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Timon (c. 320-230), of Phlius, Greek sceptic philosopher and satirical poet, a pupil of Stilpo the Megarian and Pyrrho of Elis.
Having made a fortune by teaching and lecturing in Chalcedon he spent the rest of his life chiefly at Athens, where he died. His writings (Diogenes Laërtius, ix. ch. 12) were numerous both in prose and in verse: besides the Silloi, he is said to have written epic poems, tragedies, comedies and satyric dramas. But he is best known as the author of the Silloi, three books of sarcastic hexameter verses, written against the Greek philosophers.
According to Timon, philosophers are "excessively cunning murderers of many wise saws" (v. 96); the only two whom he spares are Xenophanes, "the modest censor of Homer's lies" (v. 29), and Pyrrho, against whom "no other mortal dare contend " (v. 126). He also parodies Homer in his writings. Besides the Silloi we have some lines preserved from a poem in elegiac verse, which appears to have inculcated the tenets of scepticism, and one or two fragments which cannot be with certainty assigned to either poem. In another preserved work, a dialogue known as the Python, Timon recorded a conversation between himself and his teacher Pyrrho on the way to the Delphic oracle.
There is a reference to Timon in Eus. Praep. Ev. xiv. (Eng. trans. by EH Gifford, 1903, p. 761). Fragments of his poems have been collected by Wolke, De graecorum syllis (Warsaw, 1820), Paul, Dissertatio de syllis (Berlin, 1821);, and Wachsmuth, Sittographorum graec. reliquiae (Leipzig, 1885). His life was the inspiration for William Shakespeare's never-completed play Timon of Athens.
External links
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Hornblower, Simon, and Anthony Spawforth ed., The Oxford Classical Dictionary (Oxford University Press, 2003) ISBN 019866172X
Timon von Phleius | Timón el Silógrafo | Timon de Phlionte | Timon z Fleiuntu | Timon | Timon från Fleios
"Timon (philosopher)"