SEJANUS. See, Silius enters. SILIUS. Hail, grave fathers! LICTORES. Stand. Silius, forbear thy place. SENATORS. How! PRÆCONES. Silius, stand forth, The consul hath to charge thee. LICTORES. Room for Cæsar. ARRUNTIUS. Is he come too! nay then expect a trick. SABINUS. Silius accused! sure he will answer nobly. Enter Tiberius, attended. Tiberius TIBERIUS. We stand amazed, fathers, to behold This general dejection. Wherefore sit Rome’s consuls thus dissolved, as they had lost All the remembrance both of style and place It not becomes. No woes are of fit weight, To make the honour of the empire stoop: Though I, in my peculiar self, may meet Just reprehension, that so suddenly, And, in so fresh a grief, would greet the senate, When private tongues, of kinsmen and allies, Inspired with comforts, lothly are endured, The face of men not seen, and scarce the day, To thousands that communicate our loss. Nor can I argue these of weakness; since They take but natural ways; yet I must seek For stronger aids, and those fair helps draw out From warm embraces of the common-wealth. Our mother, great Augusta, ’s struck with time, Our self imprest with aged characters, Drusus is gone, his children young and babes; Our aims must now reflect on those that may Give timely succour to these present ills, And are our only glad-surviving hopes, The noble issue of Germanicus, Nero and Drusus: might it please the consul Honour them in, they both attend without. I would present them to the senate’s care, And raise those suns of joy that should drink up These floods of sorrow in your drowned eyes. ARRUNTIUS. By Jove, I am not Œdipus enough To understand this Sphynx.
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