Enter a Soldier in the woods, seeking Timon.
SOLDIER.
By all description this should be the place.
Who’s here? Speak, ho! No answer? What is this?
Timon is dead, who hath outstretched his span.
Some beast read this; there does not live a man.
Dead, sure, and this his grave. What’s on this tomb
I cannot read. The character I’ll take with wax.
Our captain hath in every figure skill,
An aged interpreter, though young in days.
Before proud Athens he’s set down by this,
Whose fall the mark of his ambition is.
[Exit.]
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.