Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/232

 224 ANTONY. injuries which he suffered from those he had esteemed his friends, made him hate and mistrust all mankind. This Timon was a citizen of Athens, and lived much about the Peloponnesian war, as may be seen by the comedies of Aristophanes and Plato, in which he is ridi- culed as the hater and enemy of mankind. lie avoided and repelled the approaches of every one, but embraced with kisses and the greatest show of affection Alcibiades, then in hie hot youth. And when Apemantus was aston- ished, and demanded the reason, he replied that he knew this young man would one day do infinite mischief to the Athenians. He never admitted any one into his company, except at times this Apemantus, who was of the same sort of temper, and was an imitator of his way of life. At the celebration of the festival of flagons,* these two kept the feast together, and Apemantus saying to him, " What a pleasant j)arty, Timon ! " " It would be," he answered, " if you were away." One day he got up in a full assembly on the speaker's place, and when there was a dead silence and great wonder at so unusual a sight, he said, " Ye men of Athens, I have a little plot of ground, and in it grows a fig-tree, on which many citizens have been pleased to hang themselves ; and now, having resolved to build in that place, I wished to announce it publicly, that any of you who may be desirous may go and hang yourselves before I cut it down." He died and was buried at Halae, near the sea, where it so happened that, after his burial, a land-slijj took place on the point of the shore, and the sea, flowing in, surrounded his tomb, and made it inaccessible to the foot of man. It bore this inscription : — Here am I laid, my life of misery dons. Ask not my name, I curse you every one. • " The Flagons," or Gho'es, was by the Athenians as a special day the second day of the Anthesterian of conviviality, when they met in feast of Bacchus, and was observed parties, and drank together.