Chapters 91–100

91 I saw Giton, with some towels and scrapers, hugging the wall in sad embarrassment. : You could see he was not a willing slave. So to enable me to catch his eye he turned round, his face softened with pleasure, and he said, “Forgive me, brother. As there are no deadly weapons here, I speak freely. Take me away from this bloody robber and punish me as cruelly as you like, your penitent judge.’ It will be quite enough consolation for my misery to die because you wish it.” I told him to stop his lamentation, for fear anyone should overhear our plans. We left Eumolpus behind—he was reciting a poem in the bathroom—and I took Giton out by a dark, dirty exit, and flew with all speed to my lodgings. Then

I shut the door and warmly embraced him, and rubbed my face against his cheek, which was wet with tears. For a time neither of us could utter a sound; the boy’s fair body shook with continuous sobs. “It is a shame and a wonder!” I cried, “You left me, and yet I love you, and no scar is left over my heart, where the wound was so deep. Have you any excuse for yielding your love to a stranger? Did I deserve this blow?’ As soon as he felt that I loved him, he he to hold his head up. . . .

“I laid our love’s cause before no other judge. But I make no complaint, I will forget all, if you will prove your penitence by keeping your word.” I poured out my words with groans and tears, but Giton wiped his face on his cloak, and said, “Now, Encolpius, I ask you, I appeal to your honest memory; did I leave you, or did you betray me? I admit, I confess it openly, that when I saw two armed men before me, I hurried to the side of the stronger.” I pressed my lips to his dear wise heart, and put my arms round his neck, and hugged him close to me, to make it quite plain that I was in amity with him again, and that our friendship lived afresh in perfect confidence.

92 It was now quite dark, and the woman had seen to our orders for supper, when Eumolpus knocked at the door. I asked, ‘How many of you are there?” and began as I spoke to look carefully through a chink in the door to see whether Ascyltos had come with him. When I saw that he was the only visitor, I let him in at once. He threw himself on a bed, and when he saw Giton before his eyes waiting at table, he wagged his head and said, “‘I like your Ganymede. To-day should be a fine time for us.” I was not pleased at this inquisitive opening; I was afraid I had let Ascyltos’s double into the lodgings. Eumolpus persisted, and, when the boy brought him a drink, said, “I like you better than the whole bathful.” He greedily drank the cup dry, and said he had never taken anything with a sharper tang init. “Why, I was nearly flogged while ] was washing,” he cried, “because I tried to go round the bath and recite poetry to the people sitting in it, and when I was thrown out of the bathroom as if it were a theatre, I began to look round all the corners, and shouted for Encolpius in a loud voice. In another part of the place a naked young man who had lost his clothes kept clamouring for Giton with equally noisy indignation. The boys laughed at me with saucy mimicry as if I were crazy, but a large crowd surrounded him, clapping their hands and humbly admiring. Habebat enim inguinum pondus tam grande, ut ipsum hominem laciniam fascini crederes. O iuvenem laboriosum: puto illum pridie incipere, postero die finire. So he found an ally at once: some Roman knight or other, a low fellow, they said, put his own clothes on him as he strayed round, and took him off home, I suppose, ut tam magna fortuna solus uteretur. I should never have got my own clothes back from the troublesome attendant if I had not produced a voucher. Tanto magis expedit inguina quam ingenia fricare.’. As Eumolpus told me all this, my expression kept changing, for of course I laughed at my enemy’s straits and frowned on his fortune. But anyhow I kept quiet as if I did not know what the story was about, and set forth our bill of fare. . . .

93 What we may have we do not care about; our minds are bent on folly and love what is troublesome.

“The bird won from Colchis where Phasis flows, and fowls from Africa, are sweet to taste because they are not easy to win; but the white goose and the duck with bright new feathers have a common savour. The wrasse drawn from far-off shores, and the yield of wrinkled Syrtis is praised if first it wrecks a boat: the mullet by now is a weariness. The mistress eclipses the wife, the rose bows down to the cinnamon. What men must seek after seems ever best.”

“What about your promise, that you would not make a single verse to-day?” I said. “On your honour, spare us at least: we have never stoned you. If a single one of the people who are drinking in the same tenement with us scents the name of a poet, he will rouse the whole neighbourhood and ruin us all for the same reason. Spare us then, and remember the picture-gallery or the baths.’ Giton, the gentle boy, reproved me when I spoke thus, and said that I was wrong to rebuke my elders, and forget my duty so far as to spoil with my insults the dinner I had ordered out of kindness, with much more tolerant and modest advice which well became his beautiful self. . . .

94 “Happy was the mother who bore such a son as you,” he said, “be good and prosper. Beauty and wisdom make a rare conjunction. And do not think that all your words have been wasted. In me you have found a lover. I will do justice to your worth in verse. I will teach and protect you, and follow you even where you do not bid me. I do Encolpius no wrong; he loves another.”

