appears to have been well educated, having been brought up in the convent of Robermont; she was quick-witted, strikingly handsome in appearance and intensely passionate in temper; and she had a vigorous eloquence, which she used with great effect upon the mobs of Paris during that short space of her life (1789–93) which alone is of historical interest. The story of her having been betrayed by a. young seigneur, and having in consequence devoted her life to avenge her wrongs upon aristocrats, a story which is told by Lamartine and others, is unfounded, the truth being that she left her home on account of a quarrel with her stepmother. In her career as courtesan she visited London in 1782, was back in Paris in 1785, and in Genoa in 1788, where she was a concert singer. In 1789 she returned to Paris. On the outbreak of the Revolution, she was surrounded by a coterie of well-known men, chief of whom were Pétion and Desmoulins; but she did not play the role which legend has assigned her. She took no part in the taking of the Bastille nor in the days of the 5th and 6th of October, when the women of Paris brought the king and queen from Versailles. In 1790 she had a political salon and spoke once at the club of the Cordeliers. The same year she left Paris for Marcourt, whence after a short stay she proceeded to Liége, in which town she was seized by warrant of the Austrian Government, and conveyed first to Tirol and thereafter to Vienna, accused of having been engaged in a plot against the life of the queen of France. After an interview, however, with the emperor Leopold II., she was released; and she returned to Paris in January 1792, crowned of course with fresh laurels because of her captivity, and resumed her influence. In the clubs of Paris her voice was often heard, and even in the National Assembly she would violently interrupt the expression of any moderatist views. Known henceforth as “la belle Liégoise,” she appeared in public dressed in a riding habit, a plume in her hat, a pistol in her belt and a sword dangling at her side, and excited the mob by violent harangues. Associated with the Girondists and the enemies of Robespierre, she became in fact the “ Fury of the Gironde.” She commanded in person the 3rd corps of the so-called army of the faubourgs on the 20th of June 1792, and again won the gratitude of the people. She shares a heavy responsibility for her Connexion with the riots of the 10th of August. A certain contributor to the journal, the Acts of the Apostles, Suleau by name, earned her savage hatred by associating her name, for the sake of the play upon the word, with a deputy named Populus, whom she had never seen. On the 10th of August, just after she had watched approvingly the massacre of certain of the national guard in the Place Vendome, Suleau was pointed out to her. She sprang at him, dragged him among the infuriated mob, and, he was stabbed to death in an instant. She took no part in the massacres of September, and, moderating her conduct, became less popular from 1793. Towards the end of May the Jacobin women seized her, stripped her naked, and flogged her in the public garden of the Tuileries. The following year she became mad, a fate not surprising when one considers her career. She was removed to a private house, thence in 1800 to La Salpetriére for a month, and thence to a place of confinement called the Petites Maisons, where she remained-a raving maniac-till 1807. She was then again removed to La Salpetriére, where she died, never having recovered her reason, on the 9th of June 1817.
See M. Pellet, Étude historique el biographique sur Théroigne de Méricourt (1886) ; L. Lacour, Les Origines du féminisme contemporain. Trois femmes de la Révolution (Paris, 1900); Vicomte de Reiset, La Vraie Théroigne de Méricourt (Paris, 1903); E. and J. de Goncourt, Portraits intimes du XVIIIᵉ. siècle (2 vols., 1857-58); and the play Théroigne de Méricourt of M. Paul Hervieu, produced at the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt in 1902.
THERSITES, the ugliest man in the Greek camp before Troy,
celebrated for his biting tongue. The special objects of his
attack were the leaders of the army, and Homer (Iliad, ii. 212)
tells how he was chastised by Odysseus for daring to abuse the
commander-in-chief. According to a later story, Achilles, after
he had slain the Amazonian queen Penthesilea, bitterly lamented
her death; for this he was reviled by Thersites, who even
insulted the body of the dead queen. Achilles thereupon slew
Thersites with a blow of his fist (Quint. Smyrn. i. 722). There
was a play by Chaeremon called Achilles the Thersites-slayer,
probably a satyric drama, the materials of which were taken
from the Aethiopis of Arctinus.
