I would not leave your ancient first abode As ye bequeath'd it, this bright part of it, Which most personifies the soul as leaving And then a mount of ashes, but a light Voluptuous princes. Time shall quench full many MYRRHA returns with a lighted Torch in her Hand, and a Cup in the other. Myrrha. Lo! I've lit the lamp which lights us to the stars. Sardan. And the cup? Myrrha. "Tis my country's custom tɔ And mine Make a libation to the gods. To make libations amongst men. I've not [SARDANAPALUS takes the cup, and after drinking Is for the excellent Beleses. Myrrha. Why Dwells thy mind rather upon that man's name Sardan. The one Of human sword in a friend's hand; the other But I dismiss them from my mind.-Yet pause, Myrrha. And dost thou think A Greek girl dare not do for love, that which Sardan. We but await the signal. In sounding. Then It is long Now, farewell; one last embrace. Myrrha. Embrace but not the last; there is one more. Sardan. True, the commingling fire will mix our ashes. My rha. And pure as is my love to thee, shall they, Purged from the dross of earth and earthly passion, Mix pale with thine. A single thought yet irks me. Sardan. Say it. Myrrha. It is that no kind hand will gather Sardan. The winds of heaven, and scatter'd into air, Myrrha. Then farewell, thou earth! Aloof from desolation' My last prayer Was for thee, my last thoughts, save one, were of thee! Sardun. And that? Myrrha. Sardan. Myrrha. Is yours. [The trumpet of PANIA sounds without. Hark! Now! Adieu, Assyria! I loved thee well, my own, my fathers' land, Myrrha. Now, Myrrha ! Sardan. As the torch in thy grasp. Myrrha. [He mounts the pile. Art thou ready? [MYRRHA fires the pile. "Tis fired! I come. [As MYRRHA springs forward to throw herself into the flumes, the Curtain fulls. Note 131, page 7, line 33 from bottom. And thou, my own Ionian Myrrha. "The Ionian name had been still more comprehensive, having included the Achaians and the Boeotians, who, together with those to whom it was afterwards confined, would make nearly the whole of the Greek nation, and among the orientals it was always the general name for the Greeks."-Mitford's Greece, vol. i. p. 199. Note 2, page 138, lines 15 to 16. "Sardanapalus "The king, and son of Anacynduraxes, 'Eat, drink, and love; the rest's not worth a fillip.” ' "For this expedition he took only a small chosen body of the phalanx, but all his light troops. In the first day's march he reached Anchialus, a town said to have been founded by the king of Assyria, Sardanapalus. The fortifications, in their magnitude and extent, still in Arrian's time, bore the character of greatness, which the Assyrians appear singularly to have affected in works of the kind. A monument representing Sardanapalus was found there, warranted by an inscription in Assyrian characters, of course in the old Assyrian language, which the Greeks, whether well or ill, interpreted thus: "Sardanapalus, son of Anacyndaraxes, in one day founded Anchialus and Tarsus. Eat, drink, play: all other human joys are not worth a fillip." Supposing this version nearly exact, (for Arrian says it was not quite so), whether the purpose has not been to invite to civil order a people disposed to turbulence, rather than to recommend immoderate luxury, may perhaps reasonably be questioned. What, indeed, could be the object of a king of Assyria in founding such towns in a country so distant from his capital, and so divided from it by an immense extent of sandy deserts and lofty mountains, and, still more, how the inhabitants could be at once in circumstances to abandon themselves to the intemperate joys, which their prince has been supposed to have recommended, is not obvious; but it may deserve observation that, in that line of coast, the southern of Lesser Asia, ruins of cities, evidently of an age after Alexander, yet barely named in history, at this day astonish the adventurous traveller by their magnificence and elegance. Amid the desolation which, under a singularly barbarian government, has for so many centuries been daily spreading in the finest countries of the globe, whether more from soil and climate, or from opportunities for commerce, extraordinary means must have been found for communities to flourish there, whence it may seem that the measures of Sardanapalus were directed by juster views than have been commonly ascribed to him; but that monarch having been the last of a dynasty, ended by a revolution, obloquy on his memory would follow of course from the policy of his successors and their partisans. "The inconsistency of traditions concerning Sardanapalus is striking in Diodorus's account of him."-jord's Greece, vol. ix. pp. 311, 312, and 313. |