Sejanus: His Fall
 HATERIUS. The emperor’s son! give place. 

 SILIUS. I like the prince well. 

 ARRUNTIUS. A riotous youth; There’s little hope of him. 

 SABINUS. That fault his age Will, as it grows, correct. Methinks he bears Himself each day more nobly than other; And wins no less on men’s affections, Than doth his father lose. Believe me, I love him; And chiefly for opposing to Sejanus. 

 SILIUS. And I, for gracing his young kinsmen so, The sons of prince Germanicus: it shews A gallant clearness in him, a straight mind, That envies not, in them, their father’s name. 

 ARRUNTIUS. His name was, while he lived, above all envy; And, being dead, without it. O, that man! If there were seeds of the old virtue left, They lived in him. 

 SILIUS. He had the fruits, Arruntius, More than the seeds: Sabinus, and myself Had means to know him within; and can report him. We were his followers, he would call us friends; He was a man most like to virtue; in all, And every action, nearer to the gods, Than men, in nature; of a body as fair As was his mind; and no less reverend In face, than fame: he could so use his state, Tempering his greatness with his gravity, As it avoided all self-love in him, And spite in others. What his funerals lack’d In images and pomp, they had supplied With honourable sorrow, soldiers’ sadness, A kind of silent mourning, such, as men, Who know no tears, but from their captives, use To shew in so great losses. 

 CORDUS. I thought once, Considering their forms, age, manner of deaths, The nearness of the places where they fell, To have parallel’d him with great Alexander: For both were of best feature, of high race, Year’d but to thirty, and, in foreign lands, By their own people alike made away. 

 SABINUS. I know not, for his death, how you might wrest it: But, for his life, it did as much disdain Comparison, with that voluptuous, rash, Giddy, and drunken Macedon’s, as mine Doth with my bondman’s. All the good in him, His valour and his fortune, he made his; But he had other touches of late Romans, That more did speak him: Pompey’s dignity, The innocence of Cato, Cæsar’s spirit, Wise Brutus’ temperance; and every virtue, Which, parted unto others, gave them name, Flow’d mix’d in him. He was the soul of goodness; And all our praises of him are like streams Drawn from a spring, that still rise full, and leave The part remaining greatest. 


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