THE HEROINAE: OR The lives OF 

ARRIA,  
PAULINA,  
LUCRETIA,  
DIDO,  
THEUTILLA,  
CYPRIANA,  
ARETAPHILA.    
LONDON, Printed by R. Bishop, for john Colby, and are to be sold at his Shop under the King's head Tavern, at Chancery-lane end in Fleetstreet. 1639.   

TO The true Heroine Lady, the Lady DOROTHY SIDNEY, The HEROINAES are humbly presented by G. RIVERS, To receive Fame from her Favour.  
Madam,  
THat I approach so fair a Shrine with so course an Offering; accuse not my unworthiness, but your own worth; which like a Loadstar is pleased to attract the coursest mettle, to make known her power. Were it not a profanation to sunder that symmetry of Virtue and Beauty, (pieces, of which you are the whole, and which worthily beget wonder and love▪ I might aspire to level praises to some few particulars: but since such a disunion cannot be made by a weak pen without cracking or disordering th● goodliest frame of Nature; Madam you must give me leave only to admire you in great, as the great Subject of all admiration. If in writing You, I fall short of sense; it is Love: if I overreach it; it is Wonder: so is sense and language oppressed▪ or heightened by the subject that admits no mean. Madam, if this Pamphlet of You rise in the opinion of the World, it is You; if it fall, it is I; I, that have battered my brains against as great a miracle as the Philosopher's stone. If you please to receive it with a favour answerable to the ambition it is offered, I shall account it the greatest honour that can be done to him, in whose esteem (Madam) You are the first and last of these Stories; the unparallelled Lady DOROTHY SIDNEY, the incomparable ARETAPHILA.   

ARRIA.  
Whilst the Roman State was governed, or rather mangled between the Fencer, the Fiddler, the Juggler, and the Player, lived Cecinna Paetus, sometimes Consul, a man every way worthy that high title, of a Spirit moulded for great designs, that would break through all interruptions to advance his Honour: He, a faithful friend to Scribonianus, in whose faction he had engaged his life and fortunes; after his overthrow was taken prisoner by the Soldiers of Claudius Nero. When he was taking Ship, (a Triumph for Rome) he desired the Officers that Arria his Wife might accompany him; holding it a grand discourtesy, since she had shared his prosperous fortunes, to deny her his miseries: but the Soldiers, of men the best studied in cruelty, were more ambitious to tyrannize over his mind (the greater Triumph) than his body; and well advised how sorrows are substracted by being divided, denied his most passionate prayers, and hoist sail. Many of them were flies engendered from his heat, who now fled him as an inhospitable clime, too cold to nourish flattery. They beheld him as one whose misfortunes were infectious, not to be sympathised; or as a Rock that stands the shock of the impetuous Wind, to ruin those that touch it. Adversity is the true touchstone of Virtue and Friendship; Friendship follows the good fortune, but Virtue the bad. That calmness of mind which attends some high fortunes, is grounded rather upon Policy than Virtue: he that swells when he is full, intends to break himself; who then will be proud when he is prosperous? As it is an argument of baseness to be elated; so it is true magnanimity, not to be dejected. Friendly offices, like Rivulets to the Ocean, are tributes reflecting to the fortunes, not the men: let these once decline, the other like Fry will swim against the sinking stream: or like Mice, shelter themselves from the approaching storm. So Paetus out lived his happiness, and his friends: only his dear Arria, having hired a Fish-boat, followed along by the Shore of Sclavonia; so noble was her piety; as if she did congratulate those extremities, as the trial of that unshaken faith, that well-knit affection, not to be raveled from her Paetus by the strongest battery of fortune. With so mean advantage as one small Bark, so small attendance as one mean Fisherman, no Sail but Resolution, no Pilot but that high Spirit that threatened destiny, and dared the utmost power of Fate, she embarked herself into the dangers of the Seas. When she was arrived at Rome, and in the Emperor's presence, junia the Widow of Scribonianus, chief partner in her captivity, did familiarly accost her: to whom with words made for disdain, she made reply; dost thou live, (said she) shame of our sex, and monument of our shame! Thou, in whose arms Scribonianus thy Husband was slain! What stands between thee and death, now he is removed that hindered thy prospect? Unworthy woman, that prizest loathed life above thine honour, and lovest thyself above thy Lord! Arria, thy courage (said junia) is ill placed: the Gods that sent us hither, gave us life as their greatest blessing, not to be appropriated to ourselves, but communicated to our friends and Country; if we should live only to ourselves, we should live only to undo all; since this great All subsists by each particular: is then the whole of us our own, when the least part of us is not only ours? Grant our lives were entirely ours; yet are they not of that small consequence, that like our clothes we may divest us of them when our misguided fancies tell us they are out of fashion. Then if Scribonianus (to whose departed soul thou slanderest my affection) had held an end like this, an end of misery, or a way to happiness and honour; he had counselled me to die, and had not lived himself to have been slain. Fond Woman (replied Arria) how thine own arguments condemn thee! If the Gods give us life as their greatest blessing, then surely blessedness is the quality and virtue of life: when they withdraw this, they call us (if our faint souls could hear them) nay, even nature herself whispers to us to be gone to some better place. If our Friends and Country have part, or all of us, to whom do we belong, if they discard us? must we live wretched till the decay of nature doth remove us? So patiently the poor silly Cottager awaits the good hour his house shall fall upon his head. If Scribonianus thy Husband had not died honourably in the Camp, (so great an opinion have I of his Virtue) he had died as honourably in his Tent: but when thou leav'st the World, the World shall not leave to say of thee, that junia outlived her Virtue, and her Love died sooner than herself.  
The Emperor by these passages perceived whereto she tended, that she would live no longer then till she had a power to die; commanded her to be straight guarded: but this restraint was rather a spur then a bridle to her actions travelling to fame: for she enraged that her death was denied her, flung out of the Chair where she sat, and violently ran her head against the Wall, with which blow, she much wounded, fell into a deadly swoone: but as soon as her keepers had recalled the unwelcomed life to her, the life that grieved her, not that it was gone, but returned; she thus bespoke them: You see how vainly you employ your care to keep a prisoner that will be free; you may make me die with more pain, and less honour; but not to die at all, this is beyond your power: whilst I wear a hand commanded by a heart that knows no fear, I shall not despair of death, nor shall I long protract a loathed breath in such wretched times that make life but the nursery of sorrows, and seminary of misfortunes. Some few days she wasted in comforting, and condoling with her friends the general calamities wherein the most virtuous were involved, under that monster of men, Nero, then tyrannising. Then she retired into Paetus lodging, and there thus spoke her last: The soul imprisoned in a necessity of being miserable, must break through all fence of nature into an honourable end. This very precept nature herself imprinteth in us; she denyeth not the iron-bound Slave a death to free him from the toilsome Oar; doth she deny the Sun-scorched Pilgrim his night's sleep? no, nor the world-beaten man his eternal rest. Surely then, she allows us to shake off her interest, when we are sunk below her succour. Paetus, thy life is not linked to nature, but to fame: fall then by thine own sword, and thy spirit wound up in thine honour, mounts to the Palaces of the immortal Gods: If thou faintest under so brave a resolution, or enviest thyself the glory of thy end; know, that ere two days expire, thou thyself expirest: but how? by whose hands? beheaded by a base hangman, offered up a tame sacrifice to insated tyranny. Awake the Roman in thee; shall high Paetus (whom when the World unworthy of his Virtue, ingratefully flung off) clasp broken hopes and fortunes, to save himself with the shipwreck of his fame? shall he, to whom thousand servile necks did bow, stoop to the baseness to beg life, while his death is in his hands? Cato and Scipio (whom this age is more prone to adore then admire) held it not honourable to beg life, though they might expect more from Caesar's Virtue. But what canst thou hope for from a Tyrant abjured by all the Virtues, one that approves nothing in Sovereignty but Power, and that guided by Passion to insatiate revenge? Then (as if she had disinherited her Husband's spirit) she drew out the poniard from his side: Paetus, (said she) how I have not entertained life, nor death but for thy sake, this last act of honour be my witness. Do this Paetus: then she plunged the dagger into her heart, and having drawn it out, she delivered it to him again; trust my departing breath, Paetus, (said she) not the wound it gives me, but thee, afflicts me. There died the noble Arria, there did that soul fly to eternity; that soul that was too great to owe her liberty to any power but to her own. Paetus blushing to be indebted to a precedent for his death, especially his Wife; took to him the dagger that was so lately guilded in his Arria's blood, and with these words hastened to his end. Had fortune answered my resolution, and crowned my enterprise with happiness; I had entered Rome, envied by the most noble, not pitied by the basest. I now see how the success of humane affairs depends not upon valour, but uncertain fates; and our actions elevated by the height of spirit, do but entrench us deeper into misery. But though I am bereft of all the advantages of fortune, and of honour: yet am I Master of a mind unconquered; over which nor Tyranny nor Fate shall triumph. Then embracing her dead, he sighed, and said; Pardon, blessed spirit, my too long absence from thee; I have borrowed this little leave of life but to admire thy Virtue, which being above my wonder, I must soar unto that height where it is ascended, to search out her true perfection: Pardon my soul that she ascends not to thee in an ecstasy; fain would she: but this dagger claims her liberty that gave thee thine. Then he thrust it into his heart, and there the dagger acted his last and most faithful service; slew his Master.  

