the figures of animals (pia) with which they were adorned: vases thus decorated are frequently referred to by ancient authors, and numerous specimens of them have been discovered. It is quite impossible, within the limits of this article, to state even the leading arguments on the two sides of the question; and no opinion ought to be expressed upon it without a pretty full statement of the reasons for the conclusions come to. We must, therefore, be content to refer readers, who are curious in such archaeological minutiae, to the treatises above mentioned, only adding an important observation made by another great scholar upon Welcker's arguments - Welckerus iis usus est argumentis, quae, ut mihi quidem videtur, labefactari possunt tantum non omnia." (Meineke, Frag. Com. Graec. vol. iii. p. 221.) [P.S.]

THERI MACHUS (Onpluaxos), was the Spartan harmost at Methymna in Lesbos, when the city was attacked by Thrasybulus, the Athenian, in B. c. 390. Therimachus gave battle to the enemy, and was defeated and slain. These events are placed by Diodorus in B. c. 392. (Xen. Hell. v. 8. §§ 28, 29; Diod. xiv. 94.)

[E. E.] THERI MACHUS, a painter and statuary, flourished at Ol. 107, B. c. 352, with Echion, who also practised both arts. No works of his are mentioned. (Plin. H. N. xxxiv. 8. s. 19, xxxv. 10. s. 36. § 9.) [P. S.]

THERMUS, MINU'CIUS. 1. Q. MINUCIUS Q. F. L. N. THERMUS (Fasti Capit.), served under Scipio as tribunus militum in the war against Hannibal in Africa in B. c. 202, was tribune of the plebs B. C. 201, curule aedile B. c. 197, and in the same year was appointed one of the triumviri for founding six colonies on the coast of Italy (Appian, Pun. 36, 44; Liv. xxx. 40, xxxii. 27, 29, xxxiv. 45). In the following year, B. c. 196, he was praetor, and received the province of Nearer Spain, where he carried on the war with great success, and received in consequence the honour of a triumph on his return to Rome in B. c. 195 (Liv. xxxiii, 24, 26, 44, xxxiv. 10; Appian, Hisp. 39). In B. C. 193 he was consul with L. Cornelius Merula. He obtained Liguria as his province, where a formidable insurrection had just broken out. He made Pisae his head-quarters, and carried on the war with vigour; but in consequence of his inferiority to the enemy in numbers, he was obliged to remain on the defensive and was twice in great peril during the campaign. In the following year B. c. 192, his imperium was prolonged, and he received additional troops, by means of which he was able to assume the offensive, and to gain a decisive victory over the Ligurians. Next year his imperium was again prolonged, and he again gained a victory over the Ligurians, who had made an unexpected attack upon his camp in the night. He returned to Rome in B. c. 190, and sued for a triumph, but it was refused him, chiefly through the influence of M. Cato, who delivered on the occasion his two orations intitled De decem Hominibus and De falsis Pugnis. Cato accused him of having unjustly put to death ten freemen in his province, and of having in his petition for the triumph invented many false battles, and exaggerated the number of the enemy that had been slain (Liv. xxxiv. 54, 55, xxxv. 3, 11, 20, 21, xxxvi. 38, xxxviii. 46 ; Gell. x. 3, xiii. 24; Meyer, Oratorum Romanorum Fragmenta, pp. 40-44, 2d ed.). There was also an oration of Cato intitled

De suis Virtutibus contra Thermum, which is cited by Festus (pp. 182, 234), and other grammarians. Meyer (Ibid. p. 45, foll.) supposes that Cato accused Thermus in B. c. 189, and that this oration was spoken in this year; but this is improbable, as we know that Thermus served under Scipio Asiaticus in this year in the war against Antiochus. He and his brother Lucius were sent by Scipio to receive the oath of Antiochus to the treaty which was concluded at the end of the war. In the course of the same year he was nominated by the senate one of the ten commissioners to settle the affairs of Asia. He was killed in the following year, B. c. 188, while fighting under Cn. Manlius Vulso against the Thracians. (Appian, Syr. 39; Polyb. xxii. 26; Liv. xxxvii. 55, xxxviii. 41, 46.) 2. L. MINUCIUS THERMUS, brother of the preceding, served under Scipio Asiaticus, and along with his brother received the oath of Antiochus to the treaty concluded in B. c. 189. In B. c. 178 he served as legatus under the consul A. Manlius Vulso, in Istria. (Polyb. xxii. 26; Liv. xli. 8.)

3. MINUCIUS THERMUS, accompanied the consul L. Valerius Flaccus into Asia, in B. c. 86, and was there left by him in command of the troops in the following year. He was, however, deprived of the command by Fimbria shortly afterwards. (Appian, Mithr. 52; Dion Cass. Fragm. 129, p. 52. 31, ed. Reimar.)

