Thymochares

Thymochares (Gr. Θυμοχάρης) was an Athenian general under the Four Hundred who may have come from the deme of Sphettos.[1]

In late 411 BC, commanding 36 triremes, he opposed the arrival of the Spartan commander Hegesandridas at Oropos, but was routed, losing 22 ships at the Battle of Eretria.[2] Most of the rowers fled to Eretria where they were slaughtered. Thucydides does not say what happened to Thymochares after the defeat.[3] He next appears in Xenophon at an unknown location (probably somewhere in Euboea), where he arrives with ‘a few ships’, but is again defeated by Hegesandridas.[4]

  1. ^ J. K. Davies, Athenian Propertied Families, 600-300 B.C., Oxford, 1971, pp. 324-5; S. Hornblower, A Commentary on Thucydides, vol. 3, Oxford, 2008, pp. 1,026-7.
  2. ^ Thucydides, viii.95.7; Diodorus Siculus, xiii.36.4.
  3. ^ Thucydides, viii.95.2-7. See D. H. Kelly, Xenophon’s Hellenika: a Commentary (ed. J. McDonald), Amsterdam, 2019, pp. 67-8.
  4. ^ Xenophon, Hell. i.1.1.