Chapters 101–110

101 I was thunderstruck at this blow. I bared my throat, and cried, “Ah, Fate, at last you have smitten me hip and thigh.” For Giton, who was sprawling over me, had already fainted. Then the sweat broke out on us and called us both back to life. I took Eumolpus by the knees, and cried, “Mercy onus! Weare dead men. Help us, I implore you by our fellowship in learning; death is upon us, and we may come to welcome death, unless you prevent us from doing so.”

Eumolpus was overwhelmed by this attack, and swore by gods and goddesses that he did not understand what had happened, and had no sinister intentions in his mind, but had taken us to share the voyage with him in perfect honesty and absolute good faith; he had been meaning to sail himself some time before. “Is there any trap here?” he said, “and who is the Hannibal we have on board? Lichas of Tarentum is a respectable person. He is not only owner and captain of this ship, but has several estates and some slaves in business. He is carrying a cargo consigned to a market. This is the ogre and pirate king to whom we owe our passage; and besides, there is Tryphaena, loveliest of women, who sails from one place to another in search of pleasure.” ‘But it is these two we are running away from,” said Giton, and poured out the story of our feud, and explained our imminent danger, till Eumolpus shook. He became muddled and helpless, and asked us each to put forward our views. “I would have you imagine that we have entered the ogre’s den,” he said. “We must find some way out, unless we run the ship aground and free ourselves from all danger.’ “‘No,” said Giton,

“persuade the helmsman to run the boat into some harbour. Pay him well, of course, and tell him your brother cannot stand the sea, and is at his last gasp. You will be able to hide your deception by the confused look and the tears on your face. You will touch the helmsman’s heart, and he will do you a favour.” Eumolpus declared that this was impossible: “These large boats only steer into landlocked harbours, and it is incredible that our brother should collapse so soon. Besides, Lichas may perhaps ask to see the sick man as a matter of kindness. You realize what a fine turn we should do ourselves by leading the master up to his runaways with our own hands. But supposing the ship could be turned aside from her long passage, and Lichas did not after all go round the patient’s beds; how could we leave the ship without being seen by every one? Cover our heads, or bare them? Cover them, and every one will want to lend his arm to the poor sick man! Bare them, that is nothing more or less than proscribing ourselves.”

102 “No,” I said, “I should prefer to take refuge in boldness, slip down a rope into the boat, cut the painter, and leave the rest to luck. I do not invite Eumolpus to share the risk. It is not fair to load an innocent person with another's troubles. a am satisfied if chance will help us to get down.” “It is a clever plan,” said Eumolpus, “if there were any way of starting it. But every one will see you going: especially the helmsman, who watches all night long, and keeps guard even over the motions of the stars. Of course you might elude his unsleeping watchfulness, if you wanted to escape off another part of the ship; but as it is, you want to slip off the stern close to the helm itself, where the rope which holds the boat safe hangs just by. Again, I am surprised that it did not occur to you, Encolpius, that one sailor is always on duty night and day lying in the boat, and you cannot turn this sentry out except by killing him, or throw him out except by force. You must ask your own bold heart whether that can be done. As far as my coming with you goes, I do not shirk any danger which offers a chance of safety. But I suppose that even you do not wish to squander your lives like a vain trifle without any reason. Now see whether you approve of this. I will roll you in two bales, tie you up, and put you among my clothes as luggage, of course leaving the ends a bit open, so that you can get your breath and your food. Then I will raise the cry that my slaves have jumped overboard in the dark, being afraid of some heavier punishment. Then after we have arrived in harbour, I will carry you out like baggage without arousing any suspicion.” “What,” I cried, “tie us up like wholly solid people whose stomachs never make them unhappy? Like people who never sneeze nor snore? Just because this kind of trick on one occasion turned out a success?? But even supposing we could endure one day tied up: what if we were detained longer by a calm or by rough weather? What should we do? Even clothes that are tied up too long get creased and spoilt, and papers in bundles lose their shape. Are we young fellows who never worked in our lives to put up with bondage in dirty cloths as if we were statues?. . . No, we still have to find some way of salvation. Look at what I thought of. Eumolpus, as a man of learning,

Cleopatra had herself conveyed to Julius Caesar at is sure to have some ink. We will use this medicine to dye ourselves, hair, nails, everything. Then we will stand by you with pleasure like Aethiopian slaves, without undergoing any tortures, and our change of colour will take in our enemies.” “Oh yes,” said Giton, “and please circumcise us too, so that we look like Jews, and bore our ears to imitate Arabians, and chalk our faces till Gaul takes us for her own sons; as if this colour alone could alter our shapes, when it takes a number of points in unison to make a good lie. Suppose the stain of dye on the face could last for some time; imagine that never a drop of water could make any mark on our skins, nor our clothes stick to the ink, which often clings to us without the use of any cement: but, tell me, can we make our lips swell to a hideous thickness? Or transform our hair with curling-tongs? Or plough up our foreheads with scars? Or walk bow-legged? Or bend our ankles over to the ground? Or trim our beards in a foreign cut? Artificial colours dirty one’s body without altering it. Listen, I have thought of this in desperation. Let us tie our heads in our clothes, and plunge into the deep.”

