SCENE I.—The same. The Tent of Penius.
Enter Penius, Regulus, Macer, and Drusius.
Pen. I must come?
Macer. So the general commands, sir.
Pen. I must bring up my regiment?
Macer. Believe, sir,
I bring no lie.
Pen. But did he say, I must come?
Macer. So delivered.
Pen. How long is’t, Regulus, since I commanded
In Britain here?
Reg. About five years, great Penius.
Pen. The general some five months. Are all my actions
So poor and lost, my services so barren,
That I
am remember’d in no nobler language
But must come up?
Macer. I do beseech you, sir,
Weigh but the time’s estate.
Pen. Yes, good lieutenant,
I do, and his that sways it. Must come up?
Am I turn’d bare centurion? Must
and shall,
Fit embassies to court my honour?
Macer. Sir—
Pen. Set me to lead a handful of my men
Against an hundred thousand barbarous slaves,
That have
march’d name by name with Rome’s best doers?
Serve ’em up some other meat; I’ll bring no food
To stop
the jaws of all those hungry wolves:
My regiment’s mine own. I must, my language?
Enter Curius.
Cur. Penius, where lies the host?
Pen. Where Fate may find ’em.
Cur. Are they ingirt?
Pen. The battle’s lost.
Cur. So soon?
Pen. No; but ’tis lost, because it must be won;
The Britons must be victors. Whoe’er saw
A troop of bloody
vultures hovering
About a few corrupted carcasses,
Let him behold the silly Roman host,
Girded with millions
of fierce Britain swains,
With deaths as many as they have had hopes;
And then go thither, he that loves
his shame!
I scorn my life, yet dare not lose my name.
Cur. Do not you hold it a most famous end,
When both our names and lives are sacrificed
For Rome’s
increase?
Pen. Yes, Curius; but mark this too:
What glory is there, or what lasting fame
Can be to Rome or us, what
full example,
When one is smother’d with a multitude,
And crowded in amongst a nameless press?
Honour
got out of flint, and on their heads
Whose virtues, like the sun, exhaled all valours,
Must not be lost in