Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 23.djvu/299

Rh according to Lysias, had been his own intimate friends, and secured their capital punishment. In 410 Theramenes commanded one of the three squadrons of the Athenian fleet in the victory over the Spartans at Cyzicus. In 409 he took part in the siege of Chalcedon and the capture of Byzantium. At the battle of Arginusse in 406 he was one of the officers deputed by the generals in command to pick up the crews of the disabled ships; but the rescue was not effected, on account, it seems, of the storm. Nevertheless, on his return to Athens, Theramenes took a leading part in accusing and procuring the condemnation to death of the generals for neglecting to rescue the men. When Athens was besieged by the Peloponnesians, Thera menes conducted the negotiations for surrendering the city, traitorously prolonging them till starvation compelled the Athenians to accept the rigorous terms imposed by Sparta. After the surrender he formed one of the notorious Thirty who, backed by a Spartan garrison, misgoverned Athens. But by opposing their excesses he incurred their suspicions, and, being denounced by Critias, the most violent of the Thirty, he was, in defiance of the forms of law, put to death (404). He submitted to his fate with a fortitude which won the admiration of his contemporaries and of posterity, and which might well have graced the close of a better life. His ability and eloquence are recognized by Thucydides, and Aristotle is said by Plutarch (Nic., 2) to have reckoned him one of the three best patriots of Athens. This latter judgment is not borne out by the facts as we know them. Rather Theramenes appears as a selfish and faithless trimmer, who deserved his nickname Cothurnus (a boot which fitted either foot).

The chief authorities for his life are Thucydides, viii.; Xenophon, Hellenica, i., ii.; Lysias, Contra Erat.; Diodorus, xiii., xiv.

 THERAPEUTÆ.See,.  THERESA, (1515-1582).Teresa de Cepeda, perhaps the favourite saint of modern Spain, was born at Avila, in Old Castile, on the 28th of March 1515,—at the very time, adds her biographer, "when Luther was secreting the poison which he vomited out two years later." She was one of a large family—eight sons and three daughters. Her father was a Spanish gentleman of good family, whose time was chiefly occupied with devotional reading and works of charity. Teresa's mother, his second wife, was a beautiful woman, confined generally to a sofa by delicate health. From her her daughter appears to have inherited both delicacy of health and a remarkably susceptible imagination. She delighted in the books of knight-errantry which abounded in the library, and her children sat up at night in their nursery -over the same romances. But Teresa's imagination was judiciously diverted by her father to another form of heroism. She was soon as deep in the histories of the martyrs as she had been in the tales of chivalry. She learned from these histories that martyrs passed straight to heaven without any detention in purgatory; and, being eminently practical as well as imaginative, she resolved to secure that blessing for herself. When she was seven years old, she started off with her little brother to go and seek martyrdom in the country of the Moors. They had reached the bridge on the stream which runs through the town, when an uncle met them and brought them back. Balked thus of their desire, they played at hermits, making themselves cells in the garden, and giving away their pocket-money to beggars. Teresa lost her mother early, and as she grew up the vanities and flirtations of a pretty girl took the place of these pious imaginations. Her father deemed it best to send her to be educated in an Augustinian convent in the town, but without any thoughts of her adopting a religious life. She would probably have married like her sisters, had it not been for an attack of illness. She was sent away for change of air on a visit to one of her sisters, and on her way home spent some days with a saintly uncle, who was on the eve of entering a monastery, and who strongly urged her to withdraw from the world. Her father was greatly opposed to the step, but Teresa was not to be turned from what she conceived to be her duty. She was only eighteen when she left home one morning, and applied for admission at the Carmelite convent of the Incarnation. She was disappointed at first at the slack ness of discipline. The sisters mixed freely in the society of Avila, receiving visits and returning them, and often absenting themselves from the cloister for months at a time. For the first three years she was constantly subject to attacks of sickness, fainting fits, and paroxysms of pain, but she prayed to St Joseph, after which she became comparatively better, though her nervous system was completely shaken. But she appears afterwards to have accommodated herself with tolerable success to the worldliness of her environment, though not without intervals of religious misgiving. "For twenty years," she says, "I was tossed about on a stormy sea in a wretched condition, for, if I had small content in the world, in God I had no pleasure. At prayer time I watched for the clock to strike the end of the hour. To go to the oratory was a vexation to me, and prayer itself a constant effort." At one time she abandoned prayer altogether, as she found it impos sible to fix her thoughts, and she abhorred the hypocrisy of mechanically repeating a form of words. It was in the year 1554 (her noviciate dated from 1534), when she was thus nearly forty, that the event known as her conversion took place, and the second part of her life began. The death of her father roused her to serious reflexion, and one day, as she entered the oratory, she was struck by the image of the wounded Christ, placed there for an approaching festival. The blood was depicted as stream ing over the face from the thorns and running from the side and the hands and feet. The spectacle of suffering pierced Teresa's breast; she fell in tears at the feet of the figure, and felt every worldly emotion die within her. The shock threw her into a trance, and these trances, accompanied by visions, recurred frequently in the subse quent part of her life. They have since been adduced as Divine attestations of her saintship, but the sisterhood in the convent set them down to possession by a devil; her new departure was due in their eyes to no worthier motive than the desire to be peculiar and to be reputed better than other people. Teresa herself was very humble, and thought their explanation might be true; she took her case to her confessor and to the provincial-general of the Jesuits. The latter put her under a course of discipline: she was to flog herself with a whip of nettles, to wear a haircloth plaited with broken wires that would tear the skin, and to meditate daily on the details of Christ's passion. One day, while thus occupied, her trance came upon her, and she heard a voice say, "Thou shalt have no more converse with men, but with angels." After this the trance or fit always returned when she was at prayers, and she felt that Christ was close to her. Presently she was able to see him, "exactly as he was painted rising from the sepulchre." Her confessor directed her to exorcise the figure, and she obeyed with pain, but, it is needless to say, in vain. The visions grew more and more vivid. The cross of her rosary was snatched from her hand one day, and when returned it was made of jewels more brilliant than diamonds, visible, however, to her alone. She had often an acute pain in her side, and fancied that an angel came to her with a lance tipped with fire, which he struck into her heart. The 27th of August is kept sacred in Spain to this mystery, which has also formed a favourite subject of Spanish painters; it forms the frontispiece of

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