Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 5.djvu/31

 this tragedy it has been my intention to follow the account of Diodorus Siculus; ["Sardanapalus, the Thirtieth from Ninus, and the last King of the Assyrians, exceeded all his Predecessors in Sloth and Luxury; for besides that he was seen of none out of his family, he led a most effeminate life: for wallowing in Pleasure and wanton Dalliances, he cloathed himself in Womens' attire, and spun fine Wool and Purple amongst the throngs of his Whores and Concubines. He painted likewise his Face, and decked his whole Body with other Allurements He imitated likewise a Woman's voice; and proceeded to such a degree of voluptuousness that he composed verses for his Epitaph  which were thus translated by a Grecian out of the Barbarian language—

What once I gorged I now enjoy, And wanton Lusts me still employ; All other things by Mortals prized Are left as dirt by me despised." —The Historical Library of Diodorus the Sicilian, made English by G. Booth, of the City of Chester, Esquire, 1700, p. 65. "Another king of the sort was Sardanapalus And so, when Arbaces, who was one of the generals under him, a Mede by birth, endeavoured to manage by the assistance of one of the eunuchs, whose name was Sparamizus, to see Sardanapalus: and when he saw him painted with vermilion, and adorned like a woman, sitting among his concubines, carding purple wool, and sitting among them with his feet up, wearing a woman's robe, and with his beard carefully scraped, and his face smoothed with pumice stone (for he was whiter than milk, and pencilled under his eyes and eyebrows; and when he saw Arbaces he was putting a little more white under his eyes). Most historians, of whom Duris is one, relate that Arbaces, being indignant at his countrymen being ruled over by such a monarch as that, stabbed him and slew him. But Ctesias says that he went to war with him, and collected a great army, and then that Sardanapalus, being dethroned by Arbaces, died, burning himself alive in his palace, having heaped up a funeral pile four plethra in extent, on which he placed 150 golden couches."—The Deipnosophistæ of Athenæus, bk. xii. c. 38, translated by C. D. Yonge, 1854, iii. 847.] reducing it, however, to such dramatic regularity as I best could, and trying to approach the unities. I therefore suppose the rebellion to explode and succeed in one day by a sudden conspiracy, instead of the long war of the history.