(b Miletus, c450 bce; d c360 bce). Greek composer and singer to the kithara. He represented the more extreme manifestations of the ‘new music’ that dominated the final decades of the 5th century bce and the succeeding period in Greece. The Suda credits him with 19 musical nomoi, 36 preludes, 18 dithyrambs, 21 hymns, and other works. Some Greek musicographers considered his works to be rather crude and daring violations of the tradition of the Nomos, but his Persians (more than 200 lines of which survive in a nearly contemporary papyrus fragment, PBerol 9875; Campbell, frag.791) nevertheless won the competition at the Athenian games, probably some time between 420 and 416 bce. Moreover, according to Satyrus's Life of Euripides, the prelude to this nomos was written by Euripides himself, who championed Timotheus against his opponents. Timotheus's Persians affords a clear view of the literary style and character of the later nomos, providing an account of the battle of Salamis, with vivid description, word play and stunning onomatopoeia. Towards the end of the nomos (Persians, 230–31; Campbell, frag.791), Timotheus claims to have introduced the use of 11 strings or notes on the kithara. The contemporary evidence of the poet Pherecrates (in Pseudo-Plutarch, On Music, 1141f–1142a) suggests that Timotheus's dithyrambic compositions, designed for accompanied chorus, were instrumentally conceived and forced the male voice as much as a 4th above its normal upper limit. Pseudo-Plutarch observes that Timotheus's earliest nomoi make use of dactylic hexameter – albeit with a mixture of the style of the dithyramb – in order to avoid violating the tradition. Later, however, Timotheus's style became coarse, novel, popular and commercial (On Music, 1132e, 1135d). His later nomoi also appear to have lacked any stable basis of modality – a radical departure from tradition. As for solo writing, the considerable surviving portions of his nomoi make clear that the text had become subservient to a florid, amorphous melodic line. Traces of the same process are discernible at times in the lyrics of Euripides, a close associate of the composer.
The innovations of Timotheus came under sharp attack both in Athens and in Sparta. Pausanias (Description of Greece, iii.12.10) states that the Spartans objected to Timotheus's addition of four strings to the traditional seven and that they hung his harp in the meeting house of the Assembly to express their disapproval (cf Nicomachus, Excerpts, 4: ed. Jan, 274; Plutarch, Ancient Customs of the Spartans, 238c–d; Athenaeus, xiv, 636e–f). These innovations are also the subject of a supposed Spartan decree reproduced by Boethius in his De institutione musica (i.1; the authenticity of the decree has, however, been questioned). Boethius states that when Timotheus added a string to those already established and thereby made his music more capricious, the Spartans expelled him. Although the precise number of strings added to the kithara varies from source to source, the point remains the same: Timotheus abandoned the simplicity and grandeur of the ancient style in favour of complexity and virtuosity.
On the one hand, Timotheus saw himself as a champion of tradition (Persians, 202–21; Campbell, frag.791), but he could also boast of his innovations, as in a fragment preserved by Athenaeus (iii, 122c–d=Campbell, frag.796): ‘I sing not the old songs, for my new songs are better; a young Zeus reigns, and Cronus's rule was long ago; away with the ancient Muse!’ In either case, there can be little question that Timotheus's reputation for dramatic vividness and daring innovation was fully justified.
U. von Wilamowitz-Möllendorff, ed.: Timotheos: Die Perser (Leipzig, 1903/R)
U. von Wilamowitz-Möllendorff, ed.: Der Timotheos-papyrus, gefunden bei Abusir am 1. Februar 1902 (Leipzig, 1903)
D.L. Page, ed.: Poetae melici graeci (Oxford, 1962), 399ff
D.A. Campbell, ed. and trans.: Greek Lyric, v (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1993), 70–121
K. von Jan: Musici scriptores graeci (Leipzig, 1895/R)
P. Maas: ‘Timotheus (9)’, Paulys Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, 2nd ser., vi/2 (Stuttgart, 1937), 1331–7
O.J. Gombosi: Tonarten und Stimmungen der antiken Musik (Copenhagen, 1939/R), 65–7, 74–7
M. Wegner: Das Musikleben der Griechen (Berlin, 1949), 162–5
O. Hansen: ‘On the Date and Place of the First Performance of Timotheus' Persae’, Philologus, cxxviii (1984), 135–6
T.H. Janssen: Timotheus Persae: a Commentary (Amsterdam, 1984)
J. Herington: Poetry into Drama: Early Tragedy and the Greek Poetic Tradition (Berkeley, CA, 1985)
For further bibliography see Greece, §I.
WARREN ANDERSON/THOMAS J. MATHIESEN