The Errors of Timaeus
The idea, however, of all the animals in the island
the reason of his mistake. |
being wild, has arisen in the following way:
The caretakers cannot keep up with their
animals, owing to the thick woods and rocky
broken nature of the country; but, whenever they wish to collect
them, they stand on some convenient spots and call the beasts
together by the sound of a trumpet; and all of them flock
without fail to their own trumpets. Now, when ships arrive at
the coast. and the sailors see goats or cattle grazing without
any one with them, and thereupon try to catch them, the
animals will not let them come near them, because they are not
used to them, but will scamper off. But as soon as the keeper
sees the men disembarking and sounds his trumpet, they all
set off running at full speed and collect round the trumpet.
This gives the appearance of wildness; and Timaeus, who
made only careless and perfunctory inquiries, committed himself to a random statement.
Now this obedience to the sound of a trumpet is
nothing astonishing. For in Italy the swineherds manage the feeding of their pigs in the
same way. They do not follow close behind
the beasts, as in Greece, but keep some distance in front of
them, sounding their horn every now and then; and the animals follow behind and run together at the sound. Indeed,
the complete familiarity which the animals show with the
particular horn to which they belong seems at first astonishing
and almost incredible. For owing to the populousness and
wealth of the country, the droves of swine in Italy are exceedingly large, especially along the sea coast of the Tuscans
and Gauls: for one sow will bring up a thousand pigs, or sometimes even more. They therefore drive them out from their
night styes to feed, according to their litters and ages. Whence,
if several droves are taken to the same place, they cannot
preserve these distinction of litters; but they of course get
mixed up with each other, both as they are being driven out,
and as they feed, and as they are being brought home.
Accordingly the device of the horn-blowing has been invented
to separate them, when they have got mixed up together, without labour or trouble. For as they feed, one swineherd goes
in one direction sounding his horn, and another in another:
and thus the animals sort themselves of their own accord, and
follow their own horns with such eagerness that it is impossible
by any means to stop or hinder them. But in Greece, when
the swine get mixed up in the oak forests in their search for
the mast, the swineherd who has most assistants and the best
help at his disposal, when collecting his own animals, drives off
his neighbour's also. Sometimes too a thief lies in wait, and
drives them off without the swineherd knowing how he lost
them; because the beasts straggle a long way from their drivers,
in their eagerness to find acorns, when they are just beginning
to fall. . . .
It is difficult to pardon such errors in Timaeus,
False criticisms of Timaeus on Theopompus and Ephorus. |
considering how severe he is in criticising the
slips of others. For instance he finds fault with
Theopompus for stating that Dionysius sailed
from Sicily to Corinth in a merchant vessel,
whereas he really arrived in a ship of war. And again he falsely
charges Ephorus with contradicting himself, on the ground
that he asserts that Dionysius the Elder ascended the throne
at the age of twenty-three, reigned forty-two years, and died at
sixty-three. Now no one would say, I think, that this was a
blunder of the historian, but clearly one of the transcriber.
For either Ephorus must be more foolish than Coroebus and
Margites, if he were unable to calculate that forty-two added
to twenty-three make sixty-five; or, if that is incredible in the
case of a man like Ephorus, it must be a mere mistake of the
transcriber, and the carping and malevolent criticism of
Timaeus must be rejected.
Again, in his history of Pyrrhus, he says that the Romans
His false account of the October horse. |
still keep up the memory of the fall of Troy by
shooting to death with javelins a war-horse on
a certain fixed day, because the capture of Troy
was accomplished by means of the "Wooden Horse." This
is quite childish. On this principle, all non-Hellenic nations
must be put down as descendants of the Trojans; for nearly
all of them, or at any rate the majority, when about to
commence a war or a serious battle with an enemy, first kill
and sacrifice a horse. In making this sort of ill-founded
deduction, Timaeus seems to me to show not only want of
knowledge, but, what is worse, a trick of misapplying knowledge.
For, because the Romans sacrifice a horse, he immediately
concludes that they do it because Troy was taken by means of
a horse.
These instances clearly show how worthless his account
of Libya, Sardinia, and, above all, of Italy is; and that, speaking
generally, he has entirely neglected the most important
element in historical investigation, namely, the
making personal inquiries.
The reason of his mistakes a want of care in making inquiries. |
For as historical
events take place in many different localities, and
as it is impossible for the same man to be in
several places at the same time, and also impossible for him
to see with his own eyes all places in the world and observe
their peculiarities, the only resource left is to ask questions
of as many people as possible; and to believe those who are
worthy of credit; and to show critical sagacity in judging of
their reports.
And though Timaeus makes great professions on this
Nor is he to be trusted even in matters that fell under his own observation. |
head, he appears to me to be very far from arriving
at the truth. Indeed, so far from making accurate
investigations of the truth through other people,
he does not tell us anything trustworthy even of
events of which he has been an eye-witness, or
of places he has personally visited. This will be made evident,
if we can convict him of being ignorant, even in his account
of Sicily, of the facts which he brings forward. For it will
require very little further proof of his inaccuracy, if he can be
shown to be ill-informed and misled about the localities in
which he was born and bred, and that too the most famous
of them. Now he asserts that the fountain Arethusa at
Syracuse has its source in the Peloponnese, from
the river Alpheus, which flows through Arcadia
and Olympia.
For that this river sinks into the earth, and,
after being carried for four thousand stades under the Sicilian
Sea, comes to the surface again in Syracuse; and that this was
proved from the fact that on a certain occasion a storm of
rain having come on during the Olympic festival, and the
river having flooded the sacred enclosure, a quantity of dung
from the animals used for sacrifice at the festival was thrown
up by the fountain Arethusa; as well as a certain gold cup,
which was picked up and recognised as being one of the
ornaments used at the festival. . . .