1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Timaeus
TIMAEUS (c. 345-c. 250 B.C.),[1] Greek historian, was born at Tauromenium in Sicily. Driven out by Agathocles, he migrated to Athens, where he studied rhetoric under a pupil of Isocrates and lived for fifty years. During the reign of Hiero II. he returned to Sicily (probably to Syracuse), where he died. While at Athens he completed his great historical work. The Histories, in at least 38 (Bury says 33) books, was divided into unequal sections, containing the history of Italy and Sicily in early times; of Sicily alone; of Sicily and Greece; of the cities and kings of Syria (unless the text of Suidas is corrupt); the lives of Agathocles and Pyrrhus, king of Epirus. The chronological sketch (Ὀλυμπιονῖκαι, the victors at Olympia) perhaps formed an appendix to the larger work. Timaeus was bitterly attacked by other historians, especially by Polybius, and indeed his unfairness towards his predecessors, which gained, him the nickname of Epitimaeus (fault-finder), laid him open to retaliation. Polybius was a practical soldier and statesman, Timaeus a bookworm without military experience or personal knowledge of the places he described. The most serious charge against Timaeus is that he wilfully distorted the truth, when influenced by personal considerations: thus, he was less than fair to Dionysius and Agathocles, while loud in praise of his favourite Timoleon. On the other hand, as even Polybius admits, Timaeus consulted all available authorities and records. His attitude towards the myths, which he claims to have preserved in their simple form (hence probably his nickname γραοσυλλεκτρία, “collector of old wives' tales,” though some authorities render this “old rag-woman,” in allusion to his fondness for trivial details), is preferable to the rationalistic interpretation under which it had, become the fashion to disguise them. Timaeus also devoted much attention to chronology, and introduced the system of reckoning by Olympiads, with which he compared the years of the Attic archons, the Spartan ephors, and the priestesses of Argos. This system, although not adopted in everyday life, was afterwards generally used by the Greek historians. Although a pupil of Philiscus of Miletus, a disciple of Isocrates, Timaeus is a representative of the Asiatic style of Hegesias of Mognesia rather than of the Attic (see Norden, Griech. Kunstprosa i. 136). Both Dionysius of Halicarnassus and the pseudo-Longinus characterized him as a model of “frigidity” (ψυχρόν), although the latter admits that in other respects he is a competent writer. Cicero, who was a diligent reader of Timaeus, expresses a far more favourable opinion, specially commending his copiousness of matter and variety of expression. Timaeus was one of the chief authorities used by Trogus Pompeius, Diodorus Siculus and Plutarch in his life of Timoleon.
Bibliography.—Fragments and life in C. W. Müller, Frag. hist. graec. i. iv.; frags. of bks. i., ii., ed. J. Geffcken, Timaios’ Geographie des Westens (1892); Polybius xii. 3-28; Diod. Sic. xxi. 17; Cicero, De Orat. ii. 14; J. B. Bury, Ancient Greek Historians (1909), 167 sqq.; F. Susemihl, Geschichte der griech. Litt. in der Alexandrinerzeit, with references to authorities (1891); W. Christ, Griechische Litteraturgeschichte (1898); H. Kothe, De Timaei Tauromenitae vita et scriptis (Breslau, 1874); C. Clasen, Historisch-kritische Untersuchungen zu Timaios von Tauromenion (Kiel, 1883); E. Schwartz in Hermes (1899), xxxiv. p. 481.
- ↑ J. E. Sandys, c. 350-c. 260; J. B. Bury, 340-256.