Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Thrasybulus

THRASYBULUS, an Athenian who played a distinguished part in the latter years of the Peloponnesian War and in the restoration of the democracy at Athens. In 411 B.C., as an officer in the Athenian armament at Samos, he energetically opposed the oligarchical conspiracy of the Four Hundred, and was mainly instrumental in keeping the fleet and army loyal to the democracy and in procur ing the recall of the banished Alcibiades. At the battle of Cynnosema, in the same year, he commanded the right wing of the Athenian fleet, and to his valour and conduct the Athenian victory was largely due. He took an active part in the naval operations of the following years, being present at the victories of Cyzicus (410) and Arginusae (406). In 407 he commanded a squadron on the Thracian coast, where he reduced places which had gone over to the Lacedaemonians. "When the infamous Thirty Tyrants were at the height of their power in Athens, Thrasybulus, who as a democrat had been banished, marched from Thebes with about seventy men, with the connivance of Thebes, and established himself at Phyle, a strong place in the rear of Athens. There he repulsed an attack directed against him by the Thirty; his numbers increased, and, after surprising and routing a body of foot and horse, he seized Piraeus, the port of Athens, but, finding the circuit of the walls too great to be defended by his small force, he retired into the adjoining Munychia. Here he was attacked by the troops of the Thirty, but in the streetfighting the democrats had the best of it, and the Thirty were in consequence deposed and retired to Eleusis. Hostilities, however, continued until Pausanias, one of the kings of Sparta, intervened, and by force and craft effected a reconciliation. The democrats marched into Athens with all the pomp of war, and sacrificed to Athene on the Acropolis. This restoration of the democracy by Thrasy bulus ranked henceforward with the memorable deeds of Athenian history. To his counsels seems due in part the credit for the wise moderation with which the demo crats used their victory, and the inviolate good faith with which they observed the political amnesty. The grateful citizens rewarded their champion with an olive crown. In 395, when Thebes was threatened by Sparta, the Athenians, stimulated by Thrasybulus, repaid the friendly shelter which the Thebans had afforded them in exile by resolving to stand by Thebes against Sparta, and by actually sending a force under Thrasybulus to her aid. In 390, while the war known as the Corinthian was still dragging on, Thrasybulus was sent with a fleet to check the growing power of Sparta in the ^Egean. He substituted a democracy for an oligarchy at Byzantium, and won the friendship of Chalcedon; then, landing in Lesbos, he defeated a joint force of Lacedaemonians and Lesbians. In the following spring he prepared to assist Rhodes, which was threatened by the Lacedaemonians; but to recruit his forces he levied contributions from various cities. At Aspendus, in Pamphylia, an outrage committed by some of his men roused the anger of the people, who fell on him by night, and slew him in his tent. He was buried at Athens, in the Ceramicus, near the graves of Pericles and Phormio.