Original Text |
Modern Text |
|
Exit
|
SECOND MESSENGER
exits.
|
|
CAESAR Antony,
Leave thy lascivious wassails. When thou once
Wast beaten from Modena, where thou slew’st
Hirtius and Pansa, consuls, at thy heel
60Did famine follow, whom thou fought’st
against,
Though daintily brought up, with patience more
Than savages could suffer. Thou didst drink
The stale of horses and the gilded puddle
Which beasts would cough at. Thy palate then did deign
65The roughest berry on the rudest hedge.
Yea, like the stag, when snow the pasture sheets,
The barks of trees thou browsèd. On the Alps
It is reported thou didst eat strange flesh,
Which some did die to look on. And all this—
70It wounds thine honor that I speak it now—
Was borne so like a soldier, that thy cheek
So much as lanked not.
|
CAESAR Antony, it’s time to stop your wild hedonism. When you were
defeated at the battle of Modena—where you killed the consuls,
Hirtius and Pansa—and then driven away, you had to face hunger and
thirst. And even though you were brought up as a gentleman, you
patiently tolerated more hardships than savages could withstand. You
drank horses’ urine and water from scum-covered puddles that even
animals would refuse. Though you were used to the finest foods, you
didn’t turn up your nose at the bitterest berries on the thorniest
bushes. You even ate bark from trees, as deer do in winter. Going
over the Alps, you ate strange meat that some men would rather die
than consume. And you went through all this—the comparison between
then and now shames you—in such a soldier-like way that you didn’t
seem to suffer at all.
|
|
LEPIDUS ’Tis pity of him.
|
LEPIDUS It’s too bad.
|
|
CAESAR Let his shames quickly
75Drive him to Rome. ’Tis time we twain
Did show ourselves i’ th’ field, and to that end
Assemble we immediate council. Pompey
Thrives in our idleness.
|
CAESAR Let’s hope his sense of shame will send him back to Rome quickly.
It’s time that we brought our armies into the field. Let’s call a
council of war immediately. Pompey is making the most of our
absence.
|
