Dramatic Compositions

The double mention of his tragedies raises a suspicion that Diogenes may have combined two different accounts of his writings in this sentence; but perhaps it may be explained by supposing the words τραγικὰ δὲ ἑξήκοντα to be inserted simply in order to put the number of his tragedies side by side with that of his comedies. Some may find another difficulty in the passage, on account of the great number and variety of the poetical works ascribed to Timon ; but this is nothing surprising in a writer of that age of universal imitative literature; nor, when the early theatrical occupations of Timon are borne in mind, is it at all astonishing that his taste for the drama should have prompted him to the composition of sixty tragedies and thirty comedies, besides satyric dramas. One thing, however, it is important to observe. The composition of tragedies and comedies by the same author is an almost certain indication that his dramas were intended only to be read, and not to be acted. No remains of his dramas have come down to us.

Epic Poems

Of his epic poems we know very little; but it may be presumed that they were chiefly ludicrous or satirical poems in the epic form. Possibly his (Πύθων), which contained a long account of a conversation with Pyrrhon, during a journey to Pytho, may be referred to this class; unless it was in prose (Diog. 9.64,105; Euseb. Praep. Ev. xiv. p. 761a.). It appears probable that his ʼἈρκεσιλάου περίδειπνον or πρόδειπνον was a satirical poem in epic verse (Diog. 9.115; Ath. ix. p. 406e.). Whether he wrote parodies on Homer or whether he merely occasionally, in the course of his writings, parodied passages of the Homeric poems, cannot be determined with certainty from the lines in his extant fragments which are evident parodies of Homer, such, for example, as the verse preserved by Diogenes, ἔσπετε νῦν μοι ὅσοι πολυπράγμονές ἐστε σοφισταί, which is an obvious parody on the Homeric invocation (II. 2.484), ἔσπετε νῦν μοι Μοῦσαι Ὀλύμπια δώματʼ ἔχουσαι.

Satiric Compositions ()

The most celebrated of his poems, however, were the satiric compositions called (σίλλοι), a word of somewhat doubtful etymology, but which undoubtedly describes metrical compositions, of a character at once ludicrous and sarcastic. The invention of this species of poetry is ascribed to Xenophanes of Colophon. [XENOPHANES.] The Silli of Timon were in three books, in the first of which he spoke in his own person, and the other two are in the form of a dialogue between the author and Xenophanes of Colophon, in which Timon proposed questions, to which Xenophanes replied at length. The subject was a sarcastic account of the tenets of all philosophers, living and dead; an unbounded field for scepticism and satire. They were in hexameter verse, and, from the way in which they are mentioned by the ancient writers, as well as from the few fragments of them which have come down to us, it is evident that they were very admirable productions of their kind. (Diog. l.c. ; Aristocles apud Euseb. Praep. Ev. xiv. p. 763c.; Suid. s. vv. σιλλαίνει, τίμων; Ath. passim ; Gel. 3.17.) Commentaries were written on the Silli by Apollonides of Nicaea, as already mentioned, and also by Sotion of Alexandria. (Ath. viii. p. 336d.) The poem entitled , in elegiac verse, appears to have been similar in its subject to the (D. L. 9.65). Diogenes also mentions Timon's ἰαμβοί (9.110), but perhaps the word is here merely used in the sense of satirical poems in general, without reference to the metre.

Prose

He also wrote in prose, to the quantity, Diogenes tells us, of twenty thousand lines. These works were no doubt on philosophical subjects, but all we know of their specific character is contained in the three references made by Diogenes to Timon's works περὶ αἰσθήσεως, περὶ ζητήσεως, and κατὰ σοφίας.