Thersiʹtes

A deformed, scurrilous officer in the Greek army which went to the siege of Troy. He was always railing at the chiefs, and one day Achilles felled him to the earth with his first and killed him. (Homer: Iliad.)

“He squinted, halted, gibbous was behind,

And pinched before, and on his tapering head

Grew patches only of the flimsiest down.

… . Him Greece had sent to Troy,

The miscreant, who shamed his country most.”

Cowper’s Translation, book ii.

A Thersitēs. A dastardly, malevolent, impudent railer against the powers that be. (See above.)

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.

Thersiʹtes

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