Trumpets sound. Enter Alcibiades with his Powers
before Athens. ALCIBIADES
Sound to this coward and lascivious town
Our terrible approach. Sounds a parley. The Senators appear upon the walls. Till now you have gone on and filled the time
With all licentious measure, making your wills
The scope of justice. Till now myself and such 5
As slept within the shadow of your power
Have wandered with our traversed arms and breathed
Our sufferance vainly. Now the time is flush,
When crouching marrow in the bearer strong
Cries of itself “No more!” Now breathless wrong 10
Shall sit and pant in your great chairs of ease,
And pursy insolence shall break his wind
With fear and horrid flight. FIRST SENATOR
Noble and young,
When thy first griefs were but a mere conceit, 15
Ere thou hadst power or we had cause of fear,
We sent to thee to give thy rages balm,
To wipe out our ingratitude with loves
Above their quantity. SECOND SENATOR
So did we woo 20
Transformèd Timon to our city’s love
By humble message and by promised means.
We were not all unkind, nor all deserve
The common stroke of war. FIRST SENATOR
These walls of ours 25
Were not erected by their hands from whom
You have received your grief, nor are they such
That these great towers, trophies, and schools
should fall
For private faults in them. 30 SECOND SENATOR
Nor are they living
Who were the motives that you first went out.
Shame, that they wanted cunning, in excess
Hath broke their hearts. March, noble lord,
Into our city with thy banners spread. 35
By decimation and a tithèd death,
If thy revenges hunger for that food
Which nature loathes, take thou the destined tenth
And, by the hazard of the spotted die,
Let die the spotted. 40 FIRST SENATOR
All have not offended.
For those that were, it is not square to take,
On those that are, revenge. Crimes, like lands,
Are not inherited. Then, dear countryman,
Bring in thy ranks but leave without thy rage. 45
Spare thy Athenian cradle and those kin
Which in the bluster of thy wrath must fall
With those that have offended. Like a shepherd
Approach the fold and cull th’ infected forth,
But kill not all together. 50 SECOND SENATOR
What thou wilt,
Thou rather shalt enforce it with thy smile
Than hew to ’t with thy sword. FIRST SENATOR
Set but thy foot
Against our rampired gates and they shall ope, 55
So thou wilt send thy gentle heart before
To say thou ’lt enter friendly. SECOND SENATOR
Throw thy glove,
Or any token of thine honor else,
That thou wilt use the wars as thy redress 60
And not as our confusion, all thy powers
Shall make their harbor in our town till we
Have sealed thy full desire. ALCIBIADES Then there’s my glove.
Descend and open your unchargèd ports. 65
Those enemies of Timon’s and mine own
Whom you yourselves shall set out for reproof
Fall, and no more. And to atone your fears
With my more noble meaning, not a man
Shall pass his quarter or offend the stream 70
Of regular justice in your city’s bounds
But shall be remedied to your public laws
At heaviest answer. BOTH
’Tis most nobly spoken. ALCIBIADES
Descend and keep your words. 75 The Senators descend. | Alcibiades arrives at the city gates, trumpets blaring. He tells the Senators to surrender to him. In order to do so, they have to (1) give him all his and Timon's enemies; (2) atone for their sins (translation: say sorry for what they've done); and (3) obey the new laws of justice. The Senators all agree to Alcibiades's conditions; he's got them surrounded, and they don't really have a choice. |
Enter a Soldier, with the wax tablet. SOLDIER
My noble general, Timon is dead,
Entombed upon the very hem o’ th’ sea,
And on his gravestone this insculpture, which
With wax I brought away, whose soft impression
Interprets for my poor ignorance. 80 ALCIBIADES reads the epitaph.
Here lies a wretched corse, of wretched soul bereft.
Seek not my name. A plague consume you, wicked
caitiffs left!
Here lie I, Timon, who, alive, all living men did hate.
Pass by and curse thy fill, but pass and stay not here 85
thy gait.
These well express in thee thy latter spirits.
Though thou abhorred’st in us our human griefs,
Scorned’st our brains’ flow and those our droplets
which 90
From niggard nature fall, yet rich conceit
Taught thee to make vast Neptune weep for aye
On thy low grave, on faults forgiven. Dead
Is noble Timon, of whose memory
Hereafter more. Bring me into your city, 95
And I will use the olive with my sword,
Make war breed peace, make peace stint war, make
each
Prescribe to other as each other’s leech.
Let our drums strike. 100 Drums. They exit. | In the midst of this victory, a soldier enters. He gives Alcibiades the waxed inscription from the tomb. Alcibiades reads the epitaph aloud so everyone can hear. It says that Timon hated all men and cursed them. Anyone who seeks him out will be plagued. How touching. Alcibiades gets the last word. He reflects on Timon's death by saying they'll remember what happened to noble Timon. With that, the drums sound, and Alcibiades is victorious. |