<h2><SPAN name="chap16"></SPAN>TIMON OF ATHENS</h2>
<p>Timon, a lord of Athens, in the enjoyment of a princely fortune, affected
a humor of liberality which knew no limits. His almost infinite wealth
could not flow in so fast but he poured it out faster upon all sorts and
degrees of people. Not the poor only tasted of his bounty, but great lords
did not disdain to rank themselves among his dependents and followers. His
table was resorted to by all the luxurious feasters, and his house was
open to all comers and goers at Athens. His large wealth combined with his
free and prodigal nature to subdue all hearts to his love; men of all
minds and dispositions tendered their services to Lord Timon, from the
glass-faced flatterer whose face reflects as in a mirror the present humor
of his patron, to the rough and unbending cynic who, affecting a contempt
of men’s persons and an indifference to worldly things, yet could
not stand out against the gracious manners and munificent soul of Lord
Timon, but would come (against his nature) to partake of his royal
entertainments and return most rich in his own estimation if he had
received a nod or a salutation from Timon.</p>
<p>If a poet had composed a work which wanted a recommendatory introduction
to the world, he had no more to do but to dedicate it to Lord Timon, and
the poem was sure of sale, besides a present purse from the patron, and
daily access to his house and table. If a painter had a picture to dispose
of he had only to take it to Lord Timon and pretend to consult his taste
as to the merits of it; nothing more was wanting to persuade the liberal-
hearted lord to buy it. If a jeweler had a stone of price, or a mercer
rich, costly stuffs, which for their costliness lay upon his hands, Lord
Timon’s house was a ready mart always open, where they might get off
their wares or their jewelry at any price, and the good-natured lord would
thank them into the bargain, as if they had done him a piece of courtesy
in letting him have the refusal of such precious commodities. So that by
this means his house was thronged with superfluous purchases, of no use
but to swell uneasy and ostentatious pomp; and his person was still more
inconveniently beset with a crowd of these idle visitors, lying poets,
painters, sharking tradesmen, lords, ladies, needy courtiers, and
expectants, who continually filled his lobbies, raining their fulsome
flatteries in whispers in his ears, sacrificing to him with adulation as
to a God, making sacred the very stirrup by which he mounted his horse,
and seeming as though they drank the free air but through his permission
and bounty.</p>
<p>Some of these daily dependents were young men of birth who (their means
not answering to their extravagance) had been put in prison by creditors
and redeemed thence by Lord Timon; these young prodigals thenceforward
fastened upon his lordship, as if by common sympathy he were necessarily
endeared to all such spendthrifts and loose livers, who, not being able to
follow him in his wealth, found it easier to copy him in prodigality and
copious spending of what was their own. One of these flesh-flies was
Ventidius, for whose debts, unjustly contracted, Timon but lately had paid
down the sum of five talents.</p>
<p>But among this confluence, this great flood of visitors, none were more
conspicuous than the makers of presents and givers of gifts. It was
fortunate for these men if Timon took a fancy to a dog or a horse, or any
piece of cheap furniture which was theirs. The thing so praised, whatever
it was, was sure to be sent the next morning with the compliments of the
giver for Lord Timon’s acceptance, and apologies for the
unworthiness of the gift; and this dog or horse, or whatever it might be,
did not fail to produce from Timon’s bounty, who would not be
outdone in gifts, perhaps twenty dogs or horses, certainly presents of far
richer worth, as these pretended donors knew well enough, and that their
false presents were but the putting out of so much money at large and
speedy interest. In this way Lord Lucius had lately sent to Timon a
present of four milk-white horses, trapped in silver, which this cunning
lord had observed Timon upon some occasion to commend; and another lord,
Lucullus, had bestowed upon him in the same pretended way of free gift a
brace of greyhounds whose make and fleetness Timon had been heard to
admire; these presents the easy-hearted lord accepted without suspicion of
the dishonest views of the presenters; and the givers of course were
rewarded with some rich return, a diamond or some jewel of twenty times
the value of their false and mercenary donation.</p>