4. M. MINUCIUS THERMUS, propraetor in B. c. 81, accompanied L. Murena, Sulla's legate, into Asia. Thermus was engaged in the siege of Mytilene, and it was under him that Julius Caesar served his first campaign, and gained his first laurels (Suet. Cacs. 2). [CAESAR, p. 539, b.]. This Thermus has frequently been confounded with No. 3; but it must be observed that they were in Asia at different times, and moreover that No. 3 must have been an adherent of Marius, while No. 4 belonged to Sulla's party. (Comp. Drumann, Geschichte Roms, vol. iii. p. 132, note 96.)

5. A. MINUCIUS THERMUS, was twice defended by Cicero in B. C. 59, and on each occasion acquitted. It is not stated of what crime he was accused. (Cic. pro Flace. 39; comp. Drumann, Geschichte Roms, vol. v. p. 619.) As Cicero says that the acquittal of Thermus caused great joy among the Roman people, we may conclude that he had previously filled some public office, and thus he may be the same as the Thermus who, when curator viae Flaminiae, sued for the consulship in B. c. 65. (Cic. ad Att. i. 1.)

6. Q. MINUCIUS THERMUS, was propraetor B. C. 51 and 50 in Asia, where he received many letters from Cicero, who praises his administration of the province (ad Fam. xiii. 53-57, comp. ad Att. v. 13, 20, 21. § 14, vi. 1. § 13). On the breaking out of the civil war he espoused the side of Pompey, and was sent with five cohorts to occupy Iguvium; but on the approach of Curio with three cohorts, he fled from the town. In B. c. 43 he was sent by M. Lepidus as ambassador to Sex. Pompeius. He appears afterwards to have followed the fortunes of Sex. Pompeius, for he is mentioned among the distinguished adherents of Pompeius, who deserted the latter in B. c. 35, and went over to Antonius. (Caes. B. C. i. 12; Cic. ad Att. vii. 13, Phil. xiii. 6; Appian, B. C. v. 139.)

7. MINUCIUS THERMUS, was a friend of Sejanus, and on the fall of the latter was put to

artists and poets, and the victories he obtained at the Olympic games were immortalised by Pindar. The praises of the poet are confirmed by the more impartial testimony of Diodorus. (Pind. Ol. ii. iii.; Diod. xi. 3, x. Exc. Vales. p. 558.) A magnificent monument was erected to him in the neighbourhood of Agrigentum, at which heroic honours were paid to his memory. (Diod. l. c. and xiii. 86.)

[E. H. B.] THERON (Onpwv), a Boeotian statuary, who made the statue of the Olympic victor, Gorgus the son of Eucletus, a Messenian. (Paus. vi. 14. § 5. 8. 11.)

[P.S.]

THERSANDER (épravdpos). 1. A son of Sisyphus, and father of Haliartus and Coronus. (Paus. ix. 34. § 5.)

2. A son of Agamididas, and the father of Lathria and Anaxandra, at Sparta. (Paus. iii. 16. § 5.)

3. A son of Polyneices and Argeia, and one of the Epigoni; he was married to Demonassa, by whom he became the father of Tisamenus. After having been made king of Thebes, he went with Agamemnon to Troy, and was slain in that expedition by Telephus. His tomb was shown at Elaea in Mysia, and sacrifices were offered to him there. (Paus. iii. 15. § 4, vii. 3. § 1, ix. 5. §7, x. 10. §2; Schol. ad Pind. Ol. ii. 76; Dict. Cret. ii. 2; Herod. iv. 147 ; Apollod. iii. 7. § 2.) Virgil (Aen. ii. 261) enumerates Thersander among the Greeks concealed in the wooden horse. Homer does not mention him. [L. S.]

THERSITES (Oepoírns), a son of Agrius, the most ugly and most impudent talker among the Greeks at Troy. Once, when he had spoken in the assembly in an unbecoming manner against Agamemnon, he was chastised by Odysseus. (Hom. I. ii. 212, &c.; Apollod. i. 8. § 6.) According to the later poets he pulled the eyes out of the dead body of Penthesileia, the queen of the Amazons, who had been killed by Achilles, and also calumniated Achilles, for which, however, the latter slew him. (Tzetz. ad Lycoph. 999.) In the Lesche of Delphi he was represented by Polygnotus in the act of playing at dice with Palamedes. (Paus. x. 31. § 1; Soph. Philoct. 442.) [L. S.] THESEUS (noeus), the great legendary hero of Attica, is one of those mythological personages, whose legends it is by no means easy to disentangle, and represent in their original shape. The later belief of the Athenians, adopted and strengthened by writers of authority, represented him as a very much more historical person than he really was; and, in consequence, the rationalistic mythologists took considerable pains to draw up a narrative of his life in which the supernatural should be kept as much as possible in the back ground, and the character in which the Athenians loved to regard him, as the founder of Attic nationality, be exhibited in as prominent a light as the received traditions allowed. This was avowedly the method upon which Plutarch proceeded.

