University of Virginia Library

ACT III.

(A Triclinium of the Regia: twilight; the moon is seen through the columns, with three large stars near her. In the chamber a small table is set for a meal, and behind it lies a dark, sinister-looking heap.
Shouts are heard, and the flare of torches is cast forward into the chamber: then Didius, Lætus, Eclectus, Abascantus, and the Prætorian Guards enter boisterously, followed by the Slaves of the Imperial Household.
DIDIUS.
I would relate my parts and qualities,
But that you know them, but that you have tested
Their pith in many offices.

LÆTUS.
Augustus,
Your actions are not worth a thought to those
Who know what golden honour you possess.
Others be consuls, generals, if they will;
You only have the Power between your hands
To buy the Roman Empire—gold for Earth,
Gold for the subjects you have made your slaves.
Your credit is your truest coronation,
Your wealth your glory, and our hopes your safeguard
From menace of your certain enemies.

ABASCANTUS.
A thousand drachms apiece! You have a master
Who shows no stint in his extravagance.
The Age of Gold is back again.

LÆTUS.
O Saturn,
We worship you and set you in this temple,
Whence you will shine down drachms on us, on all,
As yonder moon shines moonbeams.

ECLECTUS.
Do not vaunt
The surety of your fortune to the moon.

DIDIUS.
How white her glow swells through the shadiness!
Each flashing torch is overcast, and now
Dark objects seem to form and meet my eyes.
That table . . .

ECLECTUS.
It was spread for Pertinax.

DIDIUS.
A little table that Philemon's self
Might sit at after delving. But you jest;
It is impossible. For Pertinax
This single loaf, this scanty plate of figs,
This wine! . . . My thirst is grievous; I must drink
Whate'er the vintage. Pah! the stuff is sour
As blood upon my tongue!
A dismal banquet,
A palace like a vault! What holds the moon?
She hovers like a Harpy o'er the meal.
What passes in the chamber? Ghosts and spirits,
This is no supper for a deity.
(to the Slaves.)
Take the stale food away, illume the hall
With burning candelabra; let a banquet
Perfume and warm the air: Ambracian goat,
A dish of peacock-brains, the Spanish hare
And African pintado; citrons, peaches,
And Lusitanian cherries. Fetch my cooks,
Search everywhere for dainties: tho' tis late,
We look for entertainment. As a host
I am well seasoned, and I do not fear
Comparison with . . .

(Exeunt Slaves.)
LÆTUS
Fling the table down,
And tilt its contents in the corner—refuse
Of vile frugality.

DIDIUS.
The meal prepared,
He did not touch . . . Such violent overthrow
Is like a clap. Be gentle, and remember
He was our predecessor.

LÆTUS.
But your pattern
In nothing. Commodus would be for you
A safer paradigm.

ABASCANTUS.
We shall not need
To emulate the past.

DIDIUS.
And who is this?
The moon's Endymion, some young boy asleep?
No, the small body has a withered hand.
Ye gods of death and Hades! There, look there!
And the moon, pointing like a finger down,
Shows blood upon the floor. It cannot be . . .

LÆTUS.
Why not? It is the trunk of Pertinax
Left where it bled. I wonder that the slaves
Ere this have not removed it.

ECLECTUS.
Do you wonder?
Their master's headless trunk? It looks a thing
Not to be meddled with.

DIDIUS.
It must be moved,
It must; call in his slaves. I could have borne
The image of his slaughter haunting me
As if it were some tragedy, some dark
And inbreathed fable; but to see like this
Before my eyes, before my very feet,
The robe, these hands, the sheerness of the robe
Where once . . . to see it all! In Tartarus
There is no matching horror. Take it hence!

(Soldiers lay hands on the corse.)
ECLECTUS.
Nay, softly! He was good; by Isis, just;
And in the balance of the mighty gods
To be approved now dead.

DIDIUS.
With burial rites
Of cost and splendour I will honour him.
But hear me! In the moon's unspotted light,
Before the judging Powers, I have no fault,
I did no wrong; I am no heir of his.
O horrible! My mind is in a whirl,
For I was waiting a few hours ago,
Like him, for supper . . . and I take his place,
And swerve from contemplation of his corse
As if I were his murderer. Assist me!
Do not stand silent by! As honest men
Proclaim my innocence; for all the gods,
I feel, are unconvinced. You, Lætus, say,
Who was it brought the news? Let every actor
Fill in the story: I am ignorant,
Though I have bought his empire, wear his crown.

