The Commonwealth of Oceana [136]
day, every hour will produce a new order, the end whereof is to have no order at all, but to grind with the clack of some demagogue. Is he providing already for his golden thumb? Lift up your heads; away with ambition, that fulsome complexion of a statesman, tempered, like Sylla's, with blood and muck. 'And the Lord give to his senators wisdom; and make our faces to shine, that we may be a light to them that sit in darkness and the shadow of death, to guide their feet in the way of peace.' -- In the name of God, what's the matter?"
Philadelphus, the secretary of the council, having performed his task in reading the several orders as you have seen, upon the receipt of a packet from his correspondent Boccalini, secretary of Parnassus, in reading one of the letters, burst forth into such a violent passion of weeping and downright howling, that the legislators, being startled with the apprehension of some horrid news, one of them had no sooner snatched the letter out of his hand, than the rest crying, "Read, read," he obeyed in this manner: "The 3d instant his Phoebean majesty having taken the nature of free states into his royal consideration, and being steadily persuaded that the laws in such governments are incomparably better and more surely directed to the good of mankind than in any other; that the courage of such a people is the aptest tinder to noble fire; that the genius of such a soil is that wherein the roots of good literature are least worm-eaten with pedantism, and where their fruits have ever come to the greatest maturity and highest relish, conceived such a loathing of their ambition and tyranny, who, usurping the liberty of their native countries, become slaves to themselves, inasmuch as (be it never so contrary to their own nature or consciences) they have taken the earnest of sin, and are engaged to persecute all men that are good with the same or greater rigor than is ordained by laws for the wicked, for none ever administered that power by good which he purchased by ill arts -- Phoebus, I say, having considered this, assembled all the senators residing in the learned court at the theatre of Melpomene, where he caused Caesar the Dictator to come upon the stage, and his sister Actia, his nephew Augustus, Julia his daughter, with the children which she had by Marcus Agrippa, Lucius and Caius Caesars, Agrippa Posthumus, Julia, and Agrippina, with the numerous progeny which she bore to her renowned husband Germanicus, to enter. A miserable scene in any, but most deplorable in the eyes of Caesar, thus beholding what havoc his prodigious ambition, not satisfied with his own bloody ghost, had made upon his more innocent remains, even to the total extinction of his family. For it is (seeing where there is any humanity, there must be some compassion) not to be spoken without tears, that of the full branches deriving from Octavia the eldest sister, and Julia the daughter of Augustus, there should not be one fruit or blossom that was not cut off or blasted by the sword, famine, or poison. "Now might the great soul of Caesar have been full; and yet that which poured in as much or more was to behold that execrable race of the Claudii, having hunted and sucked his blood, with the thirst of tigers, to be rewarded with the Roman Empire, and remain in full possession of that famous patrimony: a spectacle to pollute the light of heaven! Nevertheless, as if Caesar had not yet enough, his Phoeban majesty caused to be introduced on the other side of the theatre, the most illustrious and happy prince Andrea Doria, with his dear posterity, embraced by the soft and constant arms of the city of Genoa, into whose bosom, ever fruitful in her gratitude, he had dropped her fair liberty like the dew of heaven, which, when the Roman tyrant beheld, and how much more fresh that laurel was worn with a firm root in the hearts of the people than that which he had torn off, he fell into such a horrid distortion of limbs and countenance, that the senators, who had thought themselves steel and flint at such an object, having hitherto
Philadelphus, the secretary of the council, having performed his task in reading the several orders as you have seen, upon the receipt of a packet from his correspondent Boccalini, secretary of Parnassus, in reading one of the letters, burst forth into such a violent passion of weeping and downright howling, that the legislators, being startled with the apprehension of some horrid news, one of them had no sooner snatched the letter out of his hand, than the rest crying, "Read, read," he obeyed in this manner: "The 3d instant his Phoebean majesty having taken the nature of free states into his royal consideration, and being steadily persuaded that the laws in such governments are incomparably better and more surely directed to the good of mankind than in any other; that the courage of such a people is the aptest tinder to noble fire; that the genius of such a soil is that wherein the roots of good literature are least worm-eaten with pedantism, and where their fruits have ever come to the greatest maturity and highest relish, conceived such a loathing of their ambition and tyranny, who, usurping the liberty of their native countries, become slaves to themselves, inasmuch as (be it never so contrary to their own nature or consciences) they have taken the earnest of sin, and are engaged to persecute all men that are good with the same or greater rigor than is ordained by laws for the wicked, for none ever administered that power by good which he purchased by ill arts -- Phoebus, I say, having considered this, assembled all the senators residing in the learned court at the theatre of Melpomene, where he caused Caesar the Dictator to come upon the stage, and his sister Actia, his nephew Augustus, Julia his daughter, with the children which she had by Marcus Agrippa, Lucius and Caius Caesars, Agrippa Posthumus, Julia, and Agrippina, with the numerous progeny which she bore to her renowned husband Germanicus, to enter. A miserable scene in any, but most deplorable in the eyes of Caesar, thus beholding what havoc his prodigious ambition, not satisfied with his own bloody ghost, had made upon his more innocent remains, even to the total extinction of his family. For it is (seeing where there is any humanity, there must be some compassion) not to be spoken without tears, that of the full branches deriving from Octavia the eldest sister, and Julia the daughter of Augustus, there should not be one fruit or blossom that was not cut off or blasted by the sword, famine, or poison. "Now might the great soul of Caesar have been full; and yet that which poured in as much or more was to behold that execrable race of the Claudii, having hunted and sucked his blood, with the thirst of tigers, to be rewarded with the Roman Empire, and remain in full possession of that famous patrimony: a spectacle to pollute the light of heaven! Nevertheless, as if Caesar had not yet enough, his Phoeban majesty caused to be introduced on the other side of the theatre, the most illustrious and happy prince Andrea Doria, with his dear posterity, embraced by the soft and constant arms of the city of Genoa, into whose bosom, ever fruitful in her gratitude, he had dropped her fair liberty like the dew of heaven, which, when the Roman tyrant beheld, and how much more fresh that laurel was worn with a firm root in the hearts of the people than that which he had torn off, he fell into such a horrid distortion of limbs and countenance, that the senators, who had thought themselves steel and flint at such an object, having hitherto