103 God and man forbid,’ cried Eumolpus, “that you should make such a vile conclusion of your lives. No, better take my advice. My slave, as you learned by his razor, is a barber. Let him shave the head of each ot you this minute, and your eyebrows as well. Then [ will come and mark your foreheads with some neat inscription, so that you look like slaves punished by branding. These letters will divert inquisitive people’s suspicions, and at the same time conceal your faces with the shadow of punishment.” We tried the trick at once, and walked cautiously to the side of the ship, and yielded up our heads and eyebrows to the barber to be shorn. Eumolpus covered both our foreheads with enormous letters, and scrawled the usual mark of runaway slaves all over our faces with a generous hand. But one of the passengers, who was extremely seasick, happened to be leaning over the side of the ship to relieve his stomach, and observed the barber in the moonlight busy with his ill-timed work. The man cursed this for an omen, because it looked like the last offering of a doomed crew, and then threw himself back into his bunk. We pretended not to hear his puking curses, and went on with the gloomy business, and then lay down in silence and passed the remaining hours of the night in uneasy sleep. . .

104 “I thought I heard Priapus say in my dream: ‘I tell you, Encolpius whom you seek has been led by me on board your ship.’ Tryphaena gave a scream and said, “You would think we had slept together; I dreamed that a picture of Neptune, which I noticed in a gallery at Baiae, said to me: ‘You will find Giton on board Lichas’s ship.’” “This shows you,” said Eumolpus, “that Epicurus was a superhuman creature; he condemns jokes of this kind in a very witty fashion.” . . However, Lichas first prayed that Tryphaena’s dream might mean no harm, and then said, “There is no objection to searching the ship to show that we do not despise the workings of Providence.’ Then the man who had caught us at our wretched tricks the night before, whose name was Hesus, suddenly shouted, “Then who are those fellows who were being shaved in the dark by moonlight? A mighty bad precedent, I swear. I am told that no man alive ought to shed a nail or a hair on board ship, unless winds and waves are raging.’

105 At this speech Lichas fired up in alarm, and said, ‘What, has anyone cut his hair on board my ship, and at dead of night too? Quick, bring the villains out here. I want to know who is to be punished to give us a clear voyage.” “Oh,” said Eumolpus, “I gave those orders. I was not doing anything unlucky, considering that I had to share the voyage myself. It was because these ruffians had long, dirty hair. I did not want to turn the ship into a prison, so I ordered the filth to be cleared off the brutes. Besides, I did not want the marks of branding to be screened and covered by their hair. They ought to show at full length for every one to read. Furthermore, they squandered my money on a certain lady friend of ours; I pulled them away from her the night before, reeking with wine and scent. In fact, they still stink of the shreds of my inheritance.” . .

So it was decided that forty stripes should be inflicted on each of us to appease the guardian angel of the ship. Not a moment was lost; the angry sailors advanced upon us with ropes-ends, and tried to soften their guardian angel’s heart with our miserable blood. For my part I bore three full blows with Spartan pride. But Giton cried out so lustily the moment he was touched, that his familiar voice filled Tryphaena’s ears. Not only was the lady in a flutter, but all her maids were drawn by the well-known tones, and came running to the victim. Giton’s loveliness had already disarmed the sailors; even without speaking he appealed to his tormentors. Then all the maids screamed out together: “It is Giton, it is; stop beating him, you monsters. Help, ma’am, Giton is here.” Tryphaena had already convinced herself, and inclined her ear to them, and flew on wings to the boy. Lichas, who knew me intimately, ran up as though he had heard my voice too, and did not glance at my hands or face, sed continuo ad inguina mea luminibus deflexis movit officiosam manum, and said, “How are you, Encolpius?” No one need be surprised that Ulysses’s nurse discovered the scar which revealed his identity after twenty years, when a clever man hit upon the one test of a runaway so brilliantly, though every feature of his face and body was disguised. Tryphaena, thinking that the marks on our foreheads were real prisoners’ brands, cried bitterly over our supposed punishment, and began to inquire more gently what prison had stayed us in our wanderings, and what hand had been so ruthless as to inflict such marks upon us. “But, of course,” she said, “runaway slaves who come to hate their own happiness, do deserve some chastisement.”

