THOURET, MICHEL-AUQUSTIN. 



THRASYBULUS. 



AB a systematic botanist the views of Du Petit Thours were uncer- 

 tain and speculative, and the delay in the publication of his works on 

 African botany deprived him of the merit of introducing to the world 

 many new species. In his physiological works his views are ingenious, 

 but in most cases wanting in sufficient data to establish them. His 

 views on tho formation of buds, the motion of the sap, and the origin 

 of wood, are those which have excited most attention. But each of 

 these is perhaps more indebted to the speciousness of ita reasoning 

 than to the correctness of the facts, for tho importance that botanists 

 have attached to it. But at the same time his great activity of mind, 

 his extensive erudition and original observation, have had a great 

 influence on the progress of botany in the present century. He was a 

 contributor to the 'Biographic Universelle," and wrote the lives of 

 many of the botanists in that work. The genus of plants T/touarea 

 was named after him, and Bory St. Vincent named Aubertia, in 

 honour of him. 



THOURET, MICHEL-AUQUSTIN, an eminent French physician, 

 was born in 1748, at Pout-l'Ev6que, in the ancient province of Nor- 

 mandy and the modern department of Calvados, where his father was 

 royal notary (notaire royal). His education was commenced in his 

 native town, and finished at the University of Caen. He afterwards 

 went to Paris, and in 1774 was admitted gratuitously by the Faculty 

 of Medicine in that city to the degree of M.D., an honour which was 

 gained by public competition (concours). A few years later, upon 

 the foundation of tho Royal Society of Medicine, Thouret became one 

 of its earliest members, and enriched the Memoirs of the Society by 

 several valuable essays. The most important public work in which he 

 took part was the exhumation of the bodies in the cemetery of the 

 Holy Innocents, of which he drew up a most interesting report. This 

 cemetery, together with a church of the same name, stood on the spot 

 now occupied by the Marche" des Inuocens, and had become in process 

 of time so unhealthy from being the principal burial-ground in Paris, 

 that it was absolutely necessary to destroy it. This great work had 

 been several times attempted, but as often abandoned on account of 

 the dangers and difficulties of the undertaking ; at last however, in 

 1785, a committee was named for directing the works, which were 

 carried on without intermission by night and by day for more than six 

 months, and which were at length completely successful. Thouret 

 afterwards filled several public situations with equal zeal and integrity ; 

 and in the midst of the labours of his numerous employments was 

 carried off, after a few days' illness, by a cerebral affection, at Meudon, 

 near Paris, June 19, 1810. Great honours were paid him after his 

 death by the Faculty of Medicine at Paris, of which body he was dean. 

 His works consist almost entirely of essays published in the ' Histoire 

 et Me'moires de la Socidtd Royale,' of which perhaps the most interest- 

 ing are the ' Rapports sur les Exhumations du Cimetiere des SS. 

 Innocens,' mentioned above. These were afterwards published in a 

 separate form at Paris, 12mo, 1789. (Bioyraphie Medicate.) 



THRA'SEA PAETUS. His prsenomen is uncertain ; some writers 

 call him Lucius, and others Publius, but he is generally called simply 

 Thrasea Psctus or Thrasea. He was a native of Patavium, Padua (Tacitus 

 ' Annal.,' xvi. 21 : Dion. Casa., Ixii. 26), and, like most men of talent at 

 the time, he went to Rome, where he afterwards became a senator and 

 a member of the priestly college of the quindecimviri. The first time 

 that Thrasea came prominently forward in the senate was in A.D. 59, 

 when a seriatus-consultum was passed by which the city of Syracuse 

 obtained permission to employ a greater number of gladiators iu the 

 public games than had been fixed by a law passed in tho time of 

 J. Caesar. (Tacitus, ' Annal.,' xiii. 49 ; Dion. Cass., liv. 2 ; Sueton., 

 'Caes.,' 10.) Although the matter was of no importance, Thrasea 

 took an active part in the deliberation, merely to impress upon his 

 colleagues the necessity of paying attention even to the smallest 

 matters belonging to the administration of the senate. In the same 

 year Nero determined to carry into effect his design of getting rid of 

 his mother Agrippina. [NERO ; AGRIPPINA.] When the crime was 

 committed, and when the emperor sent a letter to the senate in which 

 he endeavoured to exculpate himself, the degraded senators con- 

 gratulated him upon having got rid of so dangerous a woman. 

 The only man who on that occasion had the courage to show his detes- 

 tation of the crime was Thrasea. (Dion. Cass., Ixi 15 : Tacit., ' Annal., 

 xiv. 12.) 



In the year A.D. 62, when the praetor Antistius was charged by 

 Cossutianus Capito with high treason for having composed and read at 

 a numerous party of friends some libellous verses upon the emperor, 

 and when the emperor showed au inclination to interfere in the trial, 

 Thrasea boldly claimed for the senate tho right to try the case accord- 

 ing to the existing laws. The firmness of Thrasea induced moat of the 

 senators to follow hia example and to voto with him. Cossutianus 

 was thwarted in his hope of getting Antistius sentenced to death, and 

 the emperor, though highly annoyed, endeavoured to disguise his 

 anger. (Tacitus, 'Annal.,' xiv. 48, 49.) A short time afterwards 

 Thrasea again attracted general attention in the senate by a speech 

 against the assumption and insolence of wealthy provincials. It had 

 at that timo become customary with the provincials to request the 

 Roman senate, by embassies, to offer public thanks to the proconsuls 

 who returned from their province, and who had conducted the admi- 

 lustration to their satisfaction. The ambition to gain this distinction 

 oftn deprived the proconsuls of their independence, and degraded 



them into flatterers of influential provincials, who thus obtained an 

 improper power. Thrasea proposed to the senate a measure to remedy 

 the evil, but although it met with general approbation, he did not 

 succeed in making the senate pass a decree, which was however done 

 shortly after on the proposal of Nero himself. (Tacitus, ' Annal.,' xv. 

