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Summary
Back in Athens, two other senators discuss the strength of Alcibiades’s army and wait to hear if Timon will return to help defend the city. But soon the senators sent to Timon’s cave arrive and announce that they can’t count on him.
In the woods, a soldier is looking for Timon, only to stumble upon his gravestone. He reads the first part of the epitaph, which is written in English. But the rest is written in another language that he can’t read. So, he makes a wax rubbing and sets off to deliver it to his superiors.
Meanwhile, Alcibiades’s army approaches Athens. When several senators appear on the city wall, Alcibiades announces that the time for retribution has come. The senators plead with him, saying they have attempted to right their wrongs—and anyway, not all of them were unkind, and hence not everyone deserves to be punished. They agree to let Alcibiades into the city, but they urge him not to kill everyone. Instead, they request that he only kill the one out of every ten Athenians who have caused offense. Alcibiades agrees to this provision, and he promises to punish only those who have harmed either him or Timon. Just then, the soldier enters with the rubbing from Timon’s grave. Alcibiades reads the epitaph aloud then declares that, though he scorned humanity, Timon will live on in memory. He prepares to enter the city, pledging peace.
Analysis
For many readers and theatergoers, the play’s concluding scenes are somewhat puzzling and unsatisfying. Part of the reason relates to the way the narrative leaves Timon behind and shifts to the somewhat underdeveloped narrative of Alcibiades and the war he’s planned to wage on Athens. Alcibiades presumably wants to attack the city in retribution for his own exile as well as Timon’s. Yet it’s unclear if he’s taken on Timon’s cause because of the gold he gave him, or because of a genuine sense of solidarity. Also puzzling are the terms of the deal Alcibiades makes with the senators of Athens. The senators plead for him not to kill everyone, but their alternative is rather strange: they suggest that Alcibiades restrict himself to killing only one out of every ten Athenians, apparently to be chosen by lot. Alcibiades agrees, promising to kill only those who have personally offended against either him or Timon—apparently only a tenth of the full population. However the numbers end up working out, the point seems to be that only the guilty will be punished.
At this point in the play, though, it has become a bit confusing what “guilty” really means. And not only that, but why should either the harsh senators or the stingy lords of Athens be subjected specifically to death? Alcibiades is angry at the senators for sentencing his comrade to death and exiling him, and thus his grievances are legal and political. Meanwhile, Timon has spent the latter half of the play reeling—not so much at the bankruptcy that resulted from his debt burden, but from the shock of realizing the fundamental ungenerosity of the lords he believed to be his friends. His grievances are therefore ethical in nature. The links between the two men’s grievances seem tenuous at best, though in each case they are directed at the people of Athens. Their shared hatred of the Athenians thus provides the conditions for their alliance. But then what do we make of it when Alcibiades, who has taken up Timon’s cause, freely cuts a deal with the senators, thereby failing to honor Timon’s bitter wish to curse them all without exception? It would seem, in the end, that Alcibiades has decided to act solely in his own best interests.
Further interpretive challenges attend the death of Timon, which takes place offstage. How are we to understand his apparently self-willed death? Is it a tragic death in the way a protagonist’s demise is usually understood? If so, what has he died for, and who is ultimately responsible? None of these questions has a definitive answer, which has made it difficult for critics to come to any firm conclusions about how to interpret the play as a whole. Even so, it is helpful to underscore how the contradictions that attend Timon’s death reflect his dual nature as both philanthropist and misanthropist. This dual nature shows up in the curiously doubled epitaph that Timon has written for himself. For one thing, this epitaph is double in the sense that it is written in two languages: English and either Latin or Greek. For another thing, the non-English epitaph consists of two distinct parts that exist in tension with each other. One half of this epitaph declares, “Seek not my name” (5.4.71), while the other half announces, “Here lie I, Timon” (72). If, as Timon says before his death, his grave should act as an “oracle” (5.1.218) for Athenians, it remains mysterious just what wisdom it’s supposed to communicate, other than the fundamental contradiction of his life.
