TIMON, surnamed Misanthropos, or the Man-hater, a famous Athenian, who lived about 420 B. C. He was one day asked, why he loved the young Alcibiades while he detested all the rest of the human race? on which he replied, "It is because I foresee that he will be the ruin of the Athenians." He carefully avoided all sorts of company; yet went one day to an assembly of the people, and cried with a loud voice, "That he had a fig-tree on which several persons had hanged themselves;
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themselves; but as he intended to cut it down, in order to build a house on the place where it stood, he gave them notice of it, that if any of them had a mind to hang themselves, they must make haste and do it speedily." He had an epitaph engraved on his tomb, filled with imprecations against those who read it. Shakespeare has formed a tragedy on his story.