University of Virginia Library

Scene I.

—The Forum. The curule chair placed for judgment.
Enter Publius, Collatinus, and Lucretius.
Publius.
O Collatine, I fear. Men bring me word
That all last night he paced about the city,
Round every sacred place where altars rise,
And incense loads the air. At dawn he stood
Upon the Field of Mars, whence Romulus,
By storm embraced, was carried to the gods.
Some shepherds tell me how the consul stayed
His lonely steps, and lifted up his head;
They say the mighty apparition came,
With splendour of the sun, as once before
To Proclus Julius, who heard the charge:
Be brave, and ye shall make my city great
In all the earth. If thus it spake again,
Brutus will not be moved.

Lucretius.
Nor meet he should.

Collatinus.
We're bound by ties of our humanity
To rescue him from any such offence
As murder of his children.

Lucretius.
There's no spice
Of the wolf's nurture now-a-days. Our girls
Are fiercer than their husbands.

Collatinus.
O my sire,
Her death was cruel. Do not urge a deed
Of iterated anguish. My Lucrece,
Lay silence on his tongue, come from the shades,
And hold him back! It is impiety
To press a parent to destroy his sons;
The gods abhor such crime. Restrain your mouth,
You who have have been a father, I beseech,
From counsel so unnatural.

Lucretius.
Ha, ha!
What should you know of fatherhood? We men
Who breed the nation, rather would we live
Unwedded, or die childless, than affront
Our ancestors with infamous descent,
And stained posterity. A noble sire
Must call strong death to overthrow disgrace,
As Brutus will to-day. I had no need.
She died, and proved her parentage.

Collatinus.
They come,—
The lictors with the downcast criminals,
The consul, with fixed eyes, and at his side,
A flinching shape, a slavish countenance.
Who is the man?

Lucretius.
'Twill be a day for Rome!

[Enter Brutus, Vindex, the Prisoners, attended by Lictors.]
Brutus.
[To Lictors.]
Place the accused before me. Vindex, rise!
Give me your hand. See, fellow-citizens,
The saviour of your freedom, this old slave.
He, in the chamber where the traitors met,
Heard, without treachery, by god-made chance,
All that they, vile, imagined, and with oath
Swore as a man to dare. They went their way,
Leaving him unseen guardian of the scroll
Scored with their crime. Long while he weighed his course,
Betraying them by speech, by silence you,
Me, and our bondless city. [Holding up the scroll.]
This declares
The choice he made. He went to Publius,
He spake to save our liberties. Shall he,
Who so conceived of freedom's nobleness,
Be longer deemed a bondsman, a mere serf,
With thralled imagination?

All.
Nay, he stands
Emancipated, and we praise his deed
With grateful voices lifted in acclaim.

Titus.
What, Vindex!

Brutus.
Thou art free, thy chains are loosed.
I never was thy master with such joy
As now thy fellow-citizen. Look up,
And greet thy honour. Fall'st thou at my feet?

Vindex.

I thank your worships, I thank you; but 'tis
bred in the bone. Master, I'll never leave you. O gentles,
O good Roman senators, O my dear master, if I am
deserving, if I have served, if ye hold to rewarding me,
I ask but one thing, and I pray you to have mercy on my
prayers. Spare them, spare the young masters; strike
away their chains, and I'll be old Vindex for ever; no
disrespect to the freedom you've given me. But they're
born to it. Fetters on their white wrists!—it makes me
dead ashamed and frantic. They are not many to spare,
and I'll remain your faithful slave.

Brutus.

I hear thee not, and must command thee
hence.

Vindex.

O master, think again; forgive them. Your
worships look moved; help me to my reward. It's all
naught what you've done at me; I'm not changed by a
hair's-breadth. But, oh! they are changed. Their eyes
do not tell me what to do; there's a fear in them as they
dared not look about. It sickens me. I've no chattels;
they're all that I have in the world.

Brutus.

Remove this man; he doth not know his place.

Vindex.
[Aside.]

Ay, he does, and he'll set your little
light this evening, come what will. But we can never
speak together; there'll be no matter, and such guilt on
us. For the wonderful, great deed is worse than wickedness.
We shall never over-get it.

