being entirely hard, as in the conifers, is i)lum-like, since it develops in two layers, the inner hard and bony, the outer pulpy, making the ripe fruit resemble a plum. The structure of the stem in many cases is not essentially different from that of the ordinary conifer-stems, but in certain genera it ])resents unusual and suggestive features. In these cases the primary cambiiun, by means of which the ordinary increase in diameter is eft'ected, is short-lived, and a series of secondary cambiums is organized in the cortex. The vascular bundles thus formed in the cortex are frequently of the concentric type, which is characteristic of the ferns and not of the seed-plants. Although the strobili of the cycads have the general structure of those of conifers, in some cases the spore-leaves do not resemble those of the other seed-plants. For example, in the genus Cyeas there is no distinct stamen in the ordinary sense, but a leaf-like body whose under surface is thickly covered with groups of sporangia, as in ordinary ferns. The geographic distribution of cycads is as follows: In the Oriental tropics the genera are: Cycas, containing about sixteen species and rang- ing throughout tropical Asia, the East Indies, and the Australasian region; Macrozamia. with fourteen s]>ecies, and tlie monotypie Bowenia, both strictly Australasian; Encephalartos, with twelve species, and the monotypie Stangeria, both restricted to Africa, In the Occidental tropics the largest genus is Zamia, with about thirty species, ranging throughout tropical and sub- tropical America; Ceratozamia, with six species. and Dioon, with one species, are American;
