To'lmides
（
Τολμίδης), an Athenian general, who in B. C. 455 persuaded the people to send him with a fleet to cruize round the Peloponnesus, and ravage the enemy's country. If we may believe Diodorus,
1000 men were voted to him, to be selected by himself; but he first prevailed on 3000 to join him as volunteers, by assuring them that he meant at any rate to name them for the service, and, having thus secured these, he proceeded to act on the vote of the assembly, and chose 1000 more.
In his expedition he burnt the Lacedaemonian arsenal at Gythium, took Chalcis, a town of the Corinthians, and disembarking on the Sicyonian territory, defeated the troops that came against him.
According to Diodorus, he had previously captured Methone, which, however, by the arrival of Spartan succours, he was soon obliged to relinquish.
He also took Naupactus from the Ozolian Locrians, and settled there the Messenians, who had been besieged and recently conquered by the Lacedaemonians at Ithome.
After the return of Tolmides to Athens, we hear of his leading Athenian settlers (
κληροῦχοι) to Euboea and Naxos; and in B. C. 447, when the Boeotian exiles had returned and seized Chaeroneia and Orchomenus, he proposed that he should be sent at once with a body of volunteers to quell the rising. Pericles objected in vain to the expedition as hasty and ill-timed, and Tolmides, having carried his point, marched into Boeotia with 1000 Athenians and some allied troops, and took Chaeroneia, where he left a garrison.
But near Coroneia he fell in with a force consisting of the Boeotian exiles who had gathered together at Orchomenus, some Locrians and Euboean exiles, and others of the same party.
A battle ensued, in which the Athenians were utterly defeated, and Tolmides himself was alain, (
Thuc. 1.103,
108,
113;
Diod. 11.84,
85,
12.6; Aesch.
de Fals. Leg. p. 38;
Paus. 1.27;
Plut. Ages. 19,
Per. 16, 18.)
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