Tarantella
or TARANTELLE, in music, a rapid Neapolitan dance in triplets; so called because it was popularly thought to be a remedy against the Q TARANTULA supposed poisonous bite of the tarantula spider, which was said to set people dancing. Older specimens of the dance are not in triplets. The dance was in vogue in the 16th century. port of southern Italy, in the province TARANTO (ancient Tarentum), a seaseaof Lecce; on a rocky islet between the Mare Grande or Gulf of Taranto and the Mare Piccolo, an extensive natural harbor on the E. side of the town; 72 miles S. S. E. of Bari. The harbor is sheltered by two small islands, San Paolo and San Pietro, the Chœrades of antiquity, and is closed by Cape San Vito on the S. E. The town is joined to the mainland by a 6-arched bridge on the E. side, and on the W. by an ancient Byzantine aqueduct. The principal buildings are a modernized cathedral dedicated to St. Cataldo, a dubious 6thcentury Irishman said to have been the first bishop of Tarentum, and a castle erected by Charles V. The Mare Piccolo is still famous for its shellfish. The honey and fruit are still famous also, but the people are today as lazy as in Horace's time.
C., grew The ancient Tarentum, founded by a body of Spartan emigrants about 708 B. C., to be the sovereign city of Magna Græcia. Here flourished about Archytas, under whom it became the 400 в. c. the philosopher and geometer height of its greatness it insolently procenter center of the Pythagorean sect. At the voked a quarrel with Rome (281), was saved for a while by Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, but taken in 272, and retaken and punished severely in 207 for revolting to the side of Hannibal five years before. Later it belonged to Byzantine, and Norman, and shared the fortunes of the kingdom of Naples. Pop. about about 56,000.
TARANTULA (-ran'tu-lä), the Lycosa tarantula, a large spider, with a body about an inch in length; its bite TARANTULA was tarantism, and it doubtless, in some formerly supposed to produce cases, produces disagreeable symptoms.
Cyo-Vol. IX TARANTULA It is a native of Italy, but varieties, or closely allied species, are found throughout the S. of Europe. The tarantulas of Texas and adjacent countries are large species of Mygale. Also, a dance, or the music to which it is performed. See TARANTELLA.
TARAPACÁ, till 1883 the extreme S. province of Peru, but annexed by Chile after the war; area, 18,125 square miles; pop. (1895) 89,751. The country contains vast fields of nitrate of soda, as well as silver mines, deposits of guano, and flocks of sheep, alpacas, etc. Capital, IQUIQUE (q. v.). See CHILE.