Book 9
12.109
Timon, says ourὉ παρ’ ἡμῶν. Reiske took this to mean my fellowcitizen, ὁ τῆς ἡμετέρας πόλεως. Hence Usener inferred that Nicias of Nicaea was the author here used by D. L.; but nothing that we know of this Nicias tends to confirm such a conjecture. In favour of the translation adopted by most scholars it may be urged that Strabo calls the Stoics οἱ ἡμέτεροι, just as Cicero calls the Academics nostri. Even if we accept this meaning, a Sceptic like myself, a further subtlety arises. Is D. L. here speaking in his own person or has he merely transcribed ὁ παρ’ ἡμῶν from a monograph of a Sceptic? Something may be urged on either side; for reasons given in Introd. p. xiii, the former conjecture seems somewhat more probable. Apollonides of Nicaea in the first book of his commentaries On the Silli, which he dedicated to Tiberius Caesar, was the son of Timarchus and a native of Phlius. Losing his parents when young, he became a stage-dancer, but later took a dislike to that pursuit and went abroad to Megara to stay with Stilpo; then after some time he returned home and married. After that he went to Pyrrho at Elis with his wife, and lived there until his children were born; the elder of these he called Xanthus, taught him medicine, and made him his heir.
12.110
This son was a man of high repute, as we learn from Sotion in his eleventh book. Timon, however, found himself without means of support and sailed to the Hellespont and Propontis. Living now at Chalcedon as a sophist, he increased his reputation still further and, having made his fortune, went to Athens, where he lived until his death, except for a short period which he spent at Thebes. He was known to King Antigonus and to Ptolemy Philadelphus, as his own iambicsPossibly the proem of the Silli. testify.
