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Like madness is the glory of this life
As this pomp shows to a little oil and root.
We make ourselves fools to disport ourselves
And spend our flatteries to drink those men
Upon whose age we void it up again
With poisonous spite and envy.
Who lives that’s not depravèd or depraves?
Who dies that bears not one spurn to their graves
Of their friends’ gift?
I should fear those that dance before me now
Would one day stamp upon me. ’T has been done.
Men shut their doors against a setting sun. (1.2.130–41)
When we first meet Apemantus in the play’s opening scene, we quickly learn that he is a practicing cynic who seems to derive pleasure from pointing out the hypocrisy of other people. He confronts the various artists, craftsmen, merchants, and lords who swarm around Timon, flattering him while simultaneously receiving extravagant gifts. Though Timon sees his gift-giving as a genuine expression of friendship, Apemantus sees it as part of a transactional exchange in which Timon essentially buys praise from sycophantic hangers-on, who in turn receive money, material gifts, and hospitality. However, it isn’t until the second scene that Apemantus offers a fuller expression of his cynical worldview. This scene centers on an elaborate banquet at Timon’s house, which Apemantus attends—though he refuses to partake of the meal itself. After everyone has eaten, a troupe of dancers dressed up as Amazons comes out to perform. It is as these women take the stage that Apemantus speaks the words quoted here.
Initially, Apemantus concerns himself with the lavishness of the festivities unfolding around him. The “pomp” strikes him as “madness,” since it’s so excessive when compared to the bare necessities required to sustain life, which he refers to as “a little oil and root.” His invocation of roots here recalls the end of the prayer he spoke before the banquet, when he noted that, in contrast to “rich men [who] sin,” he “eat[s] root” (1.2.69). Roots are therefore symbolically linked to the virtue of simplicity. But whereas Apemantus commits himself a simplified material existence, those around him have invented an elaborate social system absurdly dedicated to the pursuit of accumulation. People flatter each other to accrue more material wealth, but this flattery just as soon turns to “poisonous spite and envy.” There is thus no security in social bonds, which he indicates when he says, “I should fear those that dance before me now / Would one day stamp upon me.” A very similar situation will shortly upend Timon’s life, when, in response to his financial insolvency, his supposed “friends” turn on him and refuse to help. In this sense, Apemantus’s cynical worldview has a prophetic force.
Now the gods keep you old enough that you may live
Only in bone, that none may look on you!
I’m worse than mad: I have kept back their foes
While they have told their money and let out
Their coin upon large interest, I myself
Rich only in large hurts. All those for this?
Is this the balsam that the usuring Senate
Pours into captains’ wounds? Banishment.
It comes not ill; I hate not to be banished.
It is a cause worthy my spleen and fury,
That I may strike at Athens. (3.5.103–113)
Alcibiades initially appears in the play’s opening act, though we only glimpse him briefly. He first becomes a full character in act 3, scene 5, when he stands before the Athenian senate to argue a case related to manslaughter. He has a friend who reacted badly to heckling and turned violent, accidentally killing another man. For this crime, he has been sentenced to death. Yet Alcibiades, a highly decorated and respected military leader, strenuously argues for a stay of execution. He initially pleads extenuating circumstances, then, in a last-ditch effort to solicit mercy, he suggests that he could “pawn” his own victories in battle and submit “all / My honor to you, upon his good returns” (3.5.81–82). The senators not only reject his pleas, but they also decide to banish him for his brashness. It is at this point that Alcibiades unleashes the angry lines quoted above, where he curses the senators and pledges to lead an army against Athens.
One of the most notable aspects of Alcibiades’s soliloquy is the way it incorporates the language of finance. He initially used economic terms when pleading with the senators to allow him to trade his own honor in exchange for his friend’s “good returns.” His language there implied a degree of faith that he might be able to cut a fair deal which might benefit both sides. However, when the senators won’t make a deal, Alcibiades realizes that his mistake lay in the assumption that any such deal could, in fact, be fair. He implies as much when he complains about how the senate only “let[s] out / Their coin upon large interest.” That is, the senate acts as a moneylender, but only on the condition that debts are paid back with interest, allowing them to get more than they give. This is why Alcibiades calls it “the usuring Senate.” Importantly, the “spleen and fury” caused by the self-serving senators provides the occasion for Alcibiades’s later alliance with Timon. Both men have suffered from unjust exchanges, and they both seek retaliation for the ingratitude of Athens. Thus, when he marches on the city, Alcibiades will speak for Timon’s grievances as well as his own.
Yellow, glittering, precious gold!
. . . Thus much of this will make
Black white, foul fair, wrong right,
Base noble, old young, coward valiant.
. . .
This yellow slave
Will knit and break religions, bless th’ accursed,
Make the hoar leprosy adored, place thieves
And give them title, knee, and approbation
With senators on the bench.
. . . Come, damned earth,
Thou common whore of mankind, that puts odds
Among the rout of nations, I will make thee
Do thy right nature. (4.3.26–45)
After Timon leaves Athens in a bitter rage, he retreats to the woods and settles in a cave. Now calling himself by the new name of “Misanthropos,” he has fully committed himself to a cynical worldview that repudiates all social relation. His misanthropy is more extreme than the cynicism of Apemantus, but Shakespeare underscores the connection between these men by having Timon dig in the earth in search of edible roots. His search for roots clearly echoes Apemantus’s memorable words from Timon’s first banquet: “Rich men sin, and I eat root” (1.2.69). Roots are thus symbolic of the virtue of simplicity and material moderation. Curiously, when Timon goes digging for roots, he unexpectedly unearths a bag of gold. Just when he no longer has any need for such an extravagant sum of money, it miraculously turns up. As he pulls the gold from the ground, he launches into an extended discourse on the corrupting power of wealth, an extract from which is quoted here.