<p>Sometimes these creatures would go to work in a more direct way, and with
gross and palpable artifice, which yet the credulous Timon was too blind
to see, would affect to admire and praise something that Timon possessed,
a bargain that he had bought, or some late purchase, which was sure to
draw from this yielding and soft-hearted lord a gift of the thing
commended, for no service in the world done for it but the easy expense of
a little cheap and obvious flattery. In this way Timon but the other day
had given to one of these mean lords the bay courser which he himself rode
upon, because his lordship had been pleased to say that it was a handsome
beast and went well; and Timon knew that no man ever justly praised what
he did not wish to possess. For Lord Timon weighed his friends’
affection with his own, and so fond was he of bestowing, that be could
have dealt kingdoms to these supposed friends and never have been weary.</p>
<p>Not that Timon’s wealth all went to enrich these wicked flatterers;
he could do noble and praiseworthy actions; and when a servant of his once
loved the daughter of a rich Athenian, but could not hope to obtain her by
reason that in wealth and rank the maid was so far above him, Lord Timon
freely bestowed upon his servant three Athenian talents, to make his
fortune equal with the dowry which the father of the young maid demanded
of him who should be her husband. But for the most part, knaves and
parasites had the command of his fortune, false friends whom he did not
know to be such, but, because they flocked around his person, he thought
they must needs love him; and because they smiled and flattered him, he
thought surely that his conduct was approved by all the wise and good. And
when be was feasting in the midst of all these flatterers and mock
friends, when they were eating him up and draining his fortunes dry with
large draughts of richest wines drunk to his health and prosperity, be
could not perceive the difference of a friend from a flatterer, but to his
deluded eyes (made proud with the sight) it seemed a precious comfort to
have so many like brothers commanding one another’s fortunes (though
it was his own fortune which paid all the costs), and with joy they would
run over at the spectacle of such, as it appeared to him, truly festive
and fraternal meeting.</p>
<p>But while he thus outwent the very heart of kindness, and poured out his
bounty, as if Plutus, the god of gold, had been but his steward; while
thus he proceeded without care or stop, so senseless of expense that he
would neither inquire how he could maintain it nor cease his wild flow of
riot—his riches, which were not infinite, must needs melt away
before a prodigality which knew no limits. But who should tell him so? His
flatterers? They had an interest in shutting his eyes. In vain did his
honest steward Flavius try to represent to him his condition, laying his
accounts before him, begging of him, praying of him, with an importunity
that on any other occasion would have been unmannerly in a servant,
beseeching him with tears to look into the state of his affairs. Timon
would still put him off, and turn the discourse to something else; for
nothing is so deaf to remonstrance as riches turned to poverty, nothing is
so unwilling to believe its situation, nothing so incredulous to its own
true state, and hard to give credit to a reverse. Often had this good
steward, this honest creature, when all the rooms of Timon’s great
house had been choked up with riotous feeders at his master’s cost,
when the floors have wept with drunken spilling of wine, and every
apartment has blazed with lights and resounded with music and feasting,
often had he retired by himself to some solitary spot, and wept faster
than the wine ran from the wasteful casks within, to see the mad bounty of
his lord, and to think, when the means were gone which brought him praises
from all sorts of people, how quickly the breath would be gone of which
the praise was made; praises won in feasting would be lost in fasting, and
at one cloud of winter-showers these flies would disappear.</p>
<p>But now the time was come that Timon could shut his ears no longer to the
representations of this faithful steward. Money must be had; and when he
ordered Flavius to sell some of his land for that purpose, Flavius
informed him, what he had in vain endeavored at several times before to
make him listen to, that most of his land was already sold or forfeited,
and that all he possessed at present was not enough to pay the one-half of
what he owed. Struck with wonder at this presentation, Timon hastily
replied:</p>
<p>“My lands extend from Athens to Lacedoemon.”</p>
