Timée de Tauroménion

Biography

Originating in the town of Tauroménion (current Taormina) in Sicily, he is the son of the Tyran Andromachos, in favor of Timoléon, liberator of Syracuse into 344. For this reason, it is exiled with Athens by Agathoclès of Syracuse, and it passes there the major part of its life. It becomes there the pupil of the rhetor Isocrate, and lives there during forty years (a little less than fifty years according to Polybe). Because of this exile, it did not have any experience of the handling of the public affairs. At the end of its life, under the reign of Hiéron II, it turns over to Sicily towards 280 (probably for infomer directly on the conflict between Rome and Pyrrhus) and there dies at the 96 years age towards 260.

Work

He is the author a bulky history (38 pounds) of Sicily and Mediterranean basin, origins with until the beginning of the first Punic War. Classified by Olympiad S, it contained a life of Agathoclès and Pyrrhus. Work of scholar, it also contained many ethnographic and geographical descriptions. Timée was held in great regard by the Alexandrines.

We did not preserve any fragment of its work, which survived only by the quotations that make the posterior authors of them, such Polybe, which is caught some with him with many recoveries in its Histoires , and a whole book, book XII devotes to him, where the method of Timée is used to him as driving bolt to expose its own method of the historical investigation. Polybe reproaches him the sourness of its criticisms and its taste for the marvellous one:

“When it takes again the others, it shows much easy way and insolence, but in what it tells us itself, one finds with abundance dreams, wonders, fables incredible, in short all the signs of a coarse superstition and this taste for the fairy tales which is specific to the women. ”
(Polybe, XII, 24,5, transl. Denis Roussel)

Obviously affectionate Timée the biographies, and devotes much time to study the character of its characters. For this reason, it was very popular in Antiquity, until it is détrôné by Plutarque. He also seeks the important topics in works of the great authors:

“He says to us that the poets and the historians reveal their major nature while reconsidering with an excessive insistence in their writings the same topics. ”
(Polybe, XII, 24,1, transl. Denis Roussel)

According to Polybe, it often leaves its personal friendships and enmities to take the top on the impartiality of the historian: he Agathoclès currycomb, person in charge of his exile, and sings the praises of Timoléon.

Diodore of Sicily, Trogue Pumped and Plutarque (in its Life of Timoléon ) used its work. Cicéron, in its Of the speaker (II, 55) states to appreciate his style.

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