T I R 



497 



T I R 



tered the tent of Corbulo, he took off his royal diadem, and 

 placed it at the foot of a portrait of the emperor Nero, 

 taking; an oath that he would not exercise any right of 

 sovereignty in Armenia till he had again received the 

 same diadem from the hands of the emperor in Rome. 

 (Tacitus, Hist., xv. 28, 29.) Tiridates arrived in Rome in 

 A.D. 66, and when he approached the city a great number 

 of people came out from the gates to behold the entrance 

 of an oriental king descended from the mighty sovereigns 

 of the Parthians. In Zumpt, ' Annales veterum Reg- 

 norum et Populorum, imprimis Romanorum,' the Arme- 

 nian king who entered Rome in A.D. 66 is called Tigranes, 

 but this is a typographical error. (Tacitus, Hist., xvi. 23.) 

 The latter circumstances of the life of Tiridates are un- 

 known. [PARTHIA.] 



TIRLEMONT (in Dutch, Tienen), situated in 50 50' 

 N. lat. and in 4 50' E. long., is an inland town in the 

 kingdom of Belgium, in the province of South Brabant, 

 on a small river called the Great Geete. It is a pretty 

 well-built town, and has 8000 inhabitants, who have con- 

 siderable manufactures of flannel and stockings. There 

 are also brandy distilleries, and breweries which produce 

 a celebrated kind of beer. It is said to have been for- 

 merly more populous and thriving than at present. In 

 the wars of the French revolution, several battles took 

 place here between the French and the Austrians ; first, in 

 November, 1792, when the Austrians were defeated ; se- 

 condly, on the 16th of March, 1793, when they again sus- 

 tained a check, for which they took ample revenge two 

 days afterwards by the decisive victory of Neerwinden. 

 (Hassel ; Stein ; Cannabich ; Hbrschelmann.) 

 TIRO. [CICERO.] 



TIRVALORE, TABLES OF. [ViGA GANITA.] 

 TIRY, or TYREE. [HEBRIDES.] 

 TIRYNS was an antient city of Argolis, in the Pelopon- 

 nesus, situated in 37 40' N. lat. and 41 1' E. long., at no 

 .great distance from the head of the Argolic Bay, now the 

 Gulf of Napoli di Romania. According to a legend in 

 Strabo (viii., p. 373, Casaub.), it was built by Proetus, an 

 antient king of Argolis, who in the construction of the 

 citadel employed masons from Lycia, who were called 

 Cyclopes. The Greeks attributed most architectural works 

 which were characterised by rude massiveness and great 

 antiquity to the Cyclopes, and such works were conse- 

 quently described as Cyclopean. Homer (Iliad, ii. 559) 

 calls Tiryns the ' walled,' or rather the ' wally ' Tiryns : and 

 Pausanias (ii. 25), 1000 years after him, thus describes the 

 remains, as they existed in the second century of our sera. 

 ' The ruins of Tiryns,' he observes, ' were on the right 

 of the road leading from Argos to Epidaurus. The wall 

 <it' the fortification, which still remains, is the work of the 

 Cyclopes, and is built of unwrought stones, so large that 

 not even the least of them could be even moved by a pair 

 of mules. The intervals between them have been long 

 since filled up with smaller stones, so as to make the whole 

 mass solid and compact.' No cement or mortar was used 

 in these constructions, and it is evident that they were the 

 first rude attempt at building with stone among the Pe- 

 lasgic Greeks, and constituted their first style of architec- 

 ture. The second is still visible in the remains of MY- 



CENjE. 



The ruins of Tiryns are thus described by Col. Leake, in 

 his ' Morea,' vol. ii., p. 350 : ' They occupy the lowest and 

 flattest of several rocky hills, which rise like islands out of 

 the level plain. The length of the summit of that of 

 Tiryns is about 250 yards, the breadth from 40 to 80 ; the 

 height above the plain from 20 to 50 feet ; the direction 

 nearly north and south. The entire circuit of the walls 

 Mill remains more or less preserved. Some of the masses 

 of the stone are shaped by art, some of them are rect- 

 angular ; but these are probably repairs, and not a part of 

 the original work described by Pausanias. The finest spe- 

 cimens of the Cyclopean masonry are near the remains of 

 the eastern gate, where a ramp, supported by a wall of the 

 same kind, leads up to the gate. The ruined wall of the 

 fortress still exists to the height of 25 feet above the top 

 of the ramp ; but, this is the only part in which the \yalls 

 rise to any considerable height above the table summit of 

 the hill within the. fortress. On one side of this gateway 

 I measured a stone of 10. by 3.9 by 3.6. Here the wall 

 N 2Ji feet in tlm-lou^s ; in other parts from 20 to 23. But 

 tin', principal <!iili;mee was not here, I think, but on the 

 kouthern side, adjacent, to the south-east angle of the 

 P. C., No. 1550. 



fortress, where a sloping approach from the plaiii is still te 

 be seen, leading to an opening in the walls.' 



