type, so long
considered Celtic, is now held to represent the original Iberian races.

CENCI, THE, a Roman family celebrated for their crimes and
misfortunes as well as their wealth. FRANCESCO CENCI was twice
married, had had twelve children by his first wife, whom he treated
cruelly; after his second marriage cruelly treated the children of his
first wife, but conceived a criminal passion for the youngest of them, a
beautiful girl named BEATRICE, whom he outraged, upon which, being
unable to bring him to justice, she, along with her stepmother and a
brother, hired two assassins to murder him; the crime was found out, and
all three were beheaded (1599); this is the story on which Shelley
founded his tragedy, but it is now discredited.

CENIS, MONT, one of the Cottian Alps, over which Napoleon
constructed a pass 6884 ft. high in 1802-10, through which a tunnel 71/2 m.
long passes from Modane to Bardonneche, connecting France with Italy; the
construction of this tunnel cost L3,000,000, and Napoleon's pass a tenth
of the sum.

CENSORS, two magistrates of ancient Rome, who held office at first
for five years and then eighteen months, whose duty it was to keep a
register of the citizens, guard the public morals, collect the public
revenue, and superintend the public property.

CEN`TAURS, a savage race living between Pelion and Ossa, in
Thessaly, and conceived of at length by Pindar as half men and half
horses, treated as embodying the relation between the spiritual and the
animal in man and nature, in all of whom the animal prevails over the
spiritual except in Chiron, who therefore figures as the trainer of the
heroes of Greece; in the mythology they figure as the progeny of
Centaurus, son of IXION (q. v.) and the cloud, their mothers
being mares.

CENTRAL AMERICA (3,000), territory of fertile tableland sloping
gradually to both oceans, occupied chiefly by a number of small
republics, lying between Tehuantepec and Panama in N. America; it
includes the republics of Guatemala, Honduras, St. Salvador, Nicaragua,
and Costa Rica, and a few adjoining fractions of territory.

CENTRAL INDIA (10,000), includes a group of feudatory States lying
between Rajputana in the N. and Central Provinces in the S.

CENTRAL PROVINCES (12,944), States partly British and partly native,
occupying the N. of the Deccan, and lying between the Nerbudda and the
Godavary.

CEOS, one of the Cyclades, a small island 13 m. by 8 m.