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All that was mine, and bad, thy breast inherit.
Alas, how weak is that for Catiline!

Did I but say-vain voice!—all that was mine?—
All that the Gracchi, Cinna, Marius would,
What now, had I a body again, I could,

Coming from hell, what fiends would wish should be,
And Hannibal could not have wish'd to see,
Think thou, and practise. Let the long-hid seeds
Of treason in thee, now shoot forth in deeds
Ranker than horror; and thy former facts
Not fall in mention, but to urge new acts,
Conscience of them provoke thee on to more:
Be still thy incests, murders, rapes, before
Thy sense; thy forcing first a vestal nun ;
Thy parricide, late, on thine own only son,
After his mother, to make empty way
For thy last wicked nuptials; worse than they,
That blaze that act of thy incestuous life,
Which got thee at once a daughter and a wife.
I leave the slaughters that thou didst for me,
Of senators, for which, I hid for thee
Thy murder of thy brother, being so bribed,
And writ him in the list of my proscribed
After thy fact, to save thy little shame;
Thy incest with thy sister, I not name:
These are too light; fate will have thee pursue
Deeds, after which no mischief can be new;
The ruin of thy country: Thou wert built
For such a work, and born for no less guilt.
What though defeated once thou'st been, and known,
Tempt it again: That is thy act, or none.
What all the several ills that visit earth,
Brought forth by night with a sinister birth,
Plagues, famine, fire, could not reach unto,
The sword, nor surfeits; let thy fury do:

Make all past, present, future ill thine own ;
And conquer all example in thy one.
Nor let thy thought find any vacant time
To hate an old, but still a fresher crime
Drown the remembrance; let not mischief cease,
But while it is in punishing, increase,
Conscience and care die in thee; and be free
Not heaven itself from thy impiety:

Let night grow blacker with thy plots, and day,
At shewing but thy head forth, start away

From this half-sphere; and leave Rome's blinded walls

To embrace lusts, hatreds, slaughters, funerals,
And not recover sight till their own flames
Do light them to their ruins! All the names
Of thy confederates too be no less great
In hell than here: that when we would repeat
Our strengths in muster, we may name you all,
And furies upon you for furies call!

Whilst what you do may strike them into fears,
Or make them grieve, and wish your mischief theirs.

CATILINE rises and comes forward.

[Sinks.

Cat. It is decreed: nor shall thy fate, O Rome,
Resist my vow. Though hills were set on hills,
And seas met seas to guard thee, I would through;
Ay, plough up rocks, steep as the Alps, in dust,
And lave the Tyrrhene waters into clouds,
But I would reach thy head, thy head, proud city!
The ills that I have done cannot be safe
But by attempting greater; and I feel

A spirit within me chides my sluggish hands,
And says, they have been innocent too long.
Was I a man bred great as Rome herself,
One form'd for all her honours, all her glories,

Equal to all her titles; that could stand
Close up with Atlas, and sustain her name
As strong as he doth heaven! and was I,
Of all her brood, mark'd out for the repulse
By her no-voice, when I stood candidate
To be commander in the Pontic war!
I will hereafter call her step-dame ever.
If she can lose her nature, I can lose
My piety, and in her stony entrails
Dig me a seat; where I will live again,
The labour of her womb, and be a burden

Weightier than all the prodigies and monsters

That she hath teem'd with, since she first knew Mars

Who's there?

Aur. 'Tis I.

Enter AURELIA ORESTILLA.

Cat. Aurelia ?

Aur. Yes.

Cat. Appear,

And break like day, my beauty, to this circle :
Upbraid thy Phoebus, that he is so long

In mounting to that point, which should give thee
Thy proper splendour. Wherefore frowns my sweet?
Have I too long been absent from these lips,

This cheek, these eyes? [Kisses them.] What is my trespass, speak?

Aur. It seems you know, that can accuse your self.

Cat. I will redeem it.

Aur. Still you say so.

When?

Cat. When Orestilla, by her bearing well

These my retirements, and stol'n times for thought,
Shall give their effects leave to call her queen
Of all the world, in place of humbled Rome.
Aur. You court me now.

Cat. As I would always, love,

By this ambrosiac kiss, and this of nectar,
Wouldst thou but hear as gladly as I speak.
Could my Aurelia think I meant her less,
When, wooing her, I first removed a wife,
And then a son, to make my bed and house
Spacious and fit to embrace her? these were deeds
Not to have begun with, but to end with more
And greater: He that, building, stays at one
Floor, or the second, hath erected none.
'Twas how to raise thee I was meditating,
To make some act of mine answer thy love;
That love, that, when my state was now quite sunk,
Came with thy wealth and weigh'd it up again,
And made my emergent fortune once more look
Above the main; which now shall hit the stars,
And stick my Orestilla there amongst them,
If any tempest can but make the billow,
And any billow can but lift her greatness.
But I must pray my love, she will put on
Like habits with myself; I have to do
With many men, and many natures: Some
That must be blown and sooth'd; as Lentulus,
Whom I have heav'd with magnifying his blood,
And a vain dream out of the Sybil's books,
That a third man of that great family
Whereof he is descended, the Cornelii,
Should be a king in Rome : which I have hired
The flattering augurs to interpret Him,
Cinna and Sylla dead. Then bold Cethegus,
Whose valour I have turn'd into his poison,
And praised so into daring, as he would
Go on upon the gods, kiss lightning, wrest
The engine from the Cyclops, and give fire
At face of a full cloud, and stand his ire,

Others there are,

When I would bid him move.

Whom envy to the state draws, and puts on
For contumelies received (and such are sure ones),
As Curius, and the forenamed Lentulus,

Both which have been degraded in the senate,
And must have their disgraces still new rubb'd,
To make them smart, and labour of revenge.
Others whom mere ambition fires, and dole
Of provinces abroad, which they have feign'd
To their crude hopes, and I as amply promised:
These, Lecca, Vargunteius, Bestia, Autronius.
Some whom their wants oppress, as the idle captains
Of Sylla's troops; and divers Roman knights,
The profuse wasters of their patrimonies,

So threaten'd with their debts, as they will now
Run any desperate fortune for a change.
These, for a time, we must relieve, Aurelia,

And make our house their safeguard: like for those
That fear the law, or stand within her gripe,
For any act past or to come; such will,
From their own crimes, be factious, as from ours.
Some more there be, slight airlings, will be won
With dogs and horses, or perhaps a whore;
Which must be had: and if they venture lives
For us, Aurelia, we must hazard honours
A little. Get thee store and change of women,
As I have boys; and give them time and place,
And all connivance: be thy self, too, courtly;
And entertain and feast, sit up, and revel;
Call all the great, the fair, and spirited dames
Of Rome about thee; and begin a fashion

Of freedom and community: some will thank thee,
Though the sour senate frown, whose heads must ache
In fear and feeling too. We must not spare

Or cost or modesty: It can but shew

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