A small box or chest, in which anything might be placed, but more particularly applied to the small boxes which were carried in procession in the festivals of Ceres and Bacchus. These boxes, which were always kept closed in the public processions, contained sacred things connected with the worship of these deities. In the representations of Dionysiac processions of ancient vases, women carrying cistae are frequently introduced. The cista was also the name of the ballotbox, into which those who voted in the comitia and in the courts of justice cast their tabellae. - Smith, 1873