, a variety of garnet, belonging to the lime-alumina type,
known also as essonite or hessonite, from the Gr. [Greek: esson],
"inferior," in allusion to its being less hard and less dense than most
other garnet. It has a characteristic red colour, inclining to orange,
much like that of hyacinth or jacinth. Indeed it was shown many years
ago, by Sir A.H. Church, that many gems, especially engraved stones,
commonly regarded as hyacinth, were really cinnamon-stone. The
difference is readily detected by the specific gravity, that of
hessonite being 3.64 to 3.69, whilst that of hyacinth (zircon) is about
4.6. Hessonite is rather a soft stone, its hardness being about that of
quartz or 7, whilst the hardness of most garnet reaches 7.5.
Cinnamon-stone comes chiefly from Ceylon, where it is found generally as
pebbles, though its occurrence in its native matrix is not unknown.

CINNAMUS [KINNAMOS], JOHN, Byzantine historian, flourished in the second
half of the 12th century. He was imperial secretary (probably in this
case a post connected with the military administration) to Manuel I.
Comnenus (1143-1180), whom he accompanied on his campaigns in Europe and
Asia Minor. He appears to have outlived Andronicus I., who died in 1185.
Cinnamus was the author of a history of the period 1118-1176, which thus
continues the _Alexiad_ of Anna Comnena, and embraces the reigns of John
II. and Manuel I., down to the unsuccessful campaign of the latter
against the Turks, which ended with the disastrous battle of
Myriokephalon and the rout of the Byzantine army. Cinnamus was probably
an eye-witness of the events of the last ten years which he describes.
The work breaks off abruptly; originally it no doubt went down to the
death of Manuel, and there are indications that, even in its present
form, it is an abridgment. The text is in a very corrupt state. The
author's hero is Manuel; he is strongly impressed with the superiority
of the East to the West, and is a determined opponent of the pretensions
of the papacy. But he cannot be reproached with undue bias; he writes
with the straightforwardness of a soldier, and is not ashamed on
occasion to confess his ignorance. The matter is well arranged, the
style (modelled on that of Xenophon) simple, and on the whole free from
the usual florid bombast of the Byzantine writers.

_Editio princeps_, C. Tollius (1652); in Bonn, _Corpus Scriptorum
Hist. Byz._, by A. Meineke (1836), with Du Cange's va