<p>“O my good lord,” said Flavius, “the world is but a
world, and has bounds. Were it all yours to give in a breath, how quickly
were it gone!”</p>
<p>Timon consoled himself that no villainous bounty had yet come from him,
that if he had given his wealth away unwisely, it had not been bestowed to
feed his vices, but to cherish his friends; and he bade the kind-hearted
steward (who was weeping) to take comfort in the assurance that his master
could never lack means while he had so many noble friends; and this
infatuated lord persuaded himself that he had nothing to do but to send
and borrow, to use every man’s fortune (that had ever tasted his
bounty) in this extremity, as freely as his own. Then with a cheerful
look, as if confident of the trial, he severally despatched messengers to
Lord Lucius, to Lords Lucullus and Sempronius, men upon whom he had
lavished his gifts in past times without measure or moderation; and to
Ventidius, whom he had lately released out of prison by paying his debts,
and who, by the death of his father, was now come into the possession of
an ample fortune and well enabled to requite Timon’s courtesy; to
request of Ventidius the return of those five talents which he had paid
for him, and of each of those noble lords the loan of fifty talents;
nothing doubting that their gratitude would supply his wants (if he needed
it) to the amount of five hundred times fifty talents.</p>
<p>Lucullus was the first applied to. This mean lord had been dreaming
overnight of a silver bason and cup, and when Timon’s servant was
announced his sordid mind suggested to him that this was surely a making
out of his dream, and that Timon had sent him such a present. But when he
understood the truth of the matter, and that Timon wanted money, the
quality of his faint and watery friendship showed itself, for with many
protestations he vowed to the servant that he had long foreseen the ruin
of his master’s affairs, and many a time had he come to dinner to
tell him of it, and had come again to supper to try to persuade him to
spend less, but he would take no counsel nor warning by his coming. And
true it was that he had been a constant attender (as he said) at Timon’s
feasts, as he had in greater things tasted his bounty; but that he ever
came with that intent, or gave good counsel or reproof to Timon, was a
base, unworthy lie, which he suitably followed up with meanly offering the
servant a bribe to go home to his master and tell him that be had not
found Lucullus at home.</p>
<p>As little success had the messenger who was sent to Lord Lucius. This
lying lord, who was full of Timon’s meat and enriched almost to
bursting with Timon’s costly presents, when he found the wind
changed, and the fountain of so much bounty suddenly stopped, at first
could hardly believe it; but on its being confirmed he affected great
regret that he should not have it in his power to serve Lord Timon, for,
unfortunately (which was a base falsehood), he had made a great purchase
the day before, which had quite disfurnished him of the means at present,
the more beast he, he called himself, to put it out of his power to serve
so good a friend; and he counted it one of his greatest afflictions that
his ability should fail him to pleasure such an honorable gentleman.</p>
<p>Who can call any man friend that dips in the same dish with him? Just of
this metal is every flatterer. In the recollection of everybody Timon had
been a father to this Lucius, had kept up his credit with his purse; Timon’s
money had gone to pay the wages of his servants, to pay the hire of the
laborers who had sweat to build the fine houses which Lucius’s pride
had made necessary to him. Yet—-oh, the monster which man makes
himself when he proves ungrateful!—this Lucius now denied to Timon a
sum which, in respect of what Timon had bestowed on him, was less than
charitable men afford to beggars.</p>
<p>Sempronius, and every one of these mercenary lords to whom Timon applied
in their turn, returned the same evasive answer or direct denial; even
Ventidius, the redeemed and now rich Ventidius, refused to assist him with
the loan of those five talents which Timon had not lent but generously
given him in his distress.</p>
<p>Now was Timon as much avoided in his poverty as he had been courted and
resorted to in his riches. Now the same tongues which had been loudest in
his praises, extolling him as bountiful, liberal, and open-handed, were
not ashamed to censure that very bounty as folly, that liberality as
profuseness, though it had shown itself folly in nothing so truly as in
the selection of such unworthy creatures as themselves for its objects.
