Scene II The Temple at Delphi
Enter Apollo’s Priests, with tapers; after them, Aruns, Sextus, and Brutus, with their oblations, all kneeling before the Oracle.
Priest.
O thou Delphian god, inspire
Thy priests, and with celestial fire
Shot from thy beams crown our desire,
That we may follow,
In these thy true and hallowed measures,
The utmost of thy heavenly treasures,
According to the thoughts and pleasures
Of great Apollo.
Our hearts with inflammations burn,
Great Tarquin and his people mourn,
Till from thy temple we return,
With some glad tiding.
Then tell us, shall great Rome be blest,
And royal Tarquin live in rest,
That gives his high-ennobled breast
To thy safe guiding?
Oracle.
Then Rome her ancient honours wins,
When she is purged from Tullia’s sins.
Brutus.
Gramercies, Phœbus, for these spells!
Phœbus alone, alone excels.
Sextus.
Tullia perhaps sinned in our grandsire’s death,
And hath not yet by reconcilement made
Atone with Phœbus, at whose shrine we kneel;
Yet, gentle priest, let us thus far prevail,
To know if Tarquin’s seed shall govern Rome,
And by succession claim the royal wreath?
Behold me, younger of the Tarquins’ race,
This elder Aruns, both the sons of Tullia;
This Junius Brutus, though a madman, yet
Of the high blood of the Tarquins.
Priest.
Sextus, peace.
Tell us, O thou that shin’st so bright,
From whom the world receives his light,
Whose absence is perpetual night,
Whose praises ring:
Is it with Heaven’s applause decreed,
When Tarquin’s soul from earth is freed,
That noble Sextus shall succeed
In Rome as king?
Brutus.
Ay, oracle, hast thou lost thy tongue?
Aruns.
Tempt him again, fair priest.
Sextus.
If not as king, let Delphian Phœbus yet
Thus much resolve us: who shall govern Rome,
Or of us three bear great’st pre-eminence?
Priest.
Sextus, I will.
Yet, sacred Phœbus, we entreat,
Which of these three shall be great
With largest power and state replete,
By the Heaven’s doom?23
Phœbus, thy thoughts no longer smother.
Oracle.
He that first shall kiss his mother
Shall be powerful, and no other
Of you three in Rome.
Sextus.
Shall kiss his mother!
[Brutus falls.
Brutus.
Mother Earth, to thee
An humble kiss I tender.
Aruns.
What means Brutus?
Brutus.
The blood of the slaughtered sacrifice made this floor as slippery as the place where Tarquin treads; ’tis glassy and as smooth as ice: I was proud to hear the oracle so gracious to the blood of the Tarquins, and so I fell.
Sextus.
Nothing but so? then to the oracle.
I charge thee, Aruns,—Junius Brutus, thee,—
To keep the sacred doom of the oracle
From all our train, lest when the younger lad
Our brother, now at home, sits dandled
Upon fair Tullia’s lap, this understanding,
May kiss our beauteous mother, and succeed.
Brutus.
Let the charge go round.
It shall go hard but I’ll prevent24 you, Sextus.
Sextus.
I fear not the madman Brutus; and for Aruns, let me alone to buckle25 with him: I’ll be the first at my mother’s lips for a kingdom.
Brutus.
If the madman have not been before you, Sextus. If oracles be oracles, their phrases are mystical; they speak still in clouds. Had he meant a natural mother he would not ha’ spoke it by circumstance.
Sextus.
Tullia, if ever thy lips were pleasing to me, let it be at my return from the oracle.
Aruns.
If a kiss will make me a king, Tullia, I will spring to thee, though through the blood of Sextus.
Brutus.
Earth, I acknowledge no mother but thee; accept me as thy son, and I shall shine as bright in Rome as Apollo himself in his temple at Delphos.
Sextus.
Our superstitions ended, sacred priest,
Since we have had free answer from the gods,
To whose fair altars we have done due right,
And hallowed them with presents acceptable,
Let’s now return, treading these holy measures
With which we entered great Apollo’s temple.
Now, Phœbus, let thy sweet-tuned organs sound,
Whose sphere-like music must direct our feet
Upon the marble pavement. After this
We’ll gain a kingdom by a mother’s kiss.
[Exeunt.