Therapne, or Terapne, a town of Laconia, at the west of the Eurotas, where Apollo had a temple called Phœbeum. It was but a very short distance from Lacedæmon, and, indeed, some authors have confounded it with the capital of Laconia. It received its name from Therapne, a daughter of Lelex. Castor and Pollux were born there, and on that account they were sometimes called Therapnæi fratres. Pausanias, bk. 3, ch. 14.—Ovid, Fasti, bk. 5, li. 223.—Silius Italicus, bk. 6, li. 303; bk. 8, li. 414; bk. 13, li. 43.—Livy, bk. 2, ch. 16.—Dionysius of Halicarnassus, bk. 2, ch. 49.—Statius, bk. 7, Thebaid, li. 793.
Theras, a son of Autesion of Lacedæmon, who conducted a colony to Callista, to which he gave the name of Thera. He received divine honours after death. Pausanias, bk. 3, chs. 1 & 15.
Therimăchus, a son of Hercules by Megara. Apollodorus, bk. 2, chs. 4 & 7.
Therippidas, a Lacedæmonian, &c. Diodorus, bk. 15.
Theritas, a surname of Mars in Laconia.
Therma, a town of Africa. Strabo.——A town of Macedonia, afterwards called Thessalonica, in honour of the wife of Cassander, and now Salonichi. The bay in the neighbourhood of Therma is called Thermæus, or Thermaicus sinus, and advances far into the country, so much, that Pliny has named it Macedonicus sinus, by way of eminence, to intimate its extent. Strabo.—Tacitus, Annals, bk. 5, ch. 10.—Herodotus.
Thermæ (baths), a town of Sicily, where were the baths of Selinus, now Sciacca.——Another, near Panormus, now Thermini. Silius Italicus, bk. 14, li. 23.—Cicero, Against Verres, bk. 2, ch. 35.
Thermōdon, now Termeh, a famous river of Cappadocia, in the ancient country of the Amazons, falling into the Euxine sea near Themiscyra. There was also a small river of the same name in Bœotia, near Tanagra, which was afterwards called Hæmon. Strabo, bk. 11.—Herodotus, bk. 9, ch. 27.—Mela, bk. 1, ch. 19.—Pausanias, bk. 1, ch. 1; bk. 9, ch. 19.—Plutarch, Demosthenes.—Virgil, Æneid, bk. 11, li. 659.—Ovid, Metamorphoses, bk. 2, li. 249, &c.
Thermopy̆læ, a small pass leading from Thessaly into Locris and Phocis. It has a large ridge of mountains on the west, and the sea on the east, with deep and dangerous marshes, being in the narrowest part only 25 feet in breadth. Thermopylæ receives its name from the hot baths which are in the neighbourhood. It is celebrated for a battle which was fought there B.C. 480, on the 7th of August, between Xerxes and the Greeks, in which 300 Spartans resisted for three successive days repeatedly the attacks of the most brave and courageous of the Persian army, which, according to some historians, amounted to 5,000,000. There was also another battle fought there between the Romans and Antiochus king of Syria. Herodotus, bk. 7, ch. 176, &c.—Strabo, bk. 9.—Livy, bk. 36, ch. 15.—Mela, bk. 2, ch. 3.—Plutarch, Marcus Cato, &c.—Pausanias, bk. 7, ch. 15.
Thermum, a town of Ætolia on the Evenus. Polybius, bk. 5.