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The audience-chamber, in the Palace of Cepheus.
Cepheus and Cassiopea, seated.
CASSIOPEA
What will you do, Cepheus?
CEPHEUS
This that has happened
Is most unfortunate.
CASSIOPEA
What will you do ?
I hope you will not give up to the priest
My Iolaus’ golden head ? I hope
You do not mean that?
CEPHEUS
Great Poseidon’s priest
Sways all this land: for from the liberal blood
Moistening that high-piled altar grow our harvests
And strong Poseidon satisfied defends
Our frontiers from the loud Assyrian menace.
CASSIOPEA
Empty thy treasuries, glut him with gold.
Let us be beggars rather than one bright curl
Of Iolaus feel his gloomy mischiefs.
CEPHEUS
I had already thought of it. Medes!
Medes enters.
Waits Polydaon yet?
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– 43
MEDES
He does, my lord.
CEPHEUS
Call him and Tyrian Phineus.
Medes goes out again.
CASSIOPEA
Bid Tyre save
Andromeda’s loved brother from this doom;
He shall not have our daughter otherwise.
CEPHEUS
This too was in my mind already, queen.
Polydaon and Phineus enter.
Be seated. King of Tyre: priest Polydaon,
Possess thy usual chair.
POLYDAON
Well, King of Syria,
Shall I have justice ? Wilt thou be the King
Over a peopled country? or must I loose
The snake-haired Gorgon-eyed Erinnyes
To hunt thee with the clamorous whips of Hell
Blood-dripping?
CEPHEUS
Be content. Cepheus gives nought
But justice from his mighty seat. Thou shalt
Have justice.
POLYDAON
I am not used to cool my heels
About the doors of princes like some beggarly
And negligible suitor whose poor plaint
Is valued by some paltry drachmas. I am
Poseidon’s priest.
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– 44
CEPHEUS
The prince is called to answer here
Thy charges.
POLYDAON
Answer! Will he deny a crime
Done impudently in Syria’s face? ‘Tis well;
The Tyrian stands here who can meet that lie.
CASSIOPEA
My children’s lips were never stained with lies,
Insulting priest, nor will be now; from him
We shall have truth.
CEPHEUS
And grant the charge admitted,
The ransom shall be measured with the crime.
POLYDAON
What talk is this of ransom? Think’st thou. King,
That dire Poseidon’s grim offended godhead
Can be o’erplastered with a smudge of silver ?
Shall money blunt his vengeance ? Shall his majesty
Be estimated in a usurer’s balance ?
Blood is the ransom of this sacrilege.
CASSIOPEA
Ah God!
CEPHEUS
(in agitation)
Take all my treasury includes
Of gold and silver, gems and porphyry
Unvalued.
POLYDAON
The gods are not to be bribed,
King Cepheus.
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– 45
CASSIOPEA
(apart)
Give him honours, state, precedence,
All he can ask. O husband, let me keep
My child’s head on my bosom safe.
CEPHEUS
Listen!
What wouldst thou have ? Precedence, pomp and state ?
Hundreds of spears to ring thee where thou walkest ?
Swart slaves and beautiful women in thy temple
To serve thee and thy god? They are thine. In feasts
And high processions and proud regal meetings
Poseidon’s followers shall precede the King.
POLYDAON
Me wilt thou bribe ? I take these for Poseidon,
Nor waive my chief demand.
CEPHEUS
What will content thee?
POLYDAON
A victim has been snatched from holy altar:
To fill that want a victim is demanded.
CEPHEUS
I will make war on Egypt and Assyria
And throw thee kings for victims.
POLYDAON
Thy vaunt is empty.
Poseidon being offended, who shall give thee
Victory o’er Egypt and o’er strong Assyria?
CEPHEUS
Take thou the noblest head in all the kingdom
Below the Prince. Take many heads for one.
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– 46
POLYDAON
Shall then the innocent perish for the guilty ?
Is this thy justice? How shall thy kingdom last?
CEPHEUS
You hear him, Cassiopea ? he will not yield,
He is inexorable.
POLYDAON
Must I wait longer?
CEPHEUS
Ho Medes!
Medes enters.
Iolaus comes not yet.
Medes goes out.
CASSIOPEA
(rising fiercely)
Priest, thou wilt have my child’s blood then, it seems!
Nought less will satisfy thee than thy prince
For victim?
POLYDAON
Poseidon knows not prince or beggar.
Whoever honours him, he heaps with state
And fortune. Whoever wakes his dreadful wrath,
He throws down into Erebus for ever.
