caustic severity of the old Stoic philosophers. The soul of Diogenes
appears to have been seated on the lips of Apemantus. The churlish
profession of misanthropy in the cynic is contrasted with the
profound feeling of it in Timon, and also with the soldierlike and
determined resentment of Alcibiades against his countrymen, who have
banished him, though this forms only an incidental episode in the
tragedy.

The fable consists of a single event--of the transition from the
highest pomp and profusion of artificial refinement to the most
abject state of savage life, and privation of all social
intercourse. The change is as rapid as it is complete; nor is the
description of the rich and generous Timon, banqueting in gilded
palaces, pampered by every luxury, prodigal of his hospitality,
courted by crowds of flatterers, poets, painters, lords, ladies,
who:

Follow his strides, his lobbies fill with tendance,
Rain sacrificial whisperings in his ear;
And through him drink the free air--

more striking than that of the sudden falling off of his friends and
fortune, and his naked exposure in a wild forest digging roots from
the earth for his sustenance, with a lofty spirit of self-denial,
and bitter scorn of the world, which raise him higher in our esteem
than the dazzling gloss of prosperity could do. He grudges himself
the means of life, and is only busy in preparing his grave. How
forcibly is the difference between what he was and what he is
described in Apemantus's taunting questions, when he comes to
reproach him with the change in his way of life!