Page:The Poetical Works of Elijah Fenton (1779).djvu/18

 hardly refrained from striking her; when in the heat of their quarrel there came in a witness, suborned by some of Mariamne's enemies, who accused her to the King of a design to poison him. Herod was now prepared to hear any thing in her prejudice, and immediately ordered her servant to be stretched upon the rack, who in the extremity of his tortures confessed that his mistress's aversion to the King arose from something Sohemus had told her; but as for any design of poisoning, he utterly disowned the least knowledge of it. This confession quickly proved fatal to Sohemus, who now lay under the same suspicions and sentence that Joseph had before him on the like occasion: nor would Herod rest here, but accused her, with great vehemence, of a design upon his life, and, by his authority with the judges, had her publicly condemned and executed.

"Herod, soon after her decease, grew melancholy and dejected, retiring from the public administration of affairs into a solitary forest, and there abandoned himself to all the black considerations which naturally arise from a passion made up of love, remorse, pity, and despair. He used to rave for his Mariamne, and to call upon her in his distracted fits; and in all probability would have soon followed her, had not his thoughts been seasonably called off from so sad an object by public storms, which at that time very nearly threatened him."