kai; toi'" peripavtoi" pro;" ta;" paradovxou" ejpiceirhvsei", Óotan h] Qersivtou
levgein ejgkwvmion h] Phnelovph" provqwntai yovgon h[ tino" eJtevrou tw'n
toiouvtwn. Loipo;n ejk touvtwn dia; th;n uJperbolh;n th'" paradoxologiva"
oujk eij" suvgkrisin, ajllÆ eij" katamwvkhsin a[gei kai; tou;" a[ndra" kai;
ta;" pravxei" w|n bouvletai proi?stasqai.
But Timaeus, on each of these points, is so long-winded and makes such a fuss
about making Sicily more important than the whole of Greece, with the deeds
in Sicily being more spectacular and fine than in the rest of the world, and the
wisest of the men distinguished for wisdom being those in Sicily, and the best
generals and most godlike men of action being from Syracuse, that he could
not possibly be overtaken in striving for paradox by the boys in the schools
when they are told to write an encomium of Thersites or an attack on
Penelope or anything else like that. As a result, because of his exaggeratedly
paradoxical way of talking, he exposes the men and deeds he wants to cham-
pion not to proper comparison but to ridicule.In the Herodotean context of the negotiations of 480 b.c.e., it looks as if Timaeus
had his own distinctive spin on the crucial Sicilian synchronism of the battles of
Himera and Salamis. The fundamental point of the synchronism was that these
great Hellenic victories against barbarism were won on the very same day. This
makes a good story — but not, it seems, good enough for Timaeus. It is virtually
certain that in Timaeus’s version the synchronism was not between Himera and
Salamis but between Himera and Thermopylae, a few days before. So now, instead
of the story showing that West Greece and East Greece are equal partners, the
story shows that the West is superiorto the East: on the day that the Sicilians anni-
hilated the Carthaginian hordes at Himera, the Greeks were being annihilated by
the Persians at Thermopylae; and when the Greeks managed to bounce back at
Salamis, they did so in emulation of what the Sicilians had already achieved in
Sicily under the leadership of Gelon.^43
Timaeus’s tactics are daring, but it would be a mistake simply to enjoy the jibes
of Polybius and not to take seriously the claims Timaeus advances for the status of
his mother city. Timaeus gives us a clear glimpse of the imperial pretensions of
Syracuse, which under Gelon and Hieron at the beginning of the fifth century, and
then under Dionysius, a century later, and then under Agathocles, a century later
still, repeatedly came close to being one of the great Mediterranean powers. Syra-
cuse is indeed “a place with imperial stories to tell, stories of one empire giving
Putting Sicily on the Greek Time Chart. 51