Timon (fl. 279 BCE)

TimonTimon was a disciple of Pyrrho and philosopher of the sect of the
Skeptics, who flourished in the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, about
279 BCE. and onwards.The son of Timarchus of Phlius, Timon first
studied philosophy at Megara, under Stilpo, and then returned home and
married. He next went to Elis with his wife, and heard Pyrrho, whose
tenets he adopted. Driven from Elis by straitened circumstances, he
spent some time on the Hellespont an the Propontis, and taught at
Chalcedon as a sophist with such success that he acquired a fortune.
He then moved to Athens, where he passed the remainder of his life,
with the exception of a short residence at Thebes. He died at the age
of almost ninety. Timon appears to have had an active mind, and with a
quick perception of the follies of people which betrays its possessor
into a spirit of universal distrust both of men and truths, so as to
make him a skeptic in philosophy and a satirist in everything. His
agnosticism (to use a modern term) is shown by his saying that people
need only know three things — namely, what is the nature of things,
how we are related to them, and what we can gain from them. But as our
knowledge of things must always be subjective and unreal, we can only
live in a state of suspended judgment. He wrote numerous works both in
prose and poetry. The most celebrated of his poems were the satiric
compositions called silli, a word of somewhat doubtful etymology, but
which undoubtedly describes metrical compositions of a character at
once ludicrous and sarcastic. The invention of this species of poetry
is ascribed to Xenophones of Colophon. The Silli of Timon were in
three books, in the first of which he spoke in his own person, and the
other two are in the form of a dialogue between the author and
Xenophanes of Colophon, in which Timon proposed questions to which
Xenophanes replied at length. The subject was a sarcastic account of
the tenets of all philosophers, living and dead — an unbounded field
for skepticism and satire. They were in hexameter verse, and from the
way in which they are mentioned by the ancient writers, as well as
from the few fragments of them which have come down to us, it is
evident that they were admirable productions. (Diog. Laert. ix. 12,
109-155; Euseb. Praep. Ev. xiv. p. 761).