An
audience
from the King.
Longfellow
What do they want?
JASON.
Only the royal sanction
To give a name unto a nameless temple
Upon Mount Gerizim.
ANTIOCHUS.
Then bid them enter.
This pleases me, and furthers my designs.
The occasion is auspicious. Bid them enter.
SCENE II. -- ANTIOCHUS; JASON; THE SAMARITAN AMBASSADORS.
ANTIOCHUS.
Approach. Come forward; stand not at the door
Wagging your long beards, but demean yourselves
As doth become Ambassadors. What seek ye?
AN AMBASSADOR.
An audience from the King.
ANTIOCHUS.
Speak, and be brief.
Waste not the time in useless rhetoric.
Words are not things.
AMBASSADOR (reading). "To King Antiochus,
The God, Epiphanes; a Memorial
From the Sidonians, who live at Sichem. "
ANTIOCHUS.
Sidonians?
AMBASSADOR.
Ay, my Lord.
ANTIOCHUS.
Go on, go on!
And do not tire thyself and me with bowing!
AMBASSADOR (reading).
"We are a colony of Medes and Persians.
