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Timotheus of Miletus

Persae of Timotheus

Timotheus of Miletus (Τιμόθεος Μιλήσιος) (c. 446-357 B.C.) was a Greek musician and dithyrambic poet. He added more strings to the lyre, whereby he incurred the displeasure of the Spartans and Athenians (E. Curtius, Hist of Greece, bk. v. ch. 2). He composed musical works of a mythological and historical character.

Fragments in T. Bergk, Poetae lyriei graeci. A papyrus-fragment of his Persians (the oldest papyrus in existence), discovered at Abusir has been edited by U. von Wilamowitz-Mollendorff (1903), with discussion of the nome, metre, the number of strings of the lyre, date of the poet and fragment. See V. Strazzulla, Persiani di Eschilo ed il nomo di Timoteo (1904); S. Sudhaus in Rhein. Mus., iviii. (1903), p. 481; and T. Reinach and M. Croiset in Revue des etudes grecques, xvi. (1903), pp. 62, 323.

Fragments of Persae (Greek)

Pausanias, 3.12.1

Leading from the market-place is another road, on which they have built what is called Scias (Canopy), where even at the present day they hold their meetings of the Assembly. This Canopy was made, they say, by Theodorus of Samos, who discovered the melting of iron and the moulding of images from it. Here the Lacedaemonians hung the harp of Timotheus of Miletus, to express their disapproval of his innovation in harping, the addition of four strings to the seven old ones.

References

This article incorporates text from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, a publication in the public domain.

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