According to the commonly received traditions Theseus was the son of Aegeus, king of Athens, and Aethra, the daughter of Pittheus, king of Troezen [AEGEUS]. Other legends, however, maintained their ground, which represented him as the son of Poseidon by Aethra. (Plut. Thes. 6; Diod. iv. 59; Paus. i. 17. § 3; comp. AETHRA.) When he reached maturity, Theseus, by his mother's directions, took the sword and sandals, the tokens

which had been left by Aegeus, and proceeded to Athens. Eager to emulate Hercules, he went by land, displaying his prowess by destroying the robbers and monsters that infested the country. Periphetes, Sinis, Phaea the Crommyonian sow, Sciron, Cercyon, and Procrustes fell before the invincible hero. Arrived at Cephisus, he was purified by the Phytalidae. At Athens he was immediately recognised by Medea, who laid a plot for poisoning him at a banquet to which he was invited. By means of the sword which he carried, Theseus was recognised by Aegeus, acknowledged as his son, and declared his successor. The sons of Pallas, thus disappointed in their hopes of succeeding to the throne, attempted to secure the succession by violence, and declared war; but, being betrayed by the herald Leos, were destroyed. The capture of the Marathonian bull was the next exploit of Theseus [comp. HECALE]. It was this same enterprise in which Androgeos, the son of Minos, had perished. When the occasion returned on which the Athenians had to send to Minos their tribute of seven youths and seven maidens, Theseus voluntarily offered himself as one of the youths, with the design of slaying the Minotaur, or perishing in the attempt. When they arrived at Crete, Ariadne, the daughter of Minos, became enamoured of Theseus, and provided him with a sword with which he slew the Minotaur, and a clue of thread by which he found his way out of the labyrinth. Having effected his object, and rescued the band of victims, Theseus set sail, carrying off Ariadne. (For the variations in the story, given by Cleidemus, the reader is referred to Plut. Thes. 19.) There were various accounts about Ariadne [ARIADNE], but most of them spoke of Theseus as having either lost or abandoned Ariadne on the island of Naxos. He was generally believed to have had by her two sons, Oenopion and Staphylus. As the vessel in which they sailed approached Attica, they neglected to hoist the white sail, which was to have been the signal that the expedition had had a prosperous issue. The neglect led to the death of Aegeus [AEGEUS]. A vessel was in existence up to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, which it was pretended was the very ship in which Theseus had sailed to Crete. It was this vessel which was sent every year to Delos with the sacred envoys. It is worth noting, that although Homer mentions Ariadne as having been carried off by Theseus from Crete (Od. xi. 321), he says nothing about the Minotaur. All that part of the story is probably a later addition. The expedition to Crete was probably, in its original form, only one of the somewhat numerous amatory adventures of Theseus, several of which are noticed by Plutarch (Thes. 29). Soon after he landed, Theseus is said to have instituted the festival termed Oschophoria (Dictionary of Antiquities, s. v. Oschophoria). The origin of the Pyanepsia, and the reinstitution of the Isthmian games, were also ascribed to Theseus.

One of the most renowned of the adventures of Theseus was his expedition against the Amazons. He is said to have assailed them before they had recovered from the attack of Hercules, and to have carried off their queen Antiope. The Amazons in their turn invaded Attica, and penetrated into Athens itself, the final battle in which Theseus overcame them having been fought in the very midst of the city. Of the literal truth of this fact

