Timon, a lord of Athens, in the enjoyment of a princely fortune,
affected a humour 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 humour 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.
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 jeweller
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 jewellery 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.
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.
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.
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 he could have dealt kingdoms to these supposed friends,
and never have been weary.
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 he 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, he 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.
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 no 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 have 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 feasting, and at one cloud of
winter-showers these flies would disappear.
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 endeavoured 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: 'My lands extend from Athens to Lacedaemon.' '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!'
Timon consoled himself that no villanous 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 made 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.
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 he had not found Lucullus at home.
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
honourable gentleman.
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 labourers 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.
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.
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.
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
lustre 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 pretence, and had been only 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 honourable 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.
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.
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?
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 from thence, till the
accidental striking of Timon's spade against it once more brought it to
light.
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 defence, 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.
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, he 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.
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.
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.
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 honours, 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 valour, their defence 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.
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' 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 what degree soever, 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.
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!'
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 for ever upon his grave, as in contempt
of the transient and shallow tears of hypocritical and deceitful
mankind.