cathedral of the Catholic Greek Church, and a sericultural museum. The chief of the older edifices is the (Sion) cathedral, which traces back its origin to the 5th century. Other churches date from the 14th and 15th centuries, the Armenian cathedral of Van from 1480, and the Catholic church from the 14th century. At Tiflis are the Caucasian branch of the Russian Geographical Society, an astronomical and a physical observatory, a botanical garden and museum, and a public library. There are cotton and silk factories, tanneries, soap-works and brick-works. The artisans of Tiflis are renowned as silversmiths, gunsmiths and sword-makers. Tiflis is the chief centre for the import of raw silk and silken goods, raw cotton, cottons, woollens, boots, tobacco, wine, carpets, and dried fruits from Persia and Transcaucasia, while manufactured wares are imported from Russia. The city has considerably developed, and had, in 1897, 160,645 inhabitants, as compared with 104,024 in 1883. They include Georgians, Russians, Germans, Persians and Tatars.
In the old division of Tiflis three distinct towns were included—Tiflis, Kal'a (the fort) and Isni; subsequently Tiflis seems to have been known as Saidabad, Kal'a as Tiflis, and Isni as Aulabar. Kal'a and Isni possessed citadels; that of the former contained the church of St Nicholas and a royal palace; that of the latter the church of the Holy Virgin and the residence of the archimandrite. The town is now divided into quarters: the Russian (the finest of all), the German, the Armenian, and that in which are congregated Jews, Mahommedans and the mass of Orientals.
The Georgian annals put the foundation of Tifiis back to A.D. 379. In the later half of the 5th century the chieftain of Georgia, Wakhtang, Gurgaslan, transferred his capital from Mtskhet to the warm springs of Tphilis, where he erected several churches and a fort. In 570 the Persians took the place and made it the residence of their rulers, but retained it only for ten years. Tiflis suffered successive plundering and devastations at the hands of the Greeks in 626, of one of the commanders of the Caliph Omar in 731, of the Khazars in 828, and of the Arabs in 851. The Georgians, however, always managed to return to it and to keep it in their permanent possession. In the course of the succeeding centuries Tiflis fell repeatedly into Persian hands; and it was plundered by the Mongol conqueror Tamerlane towards the end of the 14th century. Afterwards the Turks seized it several times, and towards the end of the 17th century the Lesghians attacked it. In 1795, when the shah of Persia plundered Tiflis, Russia sent troops to its protection, and the Russian occupation became permanent in 1799.
Perhaps one of the fullest accounts of Tiflis is contained in Brosset's edition of the Description géographique de la Géorgie (St Petersburg, 1842), by the illegitimate son of Wakhtang VI., king of Karthli (i.e. Georgia), who became a pensioner of Peter the Great. (P. A. K.; J. T. Be.)
TIGELLINUS, SOPHONIUS, minister and favourite of the emperor Nero, was a native of Agrigentum, of humble origin and possibly of Greek descent. During the reign of Caligula he was banished (A.D. 39) for adultery with the emperor's sisters, but recalled by Claudius (41) . Having inherited a fortune, he bought land in Apulia and Calabria and devoted himself to breeding race-horses. In this manner he gained the favour of Nero, whom he aided and abetted in his vices and cruelties. In 62 he was promoted to the prefecture of the praetorian guards. In 64 he made himself notorious for the orgies arranged by him in the Basin of Agrippa, and was suspected of incendiarism in connexion with the great fire, which, after having subsided, broke out afresh in his Aemilian gardens. In 65, during the investigation into the abortive conspiracy of Piso, he and Poppaea formed a kind of imperial privy council. In 67 he accompanied Nero on his tour in Greece. When the emperor's downfall appeared imminent, Tigellinus deserted him, and with Nymphidius Sabinus brought about the defection of the praetorians. Under Galba he was obliged to give up his command, but managed to save his life by lavishing presents upon Vinius, the favourite of Galba, and his daughter. Otho on his accession (69) determined to remove one so universally detested by the people. While in the baths at Sinuessa, Tigellinus received the news that he must die, and, having vainly endeavoured to gain a respite, cut his throat.
See Tacitus, Annals, xiv., xv., xvi.; Hist. i. 72; Dio Cassius lix. 23, lxii. 13, 15, 27, lxiii. 12, 21, lxiv. 3; Suetonius, Galba, 15; Plutarch, Galba, Otho; ancient authorities quoted by Mayor on Juvenal, i. 155; B. W. Henderson, Life and Principate of the Emperor Nero (1903).
TIGER (Felis tigris), an animal only rivalled by the lion in size, strength and ferocity among the cat-like beasts of prey (see Carnivora). Almost everything that is stated in the article Lion concerning the structure of the skeleton, teeth and claws of that animal will apply equally well to the tiger, the difference between the two lying mainly in the skin and its coverings. A tiger's skull may, however, always be distinguished from that
The Tiger (Felis tigris).
of a lion by the circumstance that the nasal bones extend higher on the forehead than the maxillae, instead of stopping on nearly the same line. Although examples of both species present considerable variations in size, it is ascertained that the length of the largest-sized Bengal tiger may exceed that of any lion. Much larger specimens are recorded, but 10 feet from the tip of the nose to the end of the tail is no unusual length for a large male tiger. The female is somewhat smaller and has a lighter and narrower head. The tiger has no mane, but in old males the hair on the cheeks is rather long and spreading. The ground-colour of the upper and outer parts of the head, body, limbs and tail is bright rufous fawn; and these parts are beautifully marked with transverse stripes of a dark, almost black colour. The markings vary much in different individuals, and even on the two sides of the same individual. The under-parts of the body, the inside of the limbs, the cheeks and a large spot over each eye are nearly white. The tigers which inhabit hotter regions, as Bengal and the south Asiatic islands, have shorter and smoother hair, and are more richly coloured and distinctly striped than those of northern China and Siberia, in which the fur is longer, softer and lighter-coloured. The Siberian tiger is F. tigris mongolica, and the Persian F. tigris virgata. Black and white phases have been recorded, but they are rare. The tiger is exclusively Asiatic, but has a very wide range in that continent, having been found in almost all suitable localities south of a line drawn from the river Euphrates, passing along the southern shores of the Caspian and Sea of Aral by Lake Baikal to the Sea of Okhotsk. Its most northern range is the territory of the Amur, its most southern the islands of Sumatra, Java and Bali. Westward it reaches to Turkish Georgia and eastward to the island of Saghalin. It is absent, however, from the great elevated plateau of Central Asia, nor does it inhabit Ceylon, Borneo or the other islands of the Indo-Malay Archipelago, except those named.
The principal food of the tiger in India is cattle, deer, wild hog and pea-fowl, and occasionally human beings. The regular “man-eater” is generally an old tiger whose vigour is past, and whose teeth are worn and defective; it takes up its abode in