CASSIOPEA
Beware! Thou shalt not have my child. Take heed
Ere thou drive monarchs to extremity.
Thou hopest in thy sacerdotal pride
To make the Kings of Syria childless, end
A line that started from the gods. Think’st thou
It will be tamely suffered? What have we
To lose, if we lose this ? I bid thee again
Take heed: drive not a queen to strong despair.
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– 47
I am no tame-souled peasant, but a princess
And great Chaldea’s child.
POLYDAON
(after a pause)
Wilt thou confirm
Thy treasury .and all the promised honours,
If I excuse the deed?
CEPHEUS
They shall be thine.
He turns to whisper with Cassiopea.
PHINEUS
(apart to Polydaon)
Dost thou prefer me for thy foeman?
POLYDAON
See
In the queen’s eyes her rage. We must discover
New means; this way’s not safe.
PHINEUS
Thou art a coward, priest, for all thy violence.
But fear me first and then blench from a woman.
POLYDAON
Well, as you choose.
Iolaus enters.
IOLAUS
Father, you sent for me ?
CEPHEUS
There is a charge upon thee, Iolaus,
I do not yet believe. But answer truth
Like Cepheus’ son, whatever the result.
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– 48
IOLAUS
Whatever I have done, my father, good
Or ill, I dare support against the world.
What is this accusation?
CEPHEUS
Didst thou rescue
At dawn a victim from Poseidon’s altar ?
IOLAUS
I did not.
POLYDAON
Dar’st thou deny it, wretched boy?
Monarch, his coward lips have uttered falsehood.
Speak, King of Tyre.
IOLAUS
Hear me speak first. Thou ruffian
Intriguer masking in a priest’s disguise, —
POLYDAON
Hear him, O King!
CEPHEUS
Speak calmly. I forbid
All violence. Thou deniest then the charge?
IOLAUS
As it was worded to me, I deny it.
PHINEUS
Syria, I have not spoken till this moment,
And would not now, but sacred truth compels
My tongue howe’er reluctant. I was there,
And saw him rescue a wrecked mariner
With his rash steel. Would that I had not seen it!
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– 49
IOLAUS
Thou liest, Phineus, King of Tyre.
CASSIOPEA
Alas!
If thou hast any pity for thy mother,
Run not upon thy death in this fierce spirit,
My child. Calmly repel the charge against thee,
Nor thus offend thy brother.
PHINEUS
I am not angry.
IOLAUS
It was no shipwrecked weeping mariner,
Condemned by the wild seas, whom they attempted,
But a calm god or glorious hero who came
By other ways than man’s to Syria’s margin.
Nor did rash steel or battle rescue him.
With the mere dreadful waving of his shield
He shook from him a hundred threatening lances,
This hero hot from Tyre and this proud priest
Now bold to bluster in his monarch’s chamber,
But then a pallid coward, — so he trusts
In his Poseidon!
POLYDAON
Hast thou done?
IOLAUS
Not yet.
That I drew forth my sword, is true, and true
I would have rescued him from god or devil
Had it been needed.
POLYDAON
Enough! he has confessed!
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– 50
Give verdict. King, and sentence. Let me watch
Thy justice.
CEPHEUS
But this fault was not so deadly!
POLYDAON
I see thy drift, O King. Thou wouldst prefer
Thy son to him who rules the earth and waters:
Thou wouldst exalt thy throne above the temple,
Setting the gods beneath thy feet. Fool, fool,
Know’st thou not that the terrible Poseidon
Can end thy house in one tremendous hour ?
Yield him one impious head which cannot live
And he will give thee other and better children.
Give sentence or be mad and perish.
IOLAUS
Father,
Not for thy son’s but for thy honour’s sake
Resist him. ‘Tis better to lose crown and life,
Than rule the world because a priest allows it.
POLYDAON
Give sentence. King. I can no longer wait,
Give sentence.
CEPHEUS
(helplessly to Cassiopia)
What shall I do?
CASSIOPEA
Monarch of Tyre,
Thou choosest silence then, a pleased spectator?
Thou hast bethought thee of other nuptials ?
PHINEUS
Lady,
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– 51
You wrong my silence which was but your servant
To find an issue from this dire impasse,
Rescuing your child from wrath, justice not wounded.
CASSIOPEA
The issue lies in the accuser’s will,
If putting malice by he’ld only seek
Poseidon’s glory.
PHINEUS
The deed’s by all admitted,
The law and bearing of it are in doubt.
