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TIMON (c. 320-230)

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Originally appearing in Volume V26, Page 989 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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TIMON (c. 320-230) , of Phlius, See also:Greek sceptic philosopher and satirical poet, a See also:pupil of See also:Stilpo the Megarian and Pyrrho of See also:Elis. Having made a See also:fortune by teaching and lecturing in See also:Chalcedon he spent the See also:rest of his See also:life chiefly at See also:Athens, where he died. His writings (See also:Diogenes Laertius, ix. ch. 1`2) were numerous both in See also:prose and in See also:verse: besides the ZiXXo6, he is said to have written epic poems, tragedies, comedies and satyric dramas. But he is best known as the author of the ItXXot, three books of sarcastic See also:hexameter verses, written against the Greek philosophers. The fragments that remain (about 140 lines or parts of lines, printed in F. W. A. Mullach, Frag. Phil. graec. i. 84–98) show that Timon possessed some of the qualities of a See also:great satirist, together with a command of the hexameter; but he had no loftier aim than to awaken See also:laughter.

Philosophers are " excessively cunning murderers of many See also:

wise saws " (v. 96) ; the only two whom he spares are See also:Xenophanes, " the modest See also:censor of See also:Homer's lies " (v. 29), and Pyrrho, against whom " no other mortal dare contend " (v. 126). Besides the zixXoi we have some lines preserved from the 'Js&tAFcof, a poem in elegiac verse, which appears to have inculcated the tenets of See also:scepticism, and one or two fragments which cannot be with certainty assigned to either poem. There is a reference to Timon in Ells. Freels,. Ev. xiv. (Eng. trans. by E. H. See also:Gifford, 1903, p. 761).

Fragments of his poems have been collected by Wilke, De graecorur syllis (See also:

Warsaw, 1820), See also:Paul, Dissertatio de syllis (See also:Berlin, 182x), and See also:Wachsmuth, Sillographorum graec. religuiae (See also:Leipzig, 1885).

End of Article: TIMON (c. 320-230)

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