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.
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.