to the Throne_.

BELESES, _a Chaldean and Soothsayer_.

SALEMENES, _the King's Brother-in-Law_.

ALTADA, _an Assyrian Officer of the Palace_.

PANIA.

ZAMES.

SFERO.

BALEA.

WOMEN.

ZARINA, _the Queen_.

MYRRHA, _an Ionian female Slave, and the Favourite Mistress
of_ SARDANAPALUS.

_Women composing the Harem of_ SARDANAPALUS, _Guards,
Attendants, Chaldean Priests, Medes, etc., etc._

SCENE.--A Hall in the Royal Palace of Nineveh.

SARDANAPALUS.[5]

ACT I.

SCENE I.--_A Hall in the Palace_.

_Salemenes_ (_solus_).
He hath wronged his queen, but still he is her lord;
He hath wronged my sister--still he is my brother;
He hath wronged his people--still he is their sovereign--
And I must be his friend as well as subject:
He must not perish thus. I will not see
The blood of Nimrod and Semiramis
Sink in the earth, and thirteen hundred years
Of Empire ending like a shepherd's tale;
He must be roused. In his effeminate heart
There is a careless courage which Corruption 10
Has not all quenched, and latent energies,
Repressed by circumstance, but not destroyed--
Steeped, but not drowned, in deep voluptuousness.
If born a peasant, he had been a man
To have reached an empire: to an empire born,
He will bequeath none; nothing but a name,
Which his sons will not prize in heritage:--
Yet--not all lost--even yet--he may redeem
His sloth and shame, by only being that
Which he should be, as easily as the thing 20
He should not be and is. Were it less toil
To sway his nations than consume his life?
To head an army than to rule a harem?
He sweats in palling pleasures, dulls his soul,[a]
And saps his goodly strength, in toils which yield not
Health like the chase, nor glory like the war--
He must be roused. Alas! there is no sound
[_Sound of soft music heard from within_.
To rouse him short of thunder. Hark! the lute--
The lyre--the timbrel; the lascivious tinklings
Of lulling instruments, the softening voices 30
Of women, and of beings less than women,
Must chime in