[Goes behind a pillar.
Brutus.
Now must I turn to judgment. These you see
Are traitors proved. I hold the very deed
That seals their condemnation. They have signed
Their sentence with their names,—behold. For this,
The darkest crime within our city's code,
Death is the righteous penalty.

Titus.
Not death!

Brutus.
What can you urge against the doom?

Aquilius.
Our faith
To Rome's old kings, the line of Romulus,
The makers of this city, of the laws
By which ye would condemn us. We defy
Your reading of their import.

Brutus.
[To his sons.]
Have ye aught
To say?

Tiberius.
I have not spoken.

Brutus.
Titus, you?

Titus.
Put me away from you, but not from life.
It is too soon. O father, let me live.
I did it all in play, in very sport;
I ever honoured you. You cannot kill.
O the blue sky!—not death!

Brutus.
Ye patient gods . . .

Titus.
You called me to the earth. I hardly knew
Its earliest joys that I should have the pain
Of going where they weep through dayless time.
O father, on all sides are axes, rods,
Like groves about the way to death; their shade
Gathers. Oh help me!

Brutus.
Senators, I now
Would finish.

Titus.
All who know me as his son,
All fathers here, beseech for us to live.

Collatinus.
Consul, there is a milder banishment
Than that to dusk Avernus. O'er the bounds
Of Rome the sorrows of the exile wait
Those who are proved unworthy of her faith.
Let these young countrymen no more consort
With us, frequent the shrines and hilly ways;
The hearth no longer glow for their return,
The household gods no longer watch their steps.

Publius.
O Brutus, we are men; thy mood extreme
Forces our nature overmuch. Relent!

Titus.
I hardly feel that I am on my knees,
I am so mad to hear you bid me live.

Brutus.
I do not bid you die; I sentence you
To death.

Titus.
O gods infernal! Like the rush
Of under water through a riven ship,
A hopeless darkness soaks into my life.
I sink, I'm lost. Save me!

Tiberius.
I ever felt
That I was born for some great cruelty,
To learn how pitiless a father is
Who never loved his children.

Brutus.
For your life
You also ask?

Tiberius.
No; that to give or take
Is yours, but as you judge, so must we learn
How meagrely you rate us, though your breath
Is housed within us.

Titus.
Dearest father, once
You caught my hand upon the Tiber's bank,
Because the mud was slipping towards the stream.
Then I was ignorant, and death was naught.

Publius.
He rises.

Brutus.
Lictors!

Titus.
Speak not to these men,
Unless to tell them we are not to die.
Think of our mother. Round about our birth
Was love, thy smiling brow, soft tendance, care,
The waiting nurses, gentle-handed. These
Relentless visages, these bitter rods,
Their unexpended anguish, the fierce axe,
Thy front like metal—round our death are these!
Is this the end of nurture? this? O gods!
Would I had died before I knew thy face,
Or thought thou wert my father, long before
My mother formed the title on my lips.

Collatinus.
Our tears entreat for them.

Publius.
From Roman eyes
Drops this demand for pity. Brutus, turn.

Lucretius.
My daughter casts the shield of her great act
'Tween him and your entreaties. He'll not budge.
I read his valour in the steady eyes
With which he met her blood.

Brutus.
I bid you keep
The lawful silence, while I speak the doom.

Titus.
O Father of the Capitol, great Jove,
Hold him from speech, forbid his tongue!

Tiberius.
In vain.
Would all the shame were ended!

Titus.
Save me, save!

Vindex.
[Aside.]

I can bear it no longer, to hear
them fight with their voices for life. [He kneels at the

feet of Brutus.]
Master, for very pity's sake, strive not to
be as the gods. 'Tis an infamy. See, there's rain from
your children's eyes, and not a Roman cheek unwashed.
Let the waters of our misery soften you!

Publius.
He speaks what fills our silence.

Collatinus.
For our breasts
Are heavy with compassion.

All.
Spare their lives.

Collatinus.
Let them be banished. Brutus, spare yourself.

Titus.
Let us not perish. Father, keep your name,
Kill not its meaning!

Brutus.
Lictors, to your work!