The Peloponnesian war between Athens and Sparta is called “The Thirty Years’ War”.[War”.]
Thisbe (2 syl.), a beautiful Babylonian maid, beloved by Pyrămus, her next-door neighbor. As their parents forbade their marriage, they contrived to hold intercourse with each other through a chink in the garden wall. Once they agreed to meet at the tomb of Ninus. Thisbê was first at the trysting-place, but, being scared by a lion, took to flight, and accidentally dropped her robe, which the lion tore and stained with blood. Pyramus, seeing the blood-stained robe, thought that the lion had eaten Thisbê, and so killed himself. When Thisbê returned and saw her lover dead, she killed herself also. Shakespeare has burlesqued this pretty tale in his Midsummer Night’s Dream (1592).
Thom´alin, a shepherd who laughed to scorn the notion of love, but was ultimately entangled in its wiles. He tells Willy that one day, hearing a rustling in a bush, he discharged an arrow, when up flew Cupid into a tree. A battle ensued between them, and when the shepherd, having spent all his arrows, ran away, Cupid shot him in the heel. Thomalin did not much heed the wound at first, but soon it festered inwardly and rankled daily more and more.--Spenser, Shepheardes Calendar, iii. (1579).
Thomalin is again introduced in Ecl. vii., when he inveighs against the Catholic priests in general, and the shepherd Palinode (3 syl.) in particular. This eclogue could not have been written before 1578, as it refers to the sequestration of Grindal, archbishop of Canterbury in that year.
Thomas (Monsieur), the fellow-traveller of Val´entine. Valentine’s niece, Mary, is in love with him.--Beaumont and Fletcher, Mons. Thomas (1619).
Thomas (Sir), a dogmatical, prating, self-sufficient squire, whose judgments are but “justices’ justice.”--Crabbe, Borough, x. (1810).
Thomas à Kempis, the pseudonym of Jean Charlier de Gerson (1363-1429). Some say, of Thomas Hämmerlein Maleŏlus (1380-1471).
Thomas the Rhymer or “Thomas of Erceldoun,” an ancient Scottish bard. His name was Thomas Learmont, and he lived in the days of Wallace (thirteenth century).
⁂ Thomas the Rhymer, and Thomas Rymer were totally different persons. The latter was an historiographer, who compiled The Fœdera (1638-1713).
Thomas (Winifred), beautiful coquette, who wins Henry Vane’s heart only to trifle with it, in Frederic Jesup Stimson’s novel, The Crime of Henry Vane (1884).