SOURCE: de Alvarez, Leo Paul S. “Timon of Athens.” In Shakespeare as Political Thinker, edited by John Alvis and Thomas G. West, pp. 157-79. Durham, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press, 1981.

[In the following essay, de Alvarez maintains that the city of Athens and its politics are the main focus of Timon of Athens, and closely examines the three principal characters—Timon, Apemantus, and Alcibiades.]

Timon of Athens, according to Howard B. White, is perhaps “the most complete political tragedy in Shakespeare.”¹ Such a statement might be justified by the lack of any other focus in the play but that of the city. No question of love, for example, diverts us from the story of Athens. We have very little in the way of anything pleasant—there seems to be no delight in the play. The banquet and the masque, for all their brilliance, are somehow unpleasant. The three principal characters, Timon, Apemantus, and Alcibiades act in terms of the city. No beautiful speeches charm us; the poetry is a scolding, harsh, vituperative poetry. Despite the outward glitter, the play reproduces the unpleasantness and harshness of the political itself.

I

We first hear of Timon as a wealthy patron of the arts. We also hear of his beneficence and how this virtue brings to him a great flood of visitors who profess their love for him and honor him as they would a god. We first see him, however, as a benefactor, paying the debt of Ventidius and providing a young man in his service with sufficient money to marry above his station. Timon explains his act of generosity to Ventidius in terms of friendship. Ventidius is a friend and a gentleman, and it is the duty of friends and gentlemen to give freely one to another. Giving, he says, when he provides Lucilius with the money whereby the latter might wed, is a “bond in men.” Giving is the highest expression of friendship, and Timon has a vision of community as a loving brotherhood:

… We are born to do benefits; and what better or properer can we call our own than the riches of our friends? O what a precious comfort ’tis to have so many like brothers commanding one another's fortunes! O joy, e'en made away ere't can be born! Mine eyes cannot hold out water, methinks. …

(I.ii.95-101)²

So deeply moved is he by his vision of friendship that to think of it is a joy which dissolves into tears.

In the lines preceding the ones we have just quoted, Timon presents his fullest explanation of why he gives. His giving is made possible by the gods so that he, Timon, might be able “to have much help” from his friends. Every benefit Timon confers means that there is another who then becomes more greatly capable of giving in return. When Ventidius, newly released from debtor's prison, comes to thank Timon, Timon speaks of his love and how he freely gives requiring nothing in return. It becomes clear, however, in the second act that Timon expects the gentlemen of Athens to reciprocate his love and generosity. He cannot believe that they will refuse him in his need, and his anger assumes terrible dimensions when he learns of the ingratitude of his supposed friends.

Timon's actions have been sanctioned by the gods themselves. As they have provided wealth for Timon, so he provides for others, and we can assume that such bountiful provision may then continue throughout the city, friend providing for friend. Giving permits others to be helpful; it seems as if the gods wish for everyone to be like them and therefore have made men “born to do benefits.”

Timon goes on to say that his giving is a selection out of thousands of those whom he chiefly cherishes and entitles with the charitable name of “friend.” He declares that he knows each of those whom he benefits, and can speak more to himself about each one than each, out of modesty, could speak on his own behalf. Timon thus claims that his giving is not indiscriminate; he knows well to whom he gives. He learns his mistake, but he insists that although unwise, he has not been ignoble in his giving (II.ii.171). But can one give nobly if one does not know what one is doing? His giving is in fact indiscriminate, but Timon believes that he knows to whom he gives. On what basis does he found that belief? Is he simply boasting, that is, deluding himself?

Before we attempt to answer this question, however, we need to continue with the argument. We note that Timon's ardor leads him to exclaim with an oath that friends are to be used when one is needy. Otherwise, friends would be “needless,” that is, there would be no reason for them to be. The gods have apparently made certain that there are inequalities among human beings so that friends must be called upon and used. Without need, there would be no possibility of exercising the highest and therefore the god-like virtue of beneficence. Timon wishes himself poorer, so that he might be nearer to those to whom he gives. The implicit argument appears to be that since the exercise of beneficence is the highest human good, then the greatest benefit one could bestow upon one's friends would be to permit them to exercise the highest virtue. Giving is the true bond between men, for the rich and the poor, the high and the low, are brought closer together and are each made nobler through giving.

But let us return to the question previously asked: why does Timon suppose that he knows to whom he gives? The answer, I believe, is that Timon looks upon citizenship as linking men together in a special bond of love—all citizens cannot but be friends. The private bond of friendship is made one with the public bond of citizenship. As he says to Apemantus, “Thou'rt an Athenian, therefore welcome.” He who is an Athenian is a friend, and Timon's door is open to all Athenians. The fine words said to him by those who are parasites and flatterers are taken by him at their face value, for they are said by fellow citizens. The selection of friends has been made for Timon through the city, and he believes therefore that he knows to whom he gives, for he gives to fellow-citizens.

Timon's principal characteristic is that he gives money generously. He gives, as we have said, for two reasons—he gives to his fellow-citizens who claim to be in need, and he gives to those who make beautiful things. We have spoken briefly of why he gives to his fellow-citizens; we must now look at his patronage of the arts.

The play begins by introducing us to a Poet, a Painter, a Jeweller, and a Merchant, who are all waiting in attendance upon Timon. The three craftsmen have brought gifts, and the Poet and the Painter exchange comments upon how art imitates nature. According to the Poet, the picture brought by the Painter not only imitates nature but tutors her. The artifact is “livelier than life.” When Timon is presented with the picture, he confirms the Poet's judgment. It is, Timon says at first, “almost the natural man.” But he then seems to say that the painting is better than man—man's nature cannot truly be seen for it traffics with dishonor, while the painting clearly reveals what the man is. Human beings may conceal that which art reveals; art shows more than nature can.

The play thus opens with a contrast between the natural and the artificial, a theme which is to culminate in Timon's abandonment of the city and all human company for the woods where he eats roots. But when we first see Timon, he clearly prefers the artificial to the natural, so much so that Apemantus suggests that he seems wholly to have forgotten the natural. Timon is a patron of the arts because the arts remove the stain of dishonor from the human being. That is, the harsh and necessitous are removed by the arts, leaving only the pleasurable and the beautiful. The city is to be the place of ease, refined pleasures, love and beauty.

