must be rare indeed Whom these things cannot blemish—yet must Antony No way excuse his foils when we do bear So great weight in his lightness. If he filled His vacancy with his voluptuousness, Full surfeits and the dryness of his bones Call on him for’t. But to confound such time That drums him from his sport, and speaks as loud As his own state and ours, ’tis to be chid As we rate boys who, being mature in knowledge, Pawn their experience to their present pleasure And so rebel to judgment. 

 Enter a Messenger. 

Messenger

 LEPIDUS. Here’s more news. 

 MESSENGER. Thy biddings have been done, and every hour, Most noble Caesar, shalt thou have report How ’tis abroad. Pompey is strong at sea, And it appears he is beloved of those That only have feared Caesar. To the ports The discontents repair, and men’s reports Give him much wronged. 

 CAESAR. I should have known no less. It hath been taught us from the primal state That he which is was wished until he were, And the ebbed man, ne’er loved till ne’er worth love, Comes deared by being lacked. This common body, Like to a vagabond flag upon the stream, Goes to and back, lackeying the varying tide, To rot itself with motion. 

 Enter a second Messenger. 

Messenger

 SECOND MESSENGER. Caesar, I bring thee word Menecrates and Menas, famous pirates, Make the sea serve them, which they ear and wound With keels of every kind. Many hot inroads They make in Italy—the borders maritime Lack blood to think on’t—and flush youth revolt. No vessel can peep forth but ’tis as soon Taken as seen; for Pompey’s name strikes more Than could his war resisted. 

 CAESAR. Antony, Leave thy lascivious wassails. When thou once Was beaten from Modena, where thou slew’st Hirtius and Pansa, consuls, at thy heel Did famine follow, whom thou fought’st against, Though daintily brought up, with patience more Than savages could suffer. Thou didst drink The stale of horses and the gilded puddle Which beasts would cough at. Thy palate then did deign The roughest berry on the rudest hedge. Yea, like the stag when snow the pasture sheets, The barks of trees thou browsed. On the Alps It is reported thou didst eat strange flesh Which some did die to look on. And all this— It wounds thine honour that I speak it now— Was borne so like a soldier that thy cheek So much as lanked not. 

 LEPIDUS. ’Tis pity of him. 

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