ABSTRACT
BLEPSIAS. Don't throw, please Timon; we'll go away. TIM. You won't get away without blood and wounds!
speaks the following lines: Spectators all, I come to represent Something triumphant Rome never beheld In the ancient days of emperors, for ne'er Throughout their realms or all their festivals Could they make boast of this our Comedy ..• Echecratides dwelt in Colly tum, Native of Athens and of gentle birth; But gentleness he never understood. Putting aside all manly works, he set His heart alone on the pursuit of cash With an unerring eye for the smallest gain. By anxious care, deceit and usury (And otherwise today you still can't get it) He makes himself immeasurably rich, But rich in secret; in his looks so poor That by his neighbours he is pointed out For grievous wretchedness and poverty: Such use he made of the treasure he amassed. But what's acquired cannot be aye retained Even by a man of unchecked appetite; So now, as always happens in such cases, Echecratides died in sorry plight, His spirit passing forth in grief and pain, And joyously his heir took over all. This heir was Timon, his legitimate son, Who out of boyhood then was growing up. He had not learned by sage experience How pounds are made by adding ounce to ounce, And how by pounds great weights are added up. By his conspicuous and indecent waste He managed his inheritance so ill, He doomed himself without need of a judge. Never foreseeing how things might befall, From wealth's abundance he falls into need; From need he tumbles into poverty, And lastly come to shameful beggary,
He's jeered at, driven away by the very men Who through his help live rich and fortunate. All the vast treasure that his father left, Palaces, villas, great possessions, He has consumed through indiscriminate gifts, And brought himself to such contemptible state That he goes clad in sheepskins, with his head And arms left bare. All this has turned his brain From anger into madness; grim his life, As wearily he digs the barren shore To earn a bare subsistence with his hands. His great resentment his exacerbatesThat once he was acceptable to all, And now they both abuse and drive him off. (This often happens to a luckless man Who spends in vain and ne'er recoups his loss. But as the Arabs in their proverb say:
'To water without salt the palm tree shoots, Makes branches green but withers dry the roots')
Now Timon, sunk in such an evil state, Perceiving some men's base ingratitude, Has formed a universal hate to all, Regardless of the two or three who're good. He also blames the Gods themselves because They don't destroy the world in punishment. But here he comes, and with his hoe equipped, Walks grumbling to himself; from far I hear him. I'd better go, for anyone he meets Is set upon and hurt incredibly.