Pro Arria.  
THE first Being tied the first two into one, and form two different sexes into one body, and one soul; the bodies by alternate use so proprietated, not to one, but both: the souls so sympathising in affections and in passions, as both became one to both. They that keep this mystery inviolable, know no outward respects of power to divide them into two: If Paetus be unhappy, Arria is unfortunate: Paetus is doomed to die; and shall Arria live to see him slain? Hath he outlived his hopes, and can she hope to outlive him? But why would she die? was the fear of the Emperor's cruelty mingled in her cause? What fears she that fears not death? what Emperor is cruel to her that dares die? what cruelty is to be paralleled to that which bereft her of her life? It was Paetus slew her; Paetus? had Arria lived, Paetus had not slain himself; therefore Arria died: died because Paetus should die: Oh unheard of cruelty! oh unparallelled affection! Arria died because Paetus could not live. Paetus by death redeemed himself from what was worse than death; from torture: Arria redeemed her honour, and her Paetus from torture, and dishonour. Fortune made her miserable, that Virtue might make her happy: her faith so firmly tied her love, that death could not undo it with her life. Her fortunes were so engrafted in her Paetus, that with his they did bud, flourish and wither▪ Her life was fastened to his strings of life: with him she lived, with him she died.   

Contra Arriam.  
THrough what forbidden paths doth passion hurry us, when once our reason is unseated! Arria would die rather than be led in triumph: did death redeem her? No; death was but fortune's headsman to execute her she had condemned. The Emperor's power extended no faerther than to afflict her withered body: not able to endure this weak revenge, she yielded up her mind a triumph to her fortune, and herself unto her sorrow. If fear did not surprise her, then engaged in Paetus treason, she was her own wrack and torture, scorning all Executioners but herself Who then condemns her death, when it was due to justice? But what law exacts of her this justice? The Gods forbid her to kill another, much more herself, being nearer to herself than any other. Nature by her law claims life, as her due debt, payable when she demands it. If she died because Paetus should die; she did but invite him to her rage, not to her virtue. But I think fear, the common defect of Nature in women, deprived her of her life: for death appeared so accoutred in the terrors of wrack and hangman; that she died for fear of death.    

PAULINA.  
LVcius Annaeus Seneca the Philosopher, and Tutor to Nero the Emperor, was Lord of great Revenues, to which his virtue, not his fortune was his title; his mind was richly embroidered with all the studied ornaments of learning; a good part of his life he exercised in the Court, where while the Prince's ears were open to Philosophy, his heart and hand were both unbent to him; his favour and his nobleness, like rivals, strived which should with most devotion serve their Sovereign: but when debauchery usurped upon the Emperor, the Tutor was devanced and disgraced. In all these extremities Seneca in himself was so well poised, that neither the greatness of fortune could bribe him into riot, the height of knowledge into pride, nor the Courtier into flattery: nor did he know any man great enough to make him less; nor could his mind, which Philosophy had placed above the World, decline with fortune. In his old age he married Pompea Paulina a young, fair, and nobly descended Roman Lady, a Lady of that worth, that no Roman but he that did enjoy her, did deserve her. Nero having let lose the reins of reason, and himself to all licentiousness, so tyrannised, as if he did persuade himself that an Emperor was above the Law, and must also be without it: what his will prescribed, his tyranny did execute, and so, as if his actions were accountable to no power but his own. Among his chief and most remarked cruelties, it is not the least he expressed against his Tutor Seneca; to him he sends his Satellites to denounce his death: the fashion of those times was, when a person of quality was condemned to die; he was allowed the liberty to choose his death, and a time proportioned according to the Emperor's rage, to dispose of his affairs: but if his revenge flowed so high, that it would brook no delay: then he enjoyed no time to do any thing but die: if the condemned resisted his decrees; then he commonly appointed, that by some slave he should be barbarously murdered: but the nobler Romen held it nearer way to honour with their own hands to anticipate their fates, and in unhappiness stayed not the enforcement of tyranny or nature. Seneca, with an undaunted look receiving the sentence of his death, called for ink and paper to write his last Will and Testament; which the Captain denying him, he turned about, and then bespoke his friends: You see, my loving friends, (said he) I cannot gratify your affections with my fortunes: I must therefore leave you my life, and my Philosophy, to enrich your minds with the invaluable and nere-to-be-depriv'd-of treasure of precept and example. I shall desire you by all the ties of friendship, and by the glory you shall purchase by it, to endear my life and death (which shall not stain the honour of my life) unto your memory: then gently reproving them who seemed too sorrowful, he said; to what other purpose have I furnished you with precepts of Philosophy, then to arm your minds against the assaults of Fortune? Is Nero's tyranny unknown to you? What man is Master of his own life under him that massacred his Brother, that used upon his Mother that cruelty which never yet knew name? Then he turned him to Paulina, in whom sorrow had swelled itself so high, that rather than break out, it threatened to break her heart: My Deer, (said he) I am now going to act what I have long taught; my hour is come, and nothing so welcome to me as my death; now I am unloaded of this flesh that clogs my soul, I shall with more ease ascend unto eternity, to enjoy a condition without a change, an happiness without a period: wherefore, my dearest Paulina, forbear thy too immoderate passion, lest thy grief disgrace my end, and thou seem to value my death above mine honour: enjoy thy youth, but still retain those seeds of virtue, ●herewith thy mind is ●●chly stored: I confess, for thy sake I could be content to live, when I consider that in my breast lives a young Lady, to whom my life may be advantage. Paulina's love now raising up her courage, and her courage her dejected spirit; Think not Seneca, (said she) that like your Physician, I will leave you when the hope of life forsakes you; but I will follow like your Wife, your fortune. This resolve shall tell you how much your life and doctrine hath availed your Paulina. When can I die well, but then when I cannot live well? When I am bereft of thee, in whom all my joys are so wealthily summed up, that thy loss will make my life my greatest curse; then will I die in honour, and think it fitter for my fame, then linger out my life in sorrow. Trust me, my Paulina (said Seneca) I cannot but admire thy love, knowing from what height of virtue it proceeds: as I will not envy thee thy death; so I wish a glory may await thy end, great as the constancy that advanced thee to it. Then he commanded his Surgeon to cut the veins of both their arms, that they might bleed to death: but Seneca's veins, shrunk up through age and abstinence, denied his blood a speedy course; therefore his thighs were also lanced: but lest his pains might insinuate too far into Paulina's torments, and a new addition of sorrow meeting with her loss of blood, might make her faint, he sought to mitigate her fears by the discourse of death.  
Why should (said he) this monster nothing so affright us? while we are living, we are dying, for life is but a dying being; when we are dead, we are after death: where then, or what is death? It is that inconsiderable atom of time that divides the body from the soul: what is it then in this afflicts us? Not the rarity, for all the world that is not gone before, will follow us: is it the separation, and tied to that the jealousy how we shall be dealt with? upon this hinge, I confess, turns the wickeds fear: but the Stoic, whom Philosophy hath taught the art of living well, death frees from misery, and wafts him to the haven of his happiness. For this necessity of death, we are bound to thank the Gods; for it redeems from a worse of being eternally miserable. The separation, as it is natural, so it is the only means conducing to our better being. The body being the corruptible and ponderous part, falls naturally to the earth whence it was first elemented: the soul etherial gains by this loss; for being purged from the dross of weight, and of corruption, is made heaven's richest ore; so refined, that the great God's image may be stamped upon it, and ascends unto the skies from whence it first descended. Nor do I hold this dis-junction to be eternal; for when the world by the revolution of times and ages, whirls about into her first Chaos, then shall they meet again never to be sundered. The soul shall be so purified by the immortal Gods: that it shall neither hope, nor fear, nor grieve; that it shall be freed from all those discording passions, and affections, that here transport it from itself. The body so spirited that it shall know no necessity of nourishment, and therefore no weight, alteration, or mortality. Of great consequence then is death to our well-being; since before it we can account none happy; we see it end all miseries; we see it make none miserable; why then should we fear it, or condemn it? What have the wisest thought it, but the Port we all must touch? He that scarce arrives at half a man hath as little to quarrel at his fate, as he that in a week reacheth his haven, whereas by the troubled winds he might be bound up in the more troubled seas a year. Nor is he that is his own death, being condemned to die, shipwrecked even at the very shore: for honour and the Emperor allow the liberty, and to die by the most abject of men, an hangman, is to die dishonourable. For this boon I gratulate the Gods: but more that they are pleased to call the perfect Seneca unto their joys, the Seneca that hath not yet outlived himself, nor returned into his infancy. There Paulina, not through fear (knowing none but what proceeded from her love) but through decaying nature fainted; therefore Seneca taking his leave caused her to be removed into the next chamber. In Seneca all these incisions were not of force to force out life; he therefore commanded his Physician to poison him; but wanting natural heat to convey it to his heart, the poison was rather a nourishment then a destruction to his nature: then he was laid in warm baths, by this forced heat the poison in his full source, and violence raged in his withered body. While he had life he discoursed freely of life and death; his end approaching, all bloody in his bath he bathed his head, and said, I vow this to jupiter the Deliverer; Nature at the last conquered by those strong assaults, yielded up her Fort (which weakness had so song fortified) to death her common enemy. So lived the famous Seneca, and so he died that with the Gods his soul's immortalised, with the world his fame.  
Nero informed of Paulina for whom he seemed much troubled: for though pity had no entrance at his iron breast: yet fear the Tyrant's tyrant ●old him that her death (being one of the most nobly allied in Rome) would make his tyranny and hate the greater: he therefore sent with all possible speed to recall her life now posting to her stage, and entering the dark confines of death. Her servants receiving the command unbound her, and closed up her incisions, she more than half dead, devoid of sense, thus against her will returned unto her life, and very honourably: for that of life she lost, did witness to the world, that nothing but want of power restrained her from her death.  

Pro Paulina.  
PAulina, when Seneca was condemned to die, would die herself. was ever constancy raised higher in a woman's breast? She did not die, there she expressed the true valour that derives itself from virtue, and that spirit that issues from the truest honour. That she would, but could not die, are both Nero's act; that she could live, or die, her own. That she was Mistress of her fortune, witness that she did live; how she valued her Husband's death, that she would die. Fame and virtue did both attend her in the progress of her actions: had she died, it had been thought the wretched times had interest in her end: but in her life she conquered the extremities of life and death. The rule of virtue ties us to live so long as we ought, not as we list: then is the fittest time to die, when we can live no longer. To die, is at the height but like a Roman: but to dare to live when life is tedious, this is as much above the Roman, as the true substance of virtue, that false shade of honour. Had she then died, she had acted but the Roman: but she lived to exceed the noblest of all Romans, but herself.   

