Chapter 12. TIMON (c.
320-2 30 B.C.)
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109]
Timon, says our
1 Apollonides of Nicaea in the first book of his
commentaries
On the Silli, which he dedicated
to Tiberius Caesar, was the son of Timarchus and a native of Phlius.
Losing his parents when young, he became a stage-dancer, but
later
took a dislike to that pursuit and went
abroad to Megara to stay with Stilpo ; then after some time he
returned home and married. After that he went to Pyrrho at Elis with
his wife, and lived there until his children were born ; the elder
of these he called Xanthus, taught him medicine, and made him his
heir.
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This son was a man of high repute, as we learn from Sotion in
his eleventh book. Timon, however, found himself without means of
support and sailed to the Hellespont and Propontis. Living now at
Chalcedon as a sophist, he increased his reputation still further
and, having made his fortune, went to Athens, where he lived until
his death, except for a short period which he spent at Thebes. He
was known to King Antigonus and to Ptolemy Philadelphus, as his
own iambics
2 testify.
He was, according to
Antigonus, fond of wine, and in the time that he could spare from
philosophy he used to write poems. These included epics, tragedies,
satyric dramas, thirty comedies and sixty tragedies, besides
silli (lampoons) and obscene poems.
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There are also
reputed works of his extending to twenty thousand verses which are
mentioned by Antigonus of Carystus, who also wrote his life. There
are three
silli in which, from his point of
view as a Sceptic, he abuses every one and lampoons the dogmatic
philosophers, using the form of parody. In the first he speaks in
the first person throughout, the second and third are in the form of
dialogues ; for he represents himself as questioning Xenophanes of
Colophon about each philosopher in turn, while Xenophanes answers
him ; in the second he speaks of the more ancient philosophers, in
the third of the
later, which is why some have
entitled it the Epilogue.
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The first deals with the same subjects,
except that the poem is a monologue. It begins as follows
3 :
Ye sophists, ye
inquisitives, come ! follow !
He died at the age of
nearly ninety, so we learn from Antigonus and from Sotion in his
eleventh book. I have heard that he had only one eye ; indeed he
used to call himself a Cyclops. There was another Timon, the
misanthrope.
4
Now this philosopher, according to
Antigonus, was very fond of gardens and preferred to mind his own
affairs. At all events there is a story that Hieronymus the
Peripatetic said of him, "Just as with the Scythians those who are
in flight shoot as well as those who pursue, so, among philosophers,
some catch their disciples by pursuing them, some by fleeing from
them, as for instance Timon."
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He was quick to perceive
anything and to turn up his nose in scorn ; he was fond of writing
and at all times good at sketching plots for poets and collaborating in dramas. He used to give the dramatists Alexander and Homer
materials for their tragedies.
5 When disturbed by
maidservants and dogs, he would stop writing, his earnest desire
being to maintain tranquillity. Aratus is said to have asked him
how he could obtain a trustworthy text of Homer, to which he
replied, "You can, if you get hold of the ancient copies, and not
the corrected copies of our day." He used to let his own poems lie
about, sometimes
half eaten away.
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Hence, when
he came to read parts of them to Zopyrus the orator, he would turn
over the pages and recite whatever came handy ; then, when he was
half through, he would discover the piece which he had been looking
for in vain, so careless was he.
6 Furthermore, he was so easy-going that
he would readily go without his dinner. They say that once, when he
saw Arcesilaus passing through the "knaves-market," he said, "What
business have you to come here, where we are all free men ?" He was
constantly in the habit of quoting, to those who would admit the
evidence of the senses when confirmed by the judgement of the
mind, the line--
Birds of a feather flock
together.Usually explained, after Diogenianus, of two
notorious thieves, Attagas the Thessalian and Numenius the
Corinthian. There may, however, be a sly hit at Pyrrho's disciple
Numenius (supra, § 102). Or merely the birds
partridge and woodcock may be meant, not any Mr. Partridge and Mr.
Woodcock.
Jesting in this fashion was habitual
with him. When a man marvelled at everything, he said, "Why do you
not marvel that we three have but four eyes between us ?" for in
fact he himself had only one eye, as also had his disciple
Dioscurides, while the man whom he addressed was normal.
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Asked once
by Arcesilaus why he had come there from Thebes, he replied, "Why,
to laugh when I have you all in full view !" Yet, while attacking
Arcesilaus in his
Silli, he has praised him in
his work entitled the
Funeral Banquet of
Arcesilaus.
According to Menodotus he left no successor,
but his school lapsed until Ptolemy of Cyrene re-established it.
Hippobotus and Sotion, however, say that he had as pupils
Dioscurides of Cyprus, Nicolochus of Rhodes, Euphranor of Seleucia,
and Praÿlus of the
Troad.
8
The latter, as we learn from the history of Phylarchus, was a man of
such unflinching courage that, although unjustly accused, he
patiently suffered a traitor's death, without so much as deigning to
speak one word to his fellow-citizens.
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Euphranor had as pupil
Eubulus of Alexandria ; Eubulus taught Ptolemy, and he again
Sarpedon and Heraclides ; Heraclides again taught Aenesidemus of
Cnossus, the compiler of eight books of Pyrrhonean discourses ; the
latter was the instructor of Zeuxippus his fellow-citizen, he of
Zeuxis of the angular foot (
γωνιόπο
υς, Cruickshank), he again of Antiochus of Laodicea on the
Lycus, who had as pupils Menodotus of Nicomedia, an empiric
physician, and Theiodas of Laodicea ; Menodotus was the instructor
of Herodotus of Tarsus, son of Arieus, and Herodotus taught Sextus
Empiricus, who wrote ten books on Scepticism, and other fine works.
Sextus taught Saturninus called Cythenas,
9 another
empiricist.
