Timophanes
Encyclopedia
Timophanes was an Ancient Corinth
Ancient Corinth
Corinth, or Korinth was a city-state on the Isthmus of Corinth, the narrow stretch of land that joins the Peloponnesus to the mainland of Greece, roughly halfway between Athens and Sparta. The modern town of Corinth is located approximately northeast of the ancient ruins...

ian and brother of the renowned Greek
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...

 statesman and general Timoleon
Timoleon
Timoleon , son of Timodemus, of Corinth was a Greek statesman and general.As the champion of Greece against Carthage he is closely connected with the history of Sicily, especially Syracuse.-Early life:...

. During the 360's BC, the city-state
Polis
Polis , plural poleis , literally means city in Greek. It could also mean citizenship and body of citizens. In modern historiography "polis" is normally used to indicate the ancient Greek city-states, like Classical Athens and its contemporaries, so polis is often translated as "city-state."The...

 of Corinth
Ancient Corinth
Corinth, or Korinth was a city-state on the Isthmus of Corinth, the narrow stretch of land that joins the Peloponnesus to the mainland of Greece, roughly halfway between Athens and Sparta. The modern town of Corinth is located approximately northeast of the ancient ruins...

 found herself in an unfamiliar and radically changing world. In the forty plus years since the end of the Peloponesian War, the political power houses of the eastern Mediterranean had changed fairly drastically. The city-states of Athens, Sparta and Thebes
Thebes, Greece
Thebes is a city in Greece, situated to the north of the Cithaeron range, which divides Boeotia from Attica, and on the southern edge of the Boeotian plain. It played an important role in Greek myth, as the site of the stories of Cadmus, Oedipus, Dionysus and others...

 had each contended to become the political and military leaders of Hellas. This, in conjunction with interference from the Achaemenid Empire
Achaemenid Empire
The Achaemenid Empire , sometimes known as First Persian Empire and/or Persian Empire, was founded in the 6th century BCE by Cyrus the Great who overthrew the Median confederation...

 in the form of the so-called King’s Peace
Peace of Antalcidas
The Peace of Antalcidas , also known as the King's Peace, was a peace treaty guaranteed by the Persian King Artaxerxes II that ended the Corinthian War in ancient Greece. The treaty's alternate name comes from Antalcidas, the Spartan diplomat who traveled to Susa to negotiate the terms of the...

, dictated by Artaxerxes II, and the rise of Jason of Pherae
Jason of Pherae
Jason of Pherae was the ruler of Thessaly during the period just before Philip II of Macedon came to power. He had succeeded his father Lycophron I of Pherae as tyrant of Pherae and was appointed tagus, or king, of Thessaly in the 370s BC and soon extended his control to much of the surrounding...

 had created an unprecedented complex political environment on the Greek peninsular.

To the end of protecting her own interests, Corinth, a demokratia
Demokratia
Demokratia is a direct democracy, as opposed to the modern representative democracy.It was used in ancient Greece, most notably Athens, and began its use around 500 BC....

, gave Timophanes a force of four hundred mercenaries
Mercenary
A mercenary, is a person who takes part in an armed conflict based on the promise of material compensation rather than having a direct interest in, or a legal obligation to, the conflict itself. A non-conscript professional member of a regular army is not considered to be a mercenary although he...

 to act as a deterrent to her many rivals in the Peloponnese
Peloponnese
The Peloponnese, Peloponnesos or Peloponnesus , is a large peninsula , located in a region of southern Greece, forming the part of the country south of the Gulf of Corinth...

 and Attica
Attica
Attica is a historical region of Greece, containing Athens, the current capital of Greece. The historical region is centered on the Attic peninsula, which projects into the Aegean Sea...

, with Athens being named by Xenophon
Xenophon
Xenophon , son of Gryllus, of the deme Erchia of Athens, also known as Xenophon of Athens, was a Greek historian, soldier, mercenary, philosopher and a contemporary and admirer of Socrates...

 as a particular threat. Timophanes was, as noted by Diodorus Siculus
Diodorus Siculus
Diodorus Siculus was a Greek historian who flourished between 60 and 30 BC. According to Diodorus' own work, he was born at Agyrium in Sicily . With one exception, antiquity affords no further information about Diodorus' life and doings beyond what is to be found in his own work, Bibliotheca...

 a man "of outstanding wealth" and used this to turn the mercenaries towards their previous employers. Diodorus relates how Timophanes would walk about the Corinthian market with “a band of ruffians” aiming towards installing himself as tyrant. He would go as far as putting to death a “great number of leading citizens” before being publicly assassinated by Timoleon
Timoleon
Timoleon , son of Timodemus, of Corinth was a Greek statesman and general.As the champion of Greece against Carthage he is closely connected with the history of Sicily, especially Syracuse.-Early life:...

.
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