ticularly worthy of admiration; for by his natural understanding, without any education originally to form it, or afterwards to strengthen it, he had the best judgment in actual circumstances, and he formed his judgment with the least deliberation ; and as to future events he made, in the general, the best conjectures; whatever he took in hand, he was also able to expound; and on matters where he had no experience, he was not unable to form a competent judgment; and both of the better and the worse, while it was still in uncertainty, he had a most excellent foresight; and to express all in brief, by the force of his natural capacity, and the quickness of his determination, he was the most efficient of all men in promptly deciding what was to be done." Undoubtedly he possessed great talents as a statesman, great political sagacity, a ready wit, and excellent judgment: but perhaps he was not an honest man; and, like many other clever men with little morality, he ended his career unhappily and ingloriously, an exile and a traitor too. Some of the anecdotes about him deserve little credit ; but an examination of them belongs to another kind of work.
There is a life of Themistocles in the collection which goes under the name of Nepos. Plutarch has enlivened his biography with several curious stories about Themistocles, after his arrival in Asia. Diodorus (xi.), always a careless writer, is of little value for the biography of Themistocles. One and twenty letters attributed to Themistocles are spurious.
[G. L.]
THEMISTO'GENES ((
Greek characters)), of Syracuse, is said by Xenophon (Hell. iii. 1. § 2) to have written a work on the Anabasis of Cyrus;
but most modern writers, following the statement
of Plutarch (de Gloria Athen. p. 361), suppose that
Xenophon really refers to his own work, to which
he prefixed the name of Themistogenes. It appears,
however, that Themistogenes is not a fictitious
name, since Suidas says (s. v.) that he wrote other
works. (C. Müller, Fragm. Historic. Graec. vol.
ii. p. 74, Paris, 1848.)
THEMISTUS, the son-in-law of Gelon, was slain along with Andranodorus. (Liv. xxiv. 24, 25.) [Andranodorus.]
THEOCHRESTUS ((Greek characters) of Gyrene,
grandfather and grandson, won a victory at the
Olympic games in the chariot-race, but in what
Olympiad is not stated (Pans, vi, 12. § 7). A
person of the same name is quoted by the Scholiast
on Apollonius Rhodius (iv. 1750) as the author of
a work on Libya; and from the subject of the
book we may reasonably infer that he was a native
of Africa, and may have been the same as one of
the Olympic victors. Pliny also refers to Theochrestus as one of his authorities. (H. N. Index,
lib. xxxvii. and xxxvii. 2. s. 11. § 1.)
THEOCLEIA. [Aristocleia.]
THE'OCLES ((Greek characters)). 1. A Pythagorean
philosopher. (Iamblich. Vit. Pyth. 27.)
2. Of Naxos or Eretria, a poet of unknown time,
to whom some ascribed the invention of the elegiac metre; but there can be little doubt that the tradition is as untrustworthy, as the etymology, in
connection with which it is mentioned, is absurd.
(Suid. and Etym. Mag. s. v. (Greek characters)), His
Terses appear to have been of a licentious character, and it is most probable that he is the same person as the Theocles from whose Ithypallics Athenaeus(xi. p. 497, c.) quotes three lines.
[P. S.]
THE'OCLES ((Greek characters)), the son of Hegylus,
was a Lacedaemonian statuary, and one of the
disciples of Dipoenus and Scyllis. He therefore
flourished about b. c. 550. He wrought in wood
and in ivory and gold. Two of his works are ap-
parently mentioned by Pausanias ; but they were
only separate parts of one and the same group,
representing Hercules preparing to carry off the
golden apples of the Hesperides. This group con-
sisted of a celestial hemisphere ((Greek characters), see
Dict, of Antiq. s. v. 2d ed.) upheld by Atlas, with Her-
cules, and the tree which bore the golden apples of
the Hesperides, and the dragon coiled around the
tree, all carved out of cedar wood. An inscription
on the (Greek characters) stated that the work was executed
by Theocles and his son. It stood at Olympia, in
the treasury of the Epidamnians ; but, in the time
of Pausanias, the figures of the Hesperides had
been removed from it by the Eleians, and placed
in the temple of Hera. (Pans. vi. 19. § 5. s. 8.)
In his description of the temple of Hera (v. 17.
§ 1), Pausanias mentions these statues, five in
number, as being of gold and ivory, which is not
inconsistent with the other statement, that they
were of cedar-wood ; for the two accounts can
easily be reconciled by supposing that they were
of cedar-wood gilt, and the faces, hands, and feet
covered with plates of ivory. Possibly the ivory
may have been added to the statues when they
were transferred to the temple of Hera. [P. S.]
THEO'CLIUS, a Greek writer of the lives of the Caesars, appears to have lived in the time of Aurelian or shortly afterwards. (Vopisc. Aurel. 6.)
THEOCLY'MENUS ((Greek characters)). 1. A son
of Polypheides of Hyperasia, and a descendant of
Melampus, was a soothsayer, who, in consequence
of a murder, was obliged to take to flight, and
came to Telemachus at the time when the latter
quitted Sparta to return to Ithaca. (Hom. Od. xv.
256, &c., 507, &c., xvii. 151, &c., xx. 350, &c.)
2. A son of Proteus. (Eurip. Hele?i. 9.) [L. S.]
THEOCOSMUS {(Greek characters)), of Megara, a
statuary, whose time is accurately defined by two
statements in Pausanias. In the temple of Zeus
Olympius at Megara, the traveller saw an unfinished chryselephantine statue of the god, which
Theocosmus had undertaken to make, with the
assistance of Pheidias, but the execution of which
was interrupted by the breaking out of the Peloponnesian War, and the consequent incursions of
the Athenians into the Megarensian territory.
The face alone was of ivory and gold, and the rest
of the statue of mud (or plastic clay) and gypsum;
and behind the temple there lay some half-wrought]
logs of wood, which Theocosmus had intended
cover with ivory and gold, and to use in com-l
pleting the statue. Above the head of the god
were the Hours and the Fates (Paus.i. 40. § 3. s.4)..
Theocosmus also made the statue of Lysander's]
pilot, Hermon, which formed a portion of the
great votive offering dedicated by the Lacedaemonians at Delphi, out of the spoils of the battle of
Aegospotami (Pans. x. 9. § 4. s. 8). Hence Theocosmus must have flourished from before the beginning till after the end of the Peloponnesian War,
that is, in round numbers, about B.C. 435—430.
He was the father of Callicles I.
[P. S.]
THEO'CRATES is given as the name of a physician by Fabricius (Bibl. Gr. vol, xiii. p. 432, ed. vet.) and Haller (Bibl. Medic. Pract. vol. .
