—Act III, scene ii, lines 40-41
He cannot indeed. That would be some 160 tons of silver. A private person of Timon's time simply could not have had so much wealth to hand out on the moment. Perhaps Shakespeare was dithering between fifty talents and five hundred talents, wondering if the latter was too great, and, having written in both, never got around to erasing one or the other by the time he had abandoned the play.
It is tempting to despise those whom Timon had so benefited and who were now so lost to gratitude. But let us be reasonable. Timon had forced the benefits on his friends, eager to demonstrate godlike generosity. Should those friends now deliver their money to someone who had displayed such abysmal lack of understanding of personal finance? Whatever they gave him would surely be lost forever and at once.
Naturally, Timon did not look at it that way at all. His pretensions to superhuman wealth and benevolence had been punctured and he found himself in a towering rage of frustration and humiliation as a result.
Meanwhile, Alcibiades is having an argument of his own with the Athenian Senate. Some soldier is under sentence of death for murder and Alcibiades is pleading for a reversal of the sentence on the grounds that death came as a result of an honorable duel fought in anger that had come about because the man under sentence had been bitterly offended.
Who the soldier is, what the occasion, why the Senate is so harsh or Alcibiades so insistent are not explained. Shakespeare had inserted the scene, perhaps the best in the play, but had never gotten around to supplying the mortar that would connect it properly to what had gone before. It seems clear, though, that Shakespeare is setting up a subplot to show another facet of the "ingratitude" theme. Alcibiades says of the soldier:
—Act III, scene v, lines 60-62
This vaguely suits the Peloponnesian War, which was going on in the lifetime of Timon and Alcibiades. Athens was fighting a coalition led by the city of Sparta, of which an alternate (and, in some respects, more nearly official) name was Lacedaemon.
However, the speech makes it sound as though there was fighting at Lacedaemon, and that wasn't so. The city of Sparta, protected by its unparalleled army, was unapproachable throughout the sixth and fifth centuries b.c. It was not until Sparta suffered a shattering defeat at the hands of Thebes, thirty years after the Peloponnesian War, that the city became vulnerable.
Nor were there important battles at Byzantium (the later Constantinople and the still later Istanbul), though it occupied a strategic position at the straits between the Aegean Sea and the Black Sea, not very far from where Troy had once been situated.
When Alcibiades continues to plead the soldier's cause, the First Senator, austere and obdurate in Roman rather than Athenian manner, finally says:
—Act III, scene v, lines 95-97
In actual history, Alcibiades was indeed banished from Athens, but not for so personal and trivial a cause. In 415 b.c. he had urged that Athens end the long war with Sparta by a very daring move, nothing less than an invasion of Sicily and the capture of its chief city, Syracuse, which had been supporting the Spartan cause financially.
A victory in Sicily would have transferred Syracuse's navy and wealth to the Athenian side, given Athens a secure base in the west, and broken the morale of the Spartan coalition. It was a desperate gamble, but under Alcibiades it might just possibly have succeeded.
The Athenians, however, voted another general, Nicias, as co-com-mander, and this was a terrible mistake. Nicias was an "appeaser," anxious to make a deal with Sparta, and couldn't possibly be expected to supply vigorous leadership-especially since he was a most incompetent general in any case.
To make matters worse, just before the expedition was to set sail, certain religious statues in the city were blasphemously mutilated, and suspicion fell upon Alcibiades, who was a known agnostic.
To be sure, Alcibiades would scarcely have been so insane as to have chosen this time to play the scofier in so ostentatious a manner. Although the mystery of who mutilated the statues has never been solved, most historians feel it must have been Alcibiades' enemies who did it, and that Alcibiades was framed.
At first, proceedings against Alcibiades were ordered suspended till the Sicilian expedition was over, but then after the fleet got under way, the Athenians changed their mind and recalled Alcibiades. Alcibiades was certain that he couldn't possibly escape conviction and so he went voluntarily into exile.
The Sicilian expedition, be it noted, came to utter grief without him. A huge Athenian force, both men and ships, was utterly destroyed and Athens never truly recovered. She was never again, after the Sicilian expedition, what she had been before it. Because it was Alcibiades who had urged it on, he had brought great harm to Athens (as Timon, according to Plutarch, had foreseen) and was yet to do more.
Back we go to Timon's house, where Timon has called back his friends for another banquet. All the men who had just refused to lend Timon money are now back at their old places. They don't know how Timon has managed to recover, but if he is conducting feasts, they intend to be at the trough.
They are as servile as ever and Timon appears as affable as ever, but when it is time to eat of the covered dishes, Timon reveals them to be full of water and nothing more. Timon throws the water in their faces, curses them, and drives them away, crying out:
—Act III, scene vi, lines 105-6
There is the transition. Timon goes from universal benevolence to universal malevolence. In both roles, he has held himself far removed from ordinary mankind, but in the latter he at least requires no wealth.
Timon leaves his home and the city. He finds himself a cave outside Athens and spends his time in cursing. He digs and finds gold (a device borrowed from Lucian's dialogue), but that does not soften his hardened heart or soothe his poisoned soul.
Now a parade of people comes seeking Timon in the cave. (After all, he is rich again.) The first, by accident rather than by design, for Timon's wealth is not yet known, is Alcibiades, who is marching against Athens at the head of a rebel army and who at first fails to recognize Timon.
Alcibiades is accompanied by two prostitutes whom Timon does not fail to condemn. He says to Alcibiades concerning one of them: