Could we be truly a prince.  And, they shall add
   Abounding grace unto our memory,
   That shall report us worthy our forefathers,
   Careful of your affairs, constant in dangers,
   And not afraid of any private frown
   For public good.  These things shall be to us
   Temples and statues, reared in your minds,
   The fairest, and most during imagery: 
   For those of stone or brass, if they become
   Odious in judgment of posterity,
   Are more contemn’d as dying sepulchres,
   Than ta’en for living monuments.  We then
   Make here our suit, alike to gods and men;
   The one, until the period of our race,
   To inspire us with a free and quiet mind,
   Discerning both divine and human laws;
   The other, to vouchsafe us after death,
   An honourable mention, and fair praise,
   To accompany our actions and our name: 
   The rest of greatness princes may command,
   And, therefore, may neglect; only, a long,
   A lasting, high, and happy memory
   They should, without being satisfied, pursue: 
   Contempt of fame begets contempt of virtue.

Nat.  Rare!

Bat.  Most divine!

Sej. 
   The oracles are ceased,
   That only Caesar, with their tongue, might speak.

Arr.  Let me be gone:  most felt and open this!

Cor.  Stay.

Arr. 
   What! to hear more cunning and fine words,
   With their sound flatter’d ere their sense be meant?

Tib. 
   Their choice of Antium, there to place the gift
   Vow’d to the goddess for our mother’s health,
   We will the senate know, we fairly like: 
   As also of their grant to Lepidus,
   For his repairing the AEmilian place,
   And restoration of those monuments: 
   Their grace too in confining of Silanus
   To the other isle Cithera, at the suit
   Of his religious sister, much commends
   Their policy, so temper’d with their mercy. 
   But for the honours which they have decreed
   To our Sejanus, to advance his statue
   In Pompey’s theatre, (whose ruining fire
   His vigilance and labour kept restrain’d
   In that one loss,) they have therein out-gone
   Their own great wisdoms, by their skilful choice,
   And placing of their bounties on a man,
   Whose merit more adorns the dignity,
   Than that can him; and gives a benefit,
   In taking, greater than it can receive. 
   Blush not, Sejanus, thou great aid of Rome,
   Associate of our labours, our chief helper;
   Let us not force thy simple modesty
   With offering at thy praise, for more we cannot,
   Since there’s no voice can take it. 
   No man here Receive our speeches as hyperboles: 
   For we are far from flattering our friend,
   Let envy know, as from the need to flatter. 
   Nor let them ask the causes of our praise: 
   Princes have still their grounds