[1] Now, Timon was an Athenian, and lived about the time of the Peloponnesian War, as may be gathered from the plays of Aristophanes and Plato. For he is represented in their comedies as peevish and misanthropical; but though he avoided and repelled all intercourse with men, he was glad to see Alcibiades, who was then young and headstrong, and showered kisses upon him. And when Apemantus was amazed at this and asked the reason for it, Timon said he loved the youth because he knew that he would be a cause of many ills to Athens.
[2] This Apemantus alone of all men Timon would sometimes admit into his company, since Apemantus was like him and tried sometimes to imitate his mode of life; and once, at the festival of The Pitchers,
1
the two were feasting by themselves, and Apemantus said:
Timon, what a fine symposium ours is!
It would be, said Timon,
if thou wert not here. We are told also that once when the Athenians were holding an assembly, he ascended the bema, and the strangeness of the thing caused deep silence and great expectancy;
[3] then he said:
I have a small building lot, men of Athens, and a fig-tree is growing in it, from which many of my fellow citizens have already hanged themselves. Accordingly, as I intend to build a house there, I wanted to give public notice to that effect, in order that all of you who desire to do so may hang yourselves before the fig-tree is cut down. After he had died and been buried at Halae near the sea, the shore in front of the tomb slipped away, and the water surrounded it and made it completely inaccessible to man.
[4] The inscription on the tomb was:
This inscription he is said to have composed himself, but that in general circulation is by Callimachus:
Here, after snapping the thread of a wretched life, I lie.
Ye shall not learn my name, but my curses shall follow you.
Timon, hater of men, dwells here; so pass along;
Heap many curses on me, if thou wilt, only pass along.
Antony. Plutarch. Bernadotte Perrin (Translator). Cambridge, MA. 1920.
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