Even as Timon laments gold’s corrupting power, he also realizes that he can capitalize on this power to pursue his own misanthropic ends. He begins by acknowledging gold’s semi-magical ability to turn the world on its head. In doing so, he echoes his earlier vision—in act 4, scene 1—of a topsy-turvy Athens where obedient children turn against their parents, slaves rebel against their masters, virgins become promiscuous, and whores pledge chastity. Having firsthand experience of how gold can upend everything, Timon decides to exploit gold’s destructive capacity: “I will make thee / Do thy right nature.” He therefore takes this “yellow slave” made of “damned earth” and begins to distribute it liberally. In an absurd reversal of his former generosity, Timon gives lavishly with the intention not of securing social bonds but of funding social ruin. He gives money to prostitutes, encouraging them to spread their diseases to all their clients. He distributes cash to bandits, employing them to steal everything they can. He also pays Alcibiades to support his military campaign against Athens. Such mayhem and destruction express the “right nature” of wealth.
A beastly ambition, which the gods grant thee t’ attain to! If thou wert the lion, the fox would beguile thee; if thou wert the lamb, the fox would eat thee; if thou wert the fox, the lion would suspect thee when peradventure thou wert accused by the ass; if thou wert the ass, thy dullness would torment thee, and still thou liv’dst but as a breakfast to the world. . . . What beast couldst thou be that were not subject to a beast? And what a beast art thou already, that seest not thy loss in transformation? (4.3.325–31, 341–43)
After Timon retreats into the woods, he has a sequence of visitors. Some, like Alcibiades, Apemantus, and Flavius, seem genuinely to care about his well-being. Others, like the Poet, the Painter, and the bandits, are little more than self-seeking sycophants. Of all the encounters he has, it’s the one with Apemantus that is the most substantive. Apemantus is shocked to find Timon living in such destitute conditions, but he’s even more surprised that Timon has transformed into such a thoroughgoing misanthrope. Apemantus is a committed cynic, so he is pleased to see that Timon’s perspective on the world is now closer to his own. However, he also recognizes that cynicism isn’t natural for Timon and that he has perhaps taken it too far. He therefore encourages Timon to give up his misanthropy and instead find a way to thrive by doing what others did to him: that is, flatter them and leech off their wealth. Changing the subject, Timon asks Apemantus what he would do with the world if it lay in his power, and Apemantus says: “Give it the beasts, to be rid of the men” (4.3.321). It is to this comment that Timon responds with the words quoted here.
Timon’s reply to Apemantus emphasizes how giving everything to the beasts wouldn’t change anything about how the world works, since hierarchies would still exist. There is no creature that isn’t subject to another. The lamb will be eaten by the fox, just as the fox is answerable to the lion. There is no end to this chain of violence and dependency, and thus there is no escape from it. Hence the defeatism implicit in Timon’s concluding question: “What beast couldst thou be that were not subject to a beast?” This rhetorical question is significant, since it reveals that Timon’s misanthropy goes deeper than we may have previously understood. When he first took to the woods, he seemed to have some hope that life could be different in the wilderness, where he expected to “find / Th’ unkindest beast must more kinder than mankind” (4.1.35–36). Now, however, he seems to find nonhuman society just as reprehensible as the human one. Thus, even as Apemantus tries to get Timon to temper his misanthropy, Timon is already too far gone. He has cursed all life under the sun, which may help to explain why, in the play’s final act, he seems to will himself to death.
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. (5.4.70–73)
Though his death takes place offstage, Timon makes several references to its imminent arrival. In act 4, scene 3, for instance, after cursing Apemantus and declaring, “I am sick of this false world” (4.3.373), Timon addresses himself: “Timon, presently prepare thy grave. / Lie where the light foam of the sea may beat / Thy gravestone daily” (375–77). Later, in act 5, scene 1, after refusing to return to Athens with the senators, Timon declares: “Why, I was writing of my epitaph. / It will be seen tomorrow” (5.1.184–85). It therefore comes as little surprise when a soldier comes looking for Timon, only to stumble upon his grave, complete with the epitaph he referenced several scenes earlier. The epitaph is strangely doubled in the sense that it’s written partly in the English and partly in some other language, likely Greek or Latin. The English text reads: “Timon is dead, who hath outstretched his span., / Some beast read this; there does not live a man” (5.3.3–4). The soldier can’t read the other text, and so he makes a wax rubbing of it and departs.
We don’t learn about the epitaph’s second part until the play’s final scene, when the soldier delivers his rubbing to Alcibiades, who then translates it. His translation is reproduced in the quote here. Curiously, just as the epitaph was doubled in the sense that it was written in two languages, now we learn that it was doubled in another sense—that is, the second part of the epitaph contains two couplets that contradict each other. The first couplet explicitly states, “Seek not my name.” But then the second couplet plainly says, “Here lie I, Timon.” The move to obscure his name and the move to reveal his name are clearly at odds with one another, which has led some critics to suggest that Shakespeare may not have gotten around to revising it. He may have written two different epitaphs, with the idea of keeping just one, but then never made the necessary decision. From another point of view, however, the twice-doubled nature of this self-contradicting epitaph is a fitting tribute to a character whose duality was itself irresolvable: Timon the philanthropist versus Timon the misanthropist.