The darker side of Athens, however, is revealed by Apemantus and Alcibiades. Apemantus is presented as an angry, scolding man, who seems always to be giving what he calls his counsel at the most inopportune times and in the most inappropriate ways. The consequence is that he is ignored by everyone, and only the great civility and humanity of Timon permit his being tolerated (I.i.175-177). Apemantus sees all too clearly the filthiness, the depravity, the hypocrisy which is concealed by the glory, courtesy, and graciousness of Athens. The Athenians, indeed all men, act entirely in terms of their self-interest, and they would as soon kill as they would pledge faith. His one concern is to make others, and especially Timon, see how foolish are all the feasts and pomps which Athens so much enjoys. He points to the natural man, saying in effect that he is a dangerous, ungrateful beast. Apemantus seems intensely to desire that Timon see this natural man. So concerned is he with Timon, that he seems to spend a good part of his time observing Timon and his ways. One wonders why Apemantus should be so concerned. One wonders also why he addresses himself to his fellow-citizens in such a self-defeating way. His angry denunciations only evoke the equally angry response that he is opposite to humanity. Is it proper for a philosopher to denounce? Can Apemantus, whose name means one free from misery,³ be properly called a philosopher? But we shall leave these questions for later consideration. It suffices us for the moment to note Apemantus' vision of Athens.

Alcibiades, the great captain, finds himself banished from the city when he attempts to persuade the Senate to pardon one of his soldiers who killed in anger. The Senate refuses to do so on the ground that it would encourage a misbegotten valor in the city which would result in factions and sects and more quarrellings and killings. The Senators fear spiritedness, and they prefer an Athens free of it. The warrior does not represent Athens and is not honored by the city. The city, as Alcibiades bitterly remarks upon his banishment, is an usurious city. What is honored is the misbegotten breeding of money by money. Apemantus shares in this judgment—Athens is a city based upon unnatural and unlimited acquisition. For Apemantus and Alcibiades alike, usury leads to the forgetfulness of natural necessity. The implicit argument is that usury, by replacing man's natural productive relationship to nature, leads to a forgetfulness of nature—it replaces natural acquisition with unnatural acquisition. For Alcibiades, the Senators forget the need to defend the city; for Apemantus, Timon forgets that it is only by a prudent self-interest that one is able to get and maintain wealth. Both Apemantus and Alcibiades point to usury as the ignoble basis of Athens, and, as Timon discovers, it is the true governor of the relations between Athenians. Timon, however, sees at first only the beautiful city which can be constructed on the basis of wealth. Timon is a founder; he wants to found a city which will be beautiful without any stain of ignobility.

We are reminded of Pericles' Funeral Speech. Pericles describes Athens as a city of decent enjoyment of delights. It is a city which loves the beautiful, but does so with thrift and without softness. Thus the love of the beautiful is also connected by Pericles with the question of the getting of wealth—if there is to be the beautiful there must be acquisition. I believe that the Athens which Shakespeare sees in Timon of Athens is described in the following passage from the Funeral Speech:

We have also found out many ways to give our minds recreation from labour, by public institution of games and sacrifices for all the days of the year, with a decent pomp and furniture of the same by private men; by the delight whereof we expel sadness. We have this farther by the greatness of our city, that all things from all parts of the earth are imported hither; whereby we no less familiarly enjoy the commodities of all other nations than our own.⁴

Athens is an empire and a commercial city. It is thus the usurious city of which Apemantus and Alcibiades speak. But Athens also loves the beautiful and depends upon her private men, her Timons, to give delight with decent pomp. The Athens of Pericles and the Athens we are shown by Shakespeare seem fundamentally to be the same city. Athens' peculiar claim is thus that she, of all the cities, is best able to use her wealth liberally and magnificently. Timon fully dedicates himself to realizing this claim of Athens. He wishes therefore to be the complete Athenian.

But the society Timon wishes to bring into existence is not political. The political is for him too harsh. He remarks that Alcibiades prefers a feast of enemies to a banquet, and he himself shows no interest in honors and glory, although he is offered the captainship of Athenian arms with absolute power. The Senators seem fully to expect him to be a match and more than a match for Alcibiades in the field of battle. Certainly, Alcibiades shows considerable respect for Timon, and he speaks of Timon's great deeds with his sword and fortune, when neighboring states trod upon Athens (IV.iii.93-96). One is reminded of Cimon, the great general who was responsible for Athenian expansion after the Persian Wars, and one is indeed tempted to think that Shakespeare's Timon is modelled upon Plutarch's Cimon. Here, for example, is Plutarch's description of the generosity of Cimon:

And since he was already wealthy, Cimon lavished the revenue from his campaign, which he was thought to have won with honour from the enemy, to his still greater honour, on his fellow-citizens. He took away the fences from his fields, that strangers and needy citizens might have it in their power to take fearlessly of the fruits of the land; and every day he gave a dinner at his house—simple, it is true, but sufficient for many, to which any poor man who wished came in, and so received a maintenance which cost him no effort and left him free to devote himself solely to public affairs. …

Cimon, it is true, is not as sumptuous as Timon in his dinners; above all, Cimon never forgets the connection between acquisition and liberality. He is liberal and magnificent, one might say, with the goods of others. But that Cimon intends to bring into existence the Athens Timon also intends is made evident by Plutarch:

… but the generosity of Cimon surpassed even the hospitality and philanthropy of the Athenians of olden time … [for] he made his home in the city a general public residence for his fellow-citizens, and on his estates in the country allowed even the stranger to take and use the choicest of the ripened fruits, with all the fair things which the seasons bring. Thus, in a certain fashion, he restored to human life the fabled communism of the age of Cronus—the golden age. …⁵

Timon desires that golden age. It seems to be a desire shared by the greatest of Athenian statesmen, who think of Athens in terms of the beautiful—where harsh necessity is banished, anger set aside, and the appetites given over to a refined and decent enjoyment of pleasures.

II

We turn now to the second half of the play, where Timon abandons and curses Athens, declaring that:

Timon will to the woods, where he shall find
Th' unkindest beast more kinder than mankind.

(IV.i.35-36)

He not only curses Athens and her citizens, he also curses all of humanity. He will have nothing to do with man, and where he formerly believed the human artifact to be superior to nature, he now finds all human things to be detestable. He looks for a nature which is without man.