Now was Timon’s princely mansion forsaken and become a shunned and
hated place, a place for men to pass by, not a place, as formerly, where
every passenger must stop and taste of his wine and good cheer; now,
instead of being thronged with feasting and tumultuous guests, it was
beset with impatient and clamorous creditors, usurers, extortioners,
fierce and intolerable in their demands, pleading bonds, interest,
mortgages; iron-hearted men that would take no denial nor putting off,
that Timon’s house was now his jail, which he could not pass, nor go
in nor out for them; one demanding his due of fifty talents, another
bringing in a bill of five thousand crowns, which, if he would tell out
his blood by drops and pay them so, he had not enough in his body to
discharge, drop by drop.</p>
<p>In this desperate and irremediable state (as it seemed) of his affairs,
the eyes of all men were suddenly surprised at a new and incredible luster
which this setting sun put forth. Once more Lord Timon proclaimed a feast,
to which he invited his accustomed guests—lords, ladies, all that
was great or fashionable in Athens. Lord Lucius and Lucullus came,
Ventidius, Sempronius, and the rest. Who more sorry now than these fawning
wretches, when they found (as they thought) that Lord Timon’s
poverty was all pretense and had been only put on to make trial of their
loves, to think that they should not have seen through the artifice at the
time and have had the cheap credit of obliging his lordship? Yet who more
glad to find the fountain of that noble bounty which they had thought
dried up, still fresh and running? They came dissembling, protesting,
expressing deepest sorrow and shame, that when his lordship sent to them
they should have been so unfortunate as to want the present means to
oblige so honorable a friend. But Timon begged them not to give such
trifles a thought, for he had altogether forgotten it. And these base,
fawning lords, though they had denied him money in his adversity, yet
could not refuse their presence at this new blaze of his returning
prosperity. For the swallow follows not summer more willingly than men of
these dispositions follow the good fortunes of the great, nor more
willingly leaves winter than these shrink from the first appearance of a
reverse. Such summer birds are men. But now with music and state the
banquet of smoking dishes was served up; and when the guests had a little
done admiring whence the bankrupt Timon could find means to furnish so
costly a feast, some doubting whether the scene which they saw was real,
as scarce trusting their own eyes, at a signal given the dishes were
uncovered and Timon’s drift appeared. Instead of those varieties and
far-fetched dainties which they expected, that Timon’s epicurean
table in past times had so liberally presented, now appeared under the
covers of these dishes a preparation more suitable to Timon’s
poverty—nothing but a little smoke and lukewarm water, fit feast for
this knot of mouth-friends, whose professions were indeed smoke, and their
hearts lukewarm and slippery as the water with which Timon welcomed his
astonished guests, bidding them, “Uncover, dogs, and lap;”
and, before they could recover their surprise, sprinkling it in their
faces, that they might have enough, and throwing dishes and all after
them, who now ran huddling out, lords, ladies, with their caps snatched up
in haste, a splendid confusion, Timon pursuing them, still calling them
what they were, “smooth smiling parasites, destroyers under the mask
of courtesy, affable wolves, meek bears, fools of fortune, feast-friends,
time-flies.” They, crowding out to avoid him, left the house more
willingly than they had entered it; some losing their gowns and caps, and
some their jewels in the hurry, all glad to escape out of the presence of
such a mad lord, and from the ridicule of his mock banquet.</p>
<p>This was the last feast which ever Timon made, and in it he took farewell
of Athens and the society of men; for, after that, he betook himself to
the woods, turning his back upon the hated city and upon all mankind,
wishing the walls of that detestable city might sink, and the houses fall
upon their owners, wishing all plagues which infest humanity—war,
outrage, poverty, diseases—might fasten upon its inhabitants,
praying the just gods to confound all Athenians, both young and old, high
and low; so wishing, he went to the woods, where he said he should find
the unkindest beast much kinder than mankind. He stripped himself naked,
that he might retain no fashion of a man, and dug a cave to live in, and
lived solitary in the manner of a beast, eating the wild roots and
drinking water, flying from the face of his kind, and choosing rather to
herd with wild beasts, as more harmless and friendly than man.</p>
<p>What a change from Lord Timon the rich, Lord Timon the delight of mankind,
to Timon the naked, Timon the man-hater! Where were his flatterers now?
