Timaeus of Tauromenion

“ The Timaeus also contains an anticipation of the stoical life according to nature. Man contemplating the heavens is to regulate his erring life according to them. He is to partake of the repose of nature and of the order of nature, to bring the variable principle in himself into harmony with the principle of the same. The ethics of the Timaeus may be summed up in the single idea of ‘law.’ To feel habitually that he is part of the order of the universe, is one of the highest ethical motives of which man is capable. ”

“ As a prelude to this magnificent celebration, Timaeus, the Pythagorean philosopher, who is present at the Panathenaea, is invited to discourse of the origin of all things, and to bring down the glorious theme to the creation of man. ”

“ This will be sufficient defence of Aristotle, Theophrastus, Callisthenes, Ephorus, and Demochares against the attacks of Timaeus: and it is addressed to those who believe that this historian is impartial and truthful....
24. We may fairly judge Timaeus on the principles which he has himself laid down. According to him,The incapacity of Timaeus for forming a judgment. “poets and historians betray their own tastes by the incidents which they repeatedly record in their writings. ”

“ Hence, as it appears to me, Timaeus with great propriety thinks it fit that we should produce the divine genera, following the inventors of fables as sons of the gods, and subscribe to their always generating secondary natures from such as are first, though they should speak without demonstration. For this kind of discourse is not demonstrative, but entheastic, or the progeny of divine inspiration; and was invented by the ancients, not through necessity, but for the sake of persuasion, not regarding naked discipline, but sympathy with things themselves. ”

“ These thoughts, in sparkles of light, had appeared often to pious and to poetic souls; but this well-bred, all-knowing Greek geometer comes with command, gathers them all up into rank and gradation, the Euclid of holiness, and marries the two parts of nature. Before all men, he saw the intellectual values of the moral sentiment. He describes his own ideal, when he paints in Timaeus a god leading things from disorder into order. He kindled a fire so truly in the center, that we see the sphere illuminated, and can distinguish poles, equator, and lines of latitude, every arc and node ”

“ GENERAL REMARKS ON TIMAEUS AS AN HISTORIAN
What epithet ought one to apply to Timaeus, and what word will properly characterise him? A man of his kind appears to me to deserve the very bitterest of the terms which he has applied to others. It has already been sufficiently proved that he is a carping, false and impudent writer ”

“ And thus people of your class are the only ones remaining who are fitted by nature and education to take part at once both in politics and philosophy. Here is Timaeus, of Locris in Italy, a city which has admirable laws, and who is himself in wealth and rank the equal of any of his fellow-citizens; he has held the most important and honourable offices in his own state, and, as I believe, has scaled the heights of all philosophy; and here is Critias, whom every Athenian knows to be no novice in the matters of which we are speaking ”

“ On the same principle he judges Dionysius the tyrant because he “was always very particular in the ornamentation of his dining-couches, and had hangings of exquisite make and variegated colours.” If we apply this principle to Timaeus, we shall have abundant reason to think badly of him. In attacking others he shows great acuteness and boldness; when he comes to independent narrative he is full of dreams, miracles, incredible myths,—in a word, of miserable superstition and old wives’ tales. ”

“ For that Agathocles must have had fine natural qualities is evident from the narrative of Timaeus itself. That a man who came as a runaway slave to Syracuse, from the potter’s wheel and smoke and clay, at the early age of eighteen, should have within a short time advanced from that humble beginning to be master of all Sicily, and after being a terror to the Carthaginians, should have grown old in office and died in enjoyment of94 the royal title,—does not this prove that Agathocles had some great and admirable qualities, and many endowments and talents for administration? ”

“ Hence, though he does not admit this mode of mythologizing, yet, as is evident from what he says in the Timaeus, bethinks we ought to be persuaded by those antients who were the offspring of the gods, and to investigate their occult conceptions. Hence too, though he rejects the Saturnian bonds, and the castrations of Heaven, when discouraging with Euthyphro and the auditors of his Republic, yet in his Cratylus, when he investigates names philosophically, he admits other secondary bonds about the mighty Saturn and Pluto. ”

