THRASYBULUS, brother of Gelo and Hieron, tyrants of

Syracuse. On the death of the latter he set aside Gelo his son, and seized the government, 467 b.c.; but in consequence of his rapacity and cruelty, he became the object of intense hatred to the Syracusans, who rose in revolt against his authority, and with the assistance of the other cities of Sicily and of the Sikel tribes defeated Thrasybulus both on sea and on land, and compelled him to abdicate the government. He withdrew to Locri in Italy, and there ended his days in retirement.—J. T. THRELKELD, Caleb, a British botanist, was born in Cumberland on 31st May, 1676, and died of fever in Dublin on 28th April, 1728. He studied at Glasgow, and took his degree in arts there. He began his career as a dissenting clergyman, but he ultimately adopted medicine as his profession, and in 1712 graduated as doctor of medicine at Edinburgh. Subsequently he went to Dublin and practised as a physician. He was fond of botany, and published a "Synopsis Stirpium Hibernicarum," in which he described some of the native plants of Ireland, especially those growing near Dublin. He gives the Irish names of plants and their medicinal and poisonous qualities.—J. H. B. THROGMORTON, Sir Nicholas, was the fourth son of Sir George Throgmorton, a gentleman of Warwickshire, whose brother Michael signally deceived Henry VIII. and his minister Cromwell by serving instead of betraying Cardinal Pole. The royal vengeance fell upon Sir George, who in 1538 was sent to the Tower, which he did not leave for several years. Nicholas was born about 1513, and on attaining manhood, went over to the reformed religion to the great displeasure of his father. He became page to the king's natural son, the duke of Richmond, whom he accompanied into France, where he remained until 1536. He returned home to serve at court and in the army, and received a pension for his military services before Boulogne. In the first year of the succeeding reign (1547) he accompanied the protector, Somerset, to Scotland, and distinguished himself at the battle of Pinkey. From Edward VI. he received solid favours in the shape of grants of land, and the honour of knighthood. On the young king's death, Throgmorton preferred the cause of Queen Mary to that of Lady Jane Grey. Nevertheless, scarcely a year after the accession of the former, he was tried on the capital charge of treason, as being implicated in Wyatt's rebellion. There is little doubt that he was as deeply concerned as any one who did not actually take up arms. But he defended himself skilfully and resolutely, and induced the jury to acquit him. The jurymen were punished for their boldness, and Sir Nicholas himself was seized again on some pretext, and again sent to the Tower. His attachment to the Princess Elizabeth, which rendered him obnoxious in Mary's reign, procured him high employment when his patroness came to the throne. As ambassador in France from 1559 to 1563, he kept alive the resistance of the Huguenot party to the Guises, and his correspondence with Cecil during his embassy is most instructive.—(See Forbes' Full View of the Transactions in the Reign of Elizabeth, 2 vols. folio, 1740-41.) When the Wars of the League were suddenly stopped by a pacification in 1564, Throgmorton was sent over on a special mission, but he was imprisoned at St. Germains on the plea that he had no regular permission. He was released in two months' time by an arrangement between the French and English governments. In 1565 he was sent to Scotland to endeavour to prevent the marriage of Queen Mary with Darnley. Four years later, when that unhappy sovereign was a prisoner in England, Throgmorton supported the project of uniting her to the duke of Norfolk, and thereby incurred the resentment of his own queen, who sent him to the Tower. His confinement was of short duration, but he did not recover Elizabeth's favour, a grief which he did not long survive. He died in 1571.—R. H. THROSBY, John, the author of "Memoirs of the Town and County of Leicester," 1777, and of other topographical works, was for many years parish clerk of St. Martins at Leicester. A talent for drawing led him to copy the antiquarian and picturesque curiosities of his native county, and to publish them with explanatory text. He was rescued from poverty in his old age by friends who appreciated his genuine worth, and he died at Leicester, in his sixty-third year, on 3rd February, 1803.—(See list of his works in Nichols' Anecd., ix. p. 87.)