(Τίμαιος).
1. Of TAUROMENIUM in Sicily, the celebrated historian, was the son of Andromachus, who collected the Naxian exiles,
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after their city had been destroyed by Dionysius, and settled them in the town of Tauromenium, which had been recently founded, and of which he became the tyrant, or supreme ruler, B. C. 358 (Diod. 16.7, comp. 14.59, with Wesseling's note). Andromachus received Timoleon at Tauromenium, when he came to Sicily in B. C. 344, and he was almost the only one of the tyrants whom Timoleon left in possession of their power (Plut. Tim. 10 ; Marcellin. Vit. Thue. § 42). We do not know the exact date of the birth or death of Timaeus, but we can make an approximation to it, which cannot be very far from the truth. We know that his history was brought down to B. C. 264 (Plb. 1.5), and that he attained the age of ninety-six (Lucian, Macrob. 22). Now as his father could not have been a very young man between B. C. 358 and 344, during which time he held the tyrannis of Tauromenium, we probably shall not be far wrong in placing the birth of Timaeus in B. C. 352, and his death in B. C. 256. We learn from Suidas that Timaeus received instruction from Philiscus, the Milesian, a disciple of Isocrates; but we have no further particulars of his life, except that he was banished from Sicily by Agathocles, and passed his exile at Athens, where he had lived fifty years when he wrote the thirty-fourth book of his history (Diod. Exc. ex libr. xxi. p. 560, Wess.; Polyb. Exc. Vat. pp. 389, 393; Plut. de Exil. p. 605c). We are not informed in what year he was banished by Agathocles, but it may have been in the year that the latter crossed over to Africa (B. C. 310), since we are told that the tyrant, fearing an insurrection in his absence, either put to death or drove into exile all the persons whom he suspected to be hostile to his government. (Diod. 20.4.)