HADRIAN. Come, lictors, and scourge this little rebel to death with your heaviest rods.
ANTIOCHUS. She deserves to feel the full weight of your anger, as she has mocked your gracious clemency.
HOPE. Here is the only clemency for which I long—here the only mercy I crave.
ANTIOCHUS. Sapientia, what are you murmuring there, standing with uplifted eyes by the body of your dead child?
SAPIENTIA. I am imploring Almighty God to give Hope the same firm courage that He gave Faith.
HOPE. Oh, mother, mother! How wonderful are your prayers! Even as you prayed the uplifted hands of the panting executioners became powerless. I have not felt a twinge of pain.
HADRIAN. So you do not mind scourging! We will try some sharper torture.
HOPE. The most savage and deadly you can invent! The more cruelty you show the greater will be your humiliation.
HADRIAN. Let her be suspended in the air, and lacerated with nails until her bowels gush forth, and the skin is stripped from her bones. Break her to pieces limb by limb.
ANTIOCHUS. That order is worthy of an emperor. The punishment fits the crime.