Timon of Athens, Act V, Scene 5
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.
SECOND SENATOR:
So did we woo
Transformed Timon to our city's love
By humble message and by promised means.
We were not all unkind, nor all deserve
The common stroke of war.
FIRST SENATOR:
These walls of ours
Were not erected by their hands from whom
You have received your grief, nor are they such
That these great tow'rs, trophies, and schools should fall
For private faults in them.
SECOND SENATOR:
Nor are they living
Who were the motives that you first went out.
Shame that they wanted cunning, in excess,
Hath broke their hearts. March, noble lord,
Into our city with thy banners spread.
By decimation and a tithed death,
If thy revenges hunger for that food
Which nature loathes, take thou the destined tenth,
And by the hazard of the spotted die
Let die the spotted.