(it) 



TIMOLEON. 



TIMON. 



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1 Curiosities of London/ 800 pp., 1855 ; ' Things not generally known 

 familiarly Explained,' and 'Curiosities of History,' 1856: of the two 

 latter works, more than 20,000 copies were sold within twenty months. 

 His 'Arcana of Science' was published yearly from 1828 to 1839 inclu- 

 sive, and his ' Year-Book of Facts ' from 1839 to 1857. Soon after the 

 establishment of the 'Illustrated London News,' in 1842, Mr. Timbs 

 became one of its editors, in which position he has ever since con- 

 tinued. In 1854 he was elected Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. 



TIMO'LEON, a Greek general and statesman. He was a native of 

 Corinth, and the sou of Timodemus and Timariste. Respecting his 

 youth we know nothing, except that he was no less distinguished by 

 his noble character and hia love of freedom than by his illustrious 

 descent. When he had grown up to manhood, his elder brother 

 Titnophanes, who had been elected general by the Corinthians, assumed 

 the tyrannis in his native city by the help of his friends and his 

 mercenaries. Timoleon at first only remonstrated with his brother, 

 but when this was useless, he formed a plot against him, and Timo- 

 phanes was killed. Soon after this event, which threw all Corinth 

 into a state of violent agitation, some extolling the conduct of Timo- 

 leon as magnanimous and worthy of a real patriot, others cursing and 

 condemning him as a fratricide, there arrived at Corinth ambassadors 

 from Syracuse soliciting the aid of tho Corinthians against ita op- 

 pressors. This was a favourable opportunity for the party hostile to 

 Timoleon to get rid of his followers, while at the same time it opened 

 to Timoleon a field of action in Sicily, where he might act according 

 to his principles and deliver the island from its oppressors. Timoleon 

 was accordingly sent to Syracuse with a small bund of mercenaries, 

 which he himself had raised, B.C. 844. Syracuse was then divided 

 into three parties : the popular party, which had engaged the service 

 of Timoleon ; a Carthaginian party ; and the party of Dionysius, the 

 tyrant, who had returned from Italy in B.C. 346. Dionysius had 

 already been driven out of a part of the city by Hicetas, the tyrant of 

 Leontini, who supported the Carthaginian party. On the arrival of 

 Timoleon, Hicetas was compelled to withdraw to Leontini, and 

 Dionysius, who was reduced to surrender himself and the citadel to 

 Timoleon, was allowed to quit the island in safety, and he withdrew 

 to Corinth, in B.C. 343. [DIONYSIUS.] Syracuse had almost become 

 desolate by the successive revolutions and party warfare. During the 

 winter and the spring following his victory over Dionysius, Timoleon 

 endeavoured as much as was in his power to restore the prosperity of 

 the city by recalling those who had been exiled, and by inviting 

 colonists from other parts of Sicily and assigning lands to them. After 

 this he continued to carry on petty warfare partly against the Cartha- 

 ginians and partly against Hicetas. The Carthaginians in the mean- 

 time collected a new army, which is said to have consisted of 70,000 

 foot and 10,000 horse, and which was conveyed to Sicily by a large 

 fleet. Timoleon could muster no more than 3000 Syracusans and 

 9000 mercenaries, but in order to strengthen himself he concluded a 

 peace with Hicetas, some of whose troops now joined his army. He 

 marched out against the enemy, and by his superior generalship he 

 succeeded in gaining a brilliant victory over the Carthaginians on the 

 banks of the river Criinessus, and confined them to the part of Sicily 

 between the river Halycus and the western coast, B.C. 339. After this 

 victory and the conclusion of a peace with Carthage he directed his 

 arms against the tyrants in other towns of Sicily, whom he compelled 

 to surrender or withdraw, partly by the terror of his name and partly 

 by force of arms. Hicetas was made prisoner, and condemned to 

 death by the Syracusans, with his wife and family. 



