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
 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
 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]