e earnest
of sin, and are engaged to persecute all men that are good with the same
or greater rigor than is ordained by laws for the wicked, for none ever
administered that power by good which he purchased by ill arts--Phoebus,
I say, having considered this, assembled all the senators residing in
the learned court at the theatre of Melpomene, where he caused Caesar
the Dictator to come upon the stage, and his sister Actia, his nephew
Augustus, Julia his daughter, with the children which she had by
Marcus Agrippa, Lucius and Caius Caesars, Agrippa Posthumus, Julia,
and Agrippina, with the numerous progeny which she bore to her renowned
husband Germanicus, to enter. A miserable scene in any, but most
deplorable in the eyes of Caesar, thus beholding what havoc his
prodigious ambition, not satisfied with his own bloody ghost, had made
upon his more innocent remains, even to the total extinction of his
family. For it is (seeing where there is any humanity, there must
be some compassion) not to be spoken without tears, that of the full
branches deriving from Octavia the eldest sister, and Julia the daughter
of Augustus, there should not be one fruit or blossom that was not cut
off or blasted by the sword, famine, or poison.

"Now might the great soul of Caesar have been full; and yet that which
poured in as much or more was to behold that execrable race of the
Claudii, having hunted and sucked his blood, with the thirst of tigers,
to be rewarded with the Roman Empire, and remain in full possession
of that famous patrimony: a spectacle to pollute the light of heaven!
Nevertheless, as if Caesar had not yet enough, his Phoeban majesty
caused to be introduced on the other side of the theatre, the most
illustrious and happy prince Andrea Doria, with his dear posterity,
embraced by the soft and constant arms of the city of Genoa, into whose
bosom, ever fruitful in her gratitude, he had dropped her fair liberty
like the dew of heaven, which, when the Roman tyrant beheld, and how
much more fresh that laurel was worn with a firm root in the hearts of
the people than that which he had torn off, he fell into such a horrid
distortion of limbs and countenance, that the senators, who had thought
themselves steel and flint at such an object, having hitherto stood
in their reverend snow-like thawing Alps, now covered their faces with
their large sleeves."

"My lords," said the Archon, rising, "witty Philadelphus has given us
grave admoniti