Timon, alone in the woods, reflects upon man's relationship to nature (IV.iii.1-48):

O blessed breeding sun, draw from the earth
Rotten humidity; below thy sister's orb
Infect the air! Twinned brothers of one womb—
Whose procreation, residence, and birth
Scarce is dividant—touch them with several fortunes,
The greater scorns the lesser. …

The sun draws forth from the earth that which is contrary to the fire of the sun, rotten humidity. This contrariety in nature curses and infects mankind, such that twin brothers can become subject to differing fortunes. And these differing fortunes lead the one who has the greater fortune to have contempt for his poorer brother. It would seem that nature herself being contrary, nature cannot serve as a basis for the human good. Thus the passage continues:

                                                                                                    Not nature,
To whom all sores lay siege, can bear great fortune
But by contempt of nature.

Nature herself would turn against nature should it escape the sores to which nature, without fortune, is always subject. No one and nothing escapes natural necessity, and there is nothing noble in human nature or in nature as such. Instead, self-preservation is the ruling principle. Men will do anything to escape necessity, and all subject themselves to fortune or wealth which alone seems to provide escape from nature. But in so doing men reveal their fundamental bestiality:

Raise me this beggar and deny't that lord;
The senator shall bear contempt hereditary,
The beggar native honor.
It is the pasture lards the wether's sides,
The want that makes him lean. …

Man's nobility is entirely a question of fortune or money. The distinction between the senator and the beggar is “pasture,” that is, what they feed upon. So strongly are men governed by necessity or self-preservation that none can show “purity of manhood”:

                                                                                          Who dares, who dares
In purity of manhood stand upright
And say, “This man's a flatterer?” If one be,
So are they all, for every grise of fortune
Is smoothed by that below. The learnèd pate
Ducks to the golden fool. All's obliquy;
There's nothing level in our cursèd natures
But direct villainy. …

The villainy is the result of man's inability to be in direct and happy relationship to nature. Instead, man's happiness comes from having to become unnatural. Timon makes this clear in another and subsequent passage when he speaks of the earth as a common mother:

Whose womb unmeasurable and infinite breast
Teems and feeds all; whose self-same mettle
Whereof thy proud child, arrogant man, is puffed
Engenders the black toad and adder blue,
The gilded newt and eyeless venomed worm,
With all the abhorrèd births below crisp heaven. …

(IV.iii.178-183)

Man is not the especial child of earth. Man's pride in himself does not take into account the indiscriminateness of the earth in her relationship to all her children, who are in the main monsters to humanity. Man, moreover, is an ungrateful child; unlike the black toad and the adder-blue he is capable of contempt for his mother. Man is ungrateful, we surmise, because he can do more with nature, he can plant and plough and thus by “liquorish drafts / And morsels unctuous,” he “greases his mind” in such a way “That from it all consideration slips.”

The conclusion of Timon's analysis is the complete rejection of society:

                                                                                          … Therefore be abhorred
All parts, societies, and throngs of men.
His semblable, yea himself, Timon disdains.
Destruction fang mankind.

Timon has discovered what Marx is later to call the alienation of man. Man's work to make for himself a more comfortable state, his building of the city, is a criminal act against nature. Man must be unnatural and therefore ungrateful to his mother, and this ingratitude makes the seemingly beautiful, the humane, and the free possible. But the price man pays is that he is in truth ungrateful in all his relationships.⁶

Timon's discovery of gold during the speech in which he calls for the destruction of mankind points up what we have just said. Gold is the means whereby nature is dissolved and transformed into any shape one pleases. Timon promises to use the gold, but not as a blessing for men but rather a curse:

                                                                                                    Come, damnèd earth,
Thou common whore of mankind, that puts odds
Among the rout of nations, I will make thee
Do thy right nature.

Upon Timon's speaking these lines, a drum beats and Alcibiades enters. In the ensuing scene, Timon gives the gold to Alcibiades and the courtesans, declaring that it will be a plague and curse to Athens. But the gold, in Alcibiades' hands, becomes the means for the salvation of the city. The paradox of the relationship between nature and man could not be more emphatically stated.

The encounter with the bandits makes the point even clearer. The bandits declare themselves not to be thieves, “but men that much do want.” Timon makes the obvious reply that they do not so much want as they want much:

Why should you want? Behold the earth hath roots;
Within this mile break forth a hundred springs;
The oaks bear mast, the briars scarlet hips;
The bounteous housewife Nature on each bush
Lays her full mess before you. Want? Why want?

(IV.iii.413-417)

The reply of the First Bandit to this query may be regarded as mankind's general answer to all such questions:

We cannot live on grass, on berries, water,
As beasts and birds and fishes.

Timon had declared that the greatest want of the bandits is meat, hence their insatiability. But it is not simply the meat of beasts, birds, or fishes that they want—“You must eat men.” Civilization is based on the eating of men. That is what usuriousness, man's unlimited acquisitiveness, finally signifies, and this is something which Timon, who loved the beautiful, cannot accept. The price of liberality and magnificence is indeed finally too high, for there must be acquisition if there is to be spending, and Timon sees to his horror that such acquisition is Alcibiades' banquet of enemies. Whatever artifices the city makes to hide this fact, it still remains. Thus Timon will have nothing to do with man and his works.

Timon now tells the thieves that they imitate nature and the city in being thieves:

                                                                                I'll example you with thievery:
The sun's a thief, and with his great attraction
Robs the vast sea; the moon's an arrant thief,
And her pale fire she snatches from the sun;
The sea's a thief, whose liquid surge resolves
The moon into salty tears; the earth's a thief,
That feeds and breeds by a composture stol'n
From general excrement. Each thing's a thief.
.....All that you meet are thieves. To Athens go;
Break open shops; nothing can you steal
But thieves do lose it.

(IV.iii.431-444)

Paradoxically, then, usury is imitative of nature. Usury imitates nature in that man, like everything in nature, wants and therefore gets. Man cannot be kind because nature is not kind, despite Timon's initial reference to that “bounteous housewife.” Timon's discontents, as the First Senator notes, are “unremovably coupled to nature.” They are coupled to his nature; they are also coupled to nature simply, and, of course, to the nature of the city and of Athens. He who was the epitome of Athens' love of the beautiful cannot accept the worse than beastly cannibalism which has been laid bare. Timon is a man of extremes; he desires a humanity purged of all the beastly and will have none of a humanity that must be beastly and perhaps worse than beastly.