 20-22.) Nero already hated Thrasea, and envy now began to increase 

 the hatred. When therefore in 63, Poppjca, the wife of Nero, was 

 expecting her confinement at Antium, and all the senators flocked 

 thither to wait for the event, Thrasea was forbidden to go there. The 

 Stoic philosopher bore this insult with his usual calmness. Nero 

 afterwards indeed declared to Seneca that he was reconciled to 

 Thrasea, but this was probably no more than an expression of his fear. 

 The inflexible character of Thrasea, his refusal to take any part in the 

 degrading proceedings of the senate, and the esteem which he enjoyed 

 among his contemporaries, increased the hatred of Nero, who only 

 wuited for a favourable opportunity to get rid of him. It appears that 

 from the year 63 Thrasea never attended the meetings of the senate. 

 Three years thus passed away, when at length, iu 66, his old 

 enemy Cossutiauus brought forward a number of charges against 

 Thrasea, the substance of which was, that he took little or no part in 

 public affairs, and that when he did so, it was ouly to oppose the 

 measures of the government ; that he was a secret enemy of the 

 emperor, and fulfilled neither his political duties as a senator nor 

 his religious duties as a priest. Thrasea first requested a personal 

 interview with the emperor, which was refused. He then wrote to 

 him, asking for a statement of tho charges against him, and declaring 

 that he would refute them. When Nero had read this letter, instead 

 of which he had expected a confession of guilt and an humble petition 

 for pardon, he convoked the senate, to decide upon the charges against 

 Thrasea and others. Some of Thrasea's friends advised him to attend 

 the meeting, but most dissuaded him from it. One young and spirited 

 friend, Rusticus Arulenus, who was tribune of the people, offered to 

 put his veto upon the senatus-consultum, which however Thrasea pre- 

 vented. The philosopher now withdrew to his country-house. In the 

 senate, which was surrounded by armed bands, the quaestor of the 

 emperor read his oration, whereupon Cossutianus and others began 

 their attacks upon Thrasea. The wishes of Nero, and the presence of 

 armed soldiers ready to enforce them, left the senators no choice, and 

 it was decreed that Thrasea, Sorauus, and Servilia should choose their 

 mode of death, and that Helvidius, <fche son-in-law of Thrasea, and 

 Paconius, should be banished from Italy. The accusers were muni- 

 ficently rewarded. Towards the evening of this day the quaestor of 

 the consul was sent to Thrasea, who had assembled around him a 

 numerous party of friends and philosophers; but before he arrived, a 

 friend, Domitius CaDcilianus, came to inform him of the decree of the 

 senate, which spread consternation among all who were present. 

 Thrasea's wife Arria, who was a relative of Persius the poet (' Vita A. 

 Persii Flacci ') was on the point of making away with herself, but her 

 husband entreated her not to deprive her daughter of the last support 

 which now remained to her. When at length the quaestor arrived 

 and officially announced the decree, Thrasea took Helvidius and his 

 Mend Demetrius to his bed-room, and had the veins of both his arms 

 opened; and when the blood gushed forth, he called out, "Jove, niy 

 deliverer, accept this libation." (Tacitus, 'Annal.,' xvi. 21-35; Dion. 

 "Cass., Ixii. 26.) 



Thus died Thrasea, according to the unanimous consent of the 

 ancients a man who professed the genuine and stern virtues of the 

 olden time in the midst of a degenerate age. Tacitus calls him virtue 

 itself, and even Nero is reported to have said, " I would that Thrasea 

 liked me as much as he is a just judge." (Plutarch, ' Rei PublicsB 

 gerendae Praecepta,' p, 810, A. ed. Frankf. comp. Martial, i. 9 ; 

 Juvenal, v. 36 ; Pliny, ' Epist.,' viii. 22.) The principles which guided 

 him through life he had imbibed from the Stoic philosophy. Cato the 

 Younger was his favourite character in the history of the Roman 

 republic; he wrote a Life of Cato, which Plutarch made use of in his 

 biography, and thus we probably still possess the substance of it. 

 (Plutarch, 'Cato Min.,' 25 and 37; compare Heereu, 'De Fontibus 

 Plutarchi,' p. 168.) Rusticus Arulenus wrote a work on Thrasea and 

 Helvidius, in which he characterised them as men of the purest inte- 

 grityan expression which became fatal to the author. (Suetou., 

 'Domit.,' 10; Tacitus, 'Agric.,' 2 and 45.) 



THRASYBU'LUS (pa(rv0ov\os), the sou of Lycus, was born at 

 Steiria in Attica. In the year B.C. 411 the oligarchical party at Athens 

 gained the ascendancy, and formed a new senate of 400 members. 

 The oligarchs in the fleet stationed at Samos, endeavoured to bring 

 about a similar revolution there, but their efforts failed ; and among 

 the men who exerted themselves to maintain the democratical consti- 

 tution, Thrasybulus, who then had the command of a trireme, was 

 foremost. He and his friend Thrasyllus compelled the oligarchs to 

 swear to keep quiet, and not to attempt any alteration in the constitu- 

 tion. The generals who were known to belong to the oligarchs were 

 removed, and Thraaybulus and Thrasyllus were appointed in their 

 stead. The army under their command assumed the rights and power 

 of the people of Athens, aud in an assembly of the camp Thrasybulus 

 got a decree passed, by which Alcibiades, who had lately been the 

 chief support of the democratical party, and who was living in exilo 

 with Tissaphernca, should be recalled. Thrasybulus set out to fetch 

 him to th camp. (Thucydidea, viii. 81.) In B.C. 410 he greatly con- 



