exclaiming, I advanced, prepared to transfix them both, when my father, O ye gods! leaping from the bed, fell at my feet, and besought me, 'O my son! stay your hand, pity your father, and these grey hairs which have nourished you. I have used you ill, I confess, but not so as to deserve death from you. Let not passion transport you; do not imbrue your hands in a parent's blood!'

"He was going on in this supplicatory strain, while I stood thunderstruck, without power either to speak or stir. I looked about for Thisbe, but she had withdrawn. I cast my eyes in amaze round the chamber, confounded and stupified: the sword fell from my hand.

"Demæneta, running up, immediately took it away; and my father, now seeing himself out of danger, laid hands upon me, and ordered me to be bound, his wife stimulating him all the time, and exclaiming, 'This is what I foretold; I bid you guard yourself from the attempts of this youth; I observed his looks, and feared his designs.'-'You did,' he replied; but I could not have imagined he would carry his wickedness to such a pitch.' He then kept me bound; and though I made several attempts to explain the matter, he would not suffer me to speak.

"When the morning was come, he brought me out before the people, bound as I was; and flinging dust upon his head, thus addressed them: 'I entertained hopes, O Athenians, when the gods gave me this son