III

Besides man and nature, there are the gods, and Timons asks them to help confound the Athenians and increase his hate “to the whole race of mankind, high and low.” Do the gods then intervene in human affairs? Will they help punish the ungrateful city? Flavius, Timon's faithful steward, speaks of the gods, however, not as those who curse but as those who are made by bounty and yet not marred (IV.ii.41). That is, the gods are the gods because they can be bountiful without harm either to themselves or to others. They can, in other words, act as Timon had acted without the consequences that Timon had brought upon himself. Only the gods, then, in Flavius' view, can do what apparently neither nature nor man can do—be bountiful without harm. The lesson Flavius draws from his understanding of the gods is that men ought not seek glory or pomp. Only the gods can do so without harm, whereas man must necessarily do harm. Flavius sees what Timon's strange fault is:

Poor honest lord, brought low by his own heart,
Undone by goodness! Strange, unusual blood,
When man's worst sin is he does too much good!
Who then dares to be half so kind again?

(IV.ii.37-40)

It would seem that only the gods may be so loving or so kind. Men cannot do so without marring themselves and others.

The gods are mentioned again when Flavius, visiting Timon in the woods, begs to stay with him. Timon asks the gods to forgive him for condemning all mankind when one man, Flavius, is honest. Timon refers to the gods as the “perpetual-sober” who do not, as he does, act rashly. It is possible to understand Timon as saying that the gods, unlike him, are sober because they know when to give and when to curse.

Timon, we recall, attributed his fortune to the gods, who had given it to him that he might make his friends more able also to give or to help. Beneficence or bounteousness would seem then to be an imitation of the gods. But according to Flavius man cannot imitate the gods. Timon admits that he does not have the soberness of the gods. Do men in general lack this sobriety and is man therefore foredoomed to failure if he tries to be like the gods? One wonders, therefore, if the divine is so distant from man and nature alike, that what the gods do or do not do becomes irrelevant to the question of what men and nature do. Certainly, there is no divine intervention in the play. If the gods act in human affairs, they act through human and perhaps natural intermediaries. It is Timon who discovers the gold which he then says was meant, at least in part, for Flavius; and Athens is saved by Alcibiades' medicine. The gods do nothing about the fundamental human dilemma we have described above—that man in the attempt to be more than the beasts becomes worse than the beasts. The gods in Timon of Athens seem to act as chance acts. The argument seems inescapable. If the gods are the only ones who are unaffected by what they do, then that very fact makes it impossible that they be models for man or nature, who are alike affected by what they do. What the gods do may have consequences for man and nature, but neither man nor nature can ever act as the gods do.

Athens' own understanding of the gods is, however, different from that of Flavius. The Merchant, who appears in the very first scene together with the Poet, the Painter, and the Jeweller, tells Apemantus that, “If traffic do it, the gods do it. …” To which Apemantus responds, “Traffic's thy god …” (I.i.236-237). But what does it mean to say that what traffic does, the gods do also? Does it signify that traffic or commerce is as necessary to the gods as it is to man? Can one think of the gods as having to depend upon trade, as having to engage in trade? Now the most obvious traffic in which the gods engage is that with men. Can the intercourse between gods and men properly be called a traffic? But what is it then that the gods would need in such a traffic, since commerce is understood to be an exchange of goods? It is well-understood, of course, what it is men need from the gods, for men are weak and poor. But do the gods need men? One wonders if the gods need men's attentions as much as men need the gods. Do the gods become rich, powerful and beautiful through the attentions of men? Magnificence is, after all, that virtue of spending money rightly upon the most beautiful things, and the most beautiful of things are the divine things. Timon's magnificent Athens, we have seen, is dependent upon the Merchant. Is not the Merchant then saying to Apemantus that the gods are equally dependent upon him?⁷

It is, I believe, intelligible that these two views of the gods should be present in the play. On the one hand, the gods appear simply as the culminating expression of the Athenian love of beauty. On the other hand, the gods appear as independent alike of man and of nature. In either case, the gods are irrelevant to human action. They are either reflections of the city, or they cannot be imitated by the city. They never therefore intervene directly in human affairs, although human beings may attribute what happens to the gods.

One further suggestion about the gods is made by Apemantus in his Grace (I.ii.60ff). Apemantus prefaces his Grace by saying that, “Feasts are too proud to give thanks to the gods.” But in the prayer proper he tells the immortal gods that he craves for nothing, prays for no one but himself, and trusts no oaths, no harlot's tears, no sleeping dogs, no keeper with his freedom, nor any friends if he be in need. He does not, that is to say, expect anyone or anything to act outside of what might reasonably be expected from their natures. Apemantus' Grace, in Christian terms, is surely most lacking in grace. His prayer is not a prayer to the gods; instead, the prayer is a statement of his self-sufficiency. Are we to conclude that self-sufficiency is the proper prayer to the gods or the proper thanks to be given to them? Such self-sufficiency would seem to be an imitation of the gods. Can the life of the gods be imitated after all, and has Apemantus succeeded in doing so? His name, we have noted, means “free from misery,” and again this is one of the principal attributes of the gods. Timon, unlike the gods, is full of discontents—what of Apemantus? We turn next then to Apemantus, to try to see what he is.

IV

Apemantus claims that he visits Timon's feasts for two reasons. He wishes to observe the folly of human beings, and he chides Timon because if he did not rail upon Timon, the latter would only sin the faster. Apemantus also claims to be able to open or close heaven to Timon; that is, he claims to be able to show the way to happiness.

He appears, however, only as an angry man whose chiding spares no one and must be borne because Timon would have it so. He is called proud by Timon, for he obviously believes himself to be greatly superior to other human beings. What he does above all is tell the truth in a most unpleasant and discourteous way. He is therefore called “opposite to humanity.”⁸ Yet nowhere in these early scenes does he express a general hatred of humanity. What he desires is that human vanity be seen for what it is, and that Timon especially see that the Athenians have no love for him or for one another but are only feeders upon him and upon one another. Apemantus does not disdain all human beings; he invites a Fool to come with him, for the Fool understands his own foolishness and that of others.

Apemantus visits Timon in the woods because he has heard that Timon imitates his manners (IV.iii.198-199). According to Apemantus, Timon ought not do so, because he does so “enforcèdly,” and not therefore by understanding. Apemantus thus still comes to vex Timon, as he did when Timon was more prosperous, for Timon has not learned whatever lesson it is that Apemantus has to teach. Apemantus does, however, admit that he loves Timon more in the woods than in the city, and it would seem then that Timon has learned more and become better by going to the woods.

Timon replies that Apemantus' manners are equally enforced. It is by necessity and not by virtue that Apemantus has kept himself free of the sweets and flatteries of this world. Apemantus has not only a nature inclined to bear hardship, but fortune has given him nothing. He has never been tempted, never had the occasion, as Timon has had, to taste the delights of wealth and philanthropy. Apemantus has no cause to complain, for he has had nothing and has given nothing.

