The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 425

TANNER, THOMAS, bishop and antiquary, born at Market Lavington, Wilts.h.i.+re; became a graduate and Fellow of Oxford; took orders, and rose to be bishop of St. Asaph; his reputation as a learned and accurate antiquary rests on his two great works "Not.i.tia Monastica, or a Short Account of the Religious Houses in England and Wales," and "Bibliotheca Britannico-Hibernica," a veritable mine of biographical and bibliographical erudition; bequeathed valuable collections of charters, deeds, &c., to the Bodleian Library (1674-1735).

TANNHaUSER, a knight of medieval legend, who wins the affection of a lady, but leaves her to wors.h.i.+p in the cave-palace of Venus, on learning which the lady plunges a dagger into her heart and dies; smitten with remorse he visits her grave, weeps over it, and hastens to Rome to confess his sin to Pope Urban; the Pope refuses absolution, and protests it is no more possible for him to receive pardon than for the dry wand in his hand to bud again and blossom; in his despair he flees from Rome, but is met by Venus, who lures him back to her cave, there to remain till the day of judgment; meanwhile the wand he left at Rome begins to put forth green leaves, and Urban, alarmed, sends off messengers in quest of the unhappy knight, but they fail to find him.

TANNIN, an astringent principle found in gallnuts and the bark chiefly of the oak.

TANTALUS, in the Greek mythology a Lydian king, who, being admitted from blood relations.h.i.+p to the banquets of the G.o.ds, incurred their displeasure by betraying their secrets, and was consigned to the nether world and compelled to suffer the constant pangs of hunger and thirst, though he stood up to the chin in water, and had ever before him the offer of the richest fruits, both of which receded from him as he attempted to reach them, while a huge rock hung over him, ever threatening to fall and crush him with its weight.

TANTIA TOPEE, the most daring and stubborn of Nana Sahib's lieutenants during the Indian Mutiny; in alliance with the Rani of Jhansi he upheld for a time the mutiny after the flight of his chief, but was finally captured and executed in 1859.

TAOISM, the religious system of LAOTZE (q. v.).

TAORMINA (2), a town of Sicily; crowns the summit of Monte Tauro, 35 m. SW. of Messina; chiefly celebrated for its splendid ruins of an ancient theatre, aqueducts, sepulchres, &c.

TAPAJOS, one of the greater affluents of the Amazon; its head-waters rise in the Serra Diamantina, in the S. of Matto-Grosso State; has a northward course of over 1000 m. before it joins the Amazon; is a broad and excellent waterway, and navigable in its lower course for 150 m.

TAPLEY, MARK, body-servant to Martin Chuzzlewit, in d.i.c.kens's novel of the name.

TAPTI, a river of Bombay; has its source in the Betul district of the Central Provinces, and flows westward across the peninsula 450 m. to the Gulf of Cambay; is a shallow and muddy stream, of little commercial use.

TARA, HILL OF, a celebrated eminence, cone-shaped (507 ft.), in county Meath, 7 m. SE. of Navan; legend points to it as the site of the residence of the kings of Ireland, where something like a parliament was held every three years.

TARANAKI (22), a provincial district of New Zealand, occupying the SW. corner of North Island; remarkable for its dense forests, which cover nearly three-fourths of its area, and for its beds (2 to 5 ft. deep) of t.i.taniferous iron-sand which extend along its coasts, out of which the finest steel is manufactured; New Plymouth (4) is the capital.

TARANTO (25), a fortified seaport of South Italy, situated on a rocky islet which lies between the Gulf of Taranto and the Mare Piccolo, a broad inlet on the E., 72 m. S. of Bari; is well built, and contains various interesting buildings, including a cathedral and castle; is connected with the mainland on the E. by a six-arched bridge, and by an ancient aqueduct on the W.; some textile manufactures are carried on, and oyster and mussel fisheries and fruit-growing are important; as the ancient Tarentum its history goes back to the time when it was the chief city of Magna Graecia; was captured by the Romans in 272 B.C., and after the fall of the Western Empire was successively in the hands of Goths, Lombards, and Saracens, and afterwards shared the fate of the kingdom of Naples, to which it was united in 1063.

TARAPACA (47), a maritime province of North Chili, taken from Peru in 1883; its immense deposits of nitrate of soda are a great source of wealth to the country; capital IQUIQUE (q. v.)

TARARE (12), a town of France, dep. of Rhone, 21 m. NW. of Lyons; busy with the manufacture of muslins, silks, and other fine textiles.

TARASCON (7), a picturesque old town of France, 18 m. SW. of Avignon; is surrounded by walls, has a 15th-century castle (King Rent's), a Gothic church, silk and woollen factories.

TARBES (25), an old historic town of France, on the Adour, 100 m.

SW. of Toulouse; has a fine 12th-century cathedral, a Government cannon factory, etc.

TARE AND TRET, commercial terms, are deductions usually made from the gross weight of goods. Tare is the weight of the case or covering, box, or such-like, containing the goods; deducting this the _net weight_ is left. Tret is a further allowance (not now so commonly deducted) made at the rate of 4 lb. for every 104 lb. for waste through dust, sand, etc.