LÆTUS.
Yes, when your gold is measured out to us.

DIDIUS.
Why did you murder him?

LÆTUS.
Must you complain?
Come, Emperor, come! We did it for your sake,
And look for our reward. This man we slew
Was to his guards a tyrant; life was shorn
Of every ease, and Venus was divorced
From Mars by yonder Censor. You have wisdom
To feast and let us feast.

ABASCANTUS.
Upon the seas
Our vessels ride, home-pointed, with their freight
Of treasure and of delicacies richer
To palate than is treasure to the hand;
Also with slaves from Paphos. Lift the corse!
Black, starving winter must be cast away
When the free year pours bounty. Take it hence.

LÆTUS.
To yonder private chamber of the baths,
That only can be entered by this door.
'Tis safer so; for no one must have sight,
I tell you, of the headless miser, no one
Must mourn him in the street. You hear those cries?
Curses, not pæans . . . but he does not hear!
All sense is in his eyes; look how they follow
The exit of the body.

(Didius watches the procession to the bath-room: Eclectus quietly steps aside and looks out.)
DIDIUS.
(suddenly turning round.)
Now at last
The stillness has no centre, and at last
The shining clouds have no reproachfulness.
My heart takes up its pulses, and I breathe
With no locked struggle more.
Let myrrh be poured,
Embalming the blue moonlight, and let youths
Deep-scatter Eastern rose-leaves. Congregate
More torches, draw me in a golden table,
If these impoverished halls can furnish such,
And, treasurer, my best Setinian! Hence,
Unlock my noblest wines.
(Exit Abascantus.)
(More Slaves of the Imperial Household enter and begin to prepare the feast.)
How soberly
Eclectus watches. Is there in the heavens
Some fixedness that may not be impaired;
Or can he outline the great polity
We learn by shocks of chance? Say, good Eclectus,
What stirs among the fates? Those vivid stars
Heave round the moon their strange, insurgent glory.
Are they not planets?

ECLECTUS.
Ask what they portend;
They are not of small presage.

DIDIUS.
They foreshadow . . . ?

ECLECTUS.
Calamity from north, and west, and east.
Observe! This fiery triangle, three stars
Form round the fluctuant moon, is nothing else
Than danger from Albinus and his host
In Britain, danger from the Syrian troops
That Niger leads, and danger from the army
Severus in Illyria makes his own:
The last the nearer hazard.

DIDIUS.
This is kindly;
You wish to give me warning that I stand
Too sheer upon a brink. It is my hope
Rather to win Albinus, to persuade
Severus . . .

ECLECTUS.
There are currents in the stars
No mortal may arrest.

DIDIUS.
Hot superstition!
A man may watch a battle from a hill,
May speculate and augur: so the gods
Look down on our encounters, laugh and bet,
But leave Fortuna to confer the crown.
You did not apprehend for Pertinax
His sudden overthrow—a righteous man
Unrighteously rewarded! So to Chance
We for the future will confide ourselves.
Soon we shall sup, and in the ruddy wine
Forget disaster.

ECLECTUS.
I need scarcely say
The Emperor sups alone.

DIDIUS.
But will the slaves
Obey me on the instant?

LÆTUS.
Give your orders;
Death corrects inattention.

DIDIUS.
And my wife
And daughter?

LÆTUS.
We are soldiers; when you need
Our service, we are ready. For to-night
We leave you in repose.

DIDIUS;
But Commodus
Had merry-making suppers.

ECLECTUS.
Peace! A body
Still lies unsepulchred beneath your roof.

LÆTUS.
The people, too, are hostile; with their shouts
And clashing arms they fill the hippodrome:
We must be watchful, and our master wise.
Sit down and sup as Pertinax, although
With self-delighting elegance. To-morrow
Feasts shall be high, and we on purple thrones
Will laugh at dawn, and pledge the ruddy sun
With ruddier Bacchus. I will set the guard
That shall protect your sleep.

