made himself master of Leontini and aimed at supplanting with Carthaginian aid the younger Dionysius, still nominally tyrant of Syracuse, but actually in possession only of the island citadel. Hicetas, whilst seeming to favour Corinthian intervention, was really working with Carthage on behalf of the tyrants. Timoleon, however, slipped away from the Carthaginian watch and landed at Tauromenium (Taormina), where he had a very friendly reception. At Adranum, an inland town, to which he came by invitation from a party among the citizens, he surprised Hicetas, and drove him back, with his troops utterly defeated, to Syracuse. The Sicilian Greeks now rallied round him, and the following year (343) saw the surrender of Dionysius and Timoleon master of the entire city. Hailed by the citizens as a heaven-sent deliverer, he at once began the work of restoration, bringing in a multitude of new settlers from the mother-city and from Greece generally, and establishing a popular government on the basis of the laws of Diocles, which had been forgotten under the Dionysian regime. The impress of Timoleon's reforms seems to have lasted to the days of Augustus. The tyrants, too, in the other Sicilian cities were put down, and his old enemy Hicetas went back to Leontini, where he lived as a private though powerful citizen. He made one more attempt to overthrow Timoleon, and induced Carthage to send (340-339) a great army, which landed at Lilybaeum (Marsala). The Syracusans could hardly be brought to face the invader; but with a miscellaneous levy of about 12,000 men, most of them mercenaries, Timoleon marched westwards across the island into the neighbourhood of Selinus and won a great and decisive victory on the Crimisus. The Carthaginian host is said to have outnumbered Timoleon's army in the proportion of seven to one. The general himself led on his infantry in person (Plut., Tim., 27), and their enemy's dis comfiture was completed by a blinding storm of rain and hail driven straight in their faces (Diod., xvi. 79). This victory gave the Greeks of Sicily many years of peace and safety from Carthage. Carthage made, however, one more effort and despatched some mercenaries to prolong the conflict between Timoleon and the tyrants. But it soon ended (338 B.C.) in the defeat of Hicetas, who was taken prisoner and put to death, and in a treaty which confined the dominion of Carthage in Sicily to the west of the Halycus (Platani). Timoleon, having put down the despots and given freedom to the Greek cities of Sicily, retired into private life, though he remained practically supreme not only at Syracuse but throughout Sicily. This island, not withstanding the many elements of discord which political revolution, with the return of exiles and the influx of new settlers, must have brought in, seems to have been during Timoleon's lifetime tranquil and contented. There are some characteristic stories told of his last days. Although blind, he used to come in his car into the assembly in the theatre and give his opinion, which was commonly accepted by a unanimous vote. An officious person once insisted on his giving the ordinary bail in a lawsuit; but he replied that he had himself always been the consistent champion of law and of legal rights for them all. Again, when his military strategy was unfavourably criticized, he expressed his gratitude to heaven that he had won for the Syracusans the privilege of liberty of speech. He died in 337, and was buried at the cost of the citizens of Syracuse, who erected a grand monument to his memory in their market-place.
Plutarch's Life of Timoleon and portions of Diodorus Siculus are our chief sources of original information. There is an admirable and most interesting account of his life and work in chap. Ixxxv. of Grote's History of Greece.
TIMON of Athens, a noted misanthrope, lived during the Peloponnesian War. He is more than once alluded to by Aristophanes and other comedians of the Attic stage. Plutarch takes occasion to introduce a short account of his life in the biography of Mark Antony (ch. 70), and he gives his name to one of Lucian's dialogues. Shakespeare probably derived his knowledge of Timon mainly from Plutarch; but the Timon of Shakespeare resembles the Timon of Lucian in so many points that some critics think Shakespeare (or whoever wrote the first sketch of the play) must have had access to the dialogue in question.
TIMON of Phlius, the well-known sillograph and sceptic philosopher, flourished about 280 B.C. He studied philosophy under Stilpo the Megarian and Pyrrho of Elis, the famous sceptic. Thereafter he spent some time in Chalcedon, where he made a fortune by teaching and lecturing. The rest of his life was passed chiefly at Athens, where he died at an advanced age.
The writings of Timon, if we may trust Diogenes Laertius (ix. ch. 12), were exceedingly numerous both in prose and in verse: besides the ZfXXoi, he is asserted to have written epic poems, tragedies, comedies, satyric dramas, and other varieties. But he is best known as the author of the 2iXXoc or sarcastic hexameter verses written against the Greek philosophers. They were divided into three books; in the first the author spoke in his own person, while in the second and third Xenophanes of Colophon replied to inquiries addressed to him by Timon about early and late philosophers. From the fragments that remain (about 140 lines or parts of lines, printed in Mullach, Frag. Phil. Græc., i. pp. 84-98) we see that Timon possessed some of the qualities of a great satirist together with a thorough command of the hexameter; but there is no trace of any loftier aim than to awaken derisive laughter. Philosophers are "excessively cunning murderers of many wise saws" (ver. 96); the only two whom he spares are Xenophanes, "the modest censor of Homer's lies" (v. 29), and Pyrrho, against whom "no other mortal dare contend" (v. 126). Besides the Zt XXot we have some lines preserved from the Iv5afj.oi, a poem in elegiac verse, which appears to have inculcated the tenets of scepticism, and one or two lines or parts of lines which cannot be with certainty assigned to either poem.
