Bes.

  Come, our King’s a brave fellow.

Mar.

He is so Bessus, I wonder how thou cam’st to know it.  But if thou wer’t a man of understanding, I would tell thee, he is vain-glorious, and humble, and angry, and patient, and merry and dull, and joyful and sorrowful in extremity in an hour:  Do not think me thy friend for this, for if I ear’d who knew it, thou shouldst not hear it Bessus.  Here he is with his prey in his foot.

Enter &c.  Senet Flourish.

Enter Arbaces and Tigranes, Two Kings and two Gentlemen.

Arb.

  Thy sadness brave Tigranes takes away
  From my full victory, am I become
  Of so small fame, that any man should grieve
  When I o’recome him?  They that plac’d me here,
  Intended it an honour large enough, (though he
  For the most valiant living, but to dare oppose me single,
  Lost the day.  What should afflict you, you are as free as I,
  To be my prisoner, is to be more free
  Than you were formerly, and never think
  The man I held worthy to combate me
  Shall be us’d servilely:  Thy ransom is
  To take my only Sister to thy Wife. 
  A heavy one Tigranes, for she is
  A Lady, that the neighbour Princes send
  Blanks to fetch home.  I have been too unkind
  To her Tigranes, she but nine years old
  I left her, and ne’re saw her since, your wars
  Have held me long and taught me though a youth,
  The way to victory, she was a pretty child,
  Then I was little better, but now fame
  Cries loudly on her, and my messengers
  Make me believe she is a miracle;
  She’l make you shrink, as I did, with a stroak
  But of her eye Tigranes.

Tigr.

  Is’t the course of Iberia to use their prisoners thus? 
  Had fortune thrown my name above Arbace,
  I should not thus have talk’d Sir, in Armenia
  We hold it base, you should have kept your temper
  Till you saw home again, where ’tis the fashion
  Perhaps to brag.

Arb.

  Be you my witness earth, need I to brag,
  Doth not this captive Prince speak
  Me sufficiently, and all the acts
  That I have wrought upon his suffering Land;
  Should I then boast! where lies that foot of ground
  Within his whole Realm, that I have not past,
  Fighting and conquering; Far then from me
  Be ostentation.  I could tell the world
  How I have laid his Kingdom desolate
  By this sole Arm prop’t by divinity,
  Stript him out of his glories, and have sent
  The pride of all his youth to people graves,
  And made his Virgins languish for their Loves,
  If I would brag, should I that have the power
  To teach the Neighbour world humility,
  Mix with vain-glory?

Mar.