Priscus.

Can you mean this?

Thr. Yes—it is my serious advice.

Pr. Now, unless it were the silence of Brutus ...

Thr. Hush, hush! Were this repeated, there is no greater peril than that word of yours.

Pr. But to you I know I may speak freely.

Thr. What know you of me?

Pr. I know Thrasea is brave, and resents his country’s wrongs; that he has insight to see that liberty was never more outraged than now.

Thr. Believe me, sir, this tale of things being at their worst is common to all times. Your judgment has gone astray upon a contempt for Cæsar’s follies, or a hatred of his mother’s crimes. Measure Nero but by what he has already done, and you may even find cause for congratulation.

Pr. We shall be ruled like the Britons by a Queen.

Thr. O nay. It is not possible that Nero will suffer Agrippina’s ambition to take such a place. ’Tis already a quarrel between them, and Seneca declares for him.

Pr. Then, I ask you, may there not be found in this quarrel an opportunity to bring in Britannicus? Now he is of age, he can no longer be held disqualified.

Thr. There is no question of qualification or of claim.

Pr. How so? The late emperor Claudius in his will mentioned Britannicus for his successor, as being his own son....

Thr. May be. But then, sir, his empress made away with both him and his will; and the Roman people chose for Cæsar the son of the murderess, rather than the heir of the idiot they were glad to be rid of. Since which day Nero is as truly our Cæsar as Britannicus could ever have been. Those who swore to Nero will remain by him; as ’tis well they should, else were no stability.

Pr. Shall we then do nothing?

Thr. You take things by the wrong handle. Let us make the best of what we have. Our Cæsar is the pupil of a philosopher and guided in everything by his master’s counsels.

Pr. You are very tolerant and hopeful.

Thr. Try and be so too, and I shall wish to see more of you. If you will visit my house, you will indeed be most welcome and may find congenial company. Only no more of Brutus.

Pr. Thank you for your kindness, if it is an earnest of your confidence—On another occasion...

Thr. O we will find many. (Shouts heard.) What is that? (More shouts.) It must be Cæsar: he is coming this way. Be not seen talking with me: go you that way: I will remain. Farewell.

Pr. Farewell, Thrasea. [Exit.

Thr. Young blood, hot blood and true: Yet is his energetic patriotism Useless,—nay, like a weapon out of date, Looks not to be a warlike weapon more. I think in me it had been truer wisdom, Knowing the forces of this drowning time, To have said outright—Good, honest Priscus, Be good no longer, let thine honesty Rot, it can stead thee nothing; there’s no man Will be the better for it; there’s no field Where thou canst exercise it, not a place In all the world where in secure possession Thou mayst retire with it: cast it away; For ’tis a burden far beyond thy freight. If thou wilt swim at all, swim with the times, An empty bottom on a shallow tide: Be that thy seamanship—No; I am bold to say Our virtue hath the topmost vaunt of honour; Seeing we are true to it in spite of shame, When its incompetence before the world Gives it the lie; nor can the fawning curs, That bask in Cæsar’s sunshine, when they mock us, Dream that we wish them other than they are. I give them joy. See here is folly’s king, The hare-brained boy to whom injurious fortune Has given the throne and grandeur of the world: Now if I bow my head ’tis in thy game, Ridiculous fate; and my soul laughs at thee.

[Retires aside.

Enter Nero, Otho, Lucan, Tigellinus, and Paris.