Tiber

Tiber (Ital. Tevere, Lat. Tiberis), the chief river of Central Italy, and the most famous in the peninsula, rises in a dell of the Tuscan Apennines (province Arezzo), about 11 miles N. of the village of Pieve Santo Stefano. Its course until it reaches Perugia is south-south-east; thence, as far as Rome, it pursues, along an irregular zigzag line, a southern direction; but when it enters the plain of the Campagna it curves south-south-west, and enters the Mediterranean by two branches, which enclose the Isola Sacra. Of these the northern, the Fiumicino, alone is navigable; the Fiumara is silted up with sand. The entire course of the river is about 260 miles—only 145 direct from source to sea. The most celebrated towns on or near its banks are Perugia, Orvieto, Rome, and Ostia; and its chief affluents are the Nera with the Velino and Teverone or Aniene (Anio) from the left, and the Paglia with the Chiana from the right. In its upper course it is rapid and turbid, and of difficult navigation. It is navigable for boats of fifty tons to the confluence of the Nera, 100 miles from its mouth, and small steamers ascend to within 7 miles of that point. The Tiber is supplied mainly by turbid mountain-torrents, whence its liability to sudden overflows of its banks; even the oldest Roman myth, that of Romulus, being inseparably associated with an inundation. Its waters, too, are still discoloured with yellow mud, as when Virgil described it—Vorticibus rapidis et multa flavus arena. See ROME, pp. 784, 786; and W. Davies, The Pilgrimage of the Tiber (2d ed. 1875).