Greek Texts & Translations

Ye sophists, ye inquisitives, come ! follow !

He died at the age of nearly ninety, so we learn from Antigonus and from Sotion in his eleventh book. I have heard that he had only one eye ; indeed he used to call himself a Cyclops. There was another Timon, the misanthrope. ^note

Now this philosopher, according to Antigonus, was very fond of gardens and preferred to mind his own affairs. At all events there is a story that Hieronymus the Peripatetic said of him, "Just as with the Scythians those who are in flight shoot as well as those who pursue, so, among philosophers, some catch their disciples by pursuing them, some by fleeing from them, as for instance Timon."

He was quick to perceive anything and to turn up his nose in scorn ; he was fond of writing and at all times good at sketching plots for poets and collaborating in dramas. He used to give the dramatists Alexander and Homer materials for their tragedies. ^note When disturbed by maidservants and dogs, he would stop writing, his earnest desire being to maintain tranquillity. Aratus is said to have asked him how he could obtain a trustworthy text of Homer, to which he replied, "You can, if you get hold of the ancient copies, and not the corrected copies of our day." He used to let his own poems lie about, sometimes half eaten away. 9.12.114 Hence, when he came to read parts of them to Zopyrus the orator, he would turn over the pages and recite whatever came handy ; then, when he was half through, he would discover the piece which he had been looking for in vain, so careless was he. ^note Furthermore, he was so easy-going that he would readily go without his dinner. They say that once, when he saw Arcesilaus passing through the "knaves-market," he said, "What business have you to come here, where we are all free men ?" He was constantly in the habit of quoting, to those who would admit the evidence of the senses when confirmed by the judgement of the mind, the line -

Birds of a feather flock together. ^note

Jesting in this fashion was habitual with him. When a man marvelled at everything, he said, "Why do you not marvel that we three have but four eyes between us ?" for in fact he himself had only one eye, as also had his disciple Dioscurides, while the man whom he addressed was normal. 9.12.115 Asked once by Arcesilaus why he had come there from Thebes, he replied, "Why, to laugh when I have you all in full view !" Yet, while attacking Arcesilaus in his Silli, he has praised him in his work entitled the Funeral Banquet of Arcesilaus.

According to Menodotus he left no successor, but his school lapsed until Ptolemy of Cyrene re-established it. Hippobotus and Sotion, however, say that he had as pupils Dioscurides of Cyprus, Nicolochus of Rhodes, Euphranor of Seleucia, and Praÿlus of the Troad. ^note The latter, as we learn from the history of Phylarchus, was a man of such unflinching courage that, although unjustly accused, he patiently suffered a traitor's death, without so much as deigning to speak one word to his fellow-citizens.

Euphranor had as pupil Eubulus of Alexandria ; Eubulus taught Ptolemy, and he again Sarpedon and Heraclides ; Heraclides again taught Aenesidemus of Cnossus, the compiler of eight books of Pyrrhonean discourses ; the latter was the instructor of Zeuxippus his fellow-citizen, he of Zeuxis of the angular foot ( γωνιόπους, Cruickshank), he again of Antiochus of Laodicea on the Lycus, who had as pupils Menodotus of Nicomedia, an empiric physician, and Theiodas of Laodicea ; Menodotus was the instructor of Herodotus of Tarsus, son of Arieus, and Herodotus taught Sextus Empiricus, who wrote ten books on Scepticism, and other fine works. Sextus taught Saturninus called Cythenas, ^note another empiricist.