After freedom and the ascendancy of Syracuse were thus restored in 

 the greater part of Sicily, Timoleon directed his attention to the 

 restoration of the prosperity of the towns and the country. The 

 former, especially Syracuse, were still thinly peopled, and he invited 

 colonists from Corinth and other parts to settle there, and distributed 

 lands among them. He himself, with the consent of the Syracusana, 

 undertook to revise and amend their constitution and laws, and to 

 adapt them to the altered wants and circumstances of the state. 

 Although it would have been easy for him to establish himself as 

 tyrant and to secure to his descendants the kingly power at Syracuse, 

 he fulfilled the duties of the office entrusted to him with a fidelity 

 which has rarely been equalled. He had no other end in view but the 

 establishment of popular liberty, for which he prepared and trained 

 the people. Some acts of cruelty and apparent injustice with which 

 he is charged, find their excuse in the character of those whom he had 

 to deal with, for the Syracusans at that time were a motley and 

 demoralised people, who could not be managed without Timoleon's 

 assuming at times the very power which it was his wish to destroy. 

 But Syracuse and Sicily felt the benefits of his institutions for many 

 years after hia death, and continued to enjoy increasing prosperity. 



During the latter part of his life Timoleon was blind and lived in 

 retirement, respected and beloved by the Sicilians as their liberator 

 and benefactor. He died in the year B.C. 337, and was buried in the" > 

 Agora of Syracuse, where subsequently his grave was surrounded by 

 porticoes and adorned with a gymnasium called the Timoleonteum. 



(Plutarch, and C. Nepos, Life of Timoleon; and Diodorus Siculus, 

 lib. xvi) 



_ TIMO'MACHUS, a celebrated ancient painter, a native of Byzan- 

 tium, and said to have been the contemporary of Julius Caesar. Pliny 

 (' Nat. Hist.,' xxxv. 40) informs us that Cseaar purchased two pictures 



in encaustic by Timomachus, for eighty Attic talents, about 17,2801. ; 

 one representing Ajax the sou of Telamon brooding over his mis- 

 fortunes ; the other, Medea about to destroy her children : he dedi- 

 cated them in the temple of Venus Genetrix. These pictures have 

 been much celebrated by the poets ; there are several epigrams upon 

 them in the Greek anthology, and they are alluded to by Ovid in. the 

 two following lines : 



"Utque sedet vultu fassus Telamonius iram, 

 Inque oculis facinus barbara mater habet." ( c Trist.,' ii. 525.) 



(Ajax, the Bon of Telamon, is seated, showing his anger by his countenance ; 

 and the barbarous mother betrays by her eyes her intended crime.) 



We learn from Pliny also that the picture of Medea was not finished ; 

 its completion was interrupted apparently by the death of the painter, 

 yet it was admired, he says, more than any of the finished works of 

 Timomachus, as was the case likewise with the Iris of Aristidea, the 

 Tyndaridse of Nicomachus, and a Venus by Apelles, which were more 

 admired than any of the finished works of their respective masters. 

 This picture is noticed also by Plutarch ('De Aud. Poet.,' 3) in a 

 passage where he speaks of the representation of improper subjects, 

 but which we admire on account of the excellence of the execution. 



lu the common text of Pliny, Timomachus is said to be the con- 

 temporary of Csesar (' Julii Csesaris setate '), but Durand, in his 

 ' Histoire de la Peinture Ancienne,' &c., expresses an opinion that the 

 word 'setate' is an addition of the copyist, for which he assigns 

 several reasons. The conjecture has much in its favour ; the price of 

 these pictures (17,28lZ.) is enormous, if we suppose it to have been 

 paid to a living painter ; but on the contrary it is a case with many 

 parallels if we suppose the money to have been paid for two of the 

 reputed masterpieces of ancient painting. The fact of the Medea 

 being unfinished puts it beyond a doubt that the picture was not 

 purchased of the painter himself ; and from a passage in Cicero (' In 

 Verr.,' 1. iv., c. 60) it seems equally clear that both pictures were 

 purchased of the city of Cyzicus ; and from the manner in which 

 they are mentioned with many of the most celebrated productions of 

 the ancient Greek artists, it would appear that they were works of 

 similar renown, and were likewise the productions of an artist long 

 since deceased. Timomachus was therefore most probably a contem- 

 porary of Pausias, Nicias, and other encaustic painters, about B.C. 300. 