Apemantus does not answer Timon's accusation; instead, he still seeks to persuade Timon to eat and think of Athens. He points out that there is no use in the woods for the gold which Timon has found; he seems to imply that there might be in Athens. Apemantus seems to want Timon to return to Athens. He says that Timon needs to learn “the middle of humanity.” If Timon learned the middle of humanity, he could return to the city for he would then not be mocked. Timon was mocked by flatterers in the city; he is now mocked as a madman in the woods. Timon needs to return to the city and not be mocked, and that also means that in Apemantus' view Timon can neither be a beast nor a god. We know that Apemantus is mocked and that he is an extreme. Does not this mean that Apemantus is saying that he himself is not a model to be followed by Timon, and probably therefore not by most men?

That Timon does not understand is shown, it seems to me, in the subsequent exchange of questions. Apemantus asks Timon, “What man didst thou ever know unthrift that was beloved after his means?” (IV.iii.308-310) And Timon in reply asks, “Who, without those means thou talks't of, dids't thou ever know beloved?” Timon here indicates that he had understood love between human beings as always dependent upon means. But if that were true, he would have seen to it that he continued to possess those means and therefore continued being loved. He is fact concedes Apemantus' point. But Apemantus goes further; he has known one man who has been loved for himself alone, and that is himself. Timon retorts that he must then have had the means to keep a dog. If Timon knew what he was saying, he would have heeded the counsels of Apemantus and Flavius, for if men and dogs love only those who feed them, why then did not Timon see to it that he always had the means to feed? Timon is saying, of course, that there is no other way to gain the love of men than to do them benefits. He holds tenaciously to his old beliefs.

Since Timon has responded that only a dog could love Apemantus because he has only the means for keeping a dog, Apemantus wonders what Timon calls his former flatterers. Women, declares Timon, or rather men. His first answer, therefore, is that they are unmanly men. But he immediately qualifies his answer by saying, in effect, that all men are unmanly. Again, one wonders why there is then no acceptance on the part of Timon of the fact that if men cannot be expected to behave differently, one should no more be angry with them than one should with an ungrateful beast. Why should one expect more of beings who cannot be other than they are? But Timon wants to know what Apemantus would do with the world if it were in his power. The answer is surprising, for heretofore Apemantus has apparently been trying to persuade Timon to return to Athens. Apemantus, for the first time, shows a misanthropy exactly like that of Timon's—he answers that he would return the world to the beasts to be rid of men. Why, then, one has to ask, has he concerned himself thus far with Timon?

In the context of the argument, I suggest that Apemantus' answer is ambiguous. Timon, in the previous exchange of answers, admitted in effect that beasts and men are alike incapable of gratitude, for they go to whoever can feed them. Timon's great error is in supposing that he could forget or transcend this fact. Apemantus' answer therefore may say only that we must return to that beastly nature of man. That his answer is ironic and meant to provoke thought, perhaps the thought we have suggested, he subsequently tells Timon:

If thou coulds't please me with speaking to me, thou mights't have hit upon it here. The common-wealth of Athens is become a place of beasts.

(IV.iii.344-346)

We do not know, we need parenthetically to note, if “here” refers to the place in the argument or the woods. Apemantus wants to return the world to the beasts because Athens has become a commonwealth of beasts. But it has become beastly without knowing that it has. The acknowledgement of beastliness would be the beginning of Athenian self-knowledge. I do not believe, therefore, that Apemantus can be called a misanthrope, even a philosophical misanthrope. As he himself says, his effort throughout has been to bring Timon to know the middle. Despite Timon's supposed disillusionment, he still expects more of mankind than can properly be asked. Timon is still prodigal in his demands, still a man of extremes. He does not, in sum, accept the beastliness of man, while Apemantus does.

Timon, in truth, has an irredeemable prejudice against Apemantus. He will not accept Apemantus' counsel because he continues to believe himself superior to Apemantus. Thus Apemantus puts his finger upon the difficulty when he asks Timon, “Art thou proud yet?” Timon, we have seen, believes himself to be superior because he has been given great wealth and has yet acted nobly. When told by Apemantus that he would give the world back to the beasts, Timon wonders if Apemantus is willing to fall “in the confusion of men, and remain a beast with the beasts.” Apemantus replies affirmatively, whereupon Timon makes clear the basis of his contempt for Apemantus—Apemantus is ineffectual, in a kingdom of the beasts he would always be the helpless victim and the subjugated. Apemantus has no power in him—his defense is absence, his safety is always in escape. As Timon asks, “What beast coulds't thou be that were not subject to a beast?” Timon at least was a sovereign; he ruled men as Apemantus never can. He had the eyes and hearts of men, and they stuck upon him numberless (IV.iii.261-263).

The difficulty with Apemantus is that he seems only to be a scold. He tells people that what they do is foolish, but he does not show them what it is then that they must do. Whatever the philosophical life is, we do not see it in the play. We do not understand the life Apemantus finds superior to the city. Timon understands Apemantus' life to be the result of accident, a combination of fortune and nature. Some natures are meant to be opposite, and they are especially so if fortune keeps them poor and humble and unable to do anything else except be angry and chide others.

The exchange between Timon and Apemantus ends in stones being thrown by Timon and name-calling on both sides. It is a most undignified brawl, but it underscores the complete failure of Apemantus to teach Timon.

Apemantus promises that he will send throngs to Timon. He makes us aware that Timon in the woods is as wealthy and as sought after as he ever was in the city. He is very seldom alone in the woods. We are also made aware that he gives his gold to more worthy beneficiaries and with better effect in the woods. He gives gold to Alcibiades, Flavius, and the Bandits, and each puts the gold to good use. We know what Alcibiades does, and the Bandits apparently become soldiers once again. Flavius, of course, is the only justly deserving recipient. Thus when Timon gave out of love, he believed he gave nobly for the sake of the city, and the consequence was misery for himself and corruption of those to whom he gave. When he gives out of hatred to Alcibiades and the Bandits, he intends that the gold should be a destroyer of men and the city, and instead it becomes a means of salvation for both. Timon never understands what he is doing when he gives.

