THERSITES, ther-setk (Lat., from Gk. Oepo(rns). in the Iliad, the ugliest and most im pudent talker among the Greeks assembled be fore Troy. He is represented as reviling Aga memnon and Achilles. and is beaten by Odysseus for his insolence. Later writers said he was a son of Agrios, brother of (Emus, and was slain by Achilles, whom he had mocked after the death of Penthesilea.
THESE'Ulli (Lat., from Gk. Onatiop, The scion, building sacred to Theseus, from Oncre6s, Theseus, Theseus). An herolin or sanctuary of the hero Theseus (q.v.). The most celebrated one was that at Athens, which seems to have stood near the centre of the city, to the northwest of the Acropolis, and not far from the Stoa of Attains. Built about n.e. 473, when Cimon brought the reputed bones of Theseus from the island of Scyros to Athens, it was decorated by Polygnotus and Micon with paintings represent ing Theseus's descent into the sea to Amphitrite, his battle with the Amazons, and the battle of the Centaurs and the Lapitlue. It was an im• portant sanctuary, and the sacred precinct in which it stood was an asylum for fugitive slaves, or those who were oppressed. Here, too. the Diesmothetx drew lots for the choice of the a rehons.
The name is commonly applied to the best preserved temple in Greece, which stands on a low hill (Colons Agoraios) to the west of the ancient Agora of Athens, though the true The scum must have been on the east. The building is a Doric hexastyle peripteros with thirteen columns on the side, and owes its preservation to its transformation in early Christian days to a church of Saint George. Its present name rests only on an anonymous description of Athens from the end of the fifteenth century. and is directly opposed to all the ancieip, testimony. The correct name of the building is still uncer tain. it has been identified with the temple of Ares, of Hercules in Alelite, of Apollo Patrons, and of Hepluestus and Athena Ergane; the last being the most plausible. It is certainly a work
of the Periclean age, and probably somewhat later than the Parthenon, though on this point good authorities differ. The exterior of the building has been comparatively little harmed by the course of time, but the interior has been remod Bled to serve as a church. A few years ago it was a museum, and it still serves as a storeroom for unimportant antiques. Of the sixty-eight metopes only eighteen are sculptured, namely, the ten across the eastern end, representing labors of Hercules. and the fora• adjoining me topes on each side, representing deeds of Theseus. Across the ends of the cella an Ionic frieze re places the Doric, and at the eastern end is prolonged beyond the walls of the cella to the beams of the peristyle. The shorter west frieze contains the contest of the Centaurs and the Lapitlile, while the east frieze represents a battle in the presence of six seated gods, but no sure interpretation of its meaning has been reached. The sculptures which originally adorned the pediments have disappeared.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. The literature is very extenBibliography. The literature is very exten- sive, but the following are among the more im portant or accessible works: Stuart and Revett, Antiquities of Athens. vol. iii. (London, 1762 1816) ; Wachsnuith. Die Stadt A then ins Alter tun (Leipzig, 1874-90) ; Graef and Baumeister, s. v. "Theseion," in Baumeister's Denk-ingler der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft (\Iunieh and Leipzig, 1889) ; Harrison and \Terra11, Mythology and Monuments of Ancient Athens (London, 1S90) ; Frazer• Pausanias. vol. ii (ib., 1898) ; B. Saner, Das SOCI01111111te Thesehm and scin plas tischer Schmuck 1899) ; Reinhardt, Ge setvaiissigkeit der griechischca Baukunst, vol. i. (Stuttgart, 1903).