Timotheus of Miletus
Timotheus of Miletus (Ancient Greek: Τιμόθεος ὁ Μιλήσιος; c. 446 – 357 BC) was a Greek musician and dithyrambic poet, an exponent of the "new music." He added one or more strings to the lyre, whereby he incurred the displeasure of the Spartans and Athenians (E. Curtius, Hist of Greece, bk. V. ch.
Timotheus of Miletus
W. Schubart · W. Schubart, Papyri Graecae Berolinensis. Bonn, 1911. · Public domain
- Born
- 450. · Miletus.
- Died
- 360. · Macedonia.
- Nationality
- Achaemenid Empire.
- Occupation
- poet, writer and musician.
- Known for
- The Persians.
- Languages
- Ancient Greek.
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Timotheus of Miletus (Ancient Greek: Τιμόθεος ὁ Μιλήσιος; c. 446 – 357 BC) was a Greek musician and dithyrambic poet, an exponent of the "new music." He added one or more strings to the lyre, whereby he incurred the displeasure of the Spartans and Athenians (E. Curtius, Hist of Greece, bk. V. ch.
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wikidata · Q669691 · wikipedia · Timotheus of Miletus
In this article
Conflation
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He composed musical works of a mythological and historical character. He spent some years in the court of Archelaus I of Macedon. Fragments of Timotheus' poetry survive, published in Denys Page, Poetae Melici Graeci. A papyrus fragment of his Persians (one of the oldest Greek papyri in existence), discovered at Abusir has been edited by U. von Wilamowitz-Mollendorff (1903), with discussion of the nome, meter, number of strings of the lyre, date of the poet and fragment.
In post-Classical literature Timotheus of Miletus is sometimes confused with another famous musician, the aulete Timotheus in the court of Alexander the Great. Rabelais speaks of the musician in Chapter 23 of Gargantua "Ponocrates also made him forget everything he learned with his former preceptors, as Timotheus did with those of his disciples who were trained by other musicians." Rabelais implies that Timotheus believed other musicians to have merely inculcated bad habits.
Life and career
Dated record
Life and career
The full dated record · 2 entries
360
Timotheus of Miletus died at Macedonia.
450
Timotheus of Miletus born at Miletus.
Places
Named by the record
Places
Only places the record itself states, plotted where the house gazetteer settles their coordinates. Nothing is inferred from a name or a nationality.
Miletus.
Birth place
Macedonia.
Death place
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.EB1911 wstitle=Timotheus (musician) display=Timotheus volume=26 page=991 inline=1
- 2.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.
- 3.Claude V. Palisca, Nancy Kovaleff Baker, Barbara Russano Hanning, Musical humanism and its legacy: essays in honor of Claude V. Palisca, Pendragon Press, 1992, p.37. See also David A. Campbell, Greek Lyric, vol. 5, Harvard University Press (Loeb) 1993; J. H. Hordern, The Fragments of Timotheus of Miletus, Oxford University Press, 2002.
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The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 14 August 2026.
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