Nor sweated them to build up pyramids,
Or Babylonian walls.

Sal.

Yet these are trophies More worthy of a people and their prince

Than songs, and lutes, and feasts, and concubines, And lavish'd treasures, and contemned virtues.

Sar. Or for my trophies I have founded cities: There's Tarsus and Anchialus, both built

In one day—what could that blood-loving beldame, My martial grandam, chaste Semiramis,

Do more, except destroy them?

Sal.

'Tis most true; I own thy merit in those founded cities, Built for a whim, recorded with a verse

Which shames both them and thee to coming ages. Sar. Shame me! By Baal, the cities, though well

built,

Are not more goodly than the verse! Say what
Thou wilt 'gainst me, my mode of life or rule,
But nothing 'gainst the truth of that brief record.
Why, those few lines contain the history
Of all things human: hear-" Sardanapalus,
The king, and son of Anacyndaraxes,

In one day built Anchialus and Tarsus.

Eat, drink, and love; the rest's not worth a fillip." (1)

(1) "For this expedition he took only a small chosen body of the phalanx, but all his light troops. In the first day's march he reached Anchialus, a town said to have been founded by the king of Assyria, Sardanapalus. The fortifications, in their magnitude and extent, still in Arrian's time, bore the character of greatness, which the Assyrians appear singularly to have affected in works of the kind. A monument representng Sardanapalus was found there, warranted by an inscription in Assyrian characters, of course in the old Assyrian language, which the Greeks, whether well or ill, interpreted thus: Sardanapalus, son of Anacyn

Sal. A worthy moral, and a wise inscription, For a king to put up before his subjects!

Sar. Oh, thou wouldst have me doubtless set up edicts

"Obey the king-contribute to his treasureRecruit his phalanx-spill your blood at bidding— Fall down and worship, or get up and toil."

Or thus

66

Sardanapalus on this spot

Slew fifty thousand of his enemies.

These are their sepulchres, and this his trophy."
I leave such things to conquerors; enough
For me, if I can make my subjects feel
The weight of human misery less, and glide

daraxes, in one day founded Anchialus and Tarsus. Eat, drink, play: all other human joys are not worth a fillip.' Supposing this version nearly exact (for Arrian says it was not quite so), whether the purpose has not been to invite to civil order a people disposed to turbulence, rather than to recommend immoderate luxury, may perhaps reasonably be questioned. What, indeed, could be the object of a king of Assyria in founding such towns in a country so distant from his capital, and so divided from it by an immense extent of sandy deserts and lofty mountains, and, still more, how the inhabitants could be at once in circumstances to abandon themselves to the intemperate joys which their prince has been supposed to have recommended, is not obvious: but it may deserve observation that, in that line of coast, the southern of Lesser Asia, ruins of cities, evidently of an age after Alexander, yet barely named in history, at this day astonish the adventurous traveller by their magnificence and elegance. Amid the desolation which, under a singularly barbarian government, has for so many centuries been daily spreading in the finest countries of the globe, whether more from soil and climate, or from opportunities for commerce, extraordinary means must have been found for communities to flourish there; whence it may seem that the measures of Sardanapalus were directed by juster views than have been commonly ascribed to him: but that monarch having been the last of a dynasty, ended by a revolution, obloquy on his memory would follow of course from the policy of his successors and their partisans. The inconsistency of traditions concerning Sardanapalus is striking in Diodorus's account of him."- MITFORD'S Greece, vol ix. p. 311.

Ungroaning to the tomb: I take no license
Which I deny to them. We all are men.
Sal. Thy sires have been revered as gods-
Sar.

In dust'
And death, where they are neither gods nor men.
Talk not of such to me! the worms are gods;
At least they banqueted upon your gods,
And died for lack of farther nutriment.

Those gods were merely men; look to their issue-
I feel a thousand mortal things about me,
But nothing godlike,-unless it may be
The thing which you condemn, a disposition
To love and to be merciful, to pardon
The follies of my species, and (that's human)
To be indulgent to my own.

Alas!

Sal.
The doom of Nineveh is seal'd.-Woe-woe

To the unrivall❜d city!

Sar.

What dost dread!

Sal. Thou art guarded by thy foes: in a few

hours

The tempest may break out which overwhelms thee, And thine and mine; and in another day

What is shall be the past of Belus' race.

Sar. What must we dread?

Sal.

Ambitious treachery,

Which has environ'd thee with snares; but yet

There is resource: empower me with thy signet
To quell the machinations, and I lay

The heads of thy chief foes before thy feet.
Sar. The heads-how many?

Sal.

VOL. XIII.

Must I stay to number

G

When even thine own's in peril? Let me go;
Give me thy signet - trust me with the rest.

Sar. I will trust no man with unlimited lives. When we take those from others, we nor know What we have taken, nor the thing we give.

Sal. Wouldst thou not take their lives who seek for thine?

Sar. That's a hard question-But I answer, Yes. Cannot the thing be done without? Who are they Whom thou suspectest? Let them be arrested. Sal. I would thou wouldst not ask me; the next

moment

Will send my answer through thy babbling troop
Of paramours, and thence fly o'er the palace,
Even to the city, and so baffle all.-

Sal. That thou this night forbear the banquet In the pavilion over the Euphrates.

Sar. Forbear the banquet! Not for all the plotters That ever shook a kingdom! Let them come, And do their worst: I shall not blench for them; Nor rise the sooner; nor forbear the goblet; Nor crown me with a single rose the less; Nor lose one joyous hour.-I fear them not.

Sal. But thou wouldst arm thee, wouldst thou not, if needful?

Sar. Perhaps. I have the goodliest armour, and A sword of such a temper; and a bow

And javelin, which might furnish Nimrod forth:
A little heavy, but yet not unwieldy.

And now I think on't, 'tis long since I've used them,
Even in the chase. Hast ever seen them, brother?
Sal. Is this a time for such fantastic trifling?.
If need be, wilt thou wear them?

Sar.
Will I not?
Oh! if it must be so, and these rash slaves
Will not be ruled with less, I'll use the sword
Till they shall wish it turn'd into a distaff.

Sal. They say thy sceptre's turn'd to that already.
Sar. That's false! but let them say so: the old
Greeks,

Of whom our captives often sing, related
The same of their chief hero, Hercules,
Because he loved a Lydian queen: thou seest
The populace of all the nations seize

No;

Each calumny they can to sink their sovereigns.
Sal. They did not speak thus of thy fathers.
Sar.
They dared not. They were kept to toil and combat;
And never changed their chains but for their armour:
Now they have peace and pastime, and the license
To revel and to rail; it irks me not.

I would not give the smile of one fair girl
For all the popular breath that e'er divided
A name from nothing. What are the rank tongues
Of this vile herd, grown insolent with feeding,
That I should prize their noisy praise, or dread
Their noisome clamour?

Sal.

You have said they are men;

As such their hearts are something.