The story
From Timon + -ize, after the 5th-century-BCE person Timon of Athens (as described by Plutarch, Lucian, and Aristophanes), possibly by way of William Shakespeare's play Timon of Athens (c. 1607). Used intransitively by William Darrell in his book The Gentleman Instructed (1713), and transitively by Herman Melville in his novel Pierre (1852).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.