SILIUS. Nay, I shall have law; Shall I not, Afer? speak. 

 AFER. Would you have more? 

 SILIUS. No, my well-spoken man, I would no more; Nor less: might I enjoy it natural,. Not taught to speak unto your present ends, Free from thine, his, and all your unkind handling, Furious enforcing, most unjust presuming, Malicious, and manifold applying, Foul wresting, and impossible construction. 

 AFER. He raves, he raves. 

 SILIUS. Thou durst not tell me so, Hadst thou not Cæsar’s warrant. I can see Whose power condemns me. 

 VARRO. This betrays his spirit: This doth enough declare him what he is. 

 SILIUS. What am I? speak. 

 VARRO. An enemy to the state. 

 SILIUS. Because I am an enemy to thee, And such corrupted ministers o’ the state, That here art made a present instrument To gratify it with thine own disgrace. 

 SEJANUS. This, to the consul, is most insolent, And impious. 

 SILIUS. Ay, take part. Reveal yourselves, Alas! I scent not your confederacies, Your plots, and combinations! I not know Minion Sejanus hates me: and that all, This boast of law, and law, is but a form, A net of Vulcan’s filing, a mere ingine, To take that life by a pretext of justice, Which you pursue in malice! I want brain, Or nostril to persuade me, that your ends, And purposes are made to what they are, Before my answer! O, you equal gods, Whose justice not a world of wolf-turn’d men Shall make me to accuse, howe’er provoked; Have I for this so oft engaged myself? Stood in the heat and fervour of a fight, When Phœbus sooner hath forsook the day Than I the field, against the blue-eyed Gauls, And crisped Germans? when our Roman eagles Have fann’d the fire, with their labouring wings, And no blow dealt, that left not death behind it? When I have charged, alone, into the troops Of curl’d Sicambrians, routed them, and came Not off, with backward ensigns of a slave; But forward marks, wounds on my breast and face, Were meant to thee, O Cæsar, and thy Rome? And have I this return! did I, for this, Perform so noble and so brave defeat On Sacrovir! O Jove, let it become me To boast my deeds, when he whom they concern, Shall thus forget them. 

 Prev. P 60/205 next