Contra Paulinam.  
WHY revolted she from her resolve, when Seneca himself allowed it? Did he teach her so to live that she durst not die? or did she distrust his happiness that she would not follow him? She had too much of death to have more, and those pangs so much endeared her to her life, that she would live at any rate, rather than break through fleeting torments into honour. While Seneca was yet alive, she was dying; he dead, she returned to life: Was her life vowed to him, when his death revived her? Nero called her back; the greater was her shame to take Sanctuary in her Husband's murderer. Sure death was far more terrible than Seneca did speak it: she fled to a most inhuman Tyrant for protection. Seneca did not force her to die, nor Nero to live; one day gave her her liberty: she had as much strength, as life; and that little power she could use, was able to force out that little life she did detain. She would die, in the extremity of sorrow for her husband's fate: but she did live to repent her both of her sorrow, and her death.    

LUCRETIA.  
WHen Rome, in the glory of her active Spirits, had pressed out her youth more ambitious of honour than life; for the common exploit, the siege of Ardea: Sextus Tarqvinius entertained the night with the Roman Nobility in the pride of luxury and riot: The ruins of Kingdoms were sacrificed to Bacchus, the sea and land ploughed up to appease ingenuous gluttony. They, as frolic as youth, and wine that made them so; unlock the treasures of their hearts, their Wives, and their beauties, to the admiration of unsound ears: But Collatine the most justly prodigal of his Wife's fame, tells them; nor Italy, nor the World holds her, that stands in parallel of wonder with the fair and virtuous Lucretia. Tarquin divided between astonishment and rage, that Collatine his servant, should be his Sovereign in happiness: mounted upon the wings of lust and fury, flies to Rome, where his eyes having encountered the Idol of his heart, and he the noon of night to enjoy it; with his sword and taper breaks into her chamber, into her presence: she affrighted at the sword, and blasted by the light that lust gave life to, trembling like a prey with more horror than attention, hears him thus bespeak her. Madam, wonder not at my unlooked for arrival at Collatium, or at this visit so unseasonable: but applaud the wonder of your beauty; the silent night will speak my purpose, when in my restless bed a flame kindled from your fair eyes burned through my soul, consumed my Country's service, my hopes of honour, than which nothing but your fair self is so near unto my thoughts. Let not the slave Fear intrude upon your princely breast, nor this steel divorce those Roses from the Lilies, drawn to hew out a way through all obstacles, to encounter Paradise. The same love that armed those eyes with Lightning, arms these hands with Thunder; bids them grapple with great jove, were he rival in my affection. This night I must enjoy thee Lucretia, or on thy name engrave an infamy, that Time, nor Time's heir, Eternity, shall ne'er devour: If thou move or hand, or voice for aid; thy groom I'll slay with thee; then fling his loathed trunk on thine, and swear I found him fast manacled in thy embraces: cease then to be fair, or to be cruel, and return me the Prince ravished from me, by the all commanding beauties that attend thee. The sin unknown is unacted, nor shall the sourest virtue mis-read those blushes the liveliest pieces of innocence. Accuse not Nature of tyranny, she made not so delicate an object to tempt, but satisfy the appetite: yield then; or this sword must enter that adamant, from whence all pity is barakadoed. She conjured with this tyranny of compliment, with as undistracted words as could be pumped from the deepest confusion of thoughts, makes her reply.  
Renowned Sir, let true pity as really enter your ears, as false is banished mine. In Tarquin's shape I entertained you; wrong not the Prince so far, as to prostrate his fame to so inglorious an action; he that hath the eyes of all Rome fixed on his virtues, and must hereafter look like a Prince in Story, shall he have all his glories sullied by the conquest of a woman? Shall he be read King of all the Romans but himself? wanting this Sovereignty, all his honours shall be buried in his infamy: Then punish Great Sir, the Traitor to your virtue, this face; tear it to a loathing; so shall you appease the lewd rebellion of your blood, and make your victories, still ending in yourself, discourse for all posterity. But if you are conquered by your lust, you shall revenge your worth in her dishonour, who shall not be unpitied of men, or unrevenged of the Gods. This said, she wept the rest. But he not daunted at that majesty of sorrow that sat enthroned in cry▪ stall, nor at her words that would charm the most inhuman: but rather whet, then refined in passion, unloads his lust, and with the night posts undiscovered to Ardea. No sooner had the Morn unchained the prisoners of the Night, and spread his light (welcome both to miserable and happy) through the vast regions of the Skies; that light that was so lovely to her, because it came to light her to her end: but she sends to Ardea for Collatine and Brutus, her Husband and Uncle. Long before the day was fled into the other world, they at Collatium did arrive. First they saw her face stand in that amazed silence, that they could read, not hear the full contents of sorrow; they in that expected some great cruelty had been used upon her, which had deprived her of the tongue to tell it. But this silence was but a pause in her great soul, whether she might stoop to that wretched body, as to borrow those organs which commonly convey our friends calamities into our ears: but lest she should detain them too long locked up in wonder, hasting to her ease, she unbent her soul, and gave vent unto her sorrow.  
Fortune, (said she) hast thou now hit the mark thou hast long aimed at, my poor heart; take to thee now thy triumph, and leave me to my injured virtue. Brutus and Collatine, you are come from Ardea to hear the story that will break my heart ere I am delivered of it; should I truly tell you how low I am rammed in misery, If should be far too low for you to pity me, unless your love should lead you to dishonour. In what Court shall I appeal to justice? The grand God's act, and licence what I suffer: the household Powers are not of power to keep their Laws inviolate. Shall I address, me to the King? his own Son hath dishonoured me: to him I would appeal, would he revenge his guilt, as I mine innocence; then would I speak him a true Prince; when to advance his justice higher than his sin; he made her way through patricide and treason to her power. But he loves his lust too well to loathe his life; of him I cannot expect justice who hath injured me, nor of you mercy whom I have injured: I have tainted your blood with mine own. Tarquin hath conquered this body, Lucretia this mind. You true Romans Brutus and Collatine, in whom my life was truly happy, I conjure you by all the ties of blood, love, and religion, be as cruel to Tarquin, as he to Lucrece, she to herself, who with bold steel carves on her breast the Tragedy that shall stagger the piety, or awake the pity of all posterity. Her life and language had both this period; for having tied their vows to her revenge, her soul too pure for her body, disclogged itself of clay, and broke the vault of mortality. So riseth day disrobed of night: so did her soul ascend to immortality. It is beyond the art of words to express what valiant sorrow, what noble rage, this cruelty of hers had stamped upon these two princely breasts. Silence at the instant had tonguetied all language, wonder had penned up all tears, immensity of fury had transcended all bounds of passion: so much had they to speak, they could not speak; so great was their sorrow they could not sorrow; so were all the powers of the soul knit and contracted into the project of revenge, that till they were scattered into their offices, passion was not discernible; then the object lessened, wonder descended to passion, passion to expression; then discolouring the crimson flood, and with their tears washing her body white as her innocence, they took it on their shoulders, set it in the Forum, where Collatine, when the Auditory was ripe for his Oratory, bespoke the Roman cofluxe. Romans, and Countrymen, this day presents to your wonder a fact of that height of impiety, so degenerating from all humanity; that in it hell hath plotted the dishonour of this whole nation, this whole age. Were not your affection stronger tied to the Orator, than the Oratory: I should not hope to persuade you that the breast of man could travel in such a prodigy of exact villainy. You see a monument of that misery that vindicates the pity of Tigers, or Tyrants: much more of minds ennobled with virtuous actions. The Tragedy (not long to wrack your expectation) I will briefly declare. Sextus Tarqvinius (I know not with what colourable excuses he painted his designs) left Ardea for Rome; honour could not bridle his false fury of affection, nor the public interest in the State overpoize his private passion; I say, he posted to Rome. Rome! where the Gods have their Temples, the Virtues their Sanctuaries, that thou shouldst breed a Monster to profane thee! No sooner had he entered Rome, but he entered my house; where like a Prince, a kinsman, like the happy messenger of Collatine's happiness, (oh, that vice should be so bravely disguised!) he was received by Lucretia, received in a bravery of affection too high for the apostate from virtue; his face did not discover the false heart that lay in ambush to surprise her honour, nor his virtue show itself, as it was, the stalking horse to his covert. The ceremonies of hospitality finished, he retires to his lodging, though not to himself; now when the brother of death had summoned to still music all but foul ravishers, thiefs, and cares; with his drawn sword he leaps from his own, enters Lucrecia's bed, her he ravisheth. She having possessed us with a full relation of her misfortunes: She Empress of a mind unconquered of sin or sorrow, with this poniard let out the life Tarquin had made loathed; And now O Countrymen awake your Roman virtue, flesh your swords and valours upon the revenge of the proud usurper of public liberty, the cruel murderer of private innocence: you cannot offer to the Gods a more grateful sacrifice; nor will they ever in requital, forsake that State that forsakes not the defence of virtue.  
Such impression strikes Thunder upon Oaks, Earthquakes on Mountains, as Collatine on the Roman hearts. Their thoughts were torn, and divided from themselves, anger boiled into malice the policy of passion, both flowed into resolution: then like an unpent torrent from some high precipice, the multitude violently ran to precipitate him made high for a precipice; which in the perpetual exile of the Tarquins was accomplished.  

