Thersites (ther-sī´tēz).—A scurrilous Grecian chief, loquacious, loud and coarse, in the Iliad. His chief delight was to inveigh against the kings of Greece. He squinted, halted, and on his tapering head grew a few white patches of starveling down.
Thopas, Sir.—In the Canterbury Tales, a capital sportsman, archer, wrestler, and runner, who resolved to marry no one but an “elf queen,” and accordingly started for Faëryland. Story left unfinished.
Thorberg Skafting.—Tales of a Wayside Inn, Henry W. Longfellow. The master-builder ordered by King Olaf to build a ship twice as long and twice as large as the Dragon, built by Raud the Strong, which was stranded.
Three Musketeers [Trois Mousquetaires (trwä mös-ke-tar´), Les].—A novel by Alexander Dumas père, published in 1844. The scene is laid in the time of Richelieu. The three musketeers are Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, but D’Artagnan is the principal character. He is a young Gascon of an adventurous yet practical nature, with a genius for intrigue, who goes up to Paris to seek his fortune with an old horse, a box of miraculous salve given to him by his mother, and his father’s counsels. His career is one of hairbreadth escapes (with death, in the end, on the field of battle) in the society of the three musketeers.
Thyestean Banquet.—Referred to in Milton’s Paradise Lost. A cannibal feast. Thyestes was given his own two sons to eat at a banquet served up to him by his brother Atreus.
Thyrsis (ther´sis).—A herdsman introduced in the Idylls of Theocritos, and in Vergil’s Eclogues.
Hard by, a cottage chimney smokes
From betwixt two aged oaks,
Where Corydon and Thyrsis, met,
Are at their savory dinner set.
Milton, L’Allegro.
Timias.—King Arthur’s squire in Spenser’s Faërie Queene. He went after the “wicked foster,” from whom Florimel fled, and the “foster” with his two brothers, falling on him, were all slain.
Tobey, Uncle.—A character in Sterne’s Tristram Shandy. A captain who was wounded at the siege of Namur, and was obliged to retire from the service. He is the impersonation of kindness, benevolence, and simple-heartedness; his courage is undoubted, and his gallantry delightful for its innocence and modesty.
Tommy Atkins.—Barrack-Room Ballads, Kipling. The name is here used in its general meaning, a British soldier. The name came from the little pocket ledgers served out, at one time, to all British soldiers. In these manuals were to be entered the name, the age, the date of enlistment, etc. The war office sent with each little book a form for filling it in, and the hypothetical name selected was Tommy Atkins. The books were instantly so called, and it did not require many days to transfer the name from the book to the soldier.