(Exeunt all but Didius and the Slaves of the Imperial Household.)
DIDIUS.
An empty palace,
And all the slaves are slinking one by one
Out of the blood-stained room. They shall not go.
Back with you, traitors!

A SLAVE.
What is your command?
What would you have us do?

DIDIUS.
Why, everything
Just as before.

SLAVE.
The Emperor supped alone.

DIDIUS.
I know; but it is singular and dreary
In this resounding hall. I am fatigued,
I . . . Do not stand about me with wide eyes
And laggard feet, and spirits further off
Than I could banish, further than the dead.
A numbness closes round me like a cloud.
Can you not speak, and proffer me some service?
(Apart.)
I stand here central, and my echoing voice
Peals through a monument, with ghostly symbols
That harrow me.
Give me some smiles, some glances,
Some pleasantry to play away the time.
Have you no tumblers, harpists?
(A Slave points to the bath-room.)
Oh, of course,
There must not be much noise: but Pylades,
The Pantomime, I sent to bid him come;
And, since we would subdue festivity,
His orchestra and chorus shall be grouped
Behind yon purple curtain at the door,
Within the Atrium, where, for once concealed,
The voices and the reeds shall softly sound
Together, while before us the quick limbs
Rehearse some gay and celebrated scene:
That is our will. And let the chamberlain
Visit my house and tell my family
My mind is altered, and I pray them come
With their best speed at once. Make preparations
That they may sleep in comfort.
(Exeunt some of the Slaves.)
When I see
My Clara's exultation, I shall soon
Be merry, and forget the triad there,
Riddling my brain with arrows as they flash;
Forget the people in the hippodrome,
Whose shouts are not of friendship, and forget
That heap, the moonlight . . .
and these rows of mutes,
The glittering, fixed eyes that pass a comment
On every little motion that I make.
Wise Pertinax to sup alone! (To Slaves)

Begone!
(Exeunt.)
(Some moments of waiting silence.)
And now there is not any, the least noise
Within; but now I must bow down and hear
The cries of execration in the street,
The soldiers' drowning plaudits, the acclaim.
Does the world echo? For I hear a blast
Prolonged, afar, a hollow trumpet-call,
To which a herald shouts “Caligula,”
Then smoothing silence; and again the call
And shout of “Claudius, Nero, Galba,”—names
Of every murdered Emperor . . . “Commodus,”
And lastly “Pertinax;” while after him
Silence lies hungry.
(The stillness is broken by fiercer cries from the hippodrome.)
Can there be such rage?
Such harassing, fanged, ravenous, wild hatred,
And no escape from all this loneliness
And furious consternation? Double horror
Of phantasms and of the deep-mouthed crowd!
I can but pace and pace, and wish that thunder
Would shake that stony moonlight from the room,
Or wish that I were buried . . . (pausing by an archaic sacrophagus)

Ay as there,
Deep in a basalt tomb, with consciousness
The weight of ages would hold down the lid
Through many thousand years. To be forgotten,
To mingle with impenetrable sand,
That is to be a king. My throat is dry;
There is a taste like brass upon my tongue,
A nausea, a discouragement . . . Again
The soldiers' clamour swells, again “Augustus”
Rings in my ears, with noble epithets,
“Magnificent, divine.” If Rome would love me,
Or even would flatter, hail me as a god!
Ay, but the gods have never mounted thrones,
At least with human witness; if they had,
They would have felt like strangers.
(Flutes are heard outside: Pylades enters.)
Pylades,
Tricked out as Bacchus, with his noble fruit,
Gilt greaves and Tyrian mantle! Now he breaks
The lovely silence of his vocal limbs,
Wreathing his body to the flutes. Divine!
Juno would rise and call this boy her son
If in Olympus he should move like this.

(Voices sing to the flutes while Pylades rhythmically interprets the Canticum.)
CHORUS.

