ALCIBIADES
Sound to this coward and lascivious town
Our terrible approach.
ALCIBIADES
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
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
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 first griefs were but a mere conceit,
hadst power or we had cause of fear,
We sent to to give rages balm,
To wipe out our ingratitude with loves
Above their quantity.
SECOND SENATOR
So did we woo
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
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.
SECOND SENATOR
Nor are they living
Who were the motives that you first went out.
Shame, that they wanted cunning, in excess
broke their hearts. March, noble lord,
Into our city with banners spread.
By decimation and a tithed death,
If revenges hunger for that food
Which nature loathes, take the destined tenth,
And by the hazard of the spotted die
Let die the spotted.
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 ranks but leave without rage;
Spare Athenian cradle and those kin
Which in the bluster of wrath must fall
With those that have offended. Like a shepherd
Approach the fold and cull th’ infected forth,
But kill not all together.
SECOND SENATOR
What wilt,
rather enforce it with smile
Than hew to ’t with sword.
FIRST SENATOR
Set but foot
Against our rampired gates and they shall ope,
So wilt send gentle heart before
To say thou’lt enter friendly.
SECOND SENATOR
Throw glove,
Or any token of honour else,
That wilt use the wars as redress
And not as our confusion, all powers
Shall make their harbour in our town till we
Have sealed full desire.
ALCIBIADES
Then there’s my glove;
Descend and open your uncharged ports.
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
Of regular justice in your city’s bounds,
But shall be remedied to your public laws
At heaviest answer.
BOTH
most nobly spoken.
ALCIBIADES
Descend, and keep your words.
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.
ALCIBIADES
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 fill, but pass and stay not here gait.
These well express in latter spirits.
Though abhorred’st in us our human griefs,
Scorned’st our brains’ flow and those our droplets which
From niggard nature fall, yet rich conceit
Taught to make vast Neptune weep for aye
On low grave, on faults forgiven. Dead
Is noble Timon, of whose memory
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.