THESAURUS (Gr. θησαυρός), the term in architecture given to the Greek treasure house, and at one time applied to the beehive tombs of Mycenae and other parts of Greece, now recognized as tombs; the subterranean chambers under some of the Greek temples were probably used as treasure rooms. Sometimes in the rear of the cella of a Greek temple there was a chamber, known as the opisthodomus, in which the treasures were kept; and, failing this provision, the epinaos or rear portico of the temple was enclosed with large railings and utilized for the same purpose; in this case the term opisthodomus was applied to it. "Thesaurus" is also used of a dictionary, or lexicon, as being a "treasure house" or store of knowledge.
THESEUS, the great hero of Attic legend,[1] son of Aegeus, king of Athens, and Aethra, daughter of Pittheus, king of Troezen. Thus through his father he was descended from
Erechtheus and the original stock of Attica; through his
mother he came of the Asiatic house of Pelops. The legend
relates that Aegeus, being childless, went to Pittheus, who
contrived that Aegeus should have intercourse with his daughter
Aethra, and that in due time Aethra brought forth Theseus.
It was given out that the child's father was Poseidon, the great
god of Troezen, and that Aethra raised a temple to Athena
Apaturia, at which Troezenian maids used to dedicate their
girdles before marriage. For his tutor and guardian young
Theseus had one Cannidas, to whom, down to Plutarch’s time
the Athenians were wont to sacrifice a black ram on the eve
of the festival of Theseus. On passing out of boyhood Theseus
was sent by his mother to Athens. He encountered many
adventures on the way. First he<met and slew Periphetes,
surnamed Corynetes (Clubman). At the isthmus of Corinth
dwelt Sinis, called the Pine-Bender, because he killed his victims
by tearing them asunder between- two pine-trees. Theseus
hoisted the Pine-Bender on his own pine-tree. Next Theseus
dispatched the Crommyonian sow (or boar). Then he Hung
over a cliff the wicked Sciron, who used to kick his guests into
the sea, while perforce they washed his feet. In Eleusis Theseus
wrestled with Cercyon and killed him. A little farther on he
slew Procrustes, who fitted all comers to his only bed: if his
guest was too short for the bed, he stretched him out; if he
was too long, he cut him down to the requisite length. As he
passed through the streets of Athens, his curls and long garment
reaching to his ankles drew on him the derision of some masons,
who were putting on the roof of the new temple of Apollo
Delphinius: “Why,” they asked, “was such a pretty girl out
alone?” In reply Theseus took the bullocks out of their cart
and flung them higher than the roof of the temple. He found
his father married to Medea, who had fled from Corinth. Being
a witch, she knew Theseus before his father did, and tried to
persuade Aegeus to poison his son; but Aegeus recognized
him by his sword and took him to his arms. Theseus was now
declared heir to the throne, and the Pallantids,[2] who had hoped
to succeed to the childless king, conspired against Theseus,
but he crushed the conspiracy. He then attacked the fire breathing
bull of Marathon and brought it alive to Athens, where he sacrificed it to Apollo Delphinius. Next, came the adventure of the Cretan Minotaur (q.v.), whom Theseus slew by the aid of Ariadne (q.v.). While Theseus was in Crete, Minos,
- ↑ The story of Theseus is a strange mixture of (mostly fictitious) political tradition, of etiological myths invented to-explain misunderstood acts of ritual and of a cycle of tales of adventure analogous to the story of the labours of Heracles. All the passages in the Iliad and Odyssey in which his name or allusions to his legend occur are regarded with more or less probability as spurious (but see O. Gruppe, Gr. Myth., i. p. 581).
- ↑ The sons of Pallas, the brother of Aegeus,
