Thimbron

Thimbron or Thibron (Greek: Θίμβρων) may refer to:

• a Lacedaemonian, he was sent out as harmost in 400 BC, with an army of about 5000 men, to aid the Ionians against Tissaphernes, who wished to bring them into subjection. Thibron raised a substantial force of Peloponnesian troops and levies from other cities around Greece, but was initially unable to face the Persian army in the field.^[1] After he was joined by elements of the Ten Thousand, he challenged and defeated the Persian army on several occasions; seizing several cities before settling in to besiege Larissa.^[2] That siege proved fruitless, and Thibron was ordered to abandon it, and then replaced by another general, Dercylidas, before he could launch his next campaign.^[3] Upon his return to Sparta Thibron was tried and exiled for allowing his troops to plunder Sparta's allies in the region.^[4] In 391 BC, during the Corinthian War, Thibron was again dispatched to Ionia with an army, and was ordered to take aggressive action against the Persian satrap Struthas, who was pursuing a pro-Athenian, anti-Spartan policy.^[5] Thibron launched a number of successful raids into Persian territory. His raids tended to be poorly organized, however, and Struthas took advantage of this to ambush one of Thibron's raiding parties. The Spartans were routed, and a large number of them, including Thibron, were killed.^[6]

• a Lacedaemonian, he was a confidential officer of Harpalus, the Macedonian satrap of Babylon under Alexander the Great. According to one account it was Thimbron who murdered Harpalus in Crete, in 324 BC. He then possessed himself of his late master's treasures, fleet, and army, and, ostensibly espousing the cause of some Cyrenaean exiles, sailed to Cyrene with the intention of subjugating it. He defeated the Cyrenaeans in a battle, obtained possession of their harbour, Apollonia, Cyrenaica together with the treasures he found there, and compelled them to capitulate on condition of paying him 500 talents, and supplying him with half of their war-chariots for his expeditions. This agreement, however, they were soon induced to repudiate by Mnasicles, one of Thimbron's officers, who had deserted his standard, and gone over to the enemy. Under the able direction of Mnasicles, the Cyrenaeans recovered Apollonia, and, though Thimbron was aided by the Barcaeans and Hesperians, and succeeded in taking the town of Taucheira, yet, on the whole, his fortunes declined, and he met be sides with a severe disaster in the loss of a great number of his men, who were slain or captured by the enemy, and in the almost total destruction of his fleet by a storm. Not discouraged, however, he collected reinforcements from the Peloponnesus, defeated the Cyrenaeans (who were now aided by the Libyans and Carthaginians), and closely besieged Cyrene. Pressed by scarcity, the citizens quarrelled among themselves, and the chiefs of the oligarchical party, being driven out, betook themselves partly to Ptolemy I Soter, king of Egypt, and partly to Thimbron. Ptolemy thereupon sent a large force against Cyrene under Ophellas, to whom the exiles, who had taken refuge with Thimbron, endeavoured to escape, but were detected, and put to death. The Cyrenaean people then made common cause with Thimbron against the new invader; but Ophelias defeated him, and he was obliged to seek safety in flight. He fell, however, into the hands of some Libyans, and was by them delivered up to Epicydes, an Olynthian, whom Ophelias, having taken Teucheira, had made governor of the town. The citizens of Teucheira, with the sanction of Ophelias, sent Thimbron to Apollonia, the scene of much of his violence and extortion, to be crucified in 322 BC.

References

• Fine, John V.A. The Ancient Greeks: A critical history (Harvard University Press, 1983) ISBN 0-674-03314-0
• Xenophon (1890s) [original 4th century BC].  Hellenica. Trans. Henry Graham Dakyns. Wikisource. 

Notes

This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology by William Smith (1870).