ROMSO Cyprus Knowledge Base

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Timon the Silograph or Timon of Fliunte (Τίμων, ca. 320 - 230 a. C.) was a Greek skeptical philosopher, as well as a satirical poet. He was a disciple of Estipon of Megara and Pirron.

Biography

Most of Timon's biographical data come from the work of Diogenes Laercio. According to this author, Apolonides de Nicea said that Timon was the father of Timarco, and that he was a natural of Fliunte. He was still very young and gave himself to the dance; but then, condemning this exercise, he went to Megara to be with Estipon and after living with him for a while, he returned to his homeland and married. He then passed with his wife to see Pirron, who was in Elide, and lived there until he had children. The major of them called him Janto, taught him medicine, and was his successor. Timon was very eloquent, as Sotion said; but he did not have to stay, he left the Helponto and Propontide; and by exercising philosophy and prayer in Calconia, he was very celebrated. From there, having gathered a good viatic, he retired to Athens, where he remained until his death, except for a short period of time in which he was in Tebas.

He was known and esteemed of King Antigon and Ptolemy Philly, as he testifies himself in his yambs. Antigono said of him that he was very given to drink and little applied to philosophy. He wrote Poems, Verses, Tragedias, Sretas, thirty comic dramas, sixty tragic and several obscenities, in addition to 20,000 verses in prose, of which he remembers Antigon Caristius, who wrote his life. The books of satire are three, in which, as a skeptical he was, he spilled bitterness and went out against all dogmatics, swallowing their sayings. The first of these books is an explanation he gives himself. The second and third are in the form of dialogue, in which it seems that Jenophanes asks about everything, and he himself answers. In the second he deals with the oldest; and in the third of those who came after, for the reason that some called him the Epilogo.

Diogenes Laercio granted verosularity to an information he had heard about him according to which he was guarded, for he himself was called "Cyclops." He was very fond of gardens and solitude, as Antigon says. Jerónimo Peripatetic said of him:

It was very sharp of ingenuity to make mockery of others; very applied to writing, and very dedicated to inventing fabulous pits for poets, and not less to understanding tragedies. They were subjects of them even Alexander and Homer. If he was in trouble or interrupted by the maids or dogs, he said nothing, taking care of nothing but solitude.

They say that having asked him, "Arato, how could Homer's works be fully and without error," he replied, asking for ancient copies, and not already amended. He had his poetic writings tumultuously and without order, and even corroded in some places, so that, as once he read some of them to the speaker Zopito, and passed without warning some leaves together up to m