TERNI, a town of Italy, in the province of Perugia, is situated in the fertile valley of the Nera, between two branches of that river, about 5 miles below the point where it is joined by the Velino. It has a station, threequarters of a mile off, on the railway line between Rome and Ancona, 69 miles to the north of the former city and 19 south by west from Spoleto. Terni is an episcopal see, and the seat of a sub-prefecture and a chamber of commerce. Its public buildings include the cathedral (17th century), the church of S. Francesco (partly dating from the 13th century), a gymnasium, and a theatre. Terni manufactures leather and cloth, and has some trade in wine and silk. For the traveller its chief interest lies in its antiquities (remains of an amphitheatre of the time of Tiberius, a temple, a theatre, baths, and numerous inscriptions) and in the proximity of the falls of Velino (Cascate delle Marmore). Alike in volume and in beauty these take a very high place among European waterfalls; the cataract has a total descent of about 650 feet, in three leaps of 65, 330, and 190 feet respectively. They owe their origin to M'. Curius Dentatus, who in 272 B.C. first opened an artificial channel by which the greater part of the Lacus Velinus in the valley below Reate was drained. The population of the town in 1881 was 9415, with its suburbs 10,371 (commune, 15,853).
Terni is the ancient Interamna ("inter amnes"), originally belonging to Umbria and founded, according to a local tradition, in the year 672 B.C. It early became a flourishing municipium, and it did not permanently suffer through being portioned out among his soldiers by Sulla. Its inhabitants had frequent litigations and disputes with their neighbours at Reate in connexion with the regulation of the Velinus, the waters of which are so strongly impregnated with carbonate of lime that by their deposits they tend to block up their own channel. The first interference with its natural course was that of M'. Curius Dentatus already referred to. In 54 B.C. the people of Reate appealed to Cicero to plead their cause in an arbitration which had been appointed by the Roman senate to settle disputes about the river, and in connexion with this he made a personal inspection of Lake Velinus and its outlets. In the time of Tiberius there was a project for regulating the river and its outlets from the lake, against which the citizens of Interamna and Reate energetically and successfully protested (Tac., Ann., i. 79). Similar questions arose as the river formed fresh deposits during the Middle Ages and during the 15th and 16th centuries. A branch of the Via Flaminia passed from Narnia to Forum Flaminii, and is given instead of the direct line in the Antonine and Jerusalem itineraries. The emperor Tacitus and his brother Florianus were probably natives of Interamna, which also has been claimed as the birthplace of Tacitus the historian, but with less reason. Terni was the scene of the defeat of the Neapolitans by the French on 27th November 1798.
TERPANDER, a Lesbian poet and musician, settled in Sparta about the end of the Second Messenian War (668 B.C.). According to some accounts, he was invited thither by command of the Delphian oracle to compose the differences which had arisen between different classes in the state. His innovations in music were considered to have inaugurated a new era of musical art in Greece; but we are very imperfectly informed as to their nature. On the strength of a fragment (No. 5 in Bergk), which may or may not be genuine, "rejecting the four-toned song, we will sing to thee new hymns with the seven-voiced lyre," Strabo says that he increased the number of strings in the lyre from four to seven; others take the fragment to mean that he developed the citharoedic nomos (sung to the accompaniment of the cithara or lyre) by making the divisions of the ode seven instead of four. We possess six short fragments of poetry in the Dorian dialect bearing the name of Terpander. They are from hymns to the gods Zeus, Apollo, Apollo and the Muses, the Dioscuri, &c., and are written in a slow spondaic movement or in dactyls. They present no remarkable features and are probably spurious.
Bergk, Poetæ Lyrici Græci, iii. (4th. ed.) pp. 7-12, Leipsic, 1882.
TERRACINA , a town of Italy, in the province of Rome, and about 60 miles to the south-east of that city, at the south-east extremity of the Pontine marshes, where the Monti Lepini (see Italy, vol. xiii. p. 438, and Latium) descend into the sea. The ancient town (Volscian Anxur, Roman Tarracina) stood on the white hillside ("impositum saxis late candentibus Anxur "), along the foot of which, by the seashore, ran the Via Appia. The modern town stands mainly on the level ground. The most conspicuous building is the cathedral, which is believed to occupy the site of a temple of Jupiter Anxurus; it is enriched both externally and internally with beautiful old columns and Roman mosaics. Above the town, on the summit of the cliff, are the remains of a palace of Theodoric (c. 500), afterwards a mediaeval castle. The ancient harbour, con structed by Antoninus Pius and once very important, is now silted up; a new mole affords shelter to coasting vessels. Fishing is carried on, and there is some trade in the produce of the district. The population of the town in 1881 was 6294 (commune, 8572).
Anxur finally became Roman in 400 B.C., and a colony was established there in 329. Its strategic position early gave it military importance; and its pleasant situation and its mineral waters led many Romans to build villas and seek seaside quarters there.
Meaning.
TERRA-COTTA.[1] Strictly speaking this name is applicable to all objects made of baked clay, from the rudest brick to the finest piece of pottery, but it usually has a more limited meaning, to denote fictile objects which do not come under the head of pottery, such as statuettes and busts; and in its architectural use it specially implies the finer sorts of decorative clay-work, to the exclusion of common building bricks. In ancient times, especially among the Greeks and Romans, terra cotta was employed for an immense variety of purposes, from the commonest objects of everyday use to the most elaborate and ambitious works of art, such as colossal statues and groups. Though the natural colour and sur face of the burnt clay are generally very pleasing in tone and texture, it seems to have been universally the custom in classical times to cover the terra-cotta completely with a thin white coating, which formed an absorbent ground for the further application of colour. For internal work, except in rare instances, these colours were mixed with a tempera medium, and applied after the clay had been fired. They were therefore not true ceramic colours; and pigments of great variety and brilliance could be employed, as they had not to undergo the severe ordeal of the kiln. For external work, such as that shown in fig. 5, only earth pigments such as ochres and lime were used, and the colours were fired.
Greek figures and reliefs.No branch of archaeology has during the last dozen years or so developed so rapidly as that of Greek terra-cotta figures; on this most fascinating subject an astonishingly large mass of literature has been published in Germany and France.[2] The discovery of this new world of Greek art began practically in 1873, with the first excavations in the tombs of Tanagra, a Bœotian town on the high road from Athens to the north, which brought to light a number of very beautiful terra-cotta statuettes.[3] Subsequent excavations at Corinth, Smyrna, Cyme, Tarentum, the Cyrenaica, and many other places also yielded a vast number of terra-cotta figures of various dates and styles. By far the greater number belong to the second half of the 4th century B.C.; but examples of an earlier
- ↑ An Italian word meaning literally "baked earth."
- ↑ See list at the end of the present article.
- ↑ See Bull. Com. Inst. Arch., 1874, p. 120. Many thousand tombs have been opened at Tanagra, partly cut in the rock and partly built of masonry. The statuettes were either arranged round the body or packed in large vases. The costume of the female figures is the same as that described by classical writers as being peculiar to the neighbouring city of Thebes. The finest of the Tanagra figures are from 8 to 9 inches high.
