Mar.
He is so Bessus, I wonder how thou cam'st to know it. But if thou wer't a man of understanding, I would tell thee, he is vain-glorious, and humble, and angry, and patient, and merry and dull, and joyful and sorrowful in extremity in an hour: Do not think me thy friend for this, for if I ear'd who knew it, thou shouldst not hear it Bessus. Here he is with his prey in his foot.
Enter &c. Senet Flourish.
Enter Arbaces and Tigranes, Two Kings and two Gentlemen.
Arb.
Thy sadness brave Tigranes takes away
From my full victory, am I become
Of so small fame, that any man should grieve
When I o'recome him? They that plac'd me here,
Intended it an honour large enough, (though he
For the most valiant living, but to dare oppose me single,
Lost the day. What should afflict you, you are as free as I,
To be my prisoner, is to be more free
Than you were formerly, and never think
The man I held worthy to combate me
Shall be us'd servilely: Thy ransom is
To take my only Sister to thy Wife.
A heavy one Tigranes, for she is
A Lady, that the neighbour Princes send
Blanks to fetch home. I have been too unkind
To her Tigranes, she but nine years old
I left her, and ne're saw her since, your wars
Have held me long and taught me though a youth,
The way to victory, she was a pretty child,
Then I was little better, but now fame
Cries loudly on her, and my messengers
Make me believe she is a miracle;
She'l make you shrink, as I did, with a stroak
But of her eye Tigranes.
Tigr.
Is't the course of Iberia to use their prisoners thus?
Had fortune thrown my name above Arbace,
I should not thus have talk'd Sir, in Armenia
We hold it base, you should have kept your temper
Till you saw home again, where 'tis the fashion
Perhaps to brag.
Arb.
Be you my witness earth, need I to brag,
Doth not this captive Prince speak
Me sufficiently, and all the acts
That I have wrought upon his suffering Land;
Should I then boast! where lies that foot of ground
Within his whole Realm, that I have not past,
Fighting and conquering; Far then from me
Be ostentation. I could tell the world
How I have laid his Kingdom desolate
By this sole Arm prop't by divinity,
Stript him out of his glories, and have sent
The pride of all his youth to people graves,
And made his Virgins languish for their Loves,
If I would brag, should I that have the power
To teach the Neighbour world humility,
Mix with vain-glory?