LEPIDUS.
O, act most worthy hell, and lasting night,
To hide it from the world!
NUNTIUS.
Their bodies thrown
Into the Gemonies, (I know not how,
Or by what accident return’d.) the mother,
The expulsed Apicata, finds them there;
Whom when she saw lie spread on the degrees,
After a world of fury on herself,
Tearing her hair, defacing of her face,
Beating her breasts and womb, kneeling amaz’d,
Crying to heaven, then to them; at last,
Her drowned voice gat up above her woes,
And with such black and bitter execrations,
As might affright the gods, and force the sun
Run backward to the east; nay, make the old
Deformed chaos rise again, to o’erwhelm
Them, us, and all the world, she fills the air,
Upbraids the heavens with their partial dooms,
Defies their tyrannous powers, and demands,
What she, and those poor innocents have transgress’d,
That they must suffer such a share in vengeance,
Whilst Livia, Lygdus, and Eudemus live,
Who, as she says, and firmly vows to prove it
To Cæsar and the senate, poison’d Drusus?
LEPIDUS.
Confederates with her husband!
NUNTIUS.
Ay.
LEPIDUS.
Strange act!
ARRUNTIUS.
And strangely open’d: what says now my monster,
The multitude? they reel now, do they not?
NUNTIUS.
Their gall is gone, and now they ’gin to weep
The mischief they have done.
ARRUNTIUS.
I thank ’em, rogues.
NUNTIUS.
Part are so stupid, or so flexible,
As they believe him innocent; all grieve:
And some whose hands yet reek with his warm blood,
And gripe the part which they did tear of him,
Wish him collected and created new.
LEPIDUS.
How Fortune plies her sports, when she begins
To practise them! pursues, continues, adds,
Confounds with varying her impassion’d moods!