TIMOCRACY TIMONS. 



621 



he intends to set to music. Franco of Cologne is 

 considered the inventor of modern time. (See 

 Music, History o/.) With the Greeks, the time 

 was indicated at the beginning of the chorus, ori- 

 ginally by wooden shoes (xgowiri^a), at a subsequent 

 period by iron ones ; with the Romans by the sca- 

 millum, or scabillum. 



It is of the greatest importance, for the perfor- 

 mance of musical pieces, to ascertain the precise 

 duration of the notes, i. e. the tempo, (q, v.) The 

 usual expressions, andante, adagio, allegro, &c., are 

 too vague. Various attempts, therefore, have been 

 made, at different times, in London and Paris, to 

 invent a machine which would enable the composer 

 to indicate, with the greatest accuracy, the dura- 

 tion of the unit of the bar. Some of these have 

 been commended by the academy of arts and scien- 

 ces at Paris. These inventions have not met with 

 much favour in Germany till lately, when one of 

 the most successful has been made by Stbckel, at 

 Burg, Germany, whose musical chronometer is a 

 machine of the form of a common-sized clock. It 

 has a dial, with numbers, to which the hand is 

 turned, according to the directions given by the 

 composer at the beginning of the piece. A pendu- 

 lum, now put in motion, determines exactly the 

 duration of the unit note. Malzel of Vienna has 

 brought this machine to great perfection. It is 

 used in orchestras; and distinguished composers, 

 as Beethoven, have determined the time of their 

 compositions by this instrument. It can be bought 

 in every considerable music shop in Leipsic and 

 Vienna. But a very simple and efficient way of 

 determining the time accurately is laid down, by 

 Gottf. Weber of Mayence, in the Leipsic Musical 

 Gazette. He says, " The simplest and surest mea- 

 sure of time is a simple pendulum, i. e. a thread 

 with a leaden bullet at one end. It is well known 

 that a pendulum swings quicker the shorter it is. 

 It is, therefore, only necessary to write, at the be- 

 ginning of a musical piece, the length of a pendu- 

 lum, the vibrations of which correspond to the de- 



2 

 sired duration of the unit note. Thus, allegro 8'' -j 



would signify that in this allegro the unit note 

 j is to correspond to the vibration of a pendulum 



eight inches long, Rhenish measure. This way of 

 indicating the time has this advantage, that it can 

 be easily understood every where, and easily exe- 

 cuted, as the niceties observed in astronomical cal- 

 culations with the pendulum are not requisite here. 



2 6 

 It must only be remembered that, with -g, j- and 



-time, a vibration of the pendulum indicates the du- 



*, ,1 . 4 . 2 3 4 6 ,. .. . ,. , 1 



ration of -,-; with -5,13, <r, 5- time, it indicates -. 

 4 o O o O o 



When military pedantry in Germany had reached 

 its acme, before the French revolution, chronome- 

 ters were used in some regiments, which were held 

 by the drum-major, and determined by their beats 

 the duration of each step, which he indicated by 

 signs to the drummers. We have lately heard that 

 they arc again used by some regiments in Russia 

 and Austria. 



TIMOCRACY; according to Aristotle, that 

 form of government whose laws require a certain 

 property to enable a citizen to be capable of the 

 highest offices. The word is derived from npri, 

 which signifies both honour and valuation of pro. 

 perty, and X^MTK, power. 



TIMOLEON; a native of Corinth, equally dis. 

 tinguished as a general and a lawgiver, a lover of 

 liberty and a patriot. There is one act, however, 

 of Timoleon, which casts a shade over his charac- 

 ter, the murder of his brother Timophanes, to 

 which he was a witness and accessary, if he did 

 not actually assist in its execution. Yet Timo- 

 leon's conduct may be in some measure justified by , 

 the motives. Timophanes had aimed at the sove- 

 reign power, and had already begun to play the 

 part of a tyrant. The remonstrances of Timoleon 

 had no effect upon his brother, and he, therefore, 

 determined to purchase the freedom of his fellow 

 citizens, even at the price of his brother's death, 

 should that step prove necessary. Going to his 

 brother, at the head of several armed men, and 

 finding himself unable to prevail upon him to aban- 

 don his ambitious projects, he stood aside, with his 

 head covered, while his followers put Timophanes 

 to death. Joyful as the intelligence of the tyrant's 

 death might be to his fellow citizens, yet, to most 

 minds, there was something hateful in the idea of 

 fratricide ; and Timoleon bitterly reproached him- 

 self for the act. He then went into voluntary 

 exile. Twenty years afterwards, when the Syra- 

 cusans demanded aid from Corinth against the ty- 

 rant Dionysius the younger, Timoleon was recalled, 

 and placed at the head of the troops sent to their 

 relief. He compelled Dionysius to leave Syracuse, 

 and also forced the Carthaginians to renounce their 

 claims to Sicily (B. C. 340). After having restored 

 liberty to Sicily, recalled the exiles and fugitives, 

 and erected public buildings in place of the for- 

 tresses built by the tyrant, he gave the citizens a 

 new and more stable constitution, voluntarily laid 

 down his power, which he might have retained, and 

 retired into private life. His reward was the 

 general esteem of the Sicilians, among whom he 

 spent the rest of his life. They called him then 

 benefactor and father, and took no measures of im- 

 portance without consulting him. All Sicily 

 mourned his death, which occurred at an advanced 

 age ; and a yearly solemnity was celebrated in hon- 

 our of him. Thus lived and died Timoleon, one 

 of the greatest and noblest characters, not only of 

 Greece, but of all ages and countries. 



TIMON of Athens; a celebrated misanthrope, 

 who lived at the time of the Peloponnesian war 

 a period when a general corruption of manners was 

 beginning to supplant the ancient simplicity which 

 had characterized his countrymen. Timon, who 

 united a strict integrity with much wit, seems to 

 have been exasperated, partly by the ingratitude of 

 some of his fellow citizens, and partly by the rapid 

 progress of corruption ; and, in his words and ac- 

 tions, he displayed a gloomy state of feelings. Like 

 Socrates and Diogenes, he espoused the cause of 

 virtue, but injured a good cause by the bitterness 

 of his sarcasms and the malignity of his irony. 

 His conduct gained him the epithet of the misan- 

 thrope; and he was made a subject of ridicule by 

 the comic poets. Aristophanes says, he is sur- 

 rounded with a hedge of thorns, and that every one 

 shuns him as a scion of the Furies. Lucian has a 

 witty dialogue, Timon, of which he is the subject; 

 and Shakspeare's Timon of Athens has rendered 

 his name and character familiar to the English 

 reader. 



TIMON the Phliasian, a philosopher and physi- 

 cian, the most celebrated disciple and friend of 

 Pyrrho, and, consequently, a follower of the sceptic 

 philosophy, was born at Phlius, and flourished in 