106 Lichas leaped forward in a transport of rage and cried, “You silly woman, as if these letters were made by the scars of the branding-iron. I only wish they had defiled their foreheads with this inscription: we should have some consolation left. As it is, we are being assailed by an actor's tricks, and befooled by a sham inscription.”

Tryphaena besought him to have pity, because she had not lost all her desire for Giton, but the seduction of his wife and the insults offered to him in the Porch of Hercules were still in Lichas’s mind, and he cried out with a look of still more profound agitation, “Tryphaena, I believe you admit that the Gods in Heaven take some trouble about men’s affairs. They brought these sinners on board my boat without their knowledge, and told us what they had done by a coincidence in dreams. Then do consider; how can we possibly pardon people whom a God himself has handed over to us for punishment? I am not a bloodthirsty man, but personally I am afraid that if I let them off anything it will fall on me.” Tryphaena veered round at this appeal to superstition, declined to interfere with the punishment, and declared that she approved of this most proper vengeance. She had been just as gravely wronged as Lichas, considering that her reputation for chastity had been publicly impugned. .

“I believe I am a man of some reputation, and they have chosen me for this duty, and begged me to make it up between them and their old friends. I suppose you do not imagine that these young men have fallen into the snare by chance, when the first care of every one who goes a voyage is to find a trustworthy person to depend on. So unbend the sternness which has been softened by revenge, and let the men go free without hindrance to their destination. Even a harsh and unforgiving master reins in his cruelty if his runaways are at last led back by penitence, and we all spare an enemy who surrenders. What do you want or wish for more?

107 These free and respectable young men lie prostrate before your eyes, and what is more important, they were once bound to you by close friendship I take my oath that if they had embezzled your money, or hurt you by betraying your confidence, you might still be satisfied with the punishment you have seen inflicted. Look, you see slavery on their foreheads, and their free faces branded under a self-imposed sentence of punishment.” Lichas interrupted this plea for mercy, saying, Do not go confusing the issue, but let each single point have its place. And first of all, if they came of their own accord, why have they stripped all the hair off their heads? A man who disguises himself wants to play a trick, not to make amends. Again, if they were contriving some act of grace through a mediator, why did you do everything in your power to hide your protégés away? All this makes it clear that the ruffians fell into the net by accident, and that you hunted for some device to avoid the force of our displeasure. When you try to prejudice us by calling them free and respectable, mind you do not spoil your case by impudence. What should an injured party do, when the guilty run into punishment? Oh you say, they were once our friends! Then they deserve the harsher treatment. A person who injures a stranger is called a robber, but a man who hurts his friends is practically a parricide.” Eumolpus put an end to this unfair harangue by saying, “I know that nothing is more against the poor young men than their cutting their hair at night. This looks like a proof that they came by chance upon the ship and did not come on purpose. Now I want the plain truth to come to your ears just as simply as it happened. They wanted to relieve their heads of the troublesome and useless weight before they came aboard, but the wind got up and postponed their scheme of treatment. They never thought that it made any difference where they began what they had decided to do; they were quite ignorant of sailors’ omens and sea-law.” “But why should they shave themselves to excite pity?” said Lichas, “Unless of course bald people are naturally more pitiable. But what is the use of trying to discover the truth through a third person? Now speak up, you ruffian! Who was the salamander that singed off your eyebrows? What God had the promise of your hair? Answer me, gallows-bird!”’

108 I was dumb with terror of being punished, and too upset to find a word to say, for the case was only too clear. . . .We were inno position to speak, or do any thing, for to say nothing of the disgrace of our shaven heads, our eyebrows were as bald as our pates. But when a wet sponge was wiped down my doleful countenance, and the ink ran over all my face and of course blotted out every feature in a cloud of smut, anger passed into loathing. Eumolpus cried out that he would not allow anyone to disfigure free young men without right or reason, and cut short the angry sailors’ threats not only by argument but by force. His slave stood by him in his protest, and one or two of the most feeble passengers, who rather consoled him for having to fight than increased his strength. For my part I shirked nothing. I shook my fist in Tryphaena’s face, and declared in a loud open voice that I would use violence to her if she did not leave off hurting Giton, for she was a wicked woman and the only person on the ship who deserved flogging. Lichas’s wrath blazed hotter at my daring, and he taunted me with throwing up my own case and only shouting for somebody else. Tryphaena was equally hot and angry and abusive, and divided the whole ship’s company into factions. On our side, the slave barber handed out his blades to us, and kept one for himself, on the other side Tryphaena’s slaves were ready with bare fists, and even the cries of women were not unheard on the field. The helmsman alone swore that he would give up minding the ship if this madness, which had been stirred up to suit a pack of scoundrels, did not stop. None the less, the fury of the combatants persisted, the enemy fighting for revenge and we for dear life. Many fell on both sides without fatal results, still more got bloody wounds and retired in the style of a real battle, and still we all raged implacably. Then the gallant Giton turned a razor on himself and threatened to put an end to our troubles by self-mutilation, and Tryphaena averted the horrible disaster by a fair promise of freedom. I lifted a barber’s knife to my throat several times, no more meaning to kill myself than Giton meant to do what he threatened. Still he filled the tragic part more recklessly, because he knew that he was holding the very razor with which he had already made a cut on his throat. Both sides were drawn up in battle array, and it was plain that the fight would be no ordinary affair, when the helmsman with difficulty induced Tryphaena to conclude a treaty like a true diplomat. So the usual formal undertakings were exchanged, and she waved an olivebranch which she took from the ship’s figure-head, and ventured to come up and talk to us: “What madness,” she cried, “is turning peace into war? What have our hands done to deserve it? No Trojan hero carries the bride of the cuckold son of Atreus in this fleet, nor does frenzied Medea fight her foe by slaying her brother. But love despised is powerful. Ah who courts destruction among these waves by drawing the sword?

