ARRUNTIUS.
A serving boy!
I knew him, at Caius’ trencher, when for hire
He prostituted his abused body
To that great gormond, fat Apicius;
And was the noted pathic of the time.
SABINUS.
And, now, the second face of the whole world!
The partner of the empire, hath his image
Rear’d equal with Tiberius, born in ensigns;
Commands, disposes every dignity,
Centurions, tribunes, heads of provinces,
Praetors and consuls; all that heretofore
Rome’s general suffrage gave, is now his sale.
The gain, or rather spoil of all the earth,
One, and his house, receives.
SILIUS.
He hath of late
Made him a strength too, strangely, by reducing
All the prætorian bands into one camp,
Which he commands: pretending that the soldiers,
By living loose and scatter’d, fell to riot;
And that if any sudden enterprise
Should be attempted, their united strength
Would be far more than sever’d; and their life
More strict, if from the city more removed.
SABINUS.
Where, now, he builds what kind of forts he please,
Is heard to court the soldier by his name,
Woos, feasts the chiefest men of action,
Whose wants, not loves, compel them to be his.
And though he ne’er were liberal by kind,
Yet to his own dark ends, he’s most profuse,
Lavish, and letting fly, he cares not what
To his ambition.
ARRUNTIUS.
Yet, hath he ambition?
Is there that step in state can make him higher,
Or more, or anything he is, but less?
SILIUS.
Nothing but emperor.
ARRUNTIUS.
The name Tiberius,
I hope, will keep, howe’er he hath foregone
The dignity and power.
SILIUS.
Sure, while he lives.
ARRUNTIUS.
And dead, it comes to Drusus.
Should he fail, To the brave issue of Germanicus;
And they are three: too many-ha? for him
To have a plot upon!
SABINUS.
I do not know
The heart of his designs; but, sure, their face
Looks farther than the present.