ACT V.

NERO - PREFECT. [820-876]
Nero, boiling over with rage, on account of the tumultuous rising of the populace, orders the most severe measures to be taken against them, and that Octavia, as the cause of such a rising, shall be transported to Pandataria and there slain.

NERO.

OH! the excessive laggardliness in the spirit of my soldiery, and oh! what anger rages within me, suffering as I have done from the commission of such dreadful crimes! Why has not the very life-blood of the citizens been made to extinguish the torches which have been kindled against me for my destruction? Why does Rome, assuming such a funeral aspect, not wade in the blood arising from the slaughter of such a populace? Oh thou Rome! that has ever produced men like them! but it would be a trifling thing for them to be punished only with that death that is the admitted retribution ordained for such deeds. No! this impious crime of the populace deserves more than that! But she, Octavia, for whom the fury of the citizens has subjected me to all this, and who has always been as a sister and wife to me, but whom I have had every reason to suspect, she shall at last be made to give up her life to me as the cost of that just anger, which she has always excited in my bosom, and she shall extinguish that anger with her blood! Very soon, the homesteads of the citizens shall fall a prey to the conflagrations which I will set going! Fire, utter ruin, shall weigh down this hateful rabble, extremest privations, bitter starvation with weeping and sorrow! The fact is a large proportion of the citizens have been eaten up with corruption and idleness and have grown exultant and surfeited with all the benefits that have accrued to them during my reign, nor does the ungrateful rabble appreciate the clemency they have received during my beneficent rule, nor, further, can they bear the idea of things going on peaceably, but the restless rascals must be seized with some mania or another, and in one direction they are carried away by sheer audacity, and in another they drift headlong with their rashness! These men must be kept under by terrible punishments, and perpetually weighed down by some oppressive yoke, lest they may have the audacity to venture upon a repetition of those outrages at some future time! No! they shall be made to raise their eyes with reverential respect at the divine face of my wife, and being crushed by the fear of my punishments, to obey the very nod of their emperor! But I now see coming towards me, a man, whose strict habits of discipline and acknowledged fidelity to my sceptre, have installed him in his present high position in my camp.

PREF. I have to report that the fury of the populace has at last been brought under, with the slaughter, too, of only some few, who, for a time, resisted to the last, urged on by their foolish obstinacy.

NERO. And is this, dost thou suppose, enough? Is this, too, the mode in which thou, as a soldier, hast dared to address thy Emperor? Thou appeasedst them indeed! No! No! let this hostile little modicum of punishment business fall to my lot!

PREF. The wicked leaders of the insurrection have already fallen by the sword.

NERO. What! that rascally rabble that dared to seek out my very Palace, and consign it to the flames; in other words, to lay down the law to their very Emperor, and to drag away my darling wife from my lawfully instituted marriage couch, to violate her liberty in short, as far as was in their power, by their incestuous hands and terrifying language! No! the punishment which they deserve must be left for me to carry out.

PREF. Will thy anger determine thee to inflict still further punishment upon thy citizens?

NERO. My anger will determine me to inflict that punishment which no length of time will ever serve to efface from the memory of man.

PREF. But canst thou not determine some punishment which will impose some sort of limit to thy anger, and which, at the same time, would diminish our fears.

NERO. The first object that shall expiate my anger, will be that one who deserves it the most.

PREF. Tell me whom thou wilt require for that purpose, and do not let our hands spare them.

NERO. My anger demands the execution of my sister, I require her odious life to be taken away.

PREF. I am trembling with horror at thy words - a sudden rigor has frozen up my veins! I am spell-bound!

NERO. Dost thou hesitate, then, to obey?

PREF. Why shouldst thou call my fidelity into question?

NERO. Why wouldst thou appear inclined to spare an enemy?

PREF. Dost thou mean to say, that any woman, as far as thou art concerned, deserves such a name as enemy?

NERO. Not if she has lent herself to acts of crime?

PREF. Is there anyone who can prove Octavia to be guilty of that?

NERO. This fury of the populace amply proves it to me.

PREF. Who is able, to exercise any influence over a lot of madmen?

NERO. Octavia, who was the means of exciting them on to those crimes.

PREF. I cannot suppose any woman to be capable of such a thing!

NERO. A woman, in whom nature has implanted the disposition, prone to do evil, and which has endowed her mind with all the instincts of crime and treachery, but yet that nature has withheld from her the requisite power, so that she should not in short be so impregnable, but that fear might have some chance of breaking down her feeble powers for mischief, or the punishment itself, which, although late in the day, threatens to be visited upon her, now that she is finally condemned, but this only, after having been an offender for so long! Therefore, abstain from offering me any more suggestions, or advancing any more intercessions, and see and carry out my orders to the very letter; give orders that Octavia be carried away, in some craft or other, to a remote spot, to some far-off shore, that, at last, the surging wrath in my breast may be allowed to cool down!

CHORUS - OCTAVIA. [877-982]
The Chorus sings regarding popular favor, which has been destructive to so many, and after that, brings into notice, the hard fates which have befallen the Caesarean Dynasty.

CHORUS.