Where were his attendants and retinue? Would the bleak air, that
boisterous servitor, be his chamberlain, to put his shirt on warm? Would
those stiff trees that had outlived the eagle turn young and airy pages to
him, to skip on his errands when he bade them? Would the cool brook, when
it was iced with winter, administer to him his warm broths and caudles
when sick of an overnight’s surfeit? Or would the creatures that
lived in those wild woods come and lick his hand and flatter him?</p>
<p>Here on a day, when he was digging for roots, his poor sustenance, his
spade struck against something heavy, which proved to be gold, a great
heap which some miser had probably buried in a time of alarm, thinking to
have come again and taken it from its prison, but died before the
opportunity had arrived, without making any man privy to the concealment;
so it lay, doing neither good nor harm, in the bowels of the earth, its
mother, as if it had never come thence, till the accidental striking of
Timon’s spade against it once more brought it to light.</p>
<p>Here was a mass of treasure which, if Timon had retained his old mind, was
enough to have purchased him friends and flatterers again; but Timon was
sick of the false world and the sight of gold was poisonous to his eyes;
and he would have restored it to the earth, but that, thinking of the
infinite calamities which by means of gold happen to mankind, how the
lucre of it causes robberies, oppression, injustice, briberies, violence,
and murder, among men, he had a pleasure in imagining (such a rooted
hatred did he bear to his species) that out of this heap, which in digging
he had discovered, might arise some mischief to plague mankind. And some
soldiers passing through the woods near to his cave at that instant, which
proved to be a part of the troops of the Athenian captain Alcibiades, who,
upon some disgust taken against the senators of Athens (the Athenians were
ever noted to be a thankless and ungrateful people, giving disgust to
their generals and best friends), was marching at the head of the same
triumphant army which he had formerly headed in their defense, to war
against them. Timon, who liked their business well, bestowed upon their
captain the gold to pay his soldiers, requiring no other service from him
than that he should with his conquering army lay Athens level with the
ground, and burn, slay, kill all her inhabitants; not sparing the old men
for their white beards, for (he said) they were usurers, nor the young
children for their seeming innocent smiles, for those (he said) would
live, if they grew up, to be traitors; but to steel his eyes and ears
against any sights or sounds that might awaken compassion; and not to let
the cries of virgins, babes, or mothers hinder him from making one
universal massacre of the city, but to confound them all in his conquest;
and when he had conquered, he prayed that the gods would confound him
also, the conqueror. So thoroughly did Timon hate Athens, Athenians, and
all mankind.</p>
<p>While he lived in this forlorn state, leading a life more brutal than
human, he was suddenly surprised one day with the appearance of a man
standing in an admiring posture at the door of his cave. It was Flavius,
the honest steward, whom love and zealous affection to his master had led
to seek him out at his wretched dwelling and to offer his services; and
the first sight of his master, the once noble Timon, in that abject
condition, naked as he was born, living in the manner of a beast among
beasts, looking like his own sad ruins and a monument of decay, so
affected this good servant that he stood speechless, wrapped up in horror
and confounded. And when he found utterance at last to his words, they
were so choked with tears that Timon had much ado to know him again, or to
make out who it was that had come (so contrary to the experience he had
had of mankind) to offer him service in extremity. And being in the form
and shape of a man, he suspected him for a traitor, and his tears for
false; but the good servant by so many tokens confirmed the truth of his
fidelity, and made it clear that nothing but love and zealous duty to his
once dear master had brought him there, that Timon was forced to confess
that the world contained one honest man; yet, being in the shape and form
