Be not as common fools: if you are not,
Let them have cushions by you. You are plebeians,
If they be senators: and they are no less,
When, both your voices blended, the greatest taste
Most palates theirs. They choose their magistrate!
And such a one as he who puts his "shall,"
His popular "shall," against a graver bench
Than ever frowned in Greece !-By Jove himself,
It makes the consuls base! and my soul aches
To know, when two authorities are up,
Neither supreme, how soon confusion
May enter 't wixt the gap of both, and take
The one by the other.

Even when the navel of the state was touched, They would not thread the gates. This kind of service

Did not deserve corn gratis. Being i' the war,
Their mutinies and revolts, wherein they shewed
Most valour, spoke not for them. The accusation
Which they have often made against the senate,
All cause unborn, could never be the native
Of our so frank donation.-Well, what then?
How shall this bosom multiplied digest
The senate's courtesy? Let deeds express
What's like to be their words: "We did request it:
We are the greater poll; and in true fear
They gave us our demands."-Thus we debase
The nature of our seats, and make the rabble
Call our cares, fears: which will in time break ope
The locks o' the senate, and bring in the crows
To peck the eagles.

Sic.

Speak briefly, then;
For we are peremptory to despatch
This viperous traitor. To eject him hence
Were but one danger; and to keep him here
Our certain death: therefore it is decreed
He dies to-night.

Men. Now the good gods forbid
That our renowned Rome, whose gratitude
Towards her deserved children is enrolled
In Jove's own book, like an unnatural dam,
Should now eat up her own!

Sic. He's a disease that must be cut away.
Men. O, he's a limb that has but a disease:
Mortal to cut it off; to cure it easy.
What has he done to Rome that's worthy death?
Killing our enemies? The blood he hath lost
(Which I dare vouch is more than that he hath,
By many an ounce) he dropped it for his country:
And what is left, to lose it by his country,
Were to us all that do 't and suffer it

A brand to the end o' the world.
Sic.

This is clean kam.

You adopt your policy), how is it less or worse
That it shall hold companionship in peace
With honour, as in war; since that to both
It stands in like request?

Cor.
Why force
this?
you
Vol. Because that now it lies on you to speak
To the people: not by your own instruction,
Nor by the matter which your heart prompts you,
But with such words that are but roted in
Your tongue, though but bastards and syllables
Of no allowance to your bosom's truth.
Now, this no more dishonours you at all
Than to take in a town with gentle words,
Which else would put you to your fortune and
The hazard of much blood.-

I would dissemble with my nature, where
My fortunes and my friends, at stake, required
I should do so in honour. I am in this,
Your wife,-your son, these senators, the nobles:
And you will rather shew our general louts
How you can frown, than spend a fawn upon them
For the inheritance of their loves, and safeguard
Of what that want might ruin!

Thy knee bussing the stones (for in such business
Action is eloquence, and the eyes of the ignorant,
More learned than their ears), waving thy head,
Which often, thus,-correcting thy stout heart,
Now humble as the ripest mulberry,

That will not hold the handling. Or say to them,
Thou art their soldier, and being bred in broils,
Hast not the soft way which, thou dost confess,
Were fit for thee to use, as they to claim,
In asking their good loves: but thou wilt frame
Thyself, forsooth, hereafter theirs, so far
As thou hast power and person.
This but done,

Men.

Even as she speaks, why all their hearts were

yours: