They themselves demand to be taken back under our rule; but our imperial dignity refuses them, that they may know and experience how dangerous it is for slaves to fall away from their masters and to flee slavery. And it is more becoming for thy master to give them over to me as a friend, than to renounce them to me against his will. Indeed they shall learn, if my life holds out, what it is to deceive their lord; what it is to desert their servitude. And even now, as I think, they feel what I say,—our soldiers who are beyond the sea having brought it to pass!"
To this he did not permit me to reply; but, although I desired to go away, he ordered me to return to his table. His father sat with him, a man, it seemed to me, a hundred and fifty years old. Before him, as before his son, the Greeks call out with hymns of praise—nay, with blatancies—that God may multiply his years. From this we can gather how foolish the Greeks are; how fond of such glory; how adulatory; how greedy. For, not only to an old man but to an utterly worn-out graybeard, they wish what they know for certain that nature itself will not grant. And the worn-out graybeard rejoices that that is wished to him which, as he knows, God will not grant him; and which, if He did, would be to his disadvantage and not to his advantage. And Nicephorus, if you please, could rejoice at being called the prince of peace, and the morning star! To call a weakling strong, a fool wise, a short man tall, a black man white, a sinner holy,—is, believe me, not praise but contumely. And he who rejoices in having strange attributes called after him, rather than those that are rightly due to him, is altogether like those birds whose eyes the night illumines, the day blinds.
But let us return to the matter in hand. At this meal, — a thing that he had not done before—he ordered to be read with a loud voice a homily of St. John Chrysostom on the Acts of the apostles. At the end of this reading, when I sought permission to return to you, nodding affirmatively with his head, he ordered my persecutor to take me back to my fellow citizens and co-denizens, the lions. When this had been done I was not received by him until the thirteenth day before the Calends of August (July 20), but was diligently guarded lest I might enjoy the discourse of any
