The Life Of Timon Of Athens

1 Trumpets sound. Enter Alcibiades with his powers before Athens.
2 ALCIBIADES.
3 Sound to this coward and lascivious town
4 Our terrible approach.
5 [_A parley sounds._]
6 The Senators appear upon the walls.
7 Till now you have gone on and filled the time
8 With all licentious measure, making your wills
9 The scope of justice. Till now myself and such
10 As slept within the shadow of your power
11 Have wandered with our traversed arms, and breathed
12 Our sufferance vainly. Now the time is flush,
13 When crouching marrow, in the bearer strong
14 Cries of itself, “No more!” Now breathless wrong
15 Shall sit and pant in your great chairs of ease,
16 And pursy insolence shall break his wind
17 With fear and horrid flight.
18 FIRST SENATOR.
19 Noble and young,
20 When thy first griefs were but a mere conceit,
21 Ere thou hadst power or we had cause of fear,
22 We sent to thee to give thy rages balm,
23 To wipe out our ingratitude with loves
24 Above their quantity.
25 SECOND SENATOR.
26 So did we woo
27 Transformed Timon to our city’s love
28 By humble message and by promised means.
29 We were not all unkind, nor all deserve
30 The common stroke of war.
31 FIRST SENATOR.
32 These walls of ours
33 Were not erected by their hands from whom
34 You have received your griefs; nor are they such
35 That these great towers, trophies, and schools should fall
36 For private faults in them.
37 SECOND SENATOR.
38 Nor are they living
39 Who were the motives that you first went out.
40 Shame, that they wanted cunning, in excess
41 Hath broke their hearts. March, noble lord,
42 Into our city with thy banners spread.
43 By decimation and a tithed death,
44 If thy revenges hunger for that food
45 Which nature loathes, take thou the destined tenth,
46 And by the hazard of the spotted die
47 Let die the spotted.
48 FIRST SENATOR.
49 All have not offended.
50 For those that were, it is not square to take,
51 On those that are, revenge. Crimes, like lands,
52 Are not inherited. Then, dear countryman,
53 Bring in thy ranks but leave without thy rage;
54 Spare thy Athenian cradle and those kin
55 Which in the bluster of thy wrath must fall
56 With those that have offended. Like a shepherd
57 Approach the fold and cull th’ infected forth,
58 But kill not all together.
59 SECOND SENATOR.
60 What thou wilt,
61 Thou rather shalt enforce it with thy smile
62 Than hew to ’t with thy sword.
63 FIRST SENATOR.
64 Set but thy foot
65 Against our rampired gates and they shall ope,
66 So thou wilt send thy gentle heart before
67 To say thou’lt enter friendly.
68 SECOND SENATOR.
69 Throw thy glove,
70 Or any token of thine honour else,
71 That thou wilt use the wars as thy redress
72 And not as our confusion, all thy powers
73 Shall make their harbour in our town till we
74 Have sealed thy full desire.
75 ALCIBIADES.
76 Then there’s my glove;
77 Descend and open your uncharged ports.
78 Those enemies of Timon’s and mine own
79 Whom you yourselves shall set out for reproof
80 Fall, and no more. And, to atone your fears
81 With my more noble meaning, not a man
82 Shall pass his quarter or offend the stream
83 Of regular justice in your city’s bounds,
84 But shall be remedied to your public laws
85 At heaviest answer.
86 BOTH.
87 ’Tis most nobly spoken.
88 ALCIBIADES.
89 Descend, and keep your words.
90 [_The Senators descend._]
91 Enter a Soldier.
92 SOLDIER.
93 My noble general, Timon is dead,
94 Entombed upon the very hem o’ th’ sea,
95 And on his gravestone this insculpture, which
96 With wax I brought away, whose soft impression
97 Interprets for my poor ignorance.
98 ALCIBIADES.
99 [_Reads the Epitaph._] _Here lies a wretched corse, of wretched soul
100 bereft.
101 Seek not my name. A plague consume you, wicked caitiffs left!
102 Here lie I, Timon, who alive all living men did hate.
103 Pass by and curse thy fill, but pass and stay not here thy gait._
104 These well express in thee thy latter spirits.
105 Though thou abhorred’st in us our human griefs,
106 Scorned’st our brains’ flow and those our droplets which
107 From niggard nature fall, yet rich conceit
108 Taught thee to make vast Neptune weep for aye
109 On thy low grave, on faults forgiven. Dead
110 Is noble Timon, of whose memory
111 Hereafter more. Bring me into your city,
112 And I will use the olive with my sword,
113 Make war breed peace, make peace stint war, make each
114 Prescribe to other, as each other’s leech.
115 Let our drums strike.
116 [_Exeunt._]