Apemantus had tried to remind Timon that man cannot live naturally. If Timon will not return to the city, he can only die. Timon seems to accept this alternative, for he now says that he must prepare his grave, “where the light foam of the sea may beat” his gravestone daily. Timon's death will not simply be a return to the elements; he wants his epitaph to teach men. His death is to be a rebellion against gold, the basis of human civilization. But he wants to use the gold he found to encourage faction and set men at odds one with another. Apemantus agrees with Timon's wish that men may descend into faction, but says it will not happen until he, Apemantus, is dead. It is difficult to know what Apemantus is saying, except that the gold Timon gives will not have the desired effect. But why must the fall of man into beastliness wait until Apemantus is dead? Is he in some sense the last obstacle against such a fall? That would mean that it is Apemantus, not Timon, who will be the last upholder of the city. It would indeed be strange if Apemantus is somehow the last representative of Athenian principle, in the sense that only without him would Athens finally fall.

Apemantus' self-sufficiency is of course an imitation of the gods. And his way of life remains as hidden to men as the life of the gods. The philosophic life appears to be a vauntingly ambitious claim to a superiority which cannot be seen. It is a claim, moreover, which appears to hide a contemptible weakness which arises from a lack of being favored either by nature or by fortune. Timon rejects Apemantus, in the city and in the woods, because Apemantus does not seem to have that power which will show man's freedom from the ignoble. Timon still desires that man in some way transcend nature. As we shall see, he finally succeeds. But before we come to Timon's end, we need to consider one more Athenian, the one man who, without question, is effective.

V

The first thing we note about Alcibiades is that the image of eating men seems especially to belong to him. Eating is an image which generally informs the play. Apemantus refuses to eat with Timon, for he prefers to be self-sufficient and feed on root. Alcibiades' first words are that he feeds “most hungerly” upon the sight of Timon. It is soon said of him that he loves to feed upon enemies—to which Alcibiades replies that there is no better meat nor a better feast for one's best friend. If Apemantus does not eat, or eats but little, and others feed upon Timon, then Alcibiades is the hungry feeder upon other men. When Alcibiades approaches Athens with his Powers, as the stage instructions say, the Second Senator offers a tenth of the city as a “tithèd death” to Alcibiades, if he desires “that food / Which nature loathes …” (V.iv.31-35). Unnatural tastes are attributed to Alcibiades, and that is perhaps why it is through him that Athens is saved.

Apemantus seems to recognize the usefulness of Alcibiades from the beginning. He is the only one whom Apemantus does not chide; instead, he wants to turn Alcibiades against the flatterers in Athens that they might be made meat for a feast (I.ii.75-77). That is of course exactly what happens at the end of the play.

When next we see Alcibiades, he is pleading for the life of his own men, and he speaks to the Senate as a captain (III.v.1ff). He cares for his own, and it is perhaps an especial mark of a captain that he have this care of his own, as the Senate does not. His banishment turns him into an enemy of Athens, as Timon and Apemantus are also enemies of Athens.

The third scene in which we see Alcibiades is his meeting with Timon in the woods (IV.iii.48ff). The scene begins with Alcibiades not at first recognizing Timon. He asks what Timon is and for his name. When Timon says that he is Misanthropos, Alcibiades acknowledges that he knows him well, but declares that he does not know of Timon's fortunes. Subsequently, Alcibiades adds that he has heard “in some sort” of what has happened to Timon. The inconsistencies appear to be deliberate, and would seem to be explained only if Alcibiades has sought out Timon and is carefully testing his temper. Alcibiades finally confesses that he has heard of everything that has occurred to Timon. Alcibiades then declares that although he is penurious, he still has a little gold to offer Timon. Timon refuses the gold, and upon hearing that Alcibiades is at war with Athens, gives him the gold which he has just unearthed. One is tempted to say that Alcibiades has sought out Timon for his gold, but since the gold has been freshly discovered Alcibiades could not possibly have known of it. Nevertheless, it seems to me evident that Alcibiades has come on purpose to find Timon. What brings him to Timon could be the memory of past benefits. Alcibiades, after all, takes care of his own. He remembers those who have benefited him. One might also speculate, however, that Alcibiades seeks out Timon to enlist the latter in his cause. As the Senators say later, only Timon can defend Athens against Alcibiades. Is Alcibiades' visit meant to offset this possibility? Whatever the cause of Alcibiades' visit, however, it redounds to his great benefit. Alcibiades, we should note, welcomes Timon's gold, but refuses his counsel as to how it should be used.

Alcibiades does not need advice on what is to be done. Of all the Athenians, he alone is able to prescribe a remedy for the disease which afflicts Athens. The remedy is to be a leeching or a purging of blood. He is a shepherd culling an infected flock, and we have already heard of the tithe which is to be offered him. Alcibiades knows what to do with beasts, and he shows no hesitation in applying that knowledge to men. He is the one man in the entire play who is able to act in accordance with the beastly nature of man.

We cannot at this point avoid commenting upon the presence of strangers in Athens who remark upon the ingratitude shown to Timon (III.ii.62-86). They have no other role in the play than to make their observation. Their names are Roman, and we must ask the question, were not the Romans, like Alcibiades, great eaters of men, perhaps the greatest eaters of men? We are told that the Romans visited Periclean Athens, and it is certainly tempting to speculate that this is the embassy sent by the Senate.⁹ If so, then the shadow of Rome is shown to be falling over Athens; the future belongs not to the city which loves the beautiful, but to the one which knows how to rule the man and the beast and, like Alcibiades, uses each to prescribe to the other.

VI

The salvation of Athens, however, belongs also to Timon. Timon is so much present in the last scene that we cannot but conclude that he shares in Alcibiades' refounding of Athens. That the enemies of Timon must be punished is first among the conditions which Alcibiades lays down for the surrender of Athens. Moreover, when the Soldier arrives with the news of Timon's death, Alcibiades reads the epitaph and promises that Timon will be remembered. Timon's death is to be a lesson for Athens and for all men, as Timon himself had said he intended it to be. What then is the meaning of Timon's death?

