Ancient Greece: All Wars and...

* Plut. Ant. 70.

Timon was an Athenian and reached adulthood during the Peloponnesian War... He was presented in comedy as hostile and misanthropic...Once at the "Festival of the Pitchers", he and Apemantes were both feasting together, just the two of them. Apemantes said, “O Timon, how lovely this symposium of ours,” and he replied, “it would be, if you weren't here.”

It is said that when the Athenians were holding an assembly he went up to the bema and said, “I have a small site for a house, O Athenian men, with a fig tree growing on it, from which many of my fellow citizens have hanged themselves. I’m going to build a house on that spot, and I wanted to speak to the people so that anyone wishing to can still hang themselves before the fig is cut down."...