For high Jove, that guideth all, When he lets his just wrath fall, To revenge proud diadems, With huge cares did cross kings' lives, Raising treasons in their realms By their children, friends, or wives. Therefore he, whom all men fear, Feareth all men everywhere. Fear, that doth engender hate (Hate enforcing them thereto), Maketh many undertake Many things they would not do. O, how many mighty kings Live in fear of petty things! For when kings have sought by wars Stranger towns to have o'erthrown, They have caught deserved scars, Seeking that was not their own. For no tyrant commonly, Living ill, can kindly die; But either traitorously surpris'd Doth coward poison quail[365] their breath, Or their people have devis'd, On their guard, to seek their death. He only lives most happily That, free and far from majesty, Can live content, although unknown; He fearing none, none fearing him: Meddling with nothing but his own, While gazing eyes at crowns grow dim. [_Exit._ _Enter_ CÆSAR _and_ MARK ANTONY. CÆSAR. O Rome, that with thy pride dost overpeer The worthiest cities of the conquer'd world; Whose honour, got by famous victories, Hath filled heaven's fiery vaults with frightful horror! O lofty towers! O stately battlements! O glorious temples! O proud palaces! And you brave walls, bright heaven's masonry, Grac'd with a thousand kingly diadems! Are ye not stirred with a strange delight, To see your Cæsar's matchless victories? And how your empire and your praise begins Through fame, which he of stranger nations wins? O beauteous Tiber, with thine easy streams, That glide as smoothly as a Parthian shaft! Turn not thy crispy[366] tides like silver curl, Back to thy grass-green banks to welcome us; And with a gentle murmur haste to tell The foaming seas the honour of our fight? Trudge not thy streams to Triton's mariners, To bruit the praises of our conquest past? And make their vaunts to old Oceanus, That henceforth Tiber shall salute the seas, More fam'd than Tiger or fair Euphrates? Now all the world (well-nigh) doth stoop to Rome: The sea, the earth, and all is almost ours. Be't, where the bright sun with his neighbour beams Doth early light the pearled Indians, Or where his chariot stays to stop the day, Till heaven unlock the darkness of the night. Be't, where the sea is wrapt in crystal ice, Or where the summer doth but warm the earth. Or here, or there, where is not Rome renown'd? There lives no king (how great soe'er he be) But trembleth if he once but hear of me. Cæsar is now earth's fame and Fortune's terror, And Cæsar's worth hath stain'd old soldiers' praises.