In its general form the fortress appears to have consisted 

 of an upper and a lower enclosure of nearly equal dimen- 

 sions, with an intermediate platform. The southern en- 

 trance led, by an ascent to the left, to the upper level, and 

 by a direct passage between the upper inclosure and the 

 eastern wall of the fortress into the lower inclosure, having 

 also a branch to the left into the middle platform, the 

 entrance into which last was nearly opposite to the eastern 

 gate already described. There was also a postern on the 

 western side. In the eastern, as well as in the southern 

 wall, there were galleries in the body of the wall of sin 

 gular construction, the angle of the roof being formed by 

 merely sloping the courses of the masonry. In the eastern 

 wall there are two parallel passages, of which the outer 

 has six recesses in the exterior wall. These niches were 

 probably intended to serve for the protracted defence of 

 the gallery itself, and the galleries for covered communi- 

 cations leading to places of arms at the extremities of 

 them. One of these places of arms still exists at the south- 

 west angle of the fortress, and there may have been others 

 on either side of the great southern entrance. The passage 

 which led from this entrance to the lower division of the 

 fortress was about 12 feet broad ; and about midway there 

 still exists an immense door-post, with a hole in it for a 

 bolt, showing that the passage might be closed upon oc- 

 casion. In these contrivances for the progressive defence 

 of the interior we find a great resemblance not only to 

 Mycenae, which was built by the same school of engineers, 

 but to several other Grecian fortresses of remote antiquity. 

 A deficiency of flank defence is another point of resem- 

 blance : it is only on the western side, towards the south, 

 that this essential mode of protection seems to have been 

 provided. On this side, besides the place of arms at the 

 south-western angle, there are the foundations of another 

 of a semicircular form, projecting from the same wall, fifty 

 yards farther to the north ; and at an equal distance, still 

 farther in the same direction, there is a retirement in the 

 wall, which serves in aid of the semicircular bastion in 

 covering the approach to the postern of the lower inclo- 

 sure. This latter division of the fortress was of an oval 

 shape, about 100 yards long and 40 broad : its walls formed 

 an acute angle to the north, and several obtuse angles on 

 the east and west. Of the upper inclosure very little remains. 



The fortress itself is only a third of a mile in circum- 

 ference, so that in all probability it must have been no 

 more than the citadel of the Tirynthii, the town itself being 

 situated in a plain of two or three hundred yards in breadth, 

 on the south-west of the fortress : beyond this plain lies a 

 marsh, extending a mile farther towards the sea. 



Proetus, the reputed founder of Tiryns, was succeeded 

 by his son Megapenthes, who is said to have transferred it 

 to Perseus. Perseus transmitted it to his descendant 

 Electryon, whose daughter Alcmena married Amphitryon. 

 The latter prince was expelled from Tiryns by Sthenelus, 

 king of Argos ; but his son Hercules recovered his inherit- 

 ance, and was in consequence called Tirynthius. (Dio- 

 dorus, iv. 10 ; Pindar, Olymp., x. 37.) 



From Perseus to Amphitryon, Tiryns was a dependency 

 of the neighbouring city Mycenae. At the time of the 

 Trojan war, Homer (Iliad, ii. 559) represents it as being 

 subject to the kings of Argos. Subsequently it was par- 

 tially destroyed by the Argives. The date of that event 

 is uncertain ; but from two passages of Herodotus (vi. 

 83, and ix. 28), in which mention is made of Tiryns, 

 it appears that it existed up to B.C. 480, and it is 

 probable that it was overthrown about the same time as 

 Mycenae, B.C. 4G8. (Clinton, Fasti Hell., ii., p. 425.) Ac- 

 cording to Strabo (viii., p. 373), the Tirynthians, on leaving 

 their homes, retired to Epidaurus : according to Pausanias 

 (ii. 25), the greater part of them were sent to Argos. 



Pausanias also notices what he calls the chambers 

 (flaXauoi) of the daughters of Proetus lying between Tiryns 

 and the sea ; but he gives no description of them. Strabo 

 speaks of some artificial caverns near Nauplia, which he 

 places at the distance of only 12 stadia from Tiryns, and 

 says that they were attributed to the Cyclopes. It is not 

 improbable that he alludes to the same excavations as 

 Pausanias ; but Strabo had probably not seen them, for he 

 never saw Mycenae. The Tirynthian citadel was also 

 called Licymnia, from Licymnius, a son of Electryon, and 

 brother of Alcmena. (Pindar, Oh/mp., vii. 49.) 



VOL. XXIV.-3 S 



