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Rh power, who remodelled the Tarsian constitution (making it timocratic and oligarchic). The picture which Philostratus, in his biography of Apollonius Tyanensis, draws of the Tarsians as vain, luxurious and illiterate, represents the general Graeco-Roman conception of the city. The legend which was believed to be graven on the statue of Sardanapalus at Anehiale (12 m. S.W. from Tarsus) might have been the motto of most Tarsians: "Eat, drink, play, for nothing else is worth this (gesture)" (referred to by St Paul, 1 Cor. xv. 32). The statue was probably an archaic work, with Hittite or- cuneiform inscription, representing a figure with right hand raised: the letters and the attitude were misunderstood; the figure was supposed to be snapping the fingers and uttering this expression of effeminate and weary sensualism.

Tarsus depended for its greatness on commerce, peace and orderly government. It was not a strong fortress, and could not be defended during the decay of the empire against bar- barian invasion. The Arabs captured the whole of Cilicia shortly after a.d. 660; and Tarsus seems to have been a ruin for more than a century after the conquest. But Harun al- Rashid rebuilt its walls in 787, and made it the north-western capital of the Arab power in the long wars against the Byzantine empire. All the raids, which were made in Asia Minor re- gularly, year by year, sometimes twice in one year, through the Cilician Gates and past the fortress Loulon, issued through the north gate of Tarsus, which was called the " Gate of the Holy War." The western gate is still standing, and is mis- named " St Paul's Gate." The caliph Mamun died on such a foray in a.d. 833, having caught a chill at a great spring north of the Cilician Gates beside Ak-Keupreu. He was brought to Tarsus where (like the emperor Tacitus) he died, and (like the emperor Julian) was buried. His illness recalls the fever which Alexander the Great contracted from bathing in the Cydnus. Nicephorus Phoeas reconquered Tarsus and all Cilicia for the empire in a.d. 965. In the First Crusade Baldwin and Tanered captured Tarsus a.d. 1099, and there the two leaders had a serious quarrel. It formed part of the kingdom of Lesser Armenia fcr great part of the three centuries after a.d. 1180, and it was fortified by Leo II. and Hethoum I. But Turkoman and Egyptian invaders disputed its possession with the Greek emperors and Armenian kings, and with one another. Finally it passed into Ottoman hands about the beginning of the 16th century.

Most of the successive masters of Tarsus had their own legends about its origin, usually with a religious character justifying and explaining their possession of the city. The Assyrian Sardanapalus, the native gcd Sandan, the Greek hero Perseus, the Greek god Heracles, are all called founder of Tarsus. Iapetus, i.e. Japhet, father of Javan " the Ionian," was called the grandfather of Cydnus, who gave name to the river. A curious ceremony was practised in honour of Sandan (identified with the Greek Heracles): a pyre was periodically erected and the god was burned on it. It is said that the original name of the city was Parthenia, which suggests that a virgin goddess was worshipped here as in so many shrines of Asia Minor and Syria: the virgin goddess Athena appears on Tarsian coins. The Baal of Tarsus is named in Aramaic letters on many of its coins in the Persian period.

The ruins of the ancient city are very extensive, but they are deeply buried, and make little or no appearance above the surface except in the Dunuk Tash (popularly identified as the " Tomb of Sardanapalus," a monument which, however, was at Anehiale, not at Tarsus). This shapeless mass of concrete was probably the substructure of a Graeco-Roman temple, from which the marble coating has been removed. The modern town has considerable bazaars and trade; but the climate is very oppressive, owing to the proximity of vast marshes which occupy the site of the harbour and the lower part of the original Cyndus course. The river was diverted from its former course by Justinian in the 6th century. The emperor's intention was only to carry off the surplus waters in time of flood and prevent inundations in the city, not to deprive Tarsus of what was its chief pride and boast; but gradually the neglect of subsequent centuries allowed the channel in the city to become blocked by accumulation of soil, and now the whole body of water flows in the new channel east of the city, except what is drawn off by an artificial irrigation course to water the gardens on the western side of the city. The population is about 25,000, including, besides Turks and Syrian Moslems, alsc Armenians, Greeks, Syrian Christians, Persians, Afghans, Ansaria (mostly gardeners) and even Hindus. There is a large American mission school called St Paul's Institute, giving a very comprehensive education to Armenians and Greeks drawn from an extensive district.

(W. M. Ra.)

TART, a dish of baked pastry containing fruit, a fruit pie; also a small open piece of baked pastry with jam placed upon it. The word was adapted from the O.Fr. tarte; the older form must have been torte, as is seen in the mod. Fr. tourte and the diminutive lorlel or torteau; the origin is the Lat. torta, twisted (torquere, to twist), used of a cake in Med. Lat., the paste or dough of cakes or tarts being rolled or twisted. The alteration of the vowel is also seen in Ital. tartera. In English there is some confusion with " tart," sharp, acid, bitter, which comes from O.E. teart, sharp, severe, properly "tearing," from leran, to tear; cf. "bitter," from "to bite."

TARTAGLIA, or, NICCOLÒ (c. 1506-1559), Italian mathematician, was born at Brescia. His childhood was passed in dire poverty. During the sack of Brescia in 1512, he was horribly mutilated by some French soldiers. From these injuries he slowly recovered, but he long continued to stammer in his speech, whence the nickname, adopted by himself, of "Tartaglia." Save for the barest rudiments of reading and writing, he tells us that he had no master; yet we find him at Verona in 1521 an esteemed teacher of mathematics. In 1534 he went to Venice. For Tartaglia's discovery of the solution of cubic equations, and his contests with Antonio Marie Floridas, see (History). In 1548 Tartaglia accepted a situation as professor of Euclid at Brescia, but returned to Venice at the end of eighteen months. He died at Venice in 1559.