Page:EB1911 - Volume 26.djvu/953

Rh warfare with the surrounding Berber and Sudanese populations. The tribal organization embraces dardai or headmen, maina or nobles, and the common folk, while the unwritten law of custom rules supreme over all classes. Their customs are partly negroid, partly Arab. They scar their faces like the negroes and wear the veil like the Tuareg.

TIBER (anc. Tiberis; Ital. Tevere), a river of central Italy. It traverses the Tuscan Apennines—in which it rises at a point some 12 m. N. of Pieve San Stefano, 4160 ft. above sea-level —in a series of picturesque ravines, skirts the west foot of the Sabine Mountains in a broad shallow valley, then crosses the Roman Campagna, cutting its way through Rome, and finally enters the Tyrrhenian (Mediterranean) Sea by two arms at Ostia and Fiumicino, the latter artificial. Its principal tributaries are the Paglia, the Nera and the Anio or Teverone, and it is generally navigable by boats up to the confluence of the Nera, a distance of 104 m., though, owing to the rapidity of the current, there is very little navigation above Rome. The total length of the river is 240 m., of which 21 m. lie between Rome and the sea. This latter portion of the river's course is tortuous, but in spite of this, and although the depth varies from only 7 to 20 ft., and in places at low water does not exceed 4 ft., it is nevertheless navigated by vessels up to 180 tons burden and proposals have been made to embank and dredge it so as to increase this depth to 8 ft. at least, or to build a ship canal up to Rome. The area of the Tiber basin is 6845 sq. m. The stream is heavily charged with sediment, and from that circumstance got its ancient epithet of flavus (tawny). It does not, however, form a delta proportionate to the volume of its water, owing to a strong sea current flowing northwards close to the shore, to the sudden sinking of the sea to a great depth immediately off the mouth of the river, and possibly also to the permanent subsidence of the Italian coast from the Tiber mouth southwards to Terracina. Still it has advanced at each mouth about 2 m. since Roman times, while the effect of the sediment it brings down is seen on the north-west almost as far as Palo (anc. Alsium), and on the south-east beyond Tor Paterno (see ) in the gradual advance of the coast. The rate of advance at Fiumicino is estimated at 13 ft. per annum. From Rome to the sea the fall is only 6.5.: 1000. The arm which reaches the sea at Fiumicino is a canal, dug by Claudius and improved by Trajan (see ), which partially silted up in the middle ages, and was reopened for navigation by Paul V. in 1612, m. long, 80–130 ft. wide, and with a minimum depth of 5 ft. The lower course of the Tiber has been from the earliest ages subject to frequent and severe inundations; of more recent ones, those of 1598, 1870 and 1900 have been especially destructive, but since the year 1876 the municipality of Rome, assisted by the Italian Government, has taken steps to check, and possibly to prevent these calamities within the city by constructing embankments of stone, resting on caissons, for a total distance (counting in both sides of the river) of 6 miles. The flood of 1900 carried away about m. of the new embankment on the right bank of the right arm opposite the island owing to the faulty planning of the course of the river at that point, which threw the whole of the water into the right arm, and except in flood time, left the left arm dry—a fault which has since been corrected.

In the prehistoric period the mouth of the Tiber must have been situated at the point where the hills which follow it on each side cease, about 12 m. below Rome. On the right bank they are of pliocene gravel, on the left of tufa; and on the latter, on a cliff above the river (the ancient Puilia saxa) stood Ficana (marked by the farmhouse of Dragoncello), which is said to have owed its origin to Ancus Martius. Beyond these hills the low coast belt formed by the solid matter brought down by the river begins; and on each side of the mouth in the flat ground were salt marshes (see, ). The flood of 1900, when the river both above and below Rome extended over the whole width of its valley, from hill to hill, and over most of the low ground at its mouth, gave an idea of the conditions which must have existed in prehistoric days.

 TIBERIAS, a town on the western shore of the sea of Galilee (to which it gives its modern Arabic name, Bahr Tubariya, i.e. Sea of Tiberias). It has a population of about 4000, more than half of whom are Jews (principally Polish immigrants). It stands in a fertile but fever-stricken strip of plain between the Galilee hills and the sea-shore. It is the seat of a kaimmakam or sub-governor, subordinate to the governor of 'Akka. There are Latin and Greek hospices here, as well as an important mission, with hospital and schools, under the United Free Church of Scotland. The pre-Herodian history of the city is not certain. There is a rabbinical tradition that it stands on the site of a city called Rakka, but this is wholly imaginary. Josephus (Ant. xviii. 2, 3) describes the building of Tiberias by Herod Antipas near a village called Emmaus, where are hot springs. This is probably the Hammath of Jos. xix. 35. The probability is that Herod built an entirely new city; in fact, the circumstance that it was necessary to disturb an ancient graveyard proves that there were here no buildings previously. The graveyard was probably the cemetery of Hammath. Owing to this necessity Herod had a difficulty in peopling his city, and, indeed, was compelled to use force (Jos. Ant., loc. cit.) to cause any but the dregs of the populace to incur defilement by living in a place thus unclean. On this account Tiberias was long regarded with aversion by Jews, but after the fall of Jerusalem it was settled by them and rose to be the chief centre of rabbinic learning.

The building of the city falls between 16 and  22. It was named in honour of the emperor Tiberius, and rapidly increased in luxury and art, on entirely Greek models. Probably because it was so completely exotic in character it is passed over in almost total silence in the Gospels-the city (as opposed to the lake) is mentioned but once, as the place from which came boats with sight-seers to the scene of the feeding the five thousand, John vi. 23. There is no reason to suppose that Christ ever visited it. The city surrendered to Vespasian, who restored it to Agrippa. It now became a famous rabbinic school. Here lived Rabbi Judah hak-Kadōsh, editor of the Mishnah; here was edited the Jerusalem Talmud, and here are the tombs of Rabbi Aqiba and Maimonides. Christianity never succeeded in establishing itself here in the Byzantine period, though there was a bishopric of Tiberias, and a church built by Constantine. In 637 the Arabs captured the town. The crusaders under Tancred retook it, but lost it to Saladin in 1187. In the 16th century the city was rebuilt by Joseph ben Ardut, subvented by Doña Gracia and Sultan Suleiman. An attempt was made to introduce the silk industry. In the 18th century it was fortified and occupied by the famous independent sheikh Dhahir el-Amir.

Tiberias is notoriously dirty and proverbial for its fleas, whose king is said by the Arabs to hold his court here. Most of the town was ruined by the earthquake of 1837. The most interesting buildings are the ruins of a fortress, perhaps Herodian, south of the town, and an ancient synagogue on the sea-coast. The hot springs mentioned by Josephus (and also by Pliny) are about half an hour's journey to the south.

TIBERIUS [] (42 - 37), Roman emperor, was born on the 16th of November, 42 His father, who bore the same name, was an officer of Julius Caesar, who afterwards proposed to confer honours on the assassins, then joined Mark Antony's brother in his mad attack on Octavian, took refuge with Mark Antony, and returned to Rome when the general amnesty was proclaimed in 39  Livia, the mother of Tiberius, was also of the Claudian family, out of which her father had passed by adoption into that of the Livii Drusi. Early in 38 Livia was amicably ceded to Octavian (the future Augustus), and three months after her new marriage Drusus, brother to Tiberius, was born. Livia had no children by Augustus, and therefore devoted all her remarkable gifts to the advancement of her sons. Tiberius passed through the list of state offices in the usual princely fashion, beginning with the quaestorship at the age of eighteen, and attaining the consulate for the first time at twenty-nine. From the great capacity for civil affairs