 Pliny himself, elsewhere speaking of Timomachus, mentions him 

 together with the more ancient and most celebrated painters of Greece, 

 with Nicomachus, Apelles, and Aristide3,as in the passage above quoted. 



Pliny mentions also the following works of Timomachus : an 

 Orestes; and Iphigenia in Tauris; Lecythion, a gymnasiast; a 'cog- 

 natio nobilium;' two philosophers or others, with the pallium, about 

 to speak, one standing, the other sitting; and a very celebrated 

 picture of a Gorgon. 



TIMON (Tl/juav), a Greek poet and philosopher who lived in the 

 reign of Ptolemseus Philadelphus, about B.C. 270. He was the son of 

 Timarchus, and a native of Phlius in the territory of Sicyon. He 

 studied philosophy under Stilpo, at Megara, and under Pyrrho, in 

 Elis. He subsequently spent some time in the countries north of the 

 ^Egean, and thence went to Athens, where he passed the remainder of 

 his life, and died in the ninetieth year of his age. 



Diogenes Laertius, who has written an account of Timon (ix., c. 12), 

 ascribes to him epic poems, sixty tragedies, satyric dramas, thirty 

 comedies, silli (<n'AAot), and cinsedi (/aVcuSot) or licentious songs. The 

 silli however appear to have been the kind of poetry in which he 

 excelled. They were satires directed against the arrogance and pedantry 

 of the learned. Timon wrote three books of eilli (Athenseus, vi., p. 

 251 ; vii., p. 279), in which he parodied all the dogmatic philosophers 

 of Greece : he himself was a Sceptic. The metre of these poems was 

 the hexameter, and it appears that sometimes he took whole passages 

 from Homer which he applied as parodies. In the first book Timon 

 spoke in his own person ; in the second and third the form of the 

 poems was that of a dialogue, in which he conversed with Xenophanes 

 of Colophon, who was supposed to have been the inventor of the 

 silli. (Diogenes Laert., ix. 111.) We now only possess a few fragments 

 of these poems, which show that in their way they must have been 

 admirable productions. They are collected in H. Stephanus, ' Poesis 

 Philosophica ;' and by Wolke in 'De Grsecorum Syllis,' Warsaw, 1820; 

 in F. Paul, ' De Sillis Grsecorum,' Berlin, 1821, p. 41, &c. ; in Brunck's 

 ' Analecta,' ii. 67; and iv. 139. Respecting the other works ascribed 

 to him we possess no information. 



(J. F. Langheinrich, De Timone Sillographo, in 3 parts, Lipsise, 

 1720-23.) 



TIMON, surnamed the Misanthrope, was a son of Echecratides, and 

 a native of Colyttua, a demos in Attica. (Lucian, ' Timon,' c. 7 ; 

 Tzetzes, ' Chil.,' vii. 273.) He lived during the Peloponnesian war, and 

 is said to have been disappointed in the friendships he had formed, 

 in consequence of which he conceived a bitter hatred of all mankind. 

 His conduct during the period that his mind was in this state was 

 very extraordinary. He lived almost entirely secluded from society, 

 and hia eccentricities gave rise to numerous anecdotes, which were 

 current in antiquity. The sea is said to have separated even his 

 grave, which was on the sea-coast, from the mainland, by forming it 

 into an island and thus rendering it inaccessible. (Plutarch, ' Anton.,' 

 70; Suidas, 8. v. cwro^aryas.) The comic poets, euch aa Pbrynichus 



