| ACT V SCENE IV | Before the walls of Athens. | |
| [Trumpets sound. Enter ALCIBIADES with his powers] |
| ALCIBIADES | Sound to this coward and lascivious town |
| Our terrible approach. |
[A parley sounded] |
[Enter Senators on the walls] |
| Till now you have gone on and fill'd 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 wander'd 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 |
| Transformed 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 griefs; 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 tithed 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, revenges: 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 the 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 honour else, |
| That thou wilt use the wars as thy redress | 60 |
| And not as our confusion, all thy powers |
| Shall make their harbour in our town, till we |
| Have seal'd thy full desire. |
| ALCIBIADES | Then there's my glove; |
| Descend, and open your uncharged 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 render'd to your public laws |
| At heaviest answer. |
| Both | 'Tis most nobly spoken. |
| ALCIBIADES | Descend, and keep your words. | 75 |
| [The Senators descend, and open the gates] |
| [Enter Soldier] |
| Soldier | My noble general, Timon is dead; |
| Entomb'd upon the very hem o' the sea; |
| And on his grave-stone 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: | 85 |
| Pass by and curse thy fill, but pass and stay |
| not here thy gait.' |
| These well express in thee thy latter spirits: |
| Though thou abhorr'dst in us our human griefs, |
| Scorn'dst our brain's flow and those our | 90 |
| droplets which |
| 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 | 95 |
| Hereafter more. Bring me into your city, |
| 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 |
| [Exeunt] |
Sources for Timon of Athens