Timon of Phleius

Timon von Phleius ( ancient Greek Τίμων Tímōn ; * around 320 BC in Phleius ; † around 230 BC in Athens ) was an ancient Greek philosopher , satirical poet and traveling speaker.

Timon studied philosophy with Stilpon von Megara and Pyrrhon von Elis , the founder of the Pyrrhonic skepticism , by which he was strongly influenced. After he had become known and reasonably wealthy through teaching and lecturing in Chalcedon , he spent the rest of his life mainly in Athens, where he also died. He wrote numerous poetic and prosaic works, including epics , tragedies, comedies and satyr plays . Only a few fragments of these works have survived .

Most famous, however, were and are his Silloi (ολλοι), a great satirical hexametric poem in three books, which was partly designed as a parody of Homer's epics. In this, Timon mocked all the philosophers before Pyrrhon as "tubes inflated by much knowledge", who in reality would not have recognized anything certain, especially no wisdom, but only pretended this. Only Xenophanes , whom Timon understands as a critic of knowledge, who has shown himself to be the most honest of all thinkers and who in the Silloi functions as a kind of guide through the delusional ideas of the other thinkers, is spared from the worst ridicule . But only Pyrrhon is really wise, whom Timon addresses and glorifies as the “sun”.

Only a few fragments of the Silloi have survived . The praise of Pyrrhon was also served by a dialogue under the title Python , which reproduces a conversation between Timon and his teacher on the way to the oracle of Delphi , as well as poems in elegiac distiches that are attested by a few fragments . Since Pyrrhon himself left no written records, Timon became a mediator of Pyrrhon's thoughts through his works and thus shaped the enduring image of Pyrrhonic skepticism.

Not to be confused with Timon of Phleius and the misanthropic Timon of Athens . Both were later equated in the anecdotal tradition. The merged Timon was an inspiration for Shakespeare's unfinished drama Timon of Athens , which however has little in common with the historical Timon of Phleius.

Editions and translations of the sources and fragments

• Hugh Lloyd-Jones , Peter J. Parsons : Supplementum Hellenisticum. Berlin 1983 (offers on pp. 368–395 an extensive collection of Timon's fragments in the original Greek)
• Anthony A. Long , David N. Sedley: The Hellenistic Philosophers. 2 volumes. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge et al. 1987 (vol. 1 offers the most important testimonies about Pyrrhon and Timon in English translation on pp. 13–24, vol. 2 on pp. 1–17 the original Greek texts)

literature

• Dee L. Clayman: Timon de Phlionte. In: Richard Goulet (ed.): Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques. Volume 6, CNRS Éditions, Paris 2016, ISBN 978-2-271-08989-2 , pp. 1226-1230
• Woldemar Görler : Older Pyrrhonism, Younger Academy, Antiochus from Askalon . In: Hellmut Flashar (ed.): Outline of the history of philosophy . The philosophy of antiquity , volume 4: The Hellenistic philosophy , 2nd half volume, Schwabe, Basel 1994, ISBN 3-7965-0930-4 , pp. 717–989, here: 760–767.
• Anthony A. Long: Timon of Phleius. Pyrrhonist and satirist. In: Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society , New Volume No. 24, 1978, pp. 69-91
• Doris Meyer: Timon von Phleius . In: Bernhard Zimmermann , Antonios Rengakos (Hrsg.): Handbook of the Greek literature of antiquity. Volume 2: The Literature of the Classical and Hellenistic Period. CH Beck, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-406-61818-5 , pp. 84–87 (see also p. 948 f. Rebecca Lämmle on Timon's relationship to satyr poetry)
• Friedo Ricken : Ancient Skeptics. CH Beck, Munich 1994, pp. 18-28.

Web links

Commons : Timon von Phleius  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Richard Bett:  Entry in Edward N. Zalta (Ed.): Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy .

Remarks

1. ↑ Diogenes Laertios IX 12.