TIMON (c. 320-230)  , of Phlius, Greek sceptic philosopher and satirical poet, a pupil of Stilpo the Megarian and Pyrrho of Elis . Having made a fortune by teaching and lecturing in Chalcedon he spent the rest of his life chiefly at Athens, where he died . His writings (Diogenes Laertius, ix. ch . 1`2) were numerous both in prose and in verse: besides the ZiXXo6, he is said to have written epic poems, tragedies, comedies and satyric dramas . But he is best known as the author of the ItXXot, three books of sarcastic hexameter verses, written against the Greek philosophers . The fragments that remain (about 140 lines or parts of lines, printed in F . W . A . Mullach, Frag . Phil. graec. i . 84–98) show that Timon possessed some of the qualities of a great satirist, together with a command of the hexameter; but he had no loftier aim than to awaken laughter . Philosophers are " excessively cunning murderers of many wise saws " (v .

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 zixXoi we have some lines preserved from the 'Js&tAFcof, a poem in elegiac verse, which appears to have inculcated the tenets of scepticism, and one or two fragments which cannot be with certainty assigned to either poem . There is a reference to Timon in Ells . Freels, . Ev. xiv . (Eng. trans. by E . H . Gifford, 1903, p . 761) . Fragments of his poems have been collected by Wilke, De graecorur syllis (Warsaw, 1820), Paul, Dissertatio de syllis (Berlin, 182x), and Wachsmuth, Sillographorum graec. religuiae (Leipzig, 1885) .