Ch. 677: SCENE V. Before the walls of Athens
SCENE V. Before the walls of Athens****
Trumpets sound. Enter Alcibiades with his powers before Athens.
ALCIBIADES.
Sound to this coward and lascivious town
Our terrible approach.
[_A parley sounds. _]
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
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 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, revenge. 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 th’ 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 sealed 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 remedied to your public laws
At heaviest answer.
BOTH.
’Tis most nobly spoken.
ALCIBIADES.
Descend, and keep your words.
[_The Senators descend. _]
Enter a Soldier.
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.
[_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 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 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. _]