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.
													[Sound a parley.
                    The SENATORS appear on 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.

1st 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.

2nd Senator							So did we woo
	Transformd 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.

1st Senator								These walls of ours
	Were not erected by their hands from whom
	You have received your grief; nor are they such
	That these great towers, trophies, and schools, should fall
	For private faults in them.

2nd 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 tithd 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.

1st 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.

2nd Senator								What thou wilt,
	Thou rather shalt enforce it with thy smile
	Than hew to't with thy sword.

1st 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.

2nd 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 unchargd 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.

1st &
2nd Senators						'Tis most nobly spoken.

Alcibiades	Descend, and keep your words.
												[The SENATORS descend,
									   and the gates are opened.

                       Enter SOLDIER as Messenger.

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.
									[Drums. Exeunt.