That soldier who took away my sword did Eumolpus a good turn too; otherwise I would have appeased the wrath raised in me against Ascyltos with the blood of Eumolpus. Giton was not blind to this. So he went out of the room on a pretence of fetching water, and quenched my wrath by his tactful departure. Then, as my fury cooled a little, I said, “I would prefer even that you should talk poetry now, Eumolpus, rather than harbour such hopes. I am choleric, and you are lecherous: you understand that these dispositions do not suit each other. Well, regard me as a maniac, yield to my infirmity, in short, get out quick.” Eumolpus was staggered by this attack, and never asked why I was angry, but went out of the room at once and suddenly banged the door, taking me completely by surprise and shutting mein. He pulled out the key in a moment and ran off to look for Giton.

I was locked in. I made up my mind to hang myself and die. I had just tied a belt to the frame of a bed which stood by the wall, and was pushing my neck into the noose, when the door was unlocked, Eumolpus came in with Giton, and called me back to light from the very bourne of death. Nay, Giton passed from grief to raving madness, and raised a shout, pushed me with both hands and threw me on the bed, and cried,

“Encolpius, you are wrong if you suppose you could possibly die before me. I thought of suicide first; I looked for a sword in Ascyltos’s lodgings. If I had not found you I would have hurled myself to death over a precipice. I will show you that death stands close by those who seek him: behold in your turn the scene you wished me to behold.”’

With these words he snatched a razor from Eumolpus’s servant, drew it once, twice across his throat, and tumbled down at our feet. I gave a cry of horror, rushed to him as he fell, and sought the road of death with the same steel. But Giton was not marked with any trace of a wound, and I did not feel the least pain. The razor was untempered, and specially blunted in order to give boy pupils the courage of a barber: and so it had grown as heath. Sothe servant had not been alarmed when the steel was snatched from him, and Eumolpus did not interrupt our death-scene.

95 While this lover’s play was being performed, an inmate of the house came in with part of our little dinner, and after looking at us rolling in disarray on the ground he said, “Are you drunk, please, or runaway slaves, or both? Who turned the bed up there, and what do all these sneaking contrivances mean? I declare you meant to run off in the dark into the public street rather than pay for your room. But you shall pay for it. I will teach you that these lodgings do not belong to a poor widow, but to Marcus Mannicius.”’ “What?” shouted Eumolpus, “you dare threaten us.’ And as he spoke he struck the man in the face with all the force of his outstretched hand. The man hurled a little earthenware pot, which was empty, all the guests having drunk from it, at Eumolpus’s head, broke the skin of his forehead in the midst of his clamour, and rushed out of the room. Eumolpus would not brook an insult; he seized a wooden candlestick and followed the lodger out, and avenged his bloody forehead with a rain of blows. All the household ran up, and a crowd of drunken lodgers. I had a chance of punishing Eumolpus, and [ shut him out, and so got even with the bully, and of course had the room and my sleep to myself without a rival.

Meanwhile cooks and lodgers belaboured him now that he was locked out, and one thrust a spit full of hissing meat into his eyes, another took a fork from a dresser and struck a fighting attitude. Above all, a blear-eyed old woman with a very dirty linen wrap round her. balancing herself on an uneven pair of clogs, took the lead, brought up a dog of enormous size on a chain, and set him on to Eumolpus. But the candlestick was enough to protect him from all danger.

96 We saw everything through a hole in the folding doors, which had been made by the handle of the door being broken a short time before; and I was delighted to see him thrashed. But Giton clung to compassion, and said we ought to open the door and go and rescue him from peril. My indignation was still awake; I did not hold my hand, I rapped his compassionate head with my sharp clenched knuckles. He cried and sat down on the bed. I put my eyes to the chink by turns, and gorged myself on the miseries of Eumolpus like a dainty dish, and approved their prolongation. Then Bargates, the man in charge of the lodging-house, was disturbed at his dinner, and two chairmen carried him right into the brawl; for he had gouty feet. In a furious vulgar voice he made a long oration against drunkards and escaped slaves, and then he looked at Eumolpus and said, “What, most learned bard, was it you? Getaway quick, you damned slaves, and keep your hands from quarrelling.”

“My mistress despises me. So curse her for me in rhyme, if you love me, and put shame into her.” . .

97 While Eumolpus was talking privately to Bargates, a crier came into the house with a municipal slave and quite a small crowd of other people, shook a torch which gave out more smoke than light, and made this proclamation: “Lost recently in the public baths, a boy aged about sixteen, hair curly, low habits, of attractive appearance, answers to the name of Giton. A reward of a thousand pieces will be paid to any person willing to bring him back or indicate his whereabouts.’ Ascyltos stood close by the crier in clothes of many colours, holding out the reward on a silver dish to prove his honesty. I told Giton to get under the bed at once, and hook his feet and hands into the webbing which held up the mattress on the frame, so that he might evade the grasp of searchers by staying stretched out under the bed, just as Ulysses of old clung on to the ram of the Cyclops.! Giton obeyed orders at once, and in a second had slipped his hands into the webbing, and surpassed even Ulysses at his own tricks. I did not want to leave any room for suspicion, so I stuffed the bed with clothes, and arranged them in the shape of a man about my own height sleeping by himself.

