Neptune's Tears

Call up Ariel, Flounder, and Sebastian, because we're going under the sea for this one. After Alcibiades reads Timon's epitaph, he states:

Though thou abhorredst in us our human griefs,
Scornedst our brain's flow and those our droplets which
From niggard nature fall, yet rich conceit
Taught thee to make vast Neptune weep for aye
On thy low grave, on faults forgiven. (5.4.75-79)

So Neptune, a.k.a. Poseidon, will cry forever on Timon's grave. Sounds pretty straightforward, right?

Well, not quite. Let's unpack this a little more: Neptune is a pretty angry and vengeful kind of guy. Sure, he has his calm moments, but at other times, he sends the waves crashing with his malice. All tempest, hurricanes, and other sea storms are his fault; we might say the god of the sea has some anger management issues.

Nevertheless, that's the god that Shakespeare has picked to cry over Timon's graves. Okay, that may have a lot of do with the fact that tears flow, and tears are water. But we're also interested in the fact that Neptune is the god of some seriously big, vast oceans. We think that means that Alcibiades is commenting not just on how huge Timon's rage was but also on just how much people should weep over Timon.

Neptune is a symbol of the enormousness of the ocean, and he's also a symbol the tempestuous relationship everyone has with the ocean—just like the tempestuous relationship people have with Timon. Maybe Timon wasn't perfect, but the stuff he said about how nasty people are is pretty much true, and people should seriously be ashamed of themselves.