Pro Lucretia.  
THE Roman Story big with variety of wonder, writes Lucretia the female glory: she forcibly abused by Tarquin, declares her innocence to the world, and confirms it by her death. There were two in the act, one in the sin; one adulterer, and one chaste; her body conquered, her mind truly heroical, not stooping to the lure of false pleasure; that remained as untainted, as unforced. Why died she being innocent? to be innocent. Why received she her death from her own hands? haply to prevent it from another's; then had she subscribed to guilt, and not left life without stain. For a Roman to outlive honour was dishonourable, for her to survive her infamy, was to act it. Curtius' spurred on by honour, did ride into the Gulf. Regulus, rather than his faith, would prostitute himself to the witty cruelty of the Carthaginians. To honour did the three hundred Fabiis sacrifice their lives. Honour chased the Tarquins out of Rome; but Lucrece out of life. To wipe off all thought of guilt which malign censure might imprint upon the act, she slew herself. He that condemns her for the murder, accuseth her of the adultery; life had been her guilt, whereas death was her innocence; through her life she made way to her fame, to which life and fortune are slaves, not to be entertained farther than they tend to her advancement. I confess, torn hair and face, and eyes bankrupt of tears, and her own virtue was of force to possess the world she had been ravished without the witness of her death: why then died she? Her shame was too great to be supported by her life; nor any thing but her death revenged her and all Rome, of the insulting Tarquins. Then Lucrece in the height of glory sacrificed herself, as well to the State, as to her innocence.   

Contra Lucreciam.  
WHy died she if she were innocent? why if an adulteress? is death due to innocence, or to adultery? was it that her crime was greater than Tarquin's, that she was slain and he banished? The Roman Law puts not to death the adulteress: but what law screwed to tyranny destroys the innocent? The body might be purged by the adultery: not soul of the adultery by murder. This revenge may argue chastity before and after: but not in the nick of the act, which yielding to some secret enticement, might stain her thought; then loathing herself for the act, held death a more satisfactory revenge then repentance. But, it was Tarquin's lust stained her: no, it was Lucrece; if Tarquin's lust slained her, it was not Tarquin's, but her own. The will left free by divine providence, is not constrained by humane power. If her will was ravished, why do we extol her for murder who died for adultery? had she slain Tarquin, her act had been no way to be justified; but how is this aggravated? Lucrece is her chaste and innocent self; Tarquin her foul ravisher, and greatest enemy. She than did sacrifice her life to her honour: could not her insatiate thirst of glory be slacked but by her blood? Was it not unworthy Tarquin to be her conqueror against her will? and was it not more unworthy Lucrece, not to endure the conqueror against her honour? Her virtue was more debased by being enslaved to common praise, than herself to carnal delight. Had she kept her mind unconquered she had lived the mirror of women: but her weakness pressed her down to die in her despair, rather than live after she was dishonoured.    

DIDO.  
BElus King of Tyre left Pygmalion & Dido heirs to his Kingdom: but the Tyrians as impatient of of a Duarchie, as Pygmalion of a Rival: yielded allegiance solely to him not of years to write man. Dido was married to her Uncle Sichaeus, Hercules Priest: this Sichaeus the sponge of Fortune, filled only to be squeezed; was slain by his Nephew and Brother Pygmalion. He a man of treasure vast enough to betray his life, jealous of the security of his greatness, trusted it to the earth: but Fame (the most injurious Hyperbole) drew it up (perhaps greater than it was) the many fathoms of earth, where it lay rammed from the eye, not the envy of the Prince. Unkind Fortune, that dealest with us as the Persian with their slaves, crownest us for a Sacrifice! Dido a Dowager by her Brother's tyranny, begins to feel a tyranny of sorrow; that (had not nature resolved to keep perfect as much of her as was hers) had made her a Widow also to her beauty; her fair face clouded with discontent: but her fairer soul with no more passion, then betrayed mortality; she betakes her to the male contented of the Tyrian Lords. Since Brothers (said she) are enemies, let us seek to our enemies for Brothers; since pity is fled humane breasts, let us seek it (for such a creature there is, nature tells me) among savages. Though we cannot expect it from his nature; yet his youth might enfeeble him to it: but his very infancy is a monster; what then will his riper years produce but the exile of all humanity? What distant respects will he know that wades through his own blood to his ends? if an innocent Uncle and Brother be slain; if a Sister be not, where is a Subject secure? Miserable Strato, thou wert a Prince by thy slave, to beget a Prince to make slaves of Princes! Miserable Tyre, now more oppressed by one Tyrant, than before by a thousand slaves! Wretched wealth, to thee quiet poverty is a Prince; thou hast divorced me from my Sichaeus, thou hast made me the football of a Tyrant Brother, tossed from his Kingdom, into what unhappy shore is not yet known unto my thoughts. My Lords, I speak to minds too noble to be stifled in the narrow confines of fear: follow your Princess, whose virtue the spite of Fortune shall not wrack into despair. Her words proceeding from the height and sweetness of her mind, were as great a spur as the hope of liberty to advance them into action: then as in a thoughtful mind refreshed with wine, Care itself keeps her revels: so were their thoughts (before dejected) now lifted to that pitch, that valiantly affronts the hard affronts of Fortune; then with all speed they rigged a fleet, and Dido with her treasure, and the Tyrian Lords in the advantage of night hoist sail. The Cyprian was the first shore they touched; where (as the fashion of the Country was) their Virgins were assembled, to sacrifice for their chastities to Venus, before their marriage. Fourscore of these untouched Dido ravisheth from the barbarous sacrifice, and sails with them into Africa; where when she was arrived, she purchased as much land of the Inhabitants as might be covered by an Ox's hide, which cut in thin pieces, made a great extent of ground: but scarce to contain a City two and twenty miles in compass. There was the famous Carthage built by Dido, which after times dilated into a great Empire. By the consent of all there was a yearly rent paid for the land on which the City was founded. The concourse of Africans (which hope of gain brought thither) was great as their gain they received by traffic, which invited them to settle themselves there. The many conspiring hands in no great space of time wrought it to a perfect City: but in the interim, their wealth that flowed thither in high tide, made Carthage the envy of Hiarbus King of the Mauritanians. He summons ten of the Carthaginian Princes, and with them treats of marriage with their Queen; which if fairly may not be obtained, he resolves to try the force of arms. Dido hearing this unwelcome message, desires respite of resolution till the City was finished: which accomplished, she in no wise would yield unto Hiarbus, whom lust linked to rage and avarice, had armed against her and his honour. Dido now the creature which melancholy divorceth from society; desires three months' absence from her friends, whom she tells she must go whither her own and the City's fate did drive her: in which time a little remote from the City, she erected a stately Pyre, which having kindled, and invoked Sichaeus ghost; she a little eased herself against her fortune. What a monster of misery (said she) received life with Dido? The World hath dealt with me, as Love with those it hath distracted; allowed me happiness but by some short intervals. First I was borne Princess of Tyre, then by my Brother's tyranny I was exiled; after long conflicts with the Winds and Seas, I arrived here in Africa; here I built this great Carthage, of which I am entitled Queen; then I thought me placed above my envy, or my fate: but as those wretched creatures that are drawn higher, the more to be strapadoed: so was I made great, great for Hiarbus envy; so was I wound up to the height of happiness and honour, only to fall never to rise again. Prosperity and adversity might be termed the fever of life, did not our best days afflict us more than our worst. In our happiness, the fears that do attend it make us miserable; the hopes that await our unhappiness, make us happy in our lowest unhappiness; which estate would a wise man choose, that which will be better, or that which will be worse? then to be happy, is to be miserable. As the pain of the soul transcends the pain of sense: so is misery to be valued above happiness. For as what shall be is the greatest wrack of thought; so what is, is the clearest relief, the clearest satisfaction. In our height of happiness we know we shall be, in our lowest misery we know we cannot be worse; then to be miserable is to be happy. If I desire felicity, I desire misery; for I rise only to fall. If misery, than happiness; this makes me Fortune's, that makes Fortune my triumph. Where is then content, since banished the height of State? If in the low estate, then must I seek it in the Wilderness, and in some un-sun-seen Cave waste out the remnant of my days; there Pygmalion and Hiarbus follow me; there reigns as great a confusion of thoughts as at the Court: then welcome Death, thou didst divorce me, thou shalt unite me to my Love. Purged from earth, to the Skies I fly, and intwine my soul forever to my loved Sichaeus. Then she leaped into the Pyre, and there consumed.  
The meeting of Dido and Aeneas (in which Virgil's Muse hath sweat to the dishonour of them both; her for love, him for ingratitude) is so merely fabulous, that it is scarce worth the expense of paper to disprove it, only I am bound to vindicate her honour. Rome (as Eutropius writes) was built three hundred ninety four years after the destruction of Troy, none computes the time less. Carthage was built seventy two years before Rome, so justine writes. So there must be of necessity two hundred years between the Trojan Prince and the Carthaginian Queen. Seven hundred years this City stood unconquered; so long they sacrificed to Dido as their tutelar Goddess; at last by Scipio, thence called Affricanus, it was burnt, there their devotion ended with their fortune, and themselves.  