—R. H. THUANUS. See Thou. THUCYDIDES, the son of Olorus, the author of the history of the Peloponnesian war, and one of the greatest historical writers of all ages, was born in the village of Halimus, situated about four and a half miles south of the Piræus, on the Attic coast, in the year 471 b.c., forty years before the breaking out of that terrible struggle betwixt Athens and Sparta, which it was the great work of his life to describe. he was thus contemporary with Socrates and Euripides, and belonged to the generation, which, inheriting the glories of Marathon and Salamis, saw the vigorous and brilliant democracy of Athens attain its zenith under the forty years' wise administration of Pericles, and commence its rapid and tragical decline under the pious feebleness of Nicias, and the splendid instability of Alcibiades. Of the life of Thucydides very few facts are known with certainty; none absolutely to be relied on beyond those mentioned incidentally in his great work. These few, however, are quite sufficient to show us how favourable his external position was for enabling him to collect the materials of the work, on which the form has been so strongly stamped by his powerful and penetrating intellect. His family was connected with those of Miltiades and Cimon, so renowned in the history of the Persian wars; and he possessed rich estates at Scapte Hyle in Thrace, near the island of Thasos, a district whose wealth in gold had at an early period attracted the adventurous cupidity of the Phœnicians. This country, indeed, as that from which his father originally came, he had more right to regard as his own, than the Attic village where he was born; and here also we find him posted at one of the most critical periods of the Peloponnesian war. In 424 b.c., being the eighth year of the contest, he appears in command at Amphipolis, about a day's sail from his family estate, at the time when the noble Spartan, Brasidas, made his rapid and dexterous march across Thessaly, and formed a junction with the Macedonian monarch, then in league with Sparta. The successful defence of this important position might have given Thucydides a reputation as a military commander, second only to that which he claims as a historian. But fate was not willing that two honours so great and so diverse, should accrue to a single man. Whether from culpable remissness, as Mare is inclined to think, or from one of those accidents which play such an important part in the history of war, Thucydides, who was then at Thasos, arrived at the mouth of the Strymon twelve hours too late to save the important Macedonian city from falling into the hands of Brasidas. He, however, protected Eion, a seaport standing in the same relation to Amphipolis that the Piræus does to Athens. But with this secondary achievement the Athenians were by no means satisfied. They immediately passed a sentence of banishment against him, which lasted for twenty years. This, the great misfortune of his public life, issued, as great misfortunes often do, in the greater good, that he was thus detached from the position of an active party in the war, and enabled more easily to maintain the position of an impartial spectator, and an unbiassed recorder of events. There cannot be a doubt also that this punishment brought him into intimate intercourse with Alcibiades, and other influential members of the Lacedaemonian party; and thus supplied him with information, which had he remained throughout actively engaged on the Athenian side, he could not possibly have obtained. At the end of his twenty years' exile, which was also the termination of the war, we find him again at Athens. But it does not appear that he survived that period many years; for his history, which seems to have been put into its present shape after the conclusion of the war, suddenly breaks off at the battle of Cynossema in the year 411 b.c. Whether he was assassinated in Athens, as Pausanias says (i. 23, 11), or died quietly in a philosophical old age on his ancestral estate at Scapte Hyle, will never be determined. It is only certain that his tomb was seen at Athens, near the Melitian gate; but a tomb does not always certainly indicate the place where a man dies.

The history of Thucydides, besides a most important introductory book on the early history of Greece, embraces the period already indicated, and was certainly intended to have been carried out so as to embrace the concluding years of the war, the rapid and startling succession of events in which are described by the feebler pen of Xenophon. As to the merit of this work there is but one opinion among all critics, both ancient and modern. For accuracy in the collection and a grand massiveness in the disposal of his materials, for impartiality of tone, for soundness of judgment, and for penetrating sagacity, historical literature presents nothing superior to the great work of Thucydides. It is rare indeed that in ancient history we possess the