Matt. xiii, 25–27, 29, 30, 36, 38, 40. It is not easy to determine what plant or weed is here intended, as the word _zizania_ is neither mentioned in any other part of Scripture, nor in any ancient Greek writer. Some Greek and Latin fathers have made use of it, as have also Suidas and Phavorinus: but it is probable that they have all derived it from this text. As this Gospel was first written in Syriac, it is probably a word belonging to that language. Buxtorf gives several interpretations, but at last concludes with submitting it to the decision of others. In a treatise in the Mishna, called “Kilayim,” which treats expressly of different kinds of seeds, a bastard or degenerate wheat is mentioned by the name of זונים, which the very sound, in pronouncing, proves to be the same as the _zizanion_; and which may lead to the true derivation of the word, that is, from the Chaldee זן, “a kind,” or “species” of grain, namely, whence the corrupt Hebrew or Syriac זניא, which in the ancient Syriac version answers to the Greek ζιζονια, Matt. xiii, 25, &c. In Psalm cxliv, 13, the words מזן אל־זן, are translated, “all manner of store;” but they properly signify “from species to species.” Might not the Chaldee word זונין, and the Greek word ζιζάνιον, come from the psalmist’s זנ־זן, which might have signified a “mixture” of grain of any kind, and be here used to point out the mixing bastard or degenerate wheat among the good seed-wheat? Mintert says, that “it is a kind of plant, not unlike corn or wheat, having at first the same sort of stalk, and the same viridity, but bringing forth no fruit, at least none good:” and he adds, from John Melchior, “ζιζάνιον does not signify every weed in general ...

TARENTUM, or Taras, now Taranto, a famous Greek city of southern Italy, situated on the north coast of the bay of the same name, at the entrance of the only secure port on the gulf. This port, now called the Mare Piccolo, is a bay 16 miles in circuit, landlocked by a low rocky peninsula. The entrance is so narrow that it is crossed by a bridge of seven arches; it was already bridged in Strabo’s time. The modern town, in the province of Lecce, which is the see of an archbishop and had in 1881 a population of 26,611, stands on the peninsula, which is now rather an island, the isthmus connecting it with the mainland having been cut through for defence by Ferdinand I. The ancient citadel occupied the same site, but the city in its best days was much larger, traces of the walls being visible about 2 miles from the gates of the modern town. The remains of antiquity are inconsiderable....

TARES, or Vetches. See Agriculture, vol. i. p. 376.