Timon of Athens (person)

Overview

Cultural references

• In Lysistrata, the chorus of old women claim that although Timon hated men, he was friendly and courteous towards women.
• According to Strabo, after his defeat at Actium, Mark Antony built a retreat at the end of a mole of land projecting into the harbor of Alexandria which he named the Timonium, after Timon of Athens, as Antony considered himself to be, like Timon, forsaken by his friends, and desired to live the rest of his days in solitude.
• The dialogue Timon or The Misanthrope by Lucian is about Timon.
• Timon is the inspiration for the William Shakespeare play Timon of Athens.
• Timon is the eponym of the words,,, and.
• Jonathan Swift claims to maintain a different sort of misanthropy than Timon in a letter to Alexander Pope.
• William Saxey, a judge noted for misanthropy, was called "Timon that endureth no man".
• In Chapter III of The Confidence-Man, Herman Melville uses an unnamed bystander to underscore the madness of an uncharitable reprobate as an example that "might deter Timon."
• In Charlotte Brontë's novel Villette, the protagonist Lucy Snowe is called Timon by her friend Ginevra Fanshawe because of her cynical demeanor.