Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 1.djvu/520

Rh 502 BRASIDAS. tinued to attach himself to the interests of Mace- donia under Philip V., whom he attended in his conference with Flamininus at Nicaea in Locris, B. c. 198. (Polyb. xvii. 1 ; Liv. xxxii. 32.) At the battle of Cynoscephalae, B. a 197, he com- marided the Boeotian troops in Philip's army ; but, together with the rest of his countrymen who had on that occasion fallen into the Roman power, he was sent home in safety by Flamininus, who wished to conciliate Boeotia. On his return he was elected Boeotarch, through the influence of the Macedonian party at Thebes ; in consequence of which Zeuxippus, Peisistratus, and the other leaders of the Roman party, caused him to be assassinated as he was returning home one night from an entertainment, B. c. 196. Polybius tells us, what Livy omits to state, that Flamininus him- self was privy to the crime. (Polyb. xviii. 26 ; Liv. xxxiii. 27, 28 ; comp. xxxv. 47, xxxvi. 6.) [E. E.] BRANCH US {Bpdyxos), a son of Apollo or Smicrus of Delphi. His mother, a Milesian wo- man, dreamt at the time she gave birth to him, that the sun was passing through her body, and the seers interpreted this as a favourable sign. Apollo loved the boy Branchas for his great beauty, and endowed him with prophetic power, which he exercised at Didyma, near Miletus. Here he founded an oracle, of which his descendants, the Branchidae, were the priests, and which was held in great esteem, especially by the lonians and Aeolians. (Herod, i, 157 ; Strab. xiv. p. 634, xvii. p. 814; Lutat. ad Stat. Theb. viii. 198; Conon, Nor rat. 33 ; Luc. DiaL Deor. 2 ; comp. Did. of AnL s. V. Oraculum.) BRAN'CUS, king of the Allobroges, had been deprived of his kingdom by his younger brother, but was restored to it by Hannibal in b. c 218. (Liv. xxi. 31.) BRANGAS {Bpar)as a son of the Thracian king StrjTnon, and brother of Rhessus and Olyn- thus. When the last of these three brothers had been killed during the chase by a lion, Brangas buried him on the spot where he had fallen, aiKi called ihe town which he subsequently built there Olyntlms. (Conon, Narrat. 4 ; Steph. Byz. «. v. "OAuiflos ; Athen. viii. p. 334, who <^s Olynthus a son of Heracles.) [L. S.] BRA'SIDAS (Bpao-iSoy), son of Tellis, the most distinguished Spartan in the first part of the Pclo- ponnesian war, signalized himself in its first year (b.c. 4 iil) by throwing a hundred men into Methoiie, while besieged by the Athenians in their first ravage of the Peloponnesian coast. For this ex- ploit, which saved the place, he received, the first an the wai", public commendation at Sparta ; and perhaps in consequence of this it is we find him in September appointed Ephor Eponymus. (Xen. Hell. ii. 3. § 10.) His next employment (b. c. 429) is as one of the three counsellors sent to assist Cnemus, after his first defeat by Phormion ; and his name is also mentioned after the second defeat in the attempt to surprise the Peiraeeus, and we may not improbably ascribe to him the attempt, and its failure to his colleagues. In 427 he was united in the same, but a subordinate, capacitj-, with Alcidas, the new admiral, on his return from his Ionian voyage ; and accompanjTBg him to Corcyra he was reported, Thucydides tells us, to have vainly urged him to attack the city immedi- ately after their victory in the first engagement. Next, as trierarch in the attempt to dislodge De- BRASIDAS. mosthenes from Pylos (425), he is described as running his galley ashore, and, in a gallant endeavour to land, to ha>ft fainted from his wounds, and falling back into the ship to have lost in the water his shield, which was afterwards found by the Athenians and used in their trophy. Early in the following year we find him at the Isthmus preparing for his expedition to Chalcidice(424), but suddenly called off from this by the danger of Megara, which but for his timely and skilful suc- cour would no doubt have been lost to the enemy. Shortly after, he set forth with an army of 700 helots and 1000 mercenaries, arrived at Heracleia, and, by a rapid and dexterous march through the hostile country of Thessaly, effected a junction with Perdiccas of Macedon. The events of his career in this field of action were (after a brief ex- pedition against Arrhibaeus, a revolted vassal of the king's) the acquisition, 1st. of Acanthus, effected by a most politic exposition of his views (of which Thucydides gives us a representation), made before the popular assembly ; 2nd. of Sta- geirus, its neighbour ; 3rd. of Amphipolis, the most important of all the Athenian tributaries in that part of the country, accomplished by a sudden attack after the commencement of winter, and fol- lowed by an unsuccessful attempt on Ei'on, and by the accession of Myrcinus, Galepsus, Aesyme, and most of the towns in the peninsula of Athos ; 4th. the reduction of Torone, and expulsion of its Athenian garrison from the post of Lecythus. In the following spring (423) we have the revolt of Scione, falling a da}-^ or two after the ratification of the truce agreed upon by the government at home — a mischance which Brasidas scrupled not to remedy by denying the fact, and not only retained Scione, but even availed himself of the consequent revolt of Mende, on pretext of certain infringe- ments on the other side. Next, a second expedi- tion with Perdiccas, against Arrhibaeus, resulting in a perik)us but most ably-conducted retreat : the loss, in the meantime, of Mende, recaptured by the new Athenian armament ; and in the winter an ineffectual attempt on Potidaea. In 422, Brasidas with no reinforcements had to oppose a large body of the flower of the Athenian troops under Cleon. Torone and Galepsus were lost, but Amphipolis was saved by a skilful sally, — the closing event of the war, — in which the Athenians were completely defeated and Cleon slain, and Brasidas himself in the first moment of victory received his mortal wound. He was interred at Amphipolis, within the walls — an extraordinary honour in a Greek town — with a magnificent funeral, attended under arms by all the allied forces. The tomb was railed off, and his memory honoured by the Amphipolitans, by yearh'^ sacrifices offered to him there, as to a hero, and by games. (Pans. iii. 14. § 1 ; Aristot. EUi. Nk. v. 7 ; Diet of Ant. s. v. EfMaiSeia.) Regarding him as their preserver, they trans- ferred to him all the honours of a Founder hitherto paid to Hagnon. Pausanias mentions a cenotaph to him in Sparta, and we hear also (Pint. Li/sander, 1) of a treasury at Delphi, bearing the inscription, " Brasidas and the Acan- thians from the Athenians." Two or three of his sayings are recorded in Plutarch's ApopktJieginata Laconuxu, but none very characteristic. Thucy- dides gives three speeches in his name, the first and longest at Acanthus j one to his forces in the