Seneca. Heaven, hast thou set this end to Roman greatnesse?
Were the worlds spoyles for this to Rome devided
To make but our fires bigger?
You Gods, whose anger made us great, grant yet
Some change in misery. We begge not now
To have our Consull tread on Asian Kings
Or spurne the quivered Susa at their feet;
This we have had before: we beg to live,
At least not thus to die. Let Cannae[52] come,
Let Allias[53] waters turne again to blood:
To these will any miseries be light.
Petron. Why with false Auguries have we bin deceiv'd?
Why was our Empire told us should endure
With Sunne and Moone in time, in brightnesse pass them,
And that our end should be oth' world and it?
What, can Celestiall Godheads double too?
Seneca. O Rome, the envy late
But now the pitie of the world! the Getes[54]?
The men of Cholcos at thy sufferings grive;
The shaggy dweller in the Scithian Rockes,
The Mosch[55] condemned to perpetual snowes,
That never wept at kindreds burials
Suffers with thee and feeles his heart to soften.
O should the Parthyan heare these miseries
He would (his low and native hate apart[56])
Sit downe with us and lend an Enemies teare
To grace the funerall fires of ending Rome.
[Exeunt.
(SCENE 4.)
Soft Musique. Enter Nero above alone with a Timbrell.
I, now my Troy lookes beautious in her flames;
The Tyrrhene Seas are bright with Roman fires
Whilst the amazed Mariner afarre,
Gazing on th'unknowne light, wonders what starre
Heaven hath begot to ease the aged Moone.
When Pirrhus, stryding ore the cynders, stood
On ground where Troy late was, and with his Eye
Measur'd the height of what he had throwne downe,—
A Citie great in people and in power,
Walls built with hands of God—he now forgive
The ten yeares length and thinkes his wounds well heald,
Bath'd in the blood of Priams fifty sonnes.
Yet am not I appeas'd; I must see more
Then Towers and Collomns tumble to the ground;
'Twas not the high built walls and guiltlesse stones
That Nero did provoke: themselves must be the wood
To feed this fire or quench it with their blood.
Enter a Woman with a burnt Child.
Wom. O my deare Infant, O my Child, my Child,
Unhappy comfort of my nine moneths paines;
And did I beare thee only for the fire,
Was I to that end made a mother?
Nero. I, now begins the sceane that I would have.