(As Pylades is dancing, the howls from the hippodrome become wilder, and Didius rises anxiously. He paces to and fro, his foot slips on the blood of Pertinax; he shrieks. Pylades, forgetting his part, drops his thyrsus, leaps to the Emperor's side, and clings to him, while the flutes play on.)
PYLADES
(taking off his mask.)
O Emperor, what has thrilled you? For I felt
How cold you were to everything I did.
Ye gods, the room is cold; some influence presses
As snow up round me, weighs upon my limbs,
And makes the chaunt I render yawn between
Myself and inspiration like a blank.
I have grown powerless and I hear you cry.
What is it?

DIDIUS.
Boy, my Bacchus, it is blood;
I glided on the blood of Pertinax
And almost fell.
Why did you play this part?
Why let your dithyrambus turn my palace
Into an underground and echoing tomb?
I quail with fear, the chamber is so full
Of that dread song of life and of the curses
With which the Romans keep the night alive;
And all this while a corpse is growing stiff
Behind that door, a corpse.

PYLADES.
Does Cæsar mean
There is a body near us, out of sight?

DIDIUS.
Yes, there.

PYLADES.
Whose body?

DIDIUS.
That of Pertinax.
It menances my future.

PYLADES.
Vail your eyes!
We must not look behind the screen, not there,
Not anywhere; we must not front the fates,
But let them sing to us. Again the song!

CHORUS.
March! Let fly your jests like arrows,
Slay with laughter,
Slay with hatred,
With the tongue and with the voice.
March! Our pleasure is a passion
Keen to strive and keen to conquer,
While audacious to enjoy.
India, ho!—the world before us!
All the plains and timeless deserts
That are African and Asian,
All the meadows of the West,
And the steeps of Italy.

(Flutes alone.)
PYLADES.
Why did you stop the dancing? I am lost;
It all goes by, the unarrested splendour,
The music of the pipes, the ruthless voices,
And I am outcast.

DIDIUS.
Then you feel it too?
I hear your heart, I hear it beat on mine
With terror, not an equal wretchedness.
Those howls outside are hungry but for me;
Those stars are bubbling with a fiery haste
To ruin me; these rose-leaves will not check
The sliding of my feet. I am pursued;
I feel the victim's shiver through my limbs:
The gods are injured and the majesty
Of Rome cries from the ground, while I am here
Bewildered, innocent.

PYLADES.
The clamour falls,
And the great melody goes surging on
That I have never heard before: the tune!

CHORUS.
I have passed one lonesome figure
By the surf-edge of the ocean,
With a salt and sterile drearness
In the eyes that gaze to sea:
But, unprompted, flashing forward
As no wing of bird can flash,
I am near her, I have called her,
And her lips breathe toward my breathing,
And the light from off her face
Is the glow of my own triumph,
As I draw the love within her
Out from modesty to truth.
Now my spells have wrought a kingdom,
Now is Ariadne crowned;
Side by side, above the tigers,
Side by side and gaze on gaze;
Forth we press, our powers behind us,
We the bounteous, we who live.

(Flutes alone.)
PYLADES.
You heard? That faultless marriage—love in love
Lost deep in sempiternity; the rapture
Of god and woman as the music raved,
And the voice swelled the music's resonance.
While I am here, beside you, and aloof
From all the force, the melody, the passion
That I am born to move to . . . nothing mine,
Save, Emperor, death.

DIDIUS.
I do not understand.
But such as you are prescient in their moods
And speak enigmas. What of that? You cling
With flesh that beats on mine; you are to me
More than a desert empire, precious boy:
For while you fill my arms I am not lost
In fatal strangeness that presages death
Before one dies; and when I hear you speak
I realise my execrating people
Are in the hippodrome, not with me here;
I see the undrowned lustre of that star,
And know Severus has not heard the news
That I have bought the world, that Pertinax
Is dead. I am not as a madman tethered
To my own nature's plague, shut up with self
And my clawed heart-strings. You deliver me,
You give me conciousness, and in return
I love you with a wasteful gratitude,
A fulness in a moment, years of warmth
Poured out, not to your beauty, your wide hair
And supple limbs—no, not to them, but you,
A god become a mortal, serving me,
Keeping me living by the awful zest
With which he shares my agony: more close
Than any creature of my flesh and blood
Can ever be.—Salvator! While I hold you
Safe in my clasp my hands enfold the world,
And I too hear the music—how it cries!

