„Ne tardons plus: faisons ce que l'honneur exige!“

he exclaims, and it is not without tears in his eyes thas he utters the fatal words:„Il faut nous séparer.“ It grieves him to the very heart that Berenice suspects him to be perfidious and perjured, though his love is more ardent than ever. For when Berenice insists upon departing from Rome this very day, and when all his remonstrances are useless, his despair becomes such as to make her responsible for his momentary acting:

„En l'état où je suis je puis tout entreprendre:

Et je ne réponds pas que ma main à vos yeux

N'ensanglante à la fin nos funestes adieuxX.“

His relation to Antiochus has been touched upon, when he intrusted him with the com- mission to Berenice. Titus esteems him very highly, because, as he himself says, he owes to him the better half of his glory. He knows him to be his best and truest friend and comrade and intrusts him with all his heart's secrets. He, therefore, enjoins upon him to take care of Berenice, when she returns to Palestine, and even enlarges the boundaries of his kingdom as far as those of Palestine, that she might be all the more sure of his protection and assistance.

How is this character delineated by Otway? According to Racine, he makes us have a look into the heart of the emperor. First he describes the emperor's duty doing as a good son his late father all the honours then being in use, then his ardent love to Berenice and the ter- rible conflict between his love and his duty, and indeed with such force in his expressions and such naturalness that we easily may comprehend why his contemporaries styled him„the most eminent Tragic Writer in the Seventeenth Century.“

„My happiness is plac'd in her alone“

says Titus, knowing his love returned by Berenice with the same burning passion; but at the same time he remembers the oaths sworn, on his accession to the throne, to the constitution of the Roman empire, remembers the exspectations which the people are cherishing; he hears the grumblings of the impatient crowd discontent with his choice, but he also sees the tears, the griefs and the despair of his passionately beloved Berenice; he himself is not far from being driven to despair, and so he exclaims:

„But which way from my Heart shall I remove

So long establish'd and deep-rooted Love?“

It is a long inner conflict which his soul tries to overcome and in which his sense of duty finally triumphs. Vet, several times his resolution staggers, he execrates the„Roman Ru- deness,“ names his way of acting„Barbarity,“ and wishes himself to be born a slave:

„For who by Greatness e'er did happy grow? None but the heavy Slave is truly so,

Who travels all his Life in one dull Road,

And drudging on, in quiet loves his Load; Seeking no farther than the Needs of life

Knows what's his own, and so exempt from Strife, And cherishes his homely careful Wife,

Lives by the Clod, and thinks of nothing higher; Has all, because he cannot much desire.“