109 Who does not find a single death enough? Do not strive to outdo the sea and heap fresh waves upon its savage floods.”

The woman poured out these words in a loud excited voice, the fighting died away for a little while, our hands were recalled to the way of peace, and dropped the war. Our leader Eumolpus seized the occasion of their relenting, and after making a warm attack on Lichas, signed the treaty, which ran as follows: “Agreed on your part, Tryphaena, that you will not complain of any wrong done to you by Giton, and if any has been done to you before this date will not bring it up against him or punish him or take steps to follow it up in any other way whatsoever; that you will give the boy no orders which he dislikes, for a hug, a kiss, or a lover’s close embrace, without paying a hundred pieces for it cash down. Furthermore, it is agreed on your part, Lichas, that you will not pursue Encolpius with insulting words or grimaces, nor inquire where he sleeps at night, or if you do inquire will pay two hundred pieces cash down for every injurious act done to him.” Peace was made on these terms, and we laid down our arms, and for fear any vestige of anger should be left in our minds, even after taking the oath, we decided to wipe out the past with a kiss. There was applause all round, our hatred died down, and a feast which had been brought for the fight cemented our agreement with joviality. Then the whole ship rang with songs; and a sudden calm having stayed us in our course, one man pursued the leaping fish with a spear, another pulled in his struggling prey on alluring hooks. Besides all this, some sea-birds settled on one of the yards, and a clever sportsman took them in with Jointed rod of rushes; they were snared by these limed twigs and brought down into our hands. The breeze caught their feathers as they flew, and the light foam lashed their wings as they skimmed the sea.

Lichas was just beginning to be friendly with me again, Tryphaena was just pouring the dregs of a drink over Giton, when Eumolpus, who was unsteady with drink himself, tried to aim some satire at bald persons and branded criminals, and after exhausting his chilly wit, went back to his poetry and began to declaim a little dirge on Hair:

“The hair that is the whole glory of the body is fallen, dull ‘winter has carried away the bright locks of spring. Now the temples are bare of their shade and are downcast, and the wide naked space on my old head shines where the hair is worn away. Ye Gods that love to cheat us; ye rob us first of the first joys ye gave to our youth.

Poor wretch, a moment ago thy hair shone bright and more beautiful than Phoebus and the sister of Phoebus. Now thou art smoother than bronze or the round garden mushroom that is born in rain, and turnest in dread from a girl’s mockery. To teach thee how quickly death shall come, know that a part of thine head hath died already.”

110 He wanted to produce some more lines even more silly than the last, I believe, when Tryphaena’s maid took Giton below decks, and ornamented the boy’s head with some of her mistress’s artificial curls. Further, she also took some eyebrows out of a box, and by cunningly following the lines where he was defaced she restored his proper beauty complete. Tryphaena recognized the true Giton, there was a storm of tears, and she then for the first time gave the boy a kiss with real affection. Of course, I was glad to see him clothed again in his former loveliness, but still I kept hiding my own face continually, for I realized that I was marked with no common ugliness, since not even Lichas considered me fit to speak to. But the same maid came and rescued me from gloom, called me aside, and decked me with equally becoming curls. Indeed, my face shone with a greater glory. My curls were golden!. . .

Then Eumolpus, our spokesman in peril and the begetter of our present peace, to save our jollity from falling dumb for want of good stories, began to hurl many taunts at the fickleness of women; how easily they fell in love, how quickly they forgot even their own sons, how no woman was so chaste that she could not be led away into utter madness by a passion for a stranger. He was not thinking of old tragedies or names notorious in history, but of an affair which happened in his lifetime. He would tell it us if we liked to listen. So all eyes and ears were turned upon him, and he began as follows: