one of the most celebrated poet-musicians of antiquity, was born at Miletus, an Ionian city of Caria, 446 years B.C. He was contemporary with Philip of Macedon and Euripides; and not only excelled in lyric and dithyrambic poetry, but in his performance upon the cithara. According to Paufanias, he perfected that instrument by the addition of four new strings to the seven which it had before; though Suidas says it had nine before, and that Timotheus only added two, the 10th and 11th, to that number. See LYRE.

With respect to the number of strings upon the lyre of Timotheus: The account of Paufanias and Suidas is confirmed in the famous fenatus-confutum against him, still extant, prefaced at full length in Boethius. Mr Stillingsfleet has given an extract from it, in proof of the simplicity of the ancient Spartan music. The fact is mentioned in Athenaeus; and Casaubon, in his notes upon that author, has inserted the whole original text from Boethius, with corrections. The following is a faithful translation of this extraordinary Spartan act of parliament. "Whereas Timotheus the Milesian, coming to our city, has dishonoured our ancient music, and, despising the lyre of seven strings, has, by the introduction of a greater variety of notes, corrupted the ears of our youth; and by the number of his strings, and the novelty of his melody, has given to our music an effeminate and artificial dress, instead of the plain and orderly one in which it has hitherto appeared; rendering melody infamous, by composing in the chromatic instead of the enharmonic:—The kings and the ephori have therefore resolved to pass sentence upon Timotheus for these things: and, farther, to oblige him to cut all the superfluous strings of his eleven, leaving only the seven tones; and to banish him from our city; that men may be warned for the future not to introduce into Sparta any unbecoming custom."

The same story, as related in Athenaeus, has this additional circumstance, That when the public executioner was on the point of fulfilling the sentence, by cutting off the new strings, Timotheus, perceiving a little statue in the same place, with a lyre in his hand of as many strings as that which had given the offence, and showing it to the judges, was acquitted.

It appears from Suidas, that the poetical and musical compositions of Timotheus were very numerous, and of various kinds. He attributes to him 19 nomen, or canticles, in hexameters; 36 proems, or preludes; 18 dithyrambics; 21 hymns; the poem in praise of Diana; one panegyric; three tragedies, the Persians, Phinidas, and Laertes; to which must be added a fourth, mentioned by several ancient authors, called Niobe, without forgetting the poem on the birth of Bacchus. Stephen of Byzantium makes him author of 18 books of nomen, or airs, for the cithara, to 8000 verses; and of 1000 Περιποια, or preludes, for the nomen of the flutes.

Timotheus died in Macedonia, according to Suidas, at the age of 97; though the Marbles, much better authority, say at 90; and Stephen of Byzantium fixes his death in the fourth year of the 105th Olympiad, two years before the birth of Alexander the Great; whence it appears, that this Timotheus was not the famous player on the flute so much esteemed by that prince, who was animated to such a degree by his performance as to feize his arms; and who employed him, as Athenaeus informs us, together with the other great musicians of his time, at his nuptials. However, by an inattention to dates, and by forgetting that of these two musicians of the same name the one was a Miletian and the other a Theban, they have been hitherto often confounded.