Plutarch (Thes. 27) finds evidence in the names of the localities and the tombs of the fallen Amazons. Cleidemus pretended even to point out the precise position of the contending forces and the fluctuations of the combat. (Compare the remarkable passage of Aeschylus, Eumen. 685.) By Antiope Theseus was said to have had a son named Hippolytus or Demophoon, and after her death to have married Phaedra [HIPPOLYTUS, PHAEDRA]. The seus figures in almost all the ancient heroic undertakings. He was one of the Argonauts (the anachronism of the attempt of Medea to poison him does not seem to have been noticed); he joined in the Calydonian hunt, and aided Adrastus in recovering the bodies of those slain before Thebes. He contracted a close friendship with Peirithous, and aided him and the Lapithae against the Centaurs. Aided by Peirithous he carried off Helen from Sparta while she was quite a girl, and placed her at Aphidnae under the care of Aethra. In return he assisted Peirithous in his attempt to carry off Persephone from the lower world. Peirithous perished in the enterprise, and Theseus was kept in hard durance until he was delivered by Hercules. Later writers endeavoured to turn this legend into history by making Peirithous attempt to carry off Core, the daughter of Aidoneus, a king of the Molossians. (Plut. c. 31.) Meantime Castor and Pollux invaded Attica, and carried off Helen and Aethra, Academus having informed the brothers where they were to be found [ACADEMUS]. Menestheus also endeavoured to incite the people against Theseus, who on his return found himself unable to re-establish his authority, and retired to Scyros, where he met with a treacherous death at the hands of Lycomedes. The departed hero was believed to have appeared to aid the Athenians at the battle of Marathon. In B. C. 469 a skeleton of large size was found by Cimon in Scyros [CIMON], and brought to Athens. It was believed to be that of Theseus, in whose honour a temple was erected, in which the bones were deposited. A considerable part of this temple still remains, forming one of the most interesting monuments of Athens. A festival in honour of Theseus was celebrated on the eighth day of each month, especially on the eighth of Pyanepsion. Connected with this festival were two others: the Connideia, in memory of Connidas, the guardian of Theseus; and the Cybernesia, having reference to his voyage. (Dict. of Antiq. s. v. Thescia.)

powers and functions. The citizens generally he is said to have distributed into the three classes of Eupatridae, Geomori, and Demiurgi (Plut. Thes. 24-26). That this consolidation took place some time or other, there can be no doubt. Whether it was accomplished by Theseus is another question. The authority of Thucydides has usually been allowed to settle the matter. Thucydides, however, did but follow the prevailing opinion of his coun trymen; and if his belief raises Theseus to the rank of an historical king, it must also make the Trojan war a matter of history. It is a vain task now to attempt to decide whether there is any historical basis for the accounts of Theseus that were handed down, and still more so to endeavour to separate the historical from the legendary in what has been preserved. The Theseus of the Athenians was a hero who fought the Amazons, and slew the Minotaur, and carried off Helen. A personage who should be nothing more than a wise king, consolidating the Athenian commonwealth, however possible his existence might be, would have no historical reality. It has been urged that we have no ground for denying the personality of Theseus. In matters of this kind the question is rather "Have we any ground for affirming it?" And for this we find nothing but the belief of the Athenians. The connection of Theseus with Poseidon, the national deity of the Ionic tribes, in various ways (the name Aegeus points to Aegae, the sanctuary of Poseidon), his coming from the Ionic town Troezen, forcing his way through the Isthmus into Attica, and establishing the Isthmia as an Ionic Panegyris, rather suggest that Theseus is, at least in part, the mythological representative of an Ionian immigration into Attica, which, adding perhaps to the strength and importance of Ionian settlers already in the country, might easily have led to that political aggregation of the disjointed elements of the state which is assigned to Theseus. It was probably from the relation in which he stood to the Athenian commonwealth as a whole, that his name was not connected with any particular phyle. (Plut. Theseus; Diod. I. c.; Grote, Hist. of Greece, vol. i. p. 281, &c., vol. ii. p. 29, vol. iii. p. 91; Wachsmuth, Hellenische Alterthumskunde, § 40. vol. i. p. 351, &c., § 128. vol. ii. 488.) [C. P. M.]

THESEUS (@noeús), a Greek historian of unknown date, wrote the lives of illustrious men (Bío èrdó¿wv) in five books, and a work on Corinth (Kopi biaká) in three books, in which he gave an account of the establishment of the Isthmian games. (Suidas, s. v.; Etymol. M. s. v. "Apvn; Stobaeus, Floril. vii. 67, 70; Schol. ad Lycophr. 644.)

THESIMENES. [TLESIMENES.]

THE'SMIA or THESMO'PHOROS (@eoμía, erμopópos), that is, "the law-giver," a surname of Demeter and Persephone, in honour of whom the Thesmophoria were celebrated at Athens in the month of Pyanepsion (Herod. ii. 171, vi. 16; Aristoph. Thesm. 303), and to whom sanctuaries were also erected at Megara, Troezene, Pheneos, and other places. (Paus. i. 42. §7, ii. 32. § 7, viii. 15. § 1. ix. 16. § 3, x. 33, in fin.) [L. S.]

THESPEIA (éσmeia), a daughter of Asopus, from whom the town of Thespiae in Boeotia derived its name. (Paus. ix. 26. § 4.) [L. S.]