Most of Timon's importance rests upon his reputation as a reporter, but he was also responsible for one or two original twists to the philosophy of his master—Pyrrho. He was a literary virtuoso, composing in a variety of verse forms. Seventy-one fragments of his poetry survive in quotations by later writers, sixty-five of them deriving from one work, the Silloi, a mock-epic series of lampoons in verse. The majority of them deal with philosophers other than Pyrrho, whom Timon attacks with wit and verve, frequently in pointed parody of Homeric verse; but Timon's purpose is to exalt Pyrrho at their expense: "Truly, no other mortal could rival Pyrrho; such was the man I saw, unproud, and unsubdued by everything which has subdued known and unknown alike, volatile crowds of people, weighed down in all directions by passions, opinion, and...