OH! that favor and enthusiastic preference emanating, from the people! What a source of trouble, and misery it has proved to so many! It is like the craft, which has filled its sails under a favorable wind, and has carried thee far away from the shore, but which same wind, when a dead calm presents itself, leaves thee helpless in the cruel ocean depths! A miserable parent, ¹¹ aforetime bewailed the loss of the Gracchi (Cornelia) whom intense popular regard, and excessive appreciation by the public, were the means of leading to their ultimate ruin, - men, too, of such illustrious descent, and acknowledged piety, fidelity, distinguished eloquence, moral courage, and of unflinching severity, in their administration of just laws; and thee also Livius, ¹² fortune gave up to a similar end, whom neither thy magisterial dignity, nor the roof of thy very homestead, served as a protection against death! We could adduce many more striking examples, if our griefs did not prevent us - it was only quite lately, Octavia, that citizens were up in arms, and were most desirous of restoring to thee thy country - thy palace, and to exact from thy brother thy conjugal rights, but now, forsooth, they can calmly look on and see thee weeping and in misery - dragged away to meet thy doom! Poverty, in a state of happy contentment, lies hidden under the humble roof, but the storms of fate shake the lofty palaces, or capricious fortune overthrows them altogether!

OCT. Where art thou conducting me? What has that tyrant Nero ordered now? or what exile has his Queen Poppaeea appointed for me? or is it that she is melted by compassion at the troubles I have suffered, and my being so utterly cast down by such an array of misfortunes? If Nero is preparing to accumulate my sorrows, by my slaughter, as a climax to my sufferings, why does he even grudge me the privilege of dying in my own paternal soil, although my country has been the arena of so much cruelty towards me? But now there is no apparent hope of my ultimate safety - I perceive already in my misery the craft which bore away my brother! Ah! that is the craft, too, in which his mother was once carried off, and now, as an unfortunate wretch, banished from the marriage bed, I shall be carried away by the same conveyance. Piety has no tutelar deity now, and the Gods above, alas! are nowhere to be found! It is that cruel Erinnys, who can now cause me to weep adequately for the evils I have gone through! What Thracian nightingale will ever send forth its plaintive notes equal to mine? I only wish the Fates would give to me, in misery, a pair of wings! would I not cleave the air with my rapid wings spread out, and fly far, far away from all my present troubles, and remote from the busy haunts of man, and the hotbed of cruel slaughter, and alone in the desert grove, perched on some delicate twig, should I then be able to warble my tristful strains from my sorrowing throat!

CHO. The race of mortals is governed by the inexorable Fates! Nor does any thing sublunary answer the expectations of anyone as regards stableness or durability! and the coming day is always to be dreaded; whilst it invariably brings round in its train, such a variety of events! Surely thy Caesarean dynasty has undergone many troubles! What! Is fortune more cruel to thee, than it has been to many others before thee? We will mention thee, first of all, oh! thou the daughter of Agrippa, the unhappy parent of so many sons, the daughter-in-law of an Augustus, the wife of a Caesar, whose name shone so gloriously over the whole world, thou, that broughtest forth, from thy gravid uterus, so many pledges of peace to the universe! a double pledge, first, of love to a husband, secondly, a guarantee of unbroken succession to the imperial throne; by and bye, exile, stripes, undergoing the indignity of being fettered by chains, and being thus tormented for a long time, the once felicitously married Livia, ¹³ the wife of Drusus, happy too, with the possession of her sons, rushed on to the commission of a terrible crime, and its subsequent punishment! Julia, ¹⁴ her daughter, followed the fate of her mother; after a long time, however, she met her death by the sword, although for no crime, of her own! What could not thy own mother, Messalina, do who filled the palace of the Emperor, so dear to that husband too, and so proud and elated with her progeny; yet this same woman, having submitted to the unlawful advances of an underling (the marriage with Silius), fell by the sword of a savage soldier! What about Agrippina, too, such an illustrious parent of thy own Nero, who, with justice, and every show of reason, could have aspired to a place in the heavens, to absolute Apotheosis, as Divus did! was she not, however, outraged by the terrible hands of the Tyrrhenian boatmen, before she was seen to be hacked about by the sword, for a considerable time, and eventually succumbed, as the victim of a cruel son!

OCT. Behold that cruel tyrant will send me likewise to the tristful shades, and the manes! Why in my misery am I detained on earth to no purpose? Let me be seized upon for one of death’s victims, by those to whose power my bitter lot has surrendered me! I call the gods above to witness! But what am I now talking about in my madness? Let me spare myself the mockery of invoking the good will of the deities to whom, for some cause or other, I have evidently been an object of hatred! I therefore call the deities of Hell to witness, and the goddesses of Erebus, who are the avengers of crime, and thee, even, oh! my father, who really wert worthy of such a death, and punishment, as I am now about to suffer from - that death, however, is by no means unacceptable or hateful to me - Get the craft in readiness, unfurl the sails, and commit her to the waves and let the commander of that craft steer for the coast of Pandataria with a flowing breeze!

CHO. Oh! for the gentle breezes. Oh! for the light and balmy Zephyrs, which caught thee up, and wafted thee away, Iphigenia, surrounded, by an ethereal cloud, far from the altars of the cruel goddess (Diana), Oh! ye kind breezes, convey away this victim, Octavia, far away, from any cruel punishment, I pray, to the temples of Trivia, even (Diana) Aulis itself, is a less cruel place than thy city of Rome, and so is the land of the Tauri, ¹⁵ for there it is they sacrifice the blood of any strangers who approach their shores, to appease the anger of the goddess whom they worship! But Rome is very different, she rejoices only in the slaughter of her own citizens!