“ Polybius’ comments upon Timaeus reach the dignity of a treatise upon history. He protests against its use for controversial pamphlets which distort the truth. “Directly a man assumes the moral attitude of an historian he ought to forget all 529 considerations, such as love of one’s friends, hatred of one’s enemies.... He must sometimes praise enemies and blame friends. ”

“ And for my part, I look upon this difference in writers as strictly analogous to the facts of everyday life. In this too it is easy to criticise our neighbours, but to be faultless ourselves is hard. One might almost say that those who are most ready at finding fault with others are most prone to errors in their own life.
(d) Besides these I may mention another error of Timaeus. Having stayed quietly at Athens for about fifty years, during which he devoted himself to the study of written history, he imagined that he was in possession of the most important means of writing it. ”

“ He divides man's life into four quarters thus: "Twenty years a boy, twenty years a youth, twenty years a young man, twenty years an old man; and these four periods correspond to the four seasons, the boy to spring, the youth to summer, the young man to autumn, and the old man to winter," meaning by youth one not yet grown up and by a young man a man of mature age. According to Timaeus, he was the first to say, "Friends have all things in common" and "Friendship is equality"; indeed, his disciples did put all their possessions into one common stock. ”

“ But writers who have introduced into their books a good deal of such foolish talk, so far from running down others, should think themselves fortunate if they escape attack themselves. And this is just the position in which Timaeus stands.Callisthenes. He remarks that “Callisthenes was a mere sycophant for writing stuff of this sort; and acted in a manner utterly unworthy of his philosophy in giving heed to ravens and inspired women; and that he richly deserved the punishment which he met with at the hands of Alexander, for having corrupted the mind of that monarch as far as he could.” ”

“ In the first place he misrepresents Ephorus. For in truth, admirable as Ephorus is throughout his whole work, in style, treatment, and argumentative acuteness, he is never more brilliant than in his digressions and statements of his personal views: in fact, whenever he is adding anything in the shape of a commentary or a 115note. And it so happens that his most elegant and convincing digression is on this very subject of a comparison between historians and speech-writers. But Timaeus is anxious not to be thought to follow Ephorus. ”

“ In all his later dialogues we observe a tendency in him to personify mind or God, and he therefore naturally inclines to view creation as the work of design. The creator is like a human artist who frames in his mind a plan which he executes by the help of his servants. Thus the language of philosophy which speaks of first and second causes is crossed by another sort of phraseology: ‘God made the world because he was good, and the demons ministered to him.’ The Timaeus is cast in a more theological and less philosophical mould than the other dialogues, but the same general spirit is apparent ”

“ For science is not the summit of knowledge, but beyond it is intellect; not that intellect only which is separated from soul, but the illustration infused from thence into the soul, which Aristotle affirms to be the intellect by which we acknowledge the principles of science; and Timæus says, that this exists in no place but the soul. Ascending, therefore, to this intellect, we must contemplate together with it intelligible essence, by indivisible and simple perceptions, speculating the simple genera of beings. ”

“ For he is hanging between matter and mind; he is under the dominion at the same time both of sense and of abstractions; his impressions are taken almost at random from the outside of nature; he sees the light, but not the objects which are revealed by the light; and he brings into juxtaposition things which to us appear wide as the poles asunder, because he finds nothing between them. He passes abruptly from persons to ideas and numbers, and from ideas and numbers to persons,—from the heavens to man, from astronomy to physiology ”

“ This Taurus, he thinks, was afterwards named Ταυρομενιον, Tauromenium, from the people who settled, and [237] remained there: as if this were the only place in the world where people settled and remained. It was an antient compound, and no part of it of Grecian [238] original. Tauromenium is the same as Menotaurium reversed: and the figure of the Deity was varied exactly in the same manner; as is apparent from the coins and engravings which have been found in Sicily. The Minotaur is figured as a man with the head of a bull; the Tauromen as a bull with the face of a [239] man. ”

