In Flaccum

What a change is this! In the middle of the day, as if an eclipse had come upon me, night has overshadowed my life. What shall I say of this little islet? Shall I call it my place of banishment, or my new country, or harbour and refuge of misery? A tomb would be the most proper name for it; for I, miserable that I am, am now in a manner conducted to my grave, attending my own funeral, for either I shall destroy my miserable life through my sorrow, or if I am able to cling to life among my miseries, I shall in that case find a distant death, which will be felt all the time of my life."

These, then, were the lamentations which he poured forth, [*](Now Cape Colonna. )

And those men who had conducted him hither, bringing the populace of the Andrians, exhibited him to them all, making them all witnesses of the arrival of the exile in their island.

And they, when they had discharged their office, departed; and then the misery of Flaccus was renewed, as he no longer beheld any sight to which he was accustomed, but only saw sad misery presented to him by the most conspicuous evidence, while he looked around upon what to him was perfect desolation, in the middle of which he was placed; so that it seemed to him that a violent execution in his native land would have been a lighter evil, or rather, by comparison with his present circumstances, a most desirable good; and he gave himself up to such violence of grief, that he was in no respect different from a maniac, and leaped about, and ran to and fro, and clapped his hands, and smote his thighs, and threw himself upon the ground, and kept continually crying out,

"I am Flaccus! who but a little while ago was the governor of the mighty city, of the populous city of Alexandria! the governor of that most fertile of all countries, Egypt! I am he on whom all those myriads of inhabitants turned their eyes! who had countless forces of infantry, and cavalry, and ships, formidable, not merely by their number, but consisting of all the most eminent and illustrious of all my subjects! I am he who was every day accompanied when I went out by countless companies of clients!

But now, was not all this a vision rather than reality? and was I asleep, and was this prosperity which I then beheld a dream—phantoms marching through empty space, fictions of the soul, which perhaps registered non-existent things as though they had a being? Doubtless, I have been deceived.

These things were but a shadow and no real things, imitations of reality and not a real truth, which makes falsehood evident; for as after we have awakened we find none of those things which appeared to us in our dreams, but all such things have fled in a body and disappeared, so too,

With such discourses as these, he was continually being cast down, and in a manner, as I may say, prostrated; and avoiding all places where he might be likely to meet with many persons on account of the shame which clung to him, he never went down to the harbour, nor could he endure to visit the market-place, but shut himself up in his house, where he kept himself close, never venturing to go beyond the outer court.

But sometimes indeed, in the deepest twilight of the dawn, when every one else was still in bed, so that he could be seen by no one whatever, he would go forth out of the city and spend the entire day in the desolate part of the island, turning away if any one seemed likely to meet him; and being torn as to his soul with the memorials of his misfortunes which he saw about him in his house, and being devoured with anguish, he went back home in the darkness of the night, praying, by reason of his immoderate and never-ending misery, that the evening would become morning, dreading the darkness and the strange appearances which represented themselves to him when he went to sleep, and again in the morning he prayed that it might be evening; [*](This is evidently taken from Deuteronomy xxviii. 66, "And thy life shall hang in doubt before thee; and thou shalt fear day and night, and shalt have none assurance of thy life: in the morning thou shalt say, Would God it were even! and at even thou shalt say, Would God it were morning! for the fear of thine heart wherewith thou shalt fear, and for the sight of thine eyes which thou shalt see." ) for the darkness which surrounded him was opposed to everything light or cheerful.

And a few months afterwards, having purchased a small piece of land, he spent a great deal of his time there living by himself, and bewailing and weeping over his fate.

It is said too, that often at midnight he became possessed like those who celebrate the rites of the Corybantes, and at such times he would go forth out of his farm-house and raise his eyes to heaven and to the stars, and beholding all the beauty really existing in the world, he would cry out,