Meanwhile Ascyltos went round all the rooms with a constable, and when he came to mine, his hopes swelled within him at finding the door bolted with especial care. The municipal slave put an axe into the joints, and loosened the bolts from their place. I fell at Ascyltos’s feet, and besought him, by the memory of our friendship and the miseries we had shared, at least to show me my brother. Further to win belief in my sham prayers, I said, “I know you have come to kill me, Ascyltos. Else why have you brought an axe with you? Well, satisfy your rage. Here is my neck, shed my blood, the real object of your pretended legal search.’ Ascyltos threw off his resentment, and declared that he wanted nothing but his own runaway slave, that he did not desire the death of any man or any suppliant, much less of one whom he loved very dearly now that their deadly dispute was over.

98 But the constable was not so deficient in energy.

He took a cane from the inn-keeper, and pushed it under the bed, and poked into everything, even the cracks in the walls. Giton twisted away from the stick, drew in his breath very gently, and pressed his lips close against the bugs in the bedding. . . The broken door of the room could not keep anyone out, and Eumolpus rushed in in a fury, and cried, “I have found a thousand pieces; for I mean to follow the crier as he goes away, and betray you as you richly deserve, and tell him that Giton is in your hands.” He persisted, I fell at his feet, besought him not to kill a dying man, and said, ““You might well be excited if you could show him the lost one. As it is, the boy has run away in the crowd, and I have not the least idea where he has gone. As you love me, Eumolpus, get the boy back, and give him to Ascyltos if you like.” I was just inducing him to believe me, when Giton burst with holding his breath, and all at once sneezed three times so that he shook the bed. Eumolpus turned round at the noise, and said “Good day,

Giton.” He pulled off the mattress, and saw an Ulysses whom even a hungry Cyclops might have spared. Then he turned on me, “Now, you thief;

you did not dare to tell me the truth even when you were caught. In fact, unless the God who controls man’s destiny had wrung a sign from this boy as he hung there, I should now be wandering round the pot-houses like a fool.”’. . .

he was now softening, poulticed him with kisses, and said, “Dearest father, we are in your hands, yours entirely. If you love your Giton, make up your mind to save him. I wish the cruel fire might engulf me alone, or the wintry sea assail me. I am the object of all his transgressions, I am the cause. If I were gone, you two might patch up your quarrel.” . .

99 “ At all times and in all places I have lived such a life that I spent each passing day as though that light would never return.”

I burst into tears, and begged and prayed him to be friends again with me too: a true lover was incapable of mad jealousy. At the same time I would take care to do nothing more in word or deed by which he could possibly be hurt. Only he must remove all irritation from his mind like a man of true culture, and leave no scar. “On the wild rough uplands the snow lies late, but when the earth is beautiful under the mastery of the plough, the light frost passes while you speak. Thus anger dwells in our hearts; it takes root in the savage, and glides over the man of learning.” “There,” said Eumolpus, “you see what you say is true. Behold, I banish my anger with a kiss. So good luck go with us. Get ready your luggage and follow me, or lead the way if you like.” He was still talking, when a knock sounded on the door, and a sailor with a straggly beard stood at the entrance and said, “You hang about, Eumolpus, as if you did not know a Blue Peter by sight.” We all got up in a hurry, and Eumolpus ordered his slave, who had now been asleep for some time, to come out with his baggage. Giton and I put together all we had for a journey; I asked a blessing of the stars, and went aboard.

100 I am annoyed because the boy takes a stranger’s fancy. But are not all the finest works of nature common property? The sun shines upon all men. The moon with countless troops of stars in her train leads even the beasts to their food. Can we imagine anything more lovely than water yet it flows for all the world. Then shall love alone be stolen rather than enjoyed? The truth is that I do not care for possessions unless the common herd are jealous ot them. One rival, and he too an old man, will not be troublesome; even if he wants to gain an advantage, his shortness of breath will give him away.”’ When I had made these points without any confidence, deceiving my protesting spirit, I covered my head in my cloak and pretended to be asleep.

But suddenly, as though fate were in arms against my resolution, a a voice on the ship’s deck said with a groan, like this: “So he deceived me, then?” These manly tones were somehow familiar to my ear, and my heart beat fast as they struck me. But then a woman torn by the same indignation broke out yet more vehemently: “Ah, if the gods would deliver Giton into my hands, what a fine welcome I would give the runaway.” The shock of these unexpected sounds drove all the blood out of both of us. I felt as if I were being hunted round in some troubled dream; I was a long while finding my voice, and then pulled Eumolpus’s clothes with a shaking hand, just as he was falling into a deep sleep, and said, “Tell me the truth, father; can you say who owns this ship, or who is on board?” He was annoyed at being disturbed, and replied, “Was this why you chose a quiet corner on deck, on purpose to prevent us from getting any rest?) What on earth is the use of my telling you that Lichas of Tarentum is the master of this boat, and is carrying Tryphaena to Tarentum under a sentence of banishment?”