CORDUS

Hail, to your lordship. I thought once, Considering their forms, age, manner of death's, The nearness of the places, where they fell, To-have paralleled him with great ALEXANDER: For both were of best feature, of high raze, Yeer'd but to thirty, and, in foreign lands, By their own people, alike made away. Here comes SEIANUS. He did not hear it, sir. Rarely dissembled. Stay. Great POMPEI'S theatre was never ruined Till now, that proud SEIANUS hath a statue Reared on his ashes. Did you observe How they inveighed against Caesar? Here comes another. Here. So innocent I am of fact, my lords, As but my words are argued; yet those words Not reaching either prince, or princes parent: The which your law of treason comprehends. BRUTUS, and Cassius, I am charged, to have praised: Whose deeds, when many more, beside my self, Have writ, not one hath mentioned without honour. Great TITUS LIVIUS, great for eloquence, And faith, amongst us, in his history, With so great praises POMPEY did extol, As oft AUGUSTUS called him a POMPEIAN: Yet this not hurt their friendship. In his book He often names Scipio, AFRANIUS, Yea, the same Cassius, and this BRUTUS too, As worthiest men; not thieves, and parricides, Which notes, upon their fame's, are now imposed. ASINIUS POLLIO'S writings quite throughout Give them a noble memory; SO MESSALLA Renowned his general Cassius: yet both these Lived with AUGUSTUS, full of wealth, and honours. To CICERO'S book, where CATO was heaved up Equal with heaven, what else did Caesar answer, Being then Dictator , but with a penned oration, As if before the judges? Do but see Antonius letters; read but BRUTUS pleadings: What vile reproach they hold against AUGUSTUS, False I confess, but with much bitterness. The Epigram's of BIBACULUS, and CATULLUS, Are read, full stuffed with spite of both the CAESARS; Yet deified JULIUS, and no less AUGUSTUS! Both boar them, and contemned them: (I not know Promptly to speak it, whither done with more Temper, or wisdom) for such obloquies If they despised be, they die suppressed, But, if with rage acknowledged, they are confessed. The Greeks I slip, whose licence not alone, But also lust did escape unpunished: Or where some one (by chance) exception took, He words with words revenged. But, in my work, What could be aimed more free, or farther of From the times scandal, then to write of those, Whom death from grace, or hatred had exempted? Did I, with BRUTUS, and with Cassius, Armed, and possessed of the PHILIPPI fields, Incense the people in the civil cause, With dangerous speeches? or do they, being slain Seventy years since, as by their images (Which not the conqueror hath defaced) appears, Retain that guilty memory with writers? Postery pays every man his honour. Nor shall there want, though I condemned am, That will not only Cassius well approve, And of great BRUTUS honour mindful be, But that will, also, mention make of me.