CHORUS.
Evoe! Hark the word that rouses
Tigers' fierceness,
Women's madness,
Cheers and jubilee of satyrs,
Execration in our foes,
Turbulent felicity
In our ranks and in our hearts.
Evoe!—for the earth is waking,
As the sun can never wake it;
As alone victorious passage
Of its life-blood into living
Can arouse and fire its kingdoms.
Evoe! Frantic beat the cymbals,
Satyrs, beat your little drums!
Down with impetus of dances,
Down on India, with your serpents,
With your wine-cups and the garlands
Round your weapons and your brows.
Overwhelm the world with singing,
Light it with one flow of torches,
Laugh across it, clang against it—
Evoe!—for the world is ours!

(The Flutes cease.)
PYLADES.
And yet to die . . .
To go from all that warms the pulse, to wander
Naked and fasting through the asphodels . . .

(He weeps.)
DIDIUS.
Nay, hush! We must not think: your dithyramb
Would kill all evil thinking, and the leaves
And grapes of your vine-garland, Bacchus mine,
Forbid your brain to toil. Resume the mask!
It is your pledge of life. We must not die:
You cannot, my young god; all gods endure.

(Enter Manlia and Didia Clara. Pylades hastily puts on his mask.)
CLARA.
Father!

DIDIUS.
Augusta, lady of the world,
My child . . . and you, dear wife, Augusta too:
The Senate has acclaimed you.

MANLIA.
Jupiter
Be praised, and Plutus!

DIDIUS.
I have bought the gift
Unequalled, for your love's sake. Kiss me, child.

CLARA.
Not while your arm is round that pantomime,
The wheedling sycophant, who hides his shame
With a god's visage. Throw him to the ground,
And let your slaves despatch him.

DIDIUS.
Pylades?
Why should the lad be doomed? What cause—what proof? . . .

CLARA.
I give no reason but my will: unproved,
Or proved his crime, he dies; for in the scope
Of the great honour I receive from Rome,
I have a sovereign power of life and death
That he shall feel, unless it is a dream,
A hollow title that you flout me with.
The world is nothing to me, while he breathes
Defiantly within it, poisoning,
Dimming my triumph. Slay him!

DIDIUS.
What, you greet me
With this, “The world is nothing,” when for you
I have poured out my riches, and for you
Endangered life and peace? Behind that door
Lies Pertinax beheaded, and outside
The people rage, while in this lonely dwelling
I have outbraved extremity: and yet
You say, “The world is nothing.” By the gods,
You are as hungry as the mouth of Dis.
The world is nothing, madam?

CLARA.
While he lives.

DIDIUS.
But you have never thanked me, have not sighed
One zephyr of heart's-ease nor let a smile
Pay my profuseness lavishly. Naught, naught!
When I have almost equalled deity
In my munificence.

MANLIA.
Control yourself,
Dear husband; you are now a governor.

CLARA.
By Vesta, he insulted me.

DIDIUS.
And you
Insult my very fatherhood, insult
My sickened hope to please you. When I bid
The hundred drachms beyond Sulpicianus,
I saw your joy like sun upon my gold;
That vision was my crown. Away, away!
I have no more for you; I have no more.
Hence! I have risked life, treasure, peace of mind,
To give you what is valueless. Away!

MANLIA.
Her father, you will surely hear her speak
Of wrong that wounds her pride.

DIDIUS.
I will not hear.
Have I not heard her say the world is nothing?
And yet an hour ago it was the aim
Of all desire, for which I spent myself.
You both are more like images than women,
Cold as if everything I did, my labour,
My pain, the anxious horror of to-night,
The sacrifice of a whole treasury,
Were piled in front of stone. And now you ask
The only life that through my solitude
Came close to me with love, that forced the hours
Affrighting me like monstrous births of Time
Back to their human stamp. You say . . . but then
Why should I listen further to your lies?
You said the world was all that you desired,
You say the world is nothing, and you say
My Pylades insulted you.
By heaven,
You bear false witness, that your jealousy
May seize an instant victim! I am judge;
And when man's life is in debate, 'tis vain
To bid me hasten judgment.

CLARA.
Do you call
That sorry creature man?

