Timon (philosopher)

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For the inspiration for Shakespeare's Timon of Athens, see Timon of Athens (person).

Timon, also known as Timon of Phlius (ca. 320-230 BC), was a Greek sceptic philosopher and satirical poet, a pupil of Stilpo the Megarian and Pyrrho of Elis.

Contents 1 Life and writings 2 Cultural references 3 Notes 4 References 5 External links 6 References

[edit] Life and writings

In Phlius, he worked as a professional dancer until he had children, when he turned to sophism and teaching for money.

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. Also among his lost works is Against the Physicists, in which he questioned the legitimacy of making hypotheses.^[1]. It has been suggested that Pyrrhoniam scepticism ultimately originated with Timon.^[2]

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.

[edit] Cultural references

There is a reference to Timon in Eusebius's 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 work is frequently quoted by second century Greek philosopher Sextus Empiricus, also a follower of Pyrrho. Apart from the fragments of the Silloi, most of what survives of Timon's work is what Sextus chose to quote.

While Shakespeare's Timon of Athens is based on another figure who lived much earlier, Timon of Athens, some of Timon's philosophies influenced Shakespeare's presentation of him.

[edit] Notes

1. ^ Sextus Empricus, Against the Geometers, 2. in Sextus Empiricus IV: Against the Professors. R.G. Bury (trans.) (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1949/2000). p. 244 (Greek); 245 (English) ISBN 0-674-99420-5
2. ^ Brunschwig (1999) 249-251.

[edit] References

• Brunschwig, Jacques, "Introduction: the beginnings of Hellenistic epistemology" in Algra, Barnes, Mansfeld and Schofield (eds.), The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999) 229-259.

[edit] External links

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Hornblower, Simon, and Anthony Spawforth ed., The Oxford Classical Dictionary (Oxford University Press, 2003) ISBN 0-19-866172-X

[edit] References

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.