Sometimes the straw is stacked loose, while sometimes it is tied up with twine by a tier exactly like that on a "string binder" and then stacked up. Where all the straw is used at the farm for fodder, etc., the fixed thrashing machine set up in the barn is the most convenient. The sheafed corn has to be carried to it, but, on the other hand, everything is under cover, the work can he done on a wet day, and all the products of thrashing in the shape of grain, straw, cavings, chaff, etc., are kept dry. In the great corn districts, however, the portable thrasher is most con venient ; it is set alongside the stack and only the grain and chaff are carried under cover, while the thrashed straw, etc., is re stacked up on the spot as the work goes on. (P. MCC.) THRASYBULUS, an Athenian general, whose public career began in 411 B.C., when he frustrated the oligarchic rising in Samos (see PELOPONNESIAN WAR). Elected general by the troops, he effected the recall of Alcibiades and assisted him in the ensuing naval campaigns, contributing to the victories of Cynossema and Cyzicus (410). He commanded a ship at Arginusae and after the engagement was commissioned with Theramenes (q.v.) to rescue the men on the wrecks.
In 404, when exiled by the Thirty Tyrants he retired to Thebes.
Late that year, with seventy men, he seized Phyle, a hill fort on Mt. Parnes. A force sent by the Thirty was routed by a surprise attack. Thrasybulus then gained the Peiraeus, I,000 strong, and held Munychia against the oligarchs. Eventually a Spartan expedi tion under king Pausanias arrived and effected a settlement by which the democracy was restored. Thrasybulus was now the hero of the people; but a decree by which he secured the franchise for all his followers, including many slaves, was rescinded as illegal.
In 395 Thrasybulus induced Athens to join the Theban league against Sparta, and in 389 he led a new fleet of 4o ships against the Spartans at Rhodes. Sailing first to the Bosporus he effected a democratic revolution at Byzantium and renewed the corn toll. After a successful descent on Lesbos and the renewal of the 5% import tax at Thasos and Clazomenae he sailed south in quest of further contributions, and was killed in a skirmish at Aspendus.
See Thucydides, viii. 75-105 ; Xenophon, Hellenica; Lysias, c. Era tosth. 55-61 and c. Ergocl. 5, 8; and Const. ath. xl. Diodorus xiii., xiv., Justin v. 9, 10, and Nepos depend almost wholly on Xenophon.