A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology. By various writers. Ed. by William Smith. Illustrated by numerous engravings on wood.

502 BRASIDAS.
tinned to attach himself to the interests of Macedonia under Philip V., whom he attended in his
conference with Flamininus at Nicaea in Locris,
B. c. 198. (Polyb. xvii. 1; Liv. xxxii. 32.) At
the battle of Cynoscephalae, B. c. 197, he commanded the Boeotian troops in Philip's army; but,
together with the rest of his countrymen who had
on that occasion fallen into the Roman power, he
was sent home in safety by Flamininus, who
wished to conciliate Boeotia. On his return he
was elected Boeotarch, through the influence of the
Macedonian party at Thebes; in consequence of
which Zeuxippus, Peisistratus, and the other
leaders of the Roman party, caused him to be
assassinated as he was returning home one night
from an entertainment, B. c. 196. Polybius tells
us, what Livy omits to state, that Flamininus himself was privy to the crime. (Polyb. xviii. 26; Liv.
xxxiii. 27, 28; comp. xxxv. 47, xxxvi. 6.) [E. E.]
BRANCHUS (BpdyXos), a son of Apollo or
Smicrus of Delphi. His mother, a Milesian woman, dreamt at the time she gave birth to him,
that the sun was passing through her body, and
the seers interpreted this as a favourable sign.
Apollo loved the boy Branchus for his great beauty,
and endowed him with prophetic power, which he
exercised at Didyma, near Miletus. Here he
founded an oracle, of which his descendants, the
Branchidae, were the priests, and which was held
in great esteem, especially by the lonians and
Aeolians. (Herod. i. 157; Strab. xiv. p. 634, xvii.
p. 814; Lutat. ad Stat. Theb. viii. 198; Conon,
Narrat. 33; Luc. Dial. Deor. 2; comp. Dict. of
Ant. s. v. Oraculum.)
BRANCUS, king of the Allobroges, had been
deprived of his kingdom by his younger brother,
but was restored to it by Hannibal in B. c. 218.
(Liv. xxi. 31.)
BRANGAS (Bpd'yyas), a son of the Thracian
king Strymon, and brother of Rhessus and' Olynthus. When the last of these three brothers had
been killed during the chase by a lion, Brangas
buried him on the spot where he had fallen, and
called the town which he subsequently built there
Olynthus. (Conon, Ncarrat. 4; Steph. Byz. s. v.
"OAvveos; Athen. viii. p. 334, who calls Olynthus
a son of Heracles.) [L. S.]
BRA'SIDAS (Bpae-ibas), son of Tellis, the most
distinguished Spartan in the first part of the Peloponnesian war, signalized himself in its first year
(B. c. 431) by throwing a hundred men into Methone,.while besieged by the Athenians in their first
ravage of the Peloponnesian coast. For this exploit, which saved the place, he received, the first
in the war, public commendation at Sparta; and
perhaps in consequence of this it is we find him in
September appointed Ephor Eponymus. (Xen.
Hell. ii. 3. ~ 10.) His next employment (B. c.
429) is as one of the three counsellors sent to
assist Cnemus, after his first defeat by Phormion;
and his name is also mentioned after the second
defeat in the attempt to surprise the Peiraeeus, and
we may not improbably ascribe to him the attempt,
and its failure to his colleagues. In 427 he was
united in the same, but a subordinate, capacity,
with Alcidas, the new admiral, on his return
from his Ionian voyage; and accompanying him
to Corcyra he was reported, Thucydides tells us, to
have vainly urged him to attack the city immediately after their victory in the first engagement.
Next, as trierarch in the attempt to dislodge De

BRASIDAS.
mosthehes from Pylos (425), he is described as
running his galley ashore, and, in a gallant
endeavour to land, to have fainted from his
wounds, and falling back into the ship to have lost
in the water his shield, which was afterwards found
by the Athenians and used in their trophy. Early
in the following year we find him at the Isthmus
preparing for his expedition to Chalcidice (424), but
suddenly called off from this by the danger of
Megara, which but for his timely and skilful succour would no doubt have been lost to the enemy.
Shortly after, he set forth with an army of 700
helots and 1000 mercenaries, arrived at Heracleia,
and, by a rapid and dexterous march through the
hostile country of Thessaly, effected a junction
with Perdiccas of Macedon. The events of his
career in this field of action were (after a brief expedition against Arrhibaeus, a revolted vassal of
the king's) the acquisition, 1st. of Acanthus,
effected by a most politic exposition of his views
(of which Thucydides gives us a representation),
made before the popular assembly; 2nd. of Stageirus, its neighbour; 3rd. of Amphipolis, the
most important of all the Athenian tributaries in
that part of the country, accomplished by a sudden
attack after the commencement of winter, and followed by an unsuccessful attempt on E'on, and
by the accession of Myrcinus, Galepsus, Aesyme,
and most of the towns in the peninsula of Athos;
4th. the reduction of Torone, and expulsion of its
Athenian garrison from the post of Lecythus. In
the following spring (423) we have the revolt of
Scione, falling a day or two after the ratification
of the truce agreed upon by the government at
home-a mischance which Brasidas scrupled not to
remedy by denying the fact, and not only retained
Scione, but even availed himself of the consequent
revolt of Mende, on pretext of certain infringements on the other side. Next, a second expedition with Perdiccas, against Arrhibaeus, resulting
in a perilous but most ably-conducted retreat: the
loss, in the meantime, of Mende, recaptured by
the new Athenian armament; and in the winter
an ineffectual attempt on Potidaea. In 422,
Brasidas with no reinforcements had to oppose a
large body of the flower of the Athenian troops
under Cleon. Torone and Galepsus were lost, but
Amphipolis was saved by a skilful sally,-the closing
event of the war,-in which the Athenians were
completely defeated and Cleon slain, and Brasidas
himself in the first moment of victory received his
mortal wound.
He was interred at Amphipolis, within the
walls-an extraordinary honour in a Greek town
-with a magnificent funeral, attended under arms
by all the allied forces. The tomb was railed off,
and his memory honoured by the Amphipolitans,
by yearly sacrifices offered to him there, as to a
hero, and by games. (Pans. iii. 14. ~ 1; Aristot.
Elh. Nic. v. 7; Dict. of Ant. s. v. Bpacibeia.)
Regarding him as their preserver, they transferred to him all the honours of,a Founder
hitherto paid to Hagnon. Pausanias mentions a
cenotaph to him in' Sparta, and we hear also
(Pnlt. Lysander, 1) of a treasury at Delphi,
bearing the inscription, " Brasidas and the Acanthians from the Athenians." Two or three of his
sayings are recorded in Plutarch's Apophthegmata
Laconica, but none very characteristic. Thucydides gives three speeches in his name, the first
and longest at Acanthus; one to his forces in the