Pro Dido.  
WAS it the Queen of Carthage, or the Queen of beauty that Hiarbus coveted? If Carthage was his end, money was his matrimony; if beauty, he sought a woman, not a wife; if a wife, to make his lust warrantable. Dido in Sichaeus buried all husband, in Hiarbus all man. Love is the good which by being diffused, is corrupted; she that loves one, another, and a third, taketh men in at the coil, and loves only for her pleasure. The object of true love is but one; from the infancy of time to her decrepitude the love between two hath been held most honourable. He that took from the first man his wife, did not make every rib a wife; not only to show us how out of the least of numbers he could draw infinites upon infinites: but especially that our desires might move within the narrow compass of love, not expatiate themselves to lust; that as the first man was all the men in the world to his wife: so now the husband should be the wife's Horizon, that where ere she is placed, he may be all she sees. The objects of lust are as various as numerous: as there are lovely beauties, and to attend them, fond desires. The wanton woman darts forth her unruly heats more freely than the lesse-offending Sun his beams; he with the day, in courtesy to nature, withdraws his fires: she day and night carries the rage of dog-days in her breast, and never sets but then when she can rise no more. Dido would not wed Hiarbus, because she thought all nuptial rites had not their period in Sichaeus. Death is the divorce of man and woman, not of husband and wife; that contract flesh ties and unties: but this is that of souls, which eternity cannot undo; it is as immortal as themselves, not deadened in being singled from earth, but revived to a greater perfection: if then her soul did entirely love, the soul of her soul must be her only love. But Hiarbus sought lawful marriage. Why did he force it? Dido refused marriage, she could not love. Marriage to her had been a rape, another had enjoyed her against her will: if a rape must be avoided with the loss of life; through how many death must she fly a loathed bed, where every night she shall be ravished? Did her virtue attract Hiarbus? why did he not covet her virtue in her prosperity, as in her misery? He that hath lost the effect and quality of virtue in himself, will not value it in another, and with reason; for her virtue was his greatest enemy; forced her chastity so to whom she had been married, that like the Phoenix she would marry to nothing but her ashes.   

Contra Dido.  
WHy refused she marriage? because it was lawful, it was not incestuous; was it a crime because it was no sin? Religion and honour allow her to marry Hiarbus; neither Sichaeus: he was a King, a stranger; this a Subject, an uncle. Marriage is the tie of strange bloods, not of the same. Nature bids us affect, not love our kindred; in this, affection screwed to love, is unnatural: could she then marry Sichaeus, and not Hiarbus? did she think the Priest in Sichaeus a warrant for her incest, and not the King in Hiarbus for a lawful contract? Hath the King the liberty to make the Law, and the Priest to transgress it? Hiarbus desires the establishment of the law of Nations; but Sichaeus violates the law which Nature wrote within him. The Gods suffer her to outlive her incest: she will murder herself rather then entertain a virtuous Love. Hiarbus used force. Why should she refuse it? The safety of Carthage depended on the marriage: she liv●d to build it, and would die to ruin it. Had she burnt a Martyr to her Country, her act had been too great for Chronicle: but she would die to satisfy her passion, rather than live to preserve the City. Her love to Sichaeus was that she valued above Hiarbus. She would vex a living King to appease a liveless Trunk, and rather obey a Block then a Stork. But Sichaeus stands in competition with Carthage. Oh unequal balance! a womanish fancy poised against a public good. What other reason than had she to burn, but because she would not marry?    

THEUTILLA.  
FRance the richest embroidery of beauties, bred a maid from heaven inspired with all those excellencies which first made the virtues of her sex. History writes her birth ignoble: but as it is the greatest Solecism in honour for high bloods not to flow into high attempts: so it is a real ennobling of meanness of birth to be guilty of more than noble actions. Nobility and beauty are a fair varnish of virtue, the lively shadows of that unseen substance, which were it visible, nothing so lovely: but being the true Idea of the mind, cannot be discerned with the eyes of the body. Without this (so much of nothing hath the unworthy honourable) they are but the compliments of man, serve only to fill up this vast vacuum of honour. She basely noble, not nobly base, born under a smoak-dried roof; which though of itself it received no more of heaven's influence then through the loopholes made by the rage thereof; yet her presence made perpetual day. But let her birth be strangled in the womb of History. She was Natures fairest paper, not compounded of the rags of common mortality: but so searsed and refined, that it could receive no impression but that of spotless innocence. How unfortunate had her beauty been, had she had no other championess than herself, the sequel of Theutilla will declare.  
Amalius, Dynasta of France, rich in treasure, magnificent in retinue, Lord of all the world admires, but himself, which he most admires; there was no deity to whom he should owe his fortune, but his unworthiness: for he was more hospitable to himself then to others, and freelyer feasted his senses then strangers. In sum, he was what a virtuous man is not, what a voluptuous man should be. It happened one time, the time pointed at in Chronicle; when his soul (the slave of his sense) dancing and floating like a toast in his wine, was seized on by sleep; the wine itself had paid the drawer of his wine his appetite. Then was he quiet, when he was dead drunk. How fruitlessly were spent those thousand lamps of oil? those thousand pen-plowed reams of paper about the immortality of the soul? Who hath a soul that will not here question it? what is become of it? is it only for this interim metamorphized into a beast? or doth it die? if into a beast, since the prince of man, let it be transmigrated into the prince of beasts, the Prince's beast. Who so sottish, so gross of conceit, to think the Lion, a creature of that invincible valour, and now commanded by reason; having rescued so fair a Lady from so foul tyranny, will transgress the laws of honour, let her lose to her loss of liberty, her loath some dungeon? Or doth she die? or will you mince it into an intervallum of life, a three hours' death? it than follows, the soul thus dying will dye eternally. But to return to Theutilla. Amalius servants have made the neighbouring Villages their rendevouz; where having discovered Theutilla, and in her as much as the world could boast of; they ra vished her from the weak resistance of her parents, and laden with the rich triumph of nature, return unto their Lord, and lock her up in his lodging, whose sense and fancy was so strongly locked up in yron-sleep, he had not power to dream of what he would have acted. She thus forfeited to dishonour, and night the friend of dishonour, enjoying no more of light then the courteous candle, which betrayed to her eye and hand a sword, which she taking to her, revolves her present condition.  
If the soul straightened (said she) in a necessity of ill-doing, must try all her power to gain her liberty: surely she must not refuse any opportunity conducible to the preservation of her purity. Death is then an honourable freedom, when it takes us from the danger of living ill. As we came into the world with nature; so we must go out with honour; we must not rest on nature for our ends, since before her summons, thousands of extremities do beset our lives. There she paused. Welcome (said she) my dear, dear Preserver; to thee I owe this last, this most glorious act of my well-spent life; to thee posterity shall be as much beholding as Theutilla; thou shalt redeem the errors of after times in women. Then she, borne for what she did, drew the sword, anviled and filled for her sex's glory: no sooner (said she) have I unsheathed thee, but I must sheathe thee again, Where? In this guiltless breast of mine. Call up thy too degenerous spirit. Of what bravery can it accuse the act? Thou murder'st a poor innocent maid. Shall posterity brand me with that weakness? Shall it say, that not able to stand under the miseries of life, I was pressed down by the hard extremity of fortune to despair to death? No, my tide of fury flows into another channel; here is a revenge fit for thy spirit, fit for thine arm; thine honour shall be proud to riot in his blood, whose blood would riot in thine honour. Thus than I shake off woman, and her frailty; thus do I strangle the monster lust that revels in thy veins; and to complete my vengeance, send thy sin-surfetted soul into the land of endless night, where it hath already ta'en sure footing, With that, her spirit restless in the revenge of words, eager of action, directed her arm, which gave Amalius so fatal a wound, that it seemed her hot-metled fury was bridled with exactest discretion, and nothing wanted the attempt but passion. Bravest Theutilla, sooner shall the Father's bowels be silent at the sight of his long unseen Son, than posterity forget thy name. Amalius now miserably groaning, now miserably opening his eyes to shut them again more miserably, had little more of life then what could give her life, in appeasing the fury of his servants that rushed in to her destruction. What means (said he) is Chaos of confounding noise; this unwelcome Train, to the more unwelcome Pomp of death? Whither rush ye, ye betrayers of innocence, ye servants of nothing but my lust? Oh may mine infamy find a grave as soon as life; and you sooner: that the world may want a witness of it. I conjure you by the relation that ties you to my commands, and this last; spare her life, whose chastity the Gods are pleased to spare. Then, to make a minute of his life famous, he contemplated on mortality.  
Nature (said he) that first digested this All into an exact method of parts, preserves it likewise by a constant concordance of the same, without the which it would soon resolve into the first nothing: only man, ungoverned man, Nature's Masterpiece, revolting from her allegiance, deposes her Lieutenant Reason, le's in the Usurper, Passion, to untune the harmony that preserves the soul. Hence is it that death, the privation of being, in this disorder seizes the Fort, hurries the Governess captive to an eternal, a never redeemed imprisonment. The Sun, the Sea, have both their bounds, and man his stage from life to death, of equal length to all, though one runs faster than another. The world whirls about continually till it be dissolved; and man's brain not satisfied in the bare necessaries of life, moves in an unbounded motion, till styled by the period of action, the undoer of Nature, Death. There is but one door at which we enter this Labyrinth of life: but infinite are the ways we turn and wind out of it. The infant no sooner with much difficulty raked out of the womb, (punishing the Mother's guilt of his short-lived misery) enters the Tomb, flashing through the world, being but a lightning of life. Pleasure or business wears out the riper man's vitals, and forceth out life, let Nature block it up never so strongly. The aged man, because a burden to himself, sinks under his own weight. These are ordinary ways out of this world into the next: but to be hurled out by violence of Fate, this is the doom of strictest Justice that makes eternity our curse. This is the hard fate my just merit hath encountered, to be punished by the sex I have so much abused. This was his last: for Nature, though she could not tell him he had lived long enough; told him he had been long enough dying. There she withdrew herself from him, and sealed up his eyes to the eternal sleep of eternal night.  