DIDIUS.
How well I see
Your accusation is a perjurer's,
No justice in its accent—none! (to Pylades.)

Stand forth,
And lift that mask from off your countenance.
Have you offended as she charges you?

PYLADES.
I have not; she mistakes. I played a part
That she demanded, and she took it ill:
Sometimes we pantomimes are punished thus
By slow-conceiving patrons. All the blame
Lies in the certainty I did not please.

DIDIUS.
Not please—ah, there I have it! Give your life
To this voracious Harpy—no! (To Clara.)

Your suit,
Augusta, is rejected.

CLARA.
Infamous!
Outrage from you, my father, you . . . the protest
Of venal lips preferred before my oath!
And you can suffer those still eyes to stare
In a rapt wonder at me, nor remove
At once their watching from my memory.
Mother, you stay or go, but I return
Home from a palace where my will is mocked,
My word claims no belief, my natural place
Is filled by yonder god of paint and lawn
My sire is pleased to cherish as a son.
Augustus, I, like you, disown our bond:
You have no daughter, and my love is hate.
(to Pylades.)
Almighty minion, you may grant your favours
Or hold them back: I am not in their sphere.
Vale, my lords!

(Exit.)
MANLIA.
Fortuna, you allow
Your child to leave you thus? For honour's sake
And empire's dignity, remove protection
From your dishonoured favourite! Do not place
One who was born a slave, and practises
An execrable art, before the offspring
I bore you, I, your Empress and the woman
You have entitled Juno. On my life,
Husband, I think the fever of to-day
Disorders you: you take a dancer's word
Against your daughter's, will not wash a stain
From her proud modesty in servile blood.
You glare upon me so, my shattered strength
Will need physician's soothing, ere I sleep.
Are you Lycurgus? will you slay your child
To please this Bacchus? You have slain her love.
It is a sin extravagant and cruel
That you commit against her in your rage.

DIDIUS.
Then follow her.

MANLIA.
To bring her back? I will.

DIDIUS.
I'd rather look upon a parricide;
Go, if you love the sight.

MANLIA.
What, of my child?
I do; and I retire, with prayers to heaven
The husband and the father may be changed
To his old likeness and serenity.
Our daughter must be soothed at home.
Farewell! . . .
(The Slaves of Didius' household enter with amphoræ.)
Restrain yourself in wine: you sent the keys
For your Setinian. Be persuaded, drink,
But yet with moderation, for your forehead
Is flushed and heavy, and that boy will tempt.
Our reign has opened sombrely. I go.

(Exit.)
DIDIUS.
Or I shall strike you.
Clara! she has left
My palace daughterless, and now her mother
Forgets she is my wife. Where are they gone?
Or have they ever been the human creatures
I fostered as my soul? Are they not idols,
Mere idols, with no comradeship to offer,
And with no spring of thanks to feed the time
We ruin for their sakes? O Didia Clara!
Was that her name—my own—and to be set
So proudly on the medals?
(to Pylades.)
Women, death!
We will forget them. See, the feast is spread,
The roses are ensanguined by the lamps,
And the wine waits to give them drenching baths
Of darker glory. Evoe, Pylades!
Although these women toss the world away
That I have bought, does that disown the fact
That I have bought it? It is mine, my own,
Mine to enjoy to-night, and while the fates
Yield me these marble halls for such a feast,
You for companion. Drink, my Pylades!

(Pylades, seizing the wine-cup, drains it.)
PYLADES.
O Bacchus, to oblivion! For we die,
We live—no matter—while the chorus swells
Behind us and beyond, with dedication
Of future after future in the past;
Spring, and then spring through years that dim all count;
Cycles of races, laughter, joys on joys,
And joy-enkindling pains. I lift the crater;
Drain it yourself: it gives the warranty
Of endless life, our own forgotten. Drink!

DIDIUS
(drinking.)
Two centuries have sealed it for this hour.
Quaff it again, my conqueror of death,
And dip that flagging vine.
(Pylades steeps his wreath & drinks again.)
Your golden tresses
Rust with Setinian stains. (Shouting.)

More music, heigh!
Again the wild close of the dithyramb.