TARENTUM. See TARANTO.

TARGUMS, translations, dating for the most part as early as the time of Ezra, of several books of the Old Testament into Aramaic, which both in Babylonia and Palestine had become the spoken language of the Jews instead of Hebrew, executed chiefly for the service of the Synagogue; they were more or less of a paraphrastic nature, and were accompanied with comments and instances in ill.u.s.tration; they were delivered at first orally and then handed down by tradition, which did not improve them. One of them, on the Pentateuch, bears the name of Onkelos, who sat at the feet of Gamaliel along with St. Paul, and another the name of Jonathan, in the historical and prophetical books, though there are others, the Jerusalem Targum and the Pseudo-Jonathan, which are of an inferior stamp and surcharged with fancies similar to those in the TALMUD (q. v.).

TARIFA (13), an interesting old Spanish seaport, the most southerly town of Europe, 21 m. SW. of Gibraltar, derives its name from the Moorish leader Tarif, who occupied it 710 A.D.; held by the Moors for more than 500 years; still thoroughly Moorish in appearance, dingy, crowded, and surrounded by walls; is connected by causeway with the strongly-fortified Isleta de Tarifa.

TARNOPOL (26), a town of Galicia, Austria, on the Sereth, 80 m. SE.

of Lemberg; does a good trade in agricultural produce; inhabitants chiefly Jews.

TARNOV (25), a town of Galicia, Austria, on the Biala, 48 m. SE. of Cracow; is the see of a bishop, with cathedral, monastery, etc.; manufactures linen and leather.

TARPEIAN ROCK, a precipitous cliff on the W. of the Capitoline Hill at Rome, from which in ancient times persons guilty of treason were hurled; named after Tarpeia, a vestal virgin, who betrayed the city to the Sabine soldiers, then besieging Rome, on condition that they gave her what they wore on their left arms, meaning their golden bracelets; instead the soldiers flung their s.h.i.+elds (borne on their left arms) upon her, so keeping to the letter of their promise, but visiting perfidy with merited punishment; at the base of the rock her body was buried.

TARQUINIUS, name of an ill.u.s.trious Roman family of Etruscan origin, two of whose members, according to legend, reigned as king in Rome: LUCIUS TARQUINIUS SUPERBUS, fifth king of Rome; the friend and successor of Ancus Martius; said to have reigned from 616 to 578 B.C., and to have greatly extended the power and fame of Rome; was murdered by the sons of Ancus Martius. LUCIUS TARQUINIUS SUPERBUS, seventh and last king of Rome (534-510), usurped the throne after murdering his father-in-law, King Servius Tullius; ruled as a despot, extended the power of Rome abroad, but was finally driven out by a people goaded to rebellion by his tyranny and infuriated by the infamous conduct of his son s.e.xtus (the violator of Lucretia); made several unsuccessful attempts to regain the royal power, failing in which he retired to c.u.mae, where he died.

TARRAGONA (27), a Spanish seaport, capital of a province (349) of its own name, situated at the entrance of the Francoli into the Mediterranean, 60 m. W. of Barcelona; contains many interesting remains of the Roman occupation, including an aqueduct, still used, and the Tower of the Scipios; possesses also a 12th-century Gothic cathedral; has a large s.h.i.+pping and transport trade, and manufactures silk, jute, lace, &c.

TARRYTOWN (4), a village of New York State, on the Hudson, 21 m. N.

of New York; a.s.sociated with the arrest of Major Andre in 1780, and the closing scenes of Was.h.i.+ngton Irving's life.

TARs.h.i.+SH, a place frequently mentioned in the Old Testament, now generally identified with Tartessus, a Phoenician settlement in the SW.

of Spain, near the mouth of the Guadalquivir, which became co-extensive with the district subsequently known as Andalusia; also conjectured to have been Tarsus, and also Yemen.

TARSUS (8), a city of great antiquity and interest, the ancient capital of Cilicia, now in the province of Adana, in Turkey in Asia, on the Cydnus, 12 m. above its entrance into the Mediterranean; legend ascribes its foundation to Sennacherib in 690 B.C.; in Roman times was a famous centre of wealth and culture, rivalling Athens and Alexandria; a.s.sociated with the meeting of Antony and Cleopatra and the deaths of the emperors Tacitus and Maximinus; here St. Paul was born and notable Stoic philosophers; in the hands of the Turk has decayed into a squalid residence of merchants busy with the export of corn, cotton, wool, hides, &c. In winter the population rises to 30,000.

TARTARS (originally TATARS), a name of no precise ethnological signification, used in the 13th century to describe the Mongolic, Turkish, and other Asiatic hordes, who, under GENGHIS KHAN (q. v.), were the terror of Eastern Europe, and now bestowed upon various tribes dwelling in Tartary, Siberia, and the Asiatic steppes.

TARTARUS, a dark sunless waste in the nether deeps, as far below earth as heaven is above it, into which Zeus hurled the t.i.tans that rebelled against him; the term was subsequently sometimes used to denote the whole nether world and sometimes the place of punishment.

TARTESSUS, the Greek and Roman name for the Scriptural Tars.h.i.+sh.