Pro Theutilla.  
REason is the only, and noble difference between the free and servile creature, and they whose actions are not moderated and well poized by her power, deviate from themselves into the slavery of Sense. Theutilla, if she could obtain of herself to yield to sense, why should not Amalius obtain it? If to reason; why should she not kill Amalius? or why should she be ravished? Herself then was Victor of her sense, and to conquer reason she conquered Amalius. Never had her virtue a fairer trial, then when her honour was a martyr staked to unlawful flames; never could her honour be more honourably relieved, then by her virtue; nor both, then by this act. Though Virtue being within her, Honour being above her, was not to be really violated without the Theutilla that was below her: yet must Amalius be sacrificed, as well to deprive her of the interest he might have in her dishonour, as to make opinion clear as her actions. It was that mind that stooped not to her body, that made her of consequence; not her beauty: the other sullied, who but Amalius would value this? or one whose sense is so scattered in the admiration of the outward form, that he discerns not even those deformities of soul which are detected? It was necessary for her fame not only to resolve not to yield: but to prevent occasions that might prejudice her virtue, or her honour. But why was Amalius slain, not master of the opportunity he knew not? why was she forced thither? Because she would not yield; because she should be ravished. But haply her handsome prayers had wrought him to an handsome repentance. Is beauty, the lodestar that attracts hearts of steel to it, the Orator that pleads against itself? Amalius, had his eyes been open, had not read contradictions in her face, nor made so obscure a Comment upon so clear a Text. He had seen her but as he had seen her; her eyes inviting all eyes, her lips all lips, her face Loves banquet, where she riots in the most luxuriant feast of sense: not as she was the model of Divine Perfection, so innocent she knew not the meaning of a Mistress. Theutilla, had she had no other Sword but her innocence, might satisfy herself in that defence: but Conscience is but one witness to one, and her actions must endure the trial of another touchstone beside her own. Amalius would easily confront her meanness. Then allow her this great revenge of little innocence.   

Contra Theutillam.  
A Mind well habited to virtue, enjoys all true content within itself, knowing nothing without it to transport it from itself. Why should she then strain her virtue to a vice; in the too nice satisfaction of others, unsatisfy herself? Why should she, to prevent unlawful love, act a more unlawful revenge? Why should she revenge an unacted injury; commit a certain murder, to avoid an uncertain rape? Had she been absolutely tied either to die, kill, or be ravished; she had showed a greater height of spirit in enduring, then revenging her dishonour. For the passive valour is more laudable than the active: this being often the fruit of a desperate, dejected; that ever of a well-settled mind. Her valour was her crime, her cowardice: for as she had the false spirit of a man, unjustly to kill a man: so had she the true false spirit of a woman, to act a greater, lest she should sink under a lesser evil. Perhaps glory transported her to an attempt (as she flattered herself) above a man: did she not also descend into the cruel weakness of her sex, slay a man that had already paid earnest to a sleep never to awake, that had already pawned himself to Death? Did she not go lower, sacrifice his soul to the fury of furies, herself? Whither did her blind rage lead her, to punish innocence, to salve her honour that was not wounded? This act carries little Valour in it, less Virtue.    

CYPRIANA.  
THE Island Cyprus, Nature's choicest storehouse, where she had reposed the chiefest blessings of the earth, flowing in wealth, the wantonizer of the mind, and by it once dedicated to the Queen of Love, courted and feared of the neighbouring Nations: while secure in her own height; the Othomannick Army, infinite in number, invincible in valour, unappeased by cruelty, breaks in like a sea, that threatens to eat her into another Island, if not devour her. Christianity was their crime, a wrong proud enough to unsheathe a Turkish blade; life was their greatest guilt, which must be wiped off by cruel death. That which to nature was preposterous, the soldier made methodical; the infant torn from the mother's breast, was mangled into as many atoms as it had lived minutes, and hewed out into more Sacrifices than it had sins: if sorrow was too weak to conquer the surviving distressed mother; the sword (therein courteous) supplied it, and entombed both in the womb from whence they did unfortunately spring. Wives and Maids were first ravished, then slain for adultery. Father and Daughter, Mother and Son, Brother and Sister were all incestuously piled up; there was nothing wanting but new lives to satisfy the guilt of death. The Island was an heap of carcases in despair of being repeopled but by Cannibals or Crows. Was ever cruelty so barbarously expressed? Was ever steel refined for such cruelty? Mustapha having almost dislimbed the Island, bends his fury to the head; besiegeth Salamina, renowned for rich Citizens, brave Buildings, and stately Temples; erected by the Telamonian Teucer, during the Trojan sieige. Dandalus the Governor, forced to submit himself to the Turkish yoke, after exquisite tortures, is beheaded; and to strike a greater terror in the survivors, his head is carried upon the point of a sword through the razed City. Nero had here seen his cruel wish accomplished, the head of thousands of heads struck off at one blow. The highest rate the Citizen could amount to, was too cheap for the security of life, where innocence was punished in stead of treason. Mustapha, his sword now surfeited in humane blood, spurs on his sacrilegious fury to revenge him of the Gods: he razeth the Temples, whither the wretched Salaminians were fled for refuge; the Altars are profaned; Hymen's holy Tapers are lighted to rapes and adulteries at the very Altars. Murders are their Sacrifices; innocent lives drop like beads from their bloody hands, their more bloody devotions. Good Heaven! where is your thunder? awake your sleeping armoury: is not your whole Host blasphemed? Good Earth! where is thy Earthquake? cannot these monsters move thee? The consecrated vessels are profaned to servile uses. The shrines of Saints that called the adoration of farthest Pilgrims, are demolished; all, holy, and profane, a e miscellaniously sacrificed to fire and sword. Mustapha, his rage and avarice appeased, bethinks him of a present to appease Selimus his Master's lusts; he sends captive the choicest beauties of both sexes (doomed to another destiny) to the distained Carpathian Sea, where his fleet lay at anchor. The captives shipped, and ready to be wafted in their own blood to Byzantium; when the divinely inspired Cypriana wrought the miracle, worthy the memory of all time. She, servilly employed in the powder-office, with a countenance that gave a majesty to her misery, and scorned the subjection of sorrow; resolves a powder-treason: a candle she had flaming in her hand; but a purer flame shot from heaven into her breast: from no other place could so generous a mind be fired. This fire (said she) purer then the element of fire, shall both burn and cure, shall extinguish the lurking inflammations of lust. Nothing of Cyprus shall be transported to Byzantium but my fame, powerful to perfume the contagion of their sin. O Heaven! to thee, the Sanctuary of innocence, flies my untainted soul: if my spirit enlightened by thine, act thy vengeance, thy mercy reward me; if I transgress thy Commission, if I let out my life before thou requirest it: pardon the weakness of my virtue, pardon her that sacrificeth herself a spotless creature to thy most sacred throne. If thy justice exclude me thy pity, oh pity these innocents; rain all thy revenge on me, bury my name from the discovery of posterity; let not them, because they feel my fate, feel thy vengeance. Then gave she fire to the Powder, that knew as little mercy as the Turk. The Masts and Sails were hoist nearer the Skies, then when the boisterous element conspires a shipwreck; the ribs torn from the body, flew like murdering shot through the next ship; where the unquenched pitch seized the powder, so that both were swallowed by the same fate. Into these two ships were congested the Prime of the Turkish Soldiery, the Cyprian captivity dispatched by Mustapha to Selimus at Byzantium. The miserable Salaminians now upon the shore, paying the last office of affection, to see the last of their wives and children, were more delighted then terrified at the spectacle; they looked on death not as a punishment; but as the most honourable divorce, and last refuge of honour. Death had in it more courtesy than horror: for as it was the last, so it was the least of their evils. Did they weep at their misfortunes? so did the Sea: with a general acclamation they thanked the Gods that had heard their prayers, desiring their friends should be rather a prey to the merciless waves, than Selimus lusts, for which, by the misfortune of beauty, they were reserved untouched. Mustapha now again whets his sword, which before revenge had dulled; there was not a life that was not his prey, till he had left the Island breathless; then, like a Tiger besmeared in the blood of tamer beasts, he returns to his Fleet; and laden with the spoils of the Country, but most with infamy, hoiseth Sails to Bzyantium. Now is he in the Carpathian sea; where may he see nothing but monsters ugly as himself; may wind and water roar to him the name of blood. If sleep— charming-care steal on his restless mind; may the Cyprian Ghosts awake him: may every minute be fear of endless death, and may his sin fright away his repentance: then in view of the Byzantium Towers, the great Seraglio, and his own Palace; may he be betrayed by his nearest friend to a rock that splits him; from thence let him sink into the lowest dungeon of Avernus.  

Pro Cypriana.  
THE Country is wasted and spoilt of her riches: but honour is shipped up a prisoner to Byzantium. Is there no refuge; no redemption? sword and fire can preserve this, as well as sword and fire consume the other. Policy allows not captivity a sword: but cruelty allows her a candle, the clearer to see her slavery. Ignorance is the happiness of misery which is not felt before it be understood. Had Cypriana a slavish mind in a slavish body, she had owed her attempt to fortune, not to virtue; and merited more scorn than praise: but Nature that gave her a soul above her sex, studied a discretion proportionable to manage it. Had she well weighed, always to redeem her honour with honour; she could not better inform, or in a more ingenuous way relieve herself, then to make the emblem of her slavery the instrument of her freedom; her justice was witty, to punish the Turk by the same means he had punished them. Was it their misery, or their cruelty to which she owed her life? She was halde from a glorious death, to an ignominious life, to an inglorious death. She was captivated by her own beauty, and felt the greatest tyranny of it herself, why then also should her greatest offender be unpunished? she did not kill herself for fear of the Turk: for her breast was armed to meet death in any shape of horror, she had before beheld him unaffrighted in all his ghastly forms. Life was below her honour; her honour not above her friends, which nor life, nor death shall divorce from her affection. As they had accompanied her to her slavery: so it was equal to her liberty. Unworthy is she of life, that lives by unworthiness; unworthy is she of an handsome death, that seeks it by an ignominious life: but she soared to the height of glory: for she would not go a voluntary slave to her dishonour, when death might relieve her: but she died, and in herself bequeathed three wonders to the World; a free Slave, a virtuous Prostitute, and an innocent Murderess.   

