TIBER, the chief river of central Italy, and the most famous in the peninsula, rises. from two springs in a wood of beech trees in a dell of the Tuscan Apennines (province Arezzo), about 6 m. n. of the village of Pieve-San-Stefaua, and in lat. about 43° 45' north. Its course until it reaches Perugia is s.s.e. ; thence, as far as Rome, it pursues, along an irregular zigzag line, a southern direction; but when it enters the plain of the Cam pagna, it curves to the s.s.w., and enters the Nediterranean by two branches, which inclose the Isola Sacra. The entire course of the river is about 212 miles. The most celebrated towns on of•near its banks are Perugia, Todi, Orvieto, Rome, and Ostia; and its chief affluents are the Nera (anc. .2Var), and Teverone or Aniene (anc. Anio) from the.. left, and the Chiana from the right. In the upper portion of its course, from its source to the city of Orvieto, it is rapid and turbid, and of difficult navigation. It is regularly
navigable for boats of 50 tons to the confluence of the Nera, 100 m. from its mouth, and small steamers ascend to within 7 m. of that point. Wine, corn, charcoal, wood, and other produce from the interior are conveyed by the Tiber to Rome. Within the walls. of Rome (q.v.), the width of the river is 300 ft., and the depth from 12 to 18 feet. Of its two mouths, the northern, the Fiumicino, is the channel of commerce; the southern, the Fiumara, is useless for commercial purposes, owing to the accumulation of sand at its mouth. The Tiber is supplied mostly by turbid mountain currents, whence its liability to sudden overflowings of its banks; even the oldest Roman myth, that of Romu lus, being inseparably associated with an inundation. Its waters, too, are still discolored with yellow mud, as when Virgil described it Vorticibus rapidis et multa llama arena.