Timon, the misanthrope, was a native of Athens, and a contemporary of Socrates. The little that is known concerning him is learned chiefly from Aristophanes and the other comic writers who attacked him. Disgusted with mankind on account of the ingratitude of his early friends and companions, he lived a life of almost total seclusion from society, his only visitor being Alcibiades. Lucian made him the subject of a dialogue; but his name survives best in Shakespeare's play, the basis of which was the version of the story given in Painter's Palace of Pleasure.
This Timon must be distinguished from Timon the Sillographer, a Greek poet and philosopher, who was a scholar of Pyrrho, flourished about 280 B.C., lectured at Chalcidon, and spent his latest years at Athens. There are extant some fragments of his Silloi, a series of sarcastic hexameters upon Greek philosophers.