SCENE IV. Before the walls of Athens. Timon of Athens  Shakespeare homepage  |  Timon of Athens  | Act 5, Scene 4 

 Previous scene  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 

 As slept within the shadow of your power 

 Hav e 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 

 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, 

 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 

 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 

 Hath broke their hearts. March, noble lord, 

 Into our city with thy banners spread: 

 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. 

 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: 

 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. 

 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; 

 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 

 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: 

 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 render'd to your public laws 

 At heaviest answer. 

 Both  'Tis most nobly spoken. 

 ALCIBIADES  Descend, and keep your words. 



 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. 

 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 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 

 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 

 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. 



 Exeunt 