of a man, be could not look upon his man’s face without abhorrence,
or hear words uttered from his man’s lips without loathing; and this
singly honest man was forced to depart, because he was a man, and because,
with a heart more gentle and compassionate than is usual to man, he bore
man’s detested form and outward feature.</p>
<p>But greater visitants than a poor steward were about to interrupt the
savage quiet of Timon’s solitude. For now the day was come when the
ungrateful lords of Athens sorely repented the injustice which they had
done to the noble Timon. For Alcibiades, like an incensed wild boar, was
raging at the walls of their city, and with his hot siege threatened to
lay fair Athens in the dust. And now the memory of Lord Timon’s
former prowess and military conduct came fresh into their forgetful minds,
for Timon had been their general in past times, and a valiant and expert
soldier, who alone of all the Athenians was deemed able to cope with a
besieging army such as then threatened them, or to drive back the furious
approaches of Alcibiades.</p>
<p>A deputation of the senators was chosen in this emergency to wait upon
Timon. To him they come in their extremity, to whom, when he was in
extremity, they had shown but small regard; as if they presumed upon his
gratitude whom they had disobliged, and had derived a claim to his
courtesy from their own most discourteous and unpiteous treatment.</p>
<p>Now they earnestly beseech him, implore him with tears, to return and save
that city from which their ingratitude had so lately driven him; now they
offer him riches, power, dignities,, satisfaction for past injuries, and
public honors, and the public love; their persons, lives, and fortunes to
be at his disposal, if he will but come back and save them. But Timon the
naked, Timon the man-hater, was no longer Lord Timon, the lord of bounty,
the flower of valor, their defense in war, their ornament in peace. If
Alcibiades killed his countrymen, Timon cared not. If he sacked fair
Athens, and slew her old men and her infants, Timon would rejoice. So he
told them; and that there was not a knife in the unruly camp which he did
not prize above the reverendest throat in Athens.</p>
<p>This was all the answer he vouchsafed to the weeping, disappointed
senators; only at parting he bade them commend him to his countrymen, and
tell them that to ease them of their griefs and anxieties, and to prevent
the consequences of fierce Alcibiades’s wrath, there was yet a way
left, which he would teach them, for he had yet so much affection left for
his dear countrymen as to be willing to do them a kindness before his
death. These words a little revived the senators, who hoped that his
kindness for their city was returning. Then Timon told them that he had a
tree, which grew near his cave, which he should shortly have occasion to
cut down, and he invited all his friends in Athens, high or low , of
whatsoever degree, who wished to shun affliction, to come and take a taste
of his tree before he cut it down; meaning that they might come and hang
themselves on it and escape affliction that way.</p>
<p>And this was the last courtesy, of all his noble bounties, which Timon
showed to mankind, and this the last sight of him which his countrymen
had, for not many days after, a poor soldier, passing by the sea-beach
which was at a little distance from the woods which Timon frequented,
found a tomb on the verge of the sea, with an inscription upon it
purporting that it was the grave of Timon the man-hater, who “While
he lived, did hate all living men, and, dying, wished a plague might
consume all caitiffs left!”</p>
<p>Whether he finished his life by violence, or whether mere distaste of life
and the loathing he had for mankind brought Timon to his conclusion, was
not clear, yet all men admired the fitness of his epitaph and the
consistency of his end, dying, as he had lived, a hater of mankind. And
some there were who fancied a conceit in the very choice which he had made
of the sea-beach for his place of burial, where the vast sea might weep
forever upon his grave, as in contempt of the transient and shallow tears
of hypocritical and deceitful mankind.</p>
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