Contra Cyprianam.  
Whether was the Turk or she more cruel? he slew his enemies, and strangers: she, her friends, kindred, and her self. Had she life to revenge it with self-murder? or were she wronged by another, must she therefore be revenged on herself? Was a life freely given bought at too dear a rate? or because she might feel their power, must she use her own? What was it that looked on her more terrible than death, or that she looked on through a multiplying glass? was it slavery? that is the common fate of virtue, that stands unmoved by misery, unshaken by despair. Had the Turk slain her, he had not deprived the world of the opinion of her virtue: but the very substance is shipwrecked by herself. The Turks cruelty was her courtesy: for though he triumphed over her; yet he gave her the opportunity to triumph over misery, and show that height of spirit that scorns any thing without her should afflict her: but she disdained to be beholding to their courtesy, or her own virtue. Was dishonour the thing beyond death or captivity? had she as much of woman as not to fear a death from herself, and not as much, as not to fear a dishonour from another? Could she hate her virtue, and her sin? could she better revenge her of her virtue, then by her dishonour? Why should she fear what might befall her in life, who was regardless what might befall her after death. Then was slavery the terrible, joined with dishonour her twin sister. Had she been transported to a Nunnery, where virtue is necessitated, had not that been a slavery? would not her will break into a thousand sins, who broke through life into a false liberty? But less than death, slavery, or dishonour, only sense of her dishonour deprived her of her sense; why should she be affrighted by a shadow, when her sense could be wronged by none but herself?    

ARETAPHILA.  
ARetaphila, a Cyrenaean, the last ranked in these Stories, but first in my thoughts, which by the order of birth may claim the privilege to do wonders. As some things are less curiously performed which are ordained for common use, not for the ornament or wonder of the world: so have I, like a French Volunteir on a Lute, all this while scattered slight airs, which may perchance surprise an indifferent eye: but now like the glass that twists the Sunbeams to steal fire from heaven, I must in writing her, so lessen and contract so much of her as may sink into our narrow faith, or narrower reason. If our Poets profanely rake heaven for comparisons, for each part of a rotten Mistress that shall ne'er be part of it; one whom sin, to prevent age, hath carcassed in her cradle: to what heights must I ascend to reach a Subject fit for all fancy to work, not play upon; one that is above all heights? Sometimes she is pleased to stoop to be admired, adored; not that she falls lower to rebound higher: but that we are admired for admiring her, and we her prisoners feast ourselves with the fragmentarie offals of her Fame. Thus do I admire her, till I admire myself out of breath; then she beckons to my soul (the reason I cannot reach; but I obey) to come, whither I will not tell you: but now I am returned a re-transmigrated-mountebank-Pedler, I will open to your Optics that which shall purblind the whole art; at your two nostrils you shall snuff in both the Indies; for your palates, (because the cleanest feeders are the cleanest meat) you shall have the whole sect of Epicures; if their opinions stick in your stomaches, you shall take all the sums of Arabia in a Tobacco-pipe to concoct them: Here is that will chain your care to the perpetual sound of Aretaphila: For your touch, are you a Midas? here is a Diamond set in gold, within two days it will be a Rhodian Colosse; then will it magnify to an Escurial; then to a World; then to ten Worlds; then to Aretaphila: thus Fortune blows dust up to a Lady, then to a Countess, then to a Queen: thus Gold and Diamonds at length come to be Aretaphila, in whose name they have been valued. Please you to look into this inward Drawer, you shall see all the secrets of nature, that have befooled the grand Clarks of all the World. Here shall you see reason for the ebb and flow of Seas, and of an Ague that resembles it; here shall you see the wrack of your bodies wracks, how he is the only Physician of himself. The wounded Roman State, like a broken Tobacco-pipe, was cured by blood. War cures the Turkish Lethargy. The Egyptian Dropsy is cured by drinking; one month in a year the whole Country is drunk. The Plague cures Grand-Cairo of her diseases of repletion: but the Ague only an Ague. It is an opinion of some, that every particular person hath two Angels, one waits at his right hand, the other at his left; this lefthanded Devil is the thing we speak of; if we be fairly dispossessed of him, we may say, the better Angel hath got the victory: but if by the holiogopheron hotontiperistaton, one Devil drives out another. Here you see this little little Pepper-corn; Princes are captives, Emperors are subjects to this Pymee-tyrant, this is Love. Let him be pitied, he swells higher than Atlas; heaven and earth is not a load for his little finger. Let him be scorned, then (like a Prince's cashiered Favourite) he is frowned from a Duke to a male contented Gentleman; then he crosseth his crossed arms, and looks upon his fate with that regreet a younger Brother in the Low-countries doth his followers, who make his misery their food, and are the only flatterers of low fortunes; the little wink rereares the other; four stivers in hot water defends this from the world, and which is worse, himself. Love hath been a tenant to this heart for many years, and hath now left it like a Farm in the eighteenth year, ploughed up and harrowed out of heart; under three years sleep it will not again be tenantable. Here you may see the brain working like a Powder-mill, let the brass be overwrought, he is blown up; and the rest of man is as confused as a beleaguered Town: screw him not up like a treble Lutestring, in a storm, to a French tune, and he will show you the wonders of heaven so distinctly, that you shall confute a whole kennel of Almanacs. But oh! whilst I am quacking, my Aretaphila is fled; fled like the last age; or faster, like yesterday; and my soul, like a skie-climbing Falcon, spirited as the air she flies in, hath gotten height, and wind, and thinks to seize her: but oh! she is heightened into the incomprehensible; she is lessened into the invisible; she is greatned to the un-by-any— fancy— fathomable. Shall we ask Sense what she is? Sense will tell us; her face is the unclouded Welkin in the infancy of day: her eyes the Sun and Moon that sleep by turns, lest they should leave the World in darkness: her tongue the harmony of Spheres and Nature: her breasts Heavens milky way, spangled with azure Stars: her arms Castor and Pollux: her other parts, because of lower function, are but the Symmetry of all the beauties of her sex: she is too much first to have any second; from the third, fourth, and fifth form of women, from a million, or all of them you may take some piece of her, not all, for she herself is the All. Ask Reason what she is; Reason will tell you, she is her Directress, that she keeps the elements at peace within us: our fire she confines to religious zeal, and suffers it not to inflame either to lust or superstition: our watery element she hath designed to quench unlawful flames: our sighs to dry our blubbered eyes, when tears have tired them: our earth like the earth to tread upon, or make no other account of it then of a skin-purse that holds ten thousand pound: the money outed, the purse is laid aside till it be refilled by the same treasure. Ask Faith what she is: Faith that ties us morally to riddles, religiously to mysteries; and Faith will tell you, she hath yours, and mine, & an hundred other souls in one soul: nor doth her soul receive extension: for a soul fills no room, though she be all over the body, and she all over ours; yet none knows where, nor how. If with some Philosophers we will give them but such dimensions, that twenty of them cannot stand upon the point of a needle; then may it follow that two or three thousand of them may be circumscribed (in which compass I think so many miser's souls may) in a local inch: if they have any dimensions, they may be circumscribed; if circumscribed, then follows the unheardof absurdity ' that they are bodies. We are circumscriptive; other Angels definitive: but her, immortal fame hath made ubiquitive, and repletive. There are orders of Angels, the first of higher knowledge, because of nobler function; the knowledge of the second but derived from the first: yet those and these Angels know no more of each other than they are pleased to reveal to one another: but she, first of the first rank, knows all of them and us, and we weakly enlightened, have so much of her, as the watery elements of the Sun, but bare reflection. Some Angels protect Cities, others Countries; but the noblest are Guardians to us frail and mortal men; all these offices were by her undergone on earth; to what high flights of exercise is she now soared? But I must stoop, and draw near her into her low estate. Faith tells us she stands one contrary without another: were there, or were there no night: yet were she an everlasting day. Were there none bad: yet were she unparalleldly good. Were there any or none to be compared to her: yet were she superlative. All of her is an even proportion of extremes. Faith tells us, now she is beyond our apprehension, that she is nothing, yet all of every thing. But now since she is, let us see what made her this all; she was Wife to Phedimus, a Cyrenaean Citizen. As when we see the Eastern Morn shoot his fiery-pointed darts, we say they are the Tipstaffs to usher into the World the approaching sun; presently we see himself attended by his Page, the Day; anon he goes to bed, than it is night: So shall you see the Aretaphila in her glimmering, Wife to Phedimus; then in the bright of day, Queen and protectress of the Cyrenaeans; after that her return to the solitary distaff: then like a man that hath lost the other eye, I'll bid good night to all the World. Nicocrates the Tyrant having made the sword his Orator to plead his Title, usurped dominion over the Cyrenaeans; among other his bloody butcheries, he put to death the innocent Phedimus; and then forced the incomparable Aretaphila to be his Queen. She resenting the public calamities more than her private injuries, meditates a remedy for both, and by advise of her nearest friends, attempts the poisoning of the King. The Tyrant had an old woman to his mother, named Calbia; this carcase, a better name I can hardly afford her outside, was the inside of a Sepulchre; her head was unthatched as an old Parsonage; her eyes (like lights at the last snuff, when the extinguisher is ready to make their Epitaphs) sunk low into their candlesticks; her ears now deaf, now happy (such was her tongue) they have lost their sense; her nose wormed like a piece of Homer of the first bind, offended with her breath, bowed to her chin to dam it up; her cheeks holed as the earth in dog-days drought; her lips fit to be kissed by none but by themselves; her teeth rotten as her soul, hollow as her heart, loose as the shingles of an old silenced steeple, scragged as a disparked pale, stood at that distance one could not bite another; her tongue so weakly guarded, scolds like the alarm of a clock; her chin was downed with a China beard of twenty hairs; her breast lank as a quicksand, wasted as an hourglass at the eleventh use; one arm, one leg, one foot she doffed with day, and as a resurrection, donned with the morrow; her bones (pithless as a Stallion for seven Posterities) the slightest fears might now make rattle in her skin; her body (wasted to no waste, blasted with lust as an Oak with lightning) was as familiar with diseases, as a Physician: to conclude; she is odious beyond all comparison: one sight of her would make the heat of youth recoil into an infant continence. Yet she maintains two Painters & three Apothecaries to maintain this old-old ugliness, as the rare thing she hath been these fourscore years in getting. But I have too long, like a Sexton, conversed with rottenness. She was Calbia, and in that, her soul was a well acquainted with sin as a Confessor: she was Nicocrates Mother, and in that name she carried to the fair and virtuous Aretaphila, the envy of age, the wormwood of a mother-in-law; a word that is the original that signifies all that is ill in the sex: yet for the relief of some few particulars, read it like Hebrew, and it yields something that is good. This Calbia discovers the poison-plot. Then, as eagerly as my young Master in the Country fastens on the red-Deere-pie (tougher than Drakes biscuits that went round the world, hoary as Methusalem) entailed by his Grandsire to the house for ever; she seizes the fair Aretaphila into her talons, more griping than poverty itself; nails that scratch like the law, and are as good a cure for the itch as the Goal for thiefs; her she brings to the rack, there intending, after confession, with most subtle tortures to let out her life. Oh, that Love in his Olympiads should be drowned in those fair eyes! those eyes, more eloquent than all Rhetoric, that would raise an Anchoret from his grave, and turn the Fiend Fury into the Cherubin Pity, that those eyes should be of no other use then to vent sorrow to inexorable ears! that those white and red roses (which no rain but what fell from those heavenly eyes) could colour or sweeten, should wither in their prime! those lips that stain the rubies, and make the roses blush! those lips that command the scarlet-coloured morn into a cloud to hide his shame, should kiss a merciless and sinew-sundring rack! that breath which makes us all Chamaelions' should be wasted into unregarded sighs! that those breasts eternally chaste, and white as the Alps; those legs, columns of the fairest Parian marble, columns that support this monument of all pens, should be stretched into anatomies! that her body that would call a soul from heaven into it, should be mangled like one that hath hanged in chains these three years! that her skin, smooth as the face of youth, soft as a bed of violets, white as the queen of innocence, sweet as the bean-blossomes after rain; that that skin, the casket of that body, the karkanet of that soul, should be jaged and torn with that remorseless pity we commonly bestow upon a scarecrow! After long racking, when Calbia saw she could rack no confession; then when more torment would have been a relief; she was taken down from the rack, and her body was pinned, as an unwelcome courtesy, upon her soul. Thus noble and pious guilt is twin-brother, and carries the same face with innocence: so was she spirited, that those tortures could scarce try her patience, less her truth; and though Calbia was not fully possessed of any course to put her to death; yet had she cruelty enough to do worse than kill her to make a cause. But, Aretaphila, though her Country's liberty, and her own honour lifted higher than the flatteries of life, or fear of death; resolved in spite of cruelty or fate, to live whilst she had offered Nicocrates and Calbia to her oppressed Country's rage: therefore the second time she was brought to the rack, when fearing she should be sacrificed to Calbia, not Calbia to Cyrenaea, to calm Nicocrates, she thus bespoke him:  
Great Sir, when you were pleased to lift my humble fortunes up to those glories that willingly engage a woman's pride; when by kind fate, and kinder Nicocrates, I was snatched from base private arms, to the embraces of a Prince: were these cheeks died into ingratitude and cruelty to make them lovely? can your breast harbour such a thought; that this breast which you were pleased to think worthy to harbour yours, can swell with those two monsters abandoned by the most infamous of our sex? But since (such is my hard fortune) I am reduced to that misery as to defend mine innocence; hear me Nicocrates; not that I beg life; for I scorn to stoop (now I am suspected) so low as to take it honourably. This potion (which the comments of envy interpreted a poison) is a confection, not of Cantharideses for thy lust: but of all those ingredients that may strengthen virtuous love. This true innocence had no design upon thy life, which (oh thou allseeing Sky witness) I value as much above mine own, as mine honour above mine enemy: but fearing lest like a needle between two loadstarres, the stronger might attract thee; and my unworthiness (how happy am I in it since it pleads mine innocence!) might betray me to a worthier Love; I devised this potion to make thy love lasting as mine, which else would soon consume, fed with such withered fuel as this poor declining face; this face that can boast nothing but her sorrow, which (since derived from you) is most welcome to these eyes, and is received as your Ambassador, into this heartless heart. Oh let these tears for ever drown these eyes! oh let this sorrow sacrifice this innocent heart in all her glory to the great Nicocrates! oh let Aretaphila, the Aretaphila that is (since she)—  
There (though no tongue could praise her but her own) the Tyrant impatient (such oratory have tears in a fair face) to hear more, tearing his hair, his rage too hasty to be silent; he expressed as much spleen to Calbia, as she to Aretaphila. What furies (said he) fled from their black region have possessed thy blacker soul (fir to lend rage to all the horrid hags of Tartary) to act a deed, which, oh you Heavens! can you behold without rain and thunder, your combined sorrow & rage? can you rend the clouds which are but the sucked up vapours of the earth; and not her that takes in all the poisonous sin of hell to fortify her wickedness? Accursed fury! cursed from the cradle to the tomb, cursed above all that ever Heaven and Earth yet cursed! May all the sins of me, my Name, and House return into thy venomed soul, till they have pressed it into the low despair of nere-below-repenting sinners. Then in his fury, too great for more words; he had racked his Mother Calbia; had not the virtuous Aretaphila stepped in between him and his revenge. Nicocrates now gladly possessed of her innocence, endeavours by studied favours to raze out all the injuries imprinted on her body and her soul: but she like an Anvil, too much heated by the last blows to cool suddenly; meditates upon another, and more safe way for the Tyrant's death. She had a Daughter, every way exactly perfect, for she was Daughter to Aretaphila. The Tyrant had a brother called Leander; you have already all that commends him; he was an haire-braind, wild-headed, unreined young man; one whom lust or ambition might flatter into the most desperate attempts. Aretaphila wrought so far with the King, that a match between her Hero-Daughter and the young Leander was by his consent concluded; her she counsels to insinuate into her Husband's rashness, and persuade him (and oh what will not this pestiferous night-geare do!) to besiege his brother's Crown. Leander not contented with the Kingdom he enjoyed in her; thought now nothing less than to raise himself as high as his ambition, bribed his Swiz— servant Diapheries, who in the first nick of opportunity murdered Nicocrates. Whither do these crowns and sceptres, the worlds magnalia, but indeed the balls of Fortune, hurry thee, fond Leander? thou hast not killed the Tyrant for the Country: but slain thy brother for the Crown. Through how many restless nights, and less restless thoughts do we encounter these sweet-bitter joys: and as the more we grasp the water into our hands, the less we hold: so is content the farther from us, the more we seek it in these fading glories of the World; which like an ignis fatuus, first lights us through wild untrodden paths unto themselves; then through vast airy thoughts they lead us up to that precipice, from whence we fall, and there they leave us. Aretaphila could not appease her revenge till she had plucked up the Tyrant by the roots. First she incensed the Citizens against Leander, the Traitor to his Prince, the parricide of his Country, the fratricide, and lastly the muderer of her Husband. They with one consent adjudged him to be sowed up into a sack, and cast into the sea. Then judgement proceeded to Calbia, whom they condemned to the fire, and she was burnt alive. Diapheries not worth naming, and therefore I think not worth hanging, the Story mentions not his punishment. The Cyrenaeans now prostrate their lives and fortunes to the devotion of Aretaphila, that was owner of them both; they offer her divine honours, and beseech her to take further protection of the Country. But she who to do her Country service, could subdue her thoughts to be a Queen; can fall from that height, to rise above all Crowns, into her own content; she shaking off those glorious loads of State, retired from all the crowding tumults of the Court, into a solitary and truly happy countrey-condition; there to spin out her thread of life at her homely distaff: where we will leave her a verier wonder than the Phoenix in the Desert, the alone Paragon of all peerless perfections. Her actions (so above the criticism of my purblind judgement) I am not able to comprehend, much less contradict, or controvert. I am silent, lest you should pass that censure upon me for her; which Famianus Strada did upon Horace for Plautus; that my judgement is judicium sine judicio.  
FINIS.   