Timon intends his epitaph to be an oracle to Athens (V.i.217). An oracle is of course always obscure. The epitaph thus cannot be read by the Soldier who finds it; it seems to be written in characters different from those used for a sign near the grave. But Alcibiades sees that it is not the epitaph which is of significance but the grave. Timon's rejection of human griefs, he says, is redeemed by the “conceit” of his grave. It is placed at the extreme of the earth's edge, on the mere of the sea, as close to formless chaos as it can possibly be. The “conceit” is that “niggard nature” is thus made to weep eternally upon his grave. The epitaph, which commands that no one seek the name of the dead and yet gives Timon's name, speaks of hatred for those who live, and declares the expectation that those who pass will curse the grave. According to Alcibiades' interpretation, however, the epitaph and the grave are at odds one with another. That Timon had no intention of having his name forgotten is revealed by the fact that the sign and the epitaph both bear his name. Timon seems to wish to be remembered, but he appears not to understand what it is that will make him be remembered. He seems to believe that the epitaph contains his oracle or his teaching to mankind. But for Alcibiades, it is the grave, not the epitaph, which permits that Timon be remembered as noble and that faults be forgiven. The grave thus turns into a kind of grace.

The way in which Timon's death is presented makes us wonder if Timon is not in the end a poet. Now the Poet and the Painter are included among the enemies of Timon, and when they come to him in the woods they are stoned and driven away, as Apemantus is also stoned and cursed. No others are so treated—the Senators are treated far better than are Apemantus, the Poet, and the Painter. Curiously, Apemantus makes a reference to the coming of the Poet and the Painter to visit Timon in the woods, a reference which appears to be out of place. We have noted that the other visitors to the woods are all given gold. Nevertheless, the ending of the play forces us to reconsider the Poet and the Painter, for it would seem that the greatest thing Timon does is to make an image of his own life and death. The title of the play is The Life of Timon of Athens. According to Alcibiades it is the grave which redeems the life.

The significance of Timon's grave is that he has somehow buried himself and provided his own gravestone. Surely this is the greatest conceit of all, in both meanings of that term. It is an overweening act, a mark of his attainment to complete self-sufficiency. It is also a conceit in the sense of an act of the imagination. Indeed is such self-sufficiency only possible as a fancy?

VII

We return now to the beginning to consider further the Poet and the Painter, for the reasons given above. We begin with the Poet, for he is the first to speak.

The Poet is a man who is “rapt,” and he speaks of his poesy as something which spontaneously “oozes” out of him, as a tree oozes gum. As the image suggests, there is something unconscious about this exudation. One suspects that the description we are here given of the Poet is one which repeats the common opinions. This suspicion is deepened by the Painter's judgment of the Poet's work. It is, the Painter says, common, and one has to agree that the poem's subject, Fortune casting her favorites down, is a commonplace. The Painter claims that there are a “thousand moral paintings” which demonstrate the subject more “pregnantly than words.” The rivalry between Poet and Painter turns on the question of who imitates nature better, and who, in the imitation, may be able even to surpass nature.

In this respect, painting appears to be superior to poetry. The painting in its direct representation of nature is superior to speech. The Poet himself speaks of the Painter's picture as tutoring nature and being livelier than life. One notices, by the by, that the Poet's account of his own poem is more like the description of a painting than it is the argument of a poem. When the Poet and the Painter present their works to Timon, the latter receives the poem in a perfunctory manner and reserves his ardent praise for the picture. The painting is, he says, superior to nature. Since Timon also receives the Jeweller's gift with a stronger show of interest than he gave to the poem, it would also seem that jewels are superior to poetry. Timon thus reveals a preference for that which may be immediately seen and touched, for that which is immediately available. A book, after all, cannot be immediately seen for what it is and, of course, it lacks showiness.

When Timon sees the ugliness which is concealed by the beautiful surface of the city, he of course also turns against the Poet and the Painter. He drives them away because they are not honest men. He should of course turn especially against the Painter, for it is the deceitful surface of things which he curses. The Painter, he says, draws “a counterfeit / Best in all Athens.” As for the Poet, he is not a counterfeiter but an alchemist. Timon will have none of either, for he has ceased to believe either in the possibility of the beautiful imitation correcting and replacing nature, or in the possibility of transforming a rough and ugly nature into something fine and smooth.

We have raised the question: is the play saying that Timon in some way is a poet? How are we to understand his turning away from the city and the arts, on the one hand, and his desire, on the other hand, to make a “rich conceit” which will cause him to be remembered? We have seen that Timon is ambivalent on how it is he is to be remembered. Is he to be nameless or is his name to be remembered? Does he intend a curse or does he wish to make his life and death a kind of blessing?

We remind ourselves that Alcibiades looks beyond the epitaph which curses mankind to the grave itself. Timon, however, speaks of his epitaph and not his grave as that which is to teach Athens and all mankind of his rebellion against gold. It is the epitaph which he wishes to be the oracle for Athens. He seems unaware of the significance of his making

                                                                      his everlasting mansion
Upon the beachèd verge of the salt flood,
Who once a day with his embossèd froth
The turbulent surge shall cover. …

(V.i.213-216)

He goes on to say that he wants that “Graves only be men's works.” That remark, as we shall see, takes on a special meaning.

What Timon has done is not to imitate nature, but rather like an alchemist to transform his grave into an everlasting image. He does what neither Poet nor Painter was able to do, and that is to transform the fact itself, here the fact of death, into a “rich conceit.” Timon dissolves the distinction between the image and that which is imitated—the two become one in his grave. What Timon always wished for, the dissolving of the distinction between the beautiful images and nature, he finally achieves. We are led to reflect upon the possibility that what Timon wishes for is what the poet wishes for. Does the poet wish for his images to be one with what is? Does the poet desire to be an alchemist, transforming nature in and through his images? I am reminded of Herodotus' discussion of why the Egyptians make mummies. The reason is that they desire to make the natural body and the everlasting artifact one. Such a desire is a consequence of their being a people whose lives are governed in every aspect by the sacred. Perhaps Timon, then, is more like an Egyptian priest than he is a poet. And like the Egyptians he cannot make the living natural body into an artifact, but he can turn the grave into one.¹⁰

We are left thinking about what Alcibiades can mean when he says that Timon's grave is a forgiving of human griefs and faults. It would seem that what is being said is that the terrible conditions of human existence which Timon would not accept and which drove him into the woods are forgiven; that there is, in other words, a remission or setting aside of these conditions. Thus Timon, through his grave, shows us the way in which there may be a transformation of the beastliness of human existence.