“ It happened once in the battle fought by the Corinthians against the forces of Argos and Cleonae, that Timoleon served among the infantry, when Timophanes, commanding their cavalry, was brought into extreme danger; as his horse being wounded fell forward, and threw him headlong amidst the enemies, while part of his companions dispersed at once in a panic, and the small number that remained, bearing up against a great multitude, had much ado to maintain any resistance. ”

“ Was it for nothing he made Taurosthenes an Athenian citizen, who enslaved his countrymen, and, together with his brother Callias, betrayed all Eubœa to Philip? whom our laws forbid to appear in Athens on pain of suffering the punishment of those who return from exile. Such a man this friend to our constitution enrolled among our citizens. These and many other instances in which he hath prostituted our honors can be proved by authentic evidence. And could he who gladly descended to small gains resist the temptation of so great a sum as twenty talents? ”

“ It may date back to that remote period when the fruits of trees constituted an important part of the food by which human life was sustained. 1 Tiamat is the original watery chaos from which heaven and earth were generated. Babylonian philosophers see in it the mother of the world and the source of all things, while in mythology it appears as the representative of disorder and the mother of the monsters of the deep. After a long struggle Tiamat was conquered, as we read in the fourth tablet of the creation-story, by the Sun-god, Belus or Bel-Merodach. ”

“ Accordingly, say they, we avoid some things, and we seek others, following custom in that; and we obey the laws.
Some authors have asserted, that the chief good of the Stoics is impassibility; others say that it is mildness and tranquillity.
LIFE OF TIMON.
I. Apollonides, of Nicæa, a philosopher of our school, in the first book of his Commentaries on the Silli, which he dedicated to Tiberius Cæsar, says that Timon was the son of [421] Timarchus, and a Phliasian by birth. And then, when he was young, he studied dancing, and afterwards he renounced that study, and went to Megara to Stilpo. ”

“ Timon, a lord of Athens, in the enjoyment of a princely fortune, affected a humour of liberality which knew no limits. His almost infinite wealth could not flow in so fast, but he poured it out faster upon all sorts and degrees of people. Not the poor only tasted of his bounty, but great lords did not disdain to rank themselves among his dependants and followers. His table was resorted to by all the luxurious feasters, and his house was open to all comers and goers at Athens. His large wealth combined with his free and prodigal nature to subdue all hearts to his love ”

“ We do, indeed, find in several Mithraea representations of a Titanomachia where the Titans, represented as men with serpent legs, are depicted as fleeing before a god like the Greek Zeus who strikes them with his thunderbolts [906] . But this is not more necessarily suggestive of two irreconcilable principles than the Greek story of the Titans, those sons of Earth who were persuaded by their mother to make war upon their father Uranos, who put their brother Kronos upon his throne, and who were in their turn hurled from heaven by Kronos’ son Zeus. ”

“ TIMOLEON.The life of Timoleon, one of the noblest and most interesting of the men of old Greece, is closely bound up with the history of Sicily (q.v.) , and more particularly of Syracuse (q.v.) , in the latter half of the 4th century B.C. It is as the champion of Greece against Carthage, and of constitutional government against violence and oppression, that he stands out as such a grand figure. His early career in his native Corinth was shaped by a tragic incident. Timoleon had saved the life of his brother, Timophanes, on the field of battle ”

“ They found a good number of horses, every variety of engines, a multitude of darts, and weapons to arm seventy thousand men (a magazine that had been formed from ancient time) , besides two thousand soldiers that were then with him, whom he gave up with the rest for Timoleon's service. Dionysius himself, putting his treasure aboard, and taking a few friends, sailed away unobserved by Hicetes, and being brought to the camp of Timoleon, there first appeared in the humble dress of a private person, and was shortly after sent to Corinth with a single ship and a small sum of money. ”