Apemantus

Play

Timon of Athens

Summary

Apemantus is Athens's resident professional cynic — a churlish philosopher who attends Timon's banquets only to mock the flattery and false friendship he sees everywhere, warning (unheeded) that the sycophants will abandon Timon the moment his money runs out. He is right about everything and listened to by no one. When Timon retreats to his cave in bitter misanthropy, Apemantus visits him, and the extended confrontation between them is one of the play's most intellectually bracing passages: Apemantus argues that Timon's new misanthropy is just as performed and self-indulgent as his former generosity, that true philosophy is to be born cynical rather than to fall into cynicism from disappointed idealism.

Notable Quotations

"What a coil's here! / Serving of becks and jutting-out of bums! / I doubt whether their legs be worth the sums / That are given for 'em." *(1.2)*

"The middle of humanity thou never knewest, but the extremity of both ends." *(4.3)*

"This is in thee a nature but infected, / A poor unmanly melancholy sprung / From change of fortune." *(4.3)*

Cross-references

• Timon of Athens — the play
• Tragedies
• character_timon — the idealist he warns and later debates in the wilderness
• character_flavius — the one genuinely virtuous figure Apemantus cannot dismiss