TIMAEUS (c. 25o B.C.), Greek historian, was born at Tauromenium in Sicily. Driven out by Agathocles, he migrated to Athens, where he studied rhetoric under a pupil of Isocrates and lived for 5o years. During the reign of Hiero II. he returned to Sicily (probably to Syracuse), where he died. While at Athens he completed his great historical work. The Histories, in at least 38 (Bury says 33) books, was divided into unequal sections, con taining the history of Italy and Sicily in early times; of Sicily alone; of Sicily and Greece; of the cities and kings of Syria (unless the text of SuIdas is corrupt) ; the lives of Agathocles and Pyrrhus, king of Epirus. The chronological sketch ('OXvyrtopiicat, the victors at Olympia) perhaps formed an appendix to the larger work. Timaeus was bitterly attacked by other historians, especially by Polybius.
The most serious charge against Timaeus is that he wilfully distorted the truth, when influenced by personal considerations : thus, he was less than fair to Dionysius and Agathocles, while loud in praise of his favourite Timoleon. On the other hand, as
even Polybius admits, Timaeus consulted all available authorities and records. His attitude towards the myths, which he claims to have preserved in their simple form, is preferable to the ration alistic interpretation under which it had become the fashion to disguise them. In chronology, he introduced the system of reckon ing by Olympiads, with which he compared the years of the Attic archons, the Spartan ephors, and the priestesses of Argos. This system was afterwards generally used by the Greek historians. Timaeus' prose is of the Asiatic school ; Cicero praises it.