(To Polydaon)
You urge a place is void and must be filled
On great Poseidon’s altar, and demand
Justly the guilty head of Iolaus.
He did the fault, his head must ransom it.
Let him fill up the void, who made the void.
Nor will high heaven accept a guiltless head,
To let the impious free.
CASSIOPEA
Phineus,
—
PHINEUS
But if
The victim lost return, you cannot then
Claim Iolaus: then there is no void
For substitution.
POLYDAON
King, —
PHINEUS
The simpler fault
With ransom can be easily excused
And covered up in gold. Let him produce
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– 52
The fugitive.
IOLAUS
Tyrian, —
PHINEUS
I have not forgotten.
Patience! You plead that your mysterious guest
Being neither shipwrecked nor a mariner
Comes not within the doom of law. Why then,
Let Law decide that issue, not the sword
Nor swift evasion! Dost thou fear the event
Of thy great father’s sentence from that throne
Where Justice sits with bright unsullied robe
Judging the peoples ? Calmly expect his doom
Which errs not.
CASSIOPEA
Thou art a man noble indeed in counsel
And fit to rule the nations.
CEPHEUS
I approve.
You laugh, my son ?
IOLAUS
I laugh to see wise men
Catching their feet in their own subtleties.
King Phineus, wilt thou seize Olympian Zeus
And call thy Tyrian smiths to forge his fetters ?
Or wilt thou claim the archer bright Apollo
To meet thy human doom, priest Polydaon ?
Tis well; the danger’s yours. Give me three days
And I’ll produce him.
CEPHEUS
Priest, art thou content?
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– 53
POLYDAON ,
Exceed not thou the period by one day,
Or tremble.
CEPHEUS
(rising)
Happily decided. Rise
My Cassiopea: now our hearts can rest
From these alarms.
Cepheus and Cassiopea leave the chamber.
IOLAUS
Keep thy knife sharp, sacrificant.
King Phineus, I am grateful and advise
Thy swift departure back to Tyre unmarried.
He goes out.
POLYDAON
What hast thou done, King Phineus ? All is ruined.
PHINEUS
What, have the stripling’s threats appalled thee, priest?
POLYDAON
Thou hast demanded a bright dreadful god
For victim. We might have slain young Iolaus:
Wilt thou slay him whose tasselled aegis smote
Terror into a hundred warriors ?
PHINEUS
Priest,
Thou art a superstitious fool. Believe not
The gods come down to earth with swords and wings,
Or transitory raiment made in looms,
Or bodies visible to mortal eyes.
Far otherwise they come, with unseen steps
And stroke invisible, — if gods indeed
There are. I doubt it, who can find no room
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– 54
For powers unseen: the world’s alive and moves
By natural law without their intervention.
POLYDAON
King Phineus, doubt not the immortal gods.
They love not doubters. If thou hadst lived as I,
Daily devoted to the temple dimness,
And seen the awful shapes that live in night,
And heard the awful sounds that move at will
When Ocean with the midnight is alone,
Thou wouldst not doubt. Remember the dread portents
High gods have sent on earth a hundred times
When kings offended.
PHINEUS
Well, let them reign unquestioned
Far from the earth in their too bright Olympus,
So that they come not down to meddle here
In what I purpose. For your aegis-bearer,
Your winged and two-legged lion, he’s no god.
You hurried me away or I’ld have probed
His godlike guts with a good yard of steel
To test the composition of his ichor.
POLYDAON
What of his naming aegis lightning-tasselled ?
What of his winged sandals, King?
PHINEUS
The aegis?
Some mechanism of refracted light.
The wings ? Some new aerial contrivance
A luckier Daedalus may have invented.
The Greeks are scientists unequalled, bold
Experimenters, happy in invention.
Nothing’s incredible that they devise,
And this man, Polydaon, is a Greek.
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– 55
POLYDAON
Have it your way. Say he was merely man!
How do we profit by his blood?
PHINEUS
O marvellous!
Thou hesitate to kill! thou seek for reasons!
Is not blood always blood? I could not forfeit
My right to marry young Andromeda;
She is my claim to Syria. Leave something, priest,
To fortune, but be ready for her coming
And grasp ere she escape. The old way’s best;
Excite the commons, woo their thunderer,
That plausible republican. Iolaus
Once ended, by right of fair Andromeda
I’ll save and wear the crown. Priest, over Syria
And all my Tyrians thou shalt be the one prelate,
Should all go well.
POLYDAON
All shall go well. King Phineus.
They go.
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