Timotheus of Miletus


Timotheus of Miletus was a Greek musician and dithyrambic poet, an exponent of the "new music." He added one or more strings to the lyre, whereby he incurred the displeasure of the Spartans and Athenians. He composed musical works of a mythological and historical character.
He spent some years in the court of Archelaus I of Macedon.
Fragments of Timotheus' poetry survive, published in Denys Page, Poetae Melici Graeci. A papyrus-fragment of his Persians, discovered at Abusir has been edited by U. von Wilamowitz-Mollendorff, with discussion of the nome, meter, the number of strings of the lyre, date of the poet and fragment.

In literature

In post-Classical literature Timotheus of Miletus is sometimes confused with another famous musician, the aulete Timotheus in the court of Alexander the Great.
Rabelais speaks of the musician in Chapter 23 of Gargantua "Ponocrates also made him forget everything he learned with his former preceptors, as Timotheus did with those of his disciples who were trained by other musicians." Rabelais implies that Timotheus believed other musicians to have merely inculcated bad habits.