Timosthenes of Rhodes

Rhodes

Rhodes is an island in Greece, located in the eastern Aegean Sea. It is the largest of the Dodecanese islands in terms of both land area and population, with a population of 117,007, and also the island group's historical capital. Administratively the island forms a separate municipality within...

 (Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

: ) (fl.

Floruit

Floruit , abbreviated fl. , is a Latin verb meaning "flourished", denoting the period of time during which something was active...

 270 BCE) was a Greek

Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....

 navigator

Navigator

A navigator is the person on board a ship or aircraft responsible for its navigation. The navigator's primary responsibility is to be aware of ship or aircraft position at all times. Responsibilities include planning the journey, advising the Captain or aircraft Commander of estimated timing to...

 and geographer

Geographer

A geographer is a scholar whose area of study is geography, the study of Earth's natural environment and human society.Although geographers are historically known as people who make maps, map making is actually the field of study of cartography, a subset of geography...

.

In the 280s-270s BCE, Timosthenes served as the admiral and chief pilot of the navy of King Ptolemy II Philadelphus

Ptolemy II Philadelphus

Ptolemy II Philadelphus was the king of Ptolemaic Egypt from 283 BCE to 246 BCE. He was the son of the founder of the Ptolemaic kingdom Ptolemy I Soter and Berenice, and was educated by Philitas of Cos...

 of Egypt. He wrote a periplus

Periplus

Periplus is the Latinization of an ancient Greek word, περίπλους , literally "a sailing-around." Both segments, peri- and -plous, were independently productive: the ancient Greek speaker understood the word in its literal sense; however, it developed a few specialized meanings, one of which became...

 (a book of sailing directions) in ten books (now lost), and was much admired and cited by other geographers such as Eratosthenes

Eratosthenes

Eratosthenes of Cyrene was a Greek mathematician, poet, athlete, geographer, astronomer, and music theorist.He was the first person to use the word "geography" and invented the discipline of geography as we understand it...

 and Strabo

Strabo

Strabo, also written Strabon was a Greek historian, geographer and philosopher.-Life:Strabo was born to an affluent family from Amaseia in Pontus , a city which he said was situated the approximate equivalent of 75 km from the Black Sea...

. Indeed, Marcian of Heraclea

Marcian of Heraclea

Marcian of Heraclea was a minor Greek geographer of Late Antiquity .His surviving works are:*Periplus maris externi, ed. Müller ,515-562....

 went so far as to accuse Eratosthenes' Geographica of being nothing but the wholesale plagiarism

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is defined in dictionaries as the "wrongful appropriation," "close imitation," or "purloining and publication" of another author's "language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions," and the representation of them as one's own original work, but the notion remains problematic with nebulous...

 of Timosthenes work. Strabo says only that Erastothenes preferred Timosthenes "above any other writer, though he often decides even against him."

According to the later Greek geographer Agathemerus

Agathemerus

Agathemerus was a Greek geographer who during the Roman Greece period published a small two-part geographical work titled A Sketch of Geography in Epitome , addressed to his pupil Philon. The son of Orthon, Agathemerus is speculated to have lived in the 3rd century...

 (fl.250 CE), Timosthenes of Rhodes developed a system of twelve winds by adding four winds to the classical eight, introducing the complete 12-point Classical compass winds

Classical compass winds

thumb|250px|The [[Tower of the Winds]] in [[Athens]]Classical compass winds refers to the naming and association of winds in Mediterranean classical antiquity with the points of geographic direction and orientation...

 of Classical Antiquity

Classical antiquity

Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, collectively known as the Greco-Roman world...

. Timosthenes was arguably the first of the Greek geographers to use the winds

Anemoi

In Greek mythology, the Anemoi were Greek wind gods who were each ascribed a cardinal direction from which their respective winds came , and were each associated with various seasons and weather conditions...

 for geographic

Geography

Geography is the science that studies the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes...

 orientation, rather than merely as meteorological

Meteorology

Meteorology is the interdisciplinary scientific study of the atmosphere. Studies in the field stretch back millennia, though significant progress in meteorology did not occur until the 18th century. The 19th century saw breakthroughs occur after observing networks developed across several countries...

 phenomena.

Strabo reports that Timosthenes wrote a "Pythian mood" for a musical contest at the Pythian games

Pythian Games

The Pythian Games were one of the four Panhellenic Games of Ancient Greece, a forerunner of the modern Olympic Games, held every four years at the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi....

 at Delphi

Delphi

Delphi is both an archaeological site and a modern town in Greece on the south-western spur of Mount Parnassus in the valley of Phocis.In Greek mythology, Delphi was the site of the Delphic oracle, the most important oracle in the classical Greek world, and a major site for the worship of the god...

. Timosthenes's strain, accompanied by flute and cithara, celebrated the contest between Apollo

Apollo

Apollo is one of the most important and complex of the Olympian deities in Greek and Roman mythology...

 and the serpent Python

Python (mythology)

In Greek mythology, Python was the earth-dragon of Delphi, always represented in Greek sculpture and vase-paintings as a serpent. He presided at the Delphic oracle, which existed in the cult center for his mother, Gaia, "Earth," Pytho being the place name that was substituted for the earlier Krisa...

.

Mount Timosthenes

Mount Timosthenes

Mount Timosthenes is a prominent peak between the head of Hariot Glacier and the north side of Airy Glacier, 3 nautical miles northwest of Peregrinus Peak, in central Antarctic Peninsula. Photographed from the air by United States Antarctic Service , September 28, 1940, and by Ronne Antarctic...

 in Antarctica is named after him. .