[Exeunt.]
SCENE V.—Another part of the Street.
Enter Arruntius.
ARRUNTIUS.
Still dost thou suffer, heaven! will no flame,
No heat of sin, make thy just wrath to boil
In thy distemper’d bosom, and o’erflow
The pitchy blazes of impiety,
Kindled beneath thy throne! Still canst thou sleep,
Patient, while vice doth make an antick face
At thy dread power, and blow dust and smoke
Into thy nostrils! Jove! will nothing wake thee?
Must vile Sejanus pull thee by the beard,
Ere thou wilt open thy black-lidded eye,
And look him dead? Well! snore on, dreaming gods,
And let this last of that proud giant-race
Heave mountain upon mountain, ’gainst your state—
Be good unto me, Fortune and you powers,
Whom I, expostulating, have profaned;
I see what’s equal with a prodigy,
A great, a noble Roman, and an honest,
Live an old man!—
Enter Lepidus.
O Marcus Lepidus,
When is our turn to bleed? Thyself and I,
Without our boast, are almost all the few
Left to be honest in these impious times.
LEPIDUS.
What we are left to be, we will be, Lucius;
Though tyranny did stare as wide as death,
To fright us from it.
ARRUNTIUS.
’T hath so on Sabinus.
LEPIDUS.
I saw him now drawn from the Gemonies,
And, what increased the direness of the fact,
His faithful dog, upbraiding all us Romans,
Never forsook the corps, but, seeing it thrown
Into the stream, leap’d in, and drown’d with it.
ARRUNTIUS.
O act, to be envied him of us men!
We are the next the hook lays hold on, Marcus:
What are thy arts, good patriot, teach them me,
That have preserved thy hairs to this white dye,
And kept so reverend and so dear a head
Safe on his comely shoulders?