(The Flutes sound.)
PYLADES.
And I to make it rush across your sight,
As voice and music bear it to your ears.
I practise the divinest mystery;
Co-equal with creation, it was born,
As love, in oldest days: our holy Mother
Of all things, Rhea, watches silently
With smiles the dance; it saved the life of Zeus
Through Corybantic homage, and the god
Who lives in me to-night, through dancing tamed
The Indians, the Tyrrhenians, and the folk
Of Lydia—savage peoples. By the stars,
I will subdue the curse of Pertinax!

(He catches up his mask and the thyrsus he had dropped at the moment of panic, sweeps aside the curtain and invites his hidden orchestra and chorus to enter. They group themselves behind him and recommence singing and playing to his dance.)
CHORUS.
Evoe! Hark, the word that rouses
Tigers' fierceness,
Women's madness,
Cheers and jubilee of satyrs,
Execration in our foes,
Turbulent felicity
In our ranks and in our hearts.
Evoe!—for the earth is waking
As the sun can never wake it,
As alone victorious passage
Of its life-blood into living
Can arouse and fire its kingdoms.
Evoe! Frantic beat the cymbals.
Satyrs, beat your little drums;
Down with impetus of dances,
Down on India with your serpents,
With your wine-cups and the garlands
Round your weapons and your brows.
Overwhelm the world with singing,
Light it with one flow of torches,
Laugh across it, clang against it,
Evoe!—for the world is ours.

(After a wild dithyrambic dance, he waves the flutists and singers away.)
DIDIUS.
You only live by movement. Ah, what curves
Of the supple lawn, now spread as wings, and now
As hollow as the chalice of a flower,
And you half-seen among them, apparition
Of deity belonging to the air.
Your dancing as the rod of Mercury
Could waken all that sleep. It is a pleasure
Like music or like love. Wise hands, wise feet,
That can persuade so well! If I could join
The kingdom of your dithyramb, I think
All craving would be filled. Delicious boy,
I give you perfect praise; for if the god
You dance were present, he as in a glass
Would find his acts, his motions. I can scarcely
Contain my heart at what your body pictures,
An empire that is life and will and blessing,
That taunts my gold, my fear, and draws me on
To leave regret and memories behind.
But you have fallen quivering and draped
In the damp veils that cling upon your form.
Come, let us banquet: rest these perfect limbs
Along the cushions. . .
What, you will not eat?

PYLADES
(unmasked.)
I am too much of fire to feed that way:
Your praise, the wine, the beauty—ah, the beauty
For which I live, alone can entertain
My appetite this evening.

(Gabba suddenly lifts himself from an obscure corner near the bath-room.)
GABBA.
But my supper!
I have not eaten since the early dawn.
You promised me my supper.

DIDIUS.
Ah! my dwarf,
You here! Back to your mistress; she will teach you
To grin with your scant face.

GABBA.
I am at home.
Do not dismiss me as a beggar. I
Can lead you on from empty room to room,
Till they become familiar, for I know
The palace inch by inch—its murdered masters,
Its murdered masters! I have seen before
A stain like this, a runlet from the ground.
This was my corner by the Emperor's chair.
Now lift me up.

DIDIUS.
Look at him, Pylades.
Why should I lift you? Climb!

PYLADES.
Give him a crater,
And we will have him drunk too in a trice,
And hiccuping success.

GABBA.
I can lap blood
Here on the floor.

DIDIUS.
Tush! I will lift you up,
And drop the rosy garland in your bowl:
Now you can drink the flowers.

GABBA.
You are afraid:
You spill the wine.

DIDIUS.
Why do you grovel there,
You wart, you fungus?

(He kicks Gabba.)
GABBA.
Blood upon your heel!

DIDIUS.
Quick, Pylades, remove him!
(Gabba is caught by Pylades and thrown out of the room: one thin groan is heard.)
And this feast!
I cannot touch it. So I pushed away
My wife, my child—and it is time to sleep:
Even the hippodrome is quiet now. . . .
(Pylades returns.)
I cannot sleep alone. Say, Pylades,
Poor lad, are you not weary?

PYLADES.
Wine, more wine!

(He falls across the couch at Didius' feet, a drunken Bacchus.)