THe Heroina hath nothing of woman in her but her sex, nothing of sex but her body, and that disposed to serve, not rule her better part. It is as Nature left it, neglectful, not negligent; neat, not stretched upon the tenter-hookes of quaintness of dress or garb; with Nature it decays, with Mechanic art the ruins are not repaired. Her soul is her heaven in which she enjoys eternal harmony: her conscience is her Sanctuary, whither, when she is wounded she flies for refuge. Her affections and passions, in constant calm, neither flow nor ebb with Fortune; her hope is not screwed up to ambition, nor her fear dejected to despair. Her joy is confined to smiles, her sorrow to tears. Prosperity is the type of what she shall be; Adversity, her rolling iron that smooths her way to Paradise. Outward happiness she owes not ●o her Stars, but her Virtue that rules her Stars. If she be lashed by Fortune, it is but like a Top, not to be set up, but kept upright. Religion, not Pride or weakness makes her chaste. She understands not the common conceit of love, nor entertains that familiarity with man that he may hope it. Flattery, the inseparable companion of Love, she scorns, though she cannot flatter herself. If Love enter her breast, it is in the most noble way directed to the beauty, nearest the most perfect beauty. If she marry, it is only to propagate; the very act tending thereto she singles from the thought of sin. Virtue is the reward of her Virtue; her soul is not so servile, as to be tied by the hope of happiness, or fear of misery to be what she is: but is clearly satisfied for doing well, that she doth well. She is temperate, that her soul may still be Sovereign of her sense. She entertains pity as an attribute of the Divinity, not of her sex. She is wise, because virtuous. She is valiant: for her conscience is ungalled, and can endure the sharpest touch of tongue. If she be enwrapped in the strait that she may sin, she relies upon the highest Providence, which forbids her to use a remedy worse than the evil.  
FINIS.