What Timon is may now be summed up. Timon in his extreme love of the beautiful is led into an extreme awareness of the polarities of human existence. He has a nature which cannot accept these polarities, unlike Apemantus and Alcibiades. Apemantus has a hard nature, as Timon himself says, and we conclude ourselves that Alcibiades has a cruel one, and both are able to accept what necessity imposes. Timon begins by thinking too highly of human beings, and when he is disappointed he refuses to accept them as they are and instead curses mankind, calling upon the gods to extinguish the human race. But what redeems the folly of Timon's life is that he shows that the extreme love of the beautiful may be fulfilled by transforming the grave, which is to say the decay and dissolution of the beast, into an imperishable image. It would seem that only upon this possibility would Timon's life gain the nobility which Alcibiades attributes to it. In terms of the play, we know only the grave, we know of nothing beyond the grave, and Shakespeare seems to be saying that Timon's grave as an image of self-sufficiency will indeed suffice to justify such an extreme love of the beautiful. Let us be clear about this point. Only if it is possible for someone to bury himself will such an extreme love of the beautiful be justified.

Finally, we must remember that Athens produces not one but a multiplicity and variety of character. The ruling principle of Athens is the love of the beautiful. That is, Athens is the city which pushes that love to an extreme. Such an extreme love makes the polarities of human existence sharply apparent and choices can then be made by men as to where they are to place themselves with respect to these polarities. Timon is Athens at one extreme, and we surmise that Apemantus is the other extreme. Is Alcibiades then the “middle of humanity?”

VIII

Shakespeare ends his play with an Athens which is to be reordered by Alcibiades. This Athens will not be the one of Timon's wishes, and it will not be the one which was finally brought down by Sparta. An Athens refounded by Alcibiades, as the play indicates, would have been saved, and that means saved from the disaster of defeat in the Peloponnesian War. By permitting Alcibiades to rescue Athens, Shakespeare permits Athens to win the Peloponnesian War—he thus rewrites the history of Western Civilization. That Alcibiades should rule Athens as he pleases is the advice, of course, which Aeschylus gives in the Frogs to Dionysus.¹¹

We are reminded that the history of the Peloponnesian War, that is, the one written by Thucydides, also ends with an Athens which is ruled by Alcibiades. We are told by Thucydides about this Athens reordered according to Alcibiades' instructions:

And now first (at least in my time) the Athenians seem to have ordered their state aright; which consisted now of a moderate temper, both of the few and of the many. And this was the first thing, that after so many misfortunes past made the city again to raise her head.¹²

Only an Athens ruled by Alcibiades would have won the Peloponnesian War. Upon this point Shakespeare agrees with such as Aristophanes and Thucydides, two of the greatest observers of that war. But would not a victorious Athens have then become supreme over the Greek world? And would not Athens then have been free at last to do what Alcibiades desired: “to subdue the Sicilians; after them the Italians; after them to assay the dominions of Carthage and Carthage itself …”?¹³ Would Alcibiades, at the head of a victorious Athens, have given up his hopes of conquering all of Greece and the western Mediterranean? Moreover, Xenophon, in the Anabasis and the Agesilaos, indicates the weakness of the Persian Empire and how easily it might have been conquered. A new possibility occurs to us—could Athens have done what Alexander later did, i.e., conquer Persia? An Alcibiadean Athens could then have become mistress not only of the Mediterranean but also of Asia.

Shakespeare's answer to these questions is indicated, it seems to me, in the lines spoken by Alcibiades at the very end of the play:

Make war breed peace, make peace stint war, make each
Prescribe to each other, as each other's leech.

(V.iv.83-84)

Peace, of course, is the end for which a statesman works, and Alcibiades appears to be speaking a commonplace. What every decent man would say is said—war and expansion will be moderated by the end of peace. But the next line leaves us wondering. War is equally to prescribe to peace, as peace prescribes to war. The city cannot remain simply at peace. We have seen at the beginning of the play how peace corrupts the city and how the soldier is forgotten. The variability of human affairs forbids that the city remain in a condition of rest. Not in rest but in the fluctuation between peace and war is moderation to be found. Alcibiadean Athens would not remain at rest, for she would understand the harshness of political life and the necessity of acquisition. Such an Athens would, as we have indicated before, prefigure Rome and her deeds.

But we must not forget that Timon's death is to be remembered. The memory of Timon is somehow important to Alcibiades' new orders. Perhaps Timon and his grave are the last reminders of the beautiful Athens, of that Athens of the golden age, the vision of which seems to have possessed the souls not only of Timon but also of Cimon and Pericles. Is the new Athens of Alcibiades still somehow linked to the extreme love of the beautiful? It would seem then that the new Athens is to be kept reminded of the beautiful through the image of a self-sufficient grave. That self-sufficient grave, we have said, is the revelation of the complete independence of Timon from necessity. Such self-sufficiency is not possible in political life but is made seemingly possible through the conceit of Timon's grave. We end, necessarily it seems to me, with a question: does the new Athens, which would appear to have to be an imperial Athens, require an image of the self-sufficient grave in order to be ennobled?

Notes

1. Copp'd Hills Towards Heaven: Shakespeare and the Classical Polity (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1970), p. 36.

2. Line citations follow the Penguin edition of Shakespeare's Complete Works (Baltimore: Penguin, 1969), Alfred Harbage, general editor.

3. Prof. Dain Trafton pointed out in his comment on this paper at the 1978 Shakespeare Conference at the University of Dallas that the Shakespearean audience would have understood the name as the “ape-man.” The “ape-man” who is free from misery is a good summation of Rousseau's understanding of what man is like in the state of nature.

4. Peloponnesian War II. 38 (Hobbes' translation).

5. Lives. Cimon. X. 1-3, 6-7.

6. Marx quotes Timon's speech here on gold in Capital: A Critique of Political Economy (New York: The Modern Library), p. 148, n. 2.

7. See Aristophanes, Birds, lines 187-193, 1515. Line 1549 speaks of Timon as the hater of the gods.

8. Prof. Thomas West has called my attention to the fact that the description of Apemantus' way of life reminds one of what has been said of the way of life of the young Socrates. See Leo Strauss, Socrates and Aristophanes (New York: Basic Books, 1966), pp. 311-314. Strauss cites as “the clearest and most thoughtful exposition” of what that way of life was like, the “Book on the Way of the Philosopher,” by Muhammad b. Zakariyya al-Razi. In sum, there is a tradition which presents the philosophic life as Shakespeare presents Apemantus.

9. Livy, III. 33.

10. See Seth Bernardete, Herodotean Inquiries (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969), pp. 57-58.

11. Aristophanes, Frogs, lines 1431-1433.

12. Peloponnesian War VIII.97. On Alcibiades' instructions see VIII.86. See also Leo Strauss, The City and Man (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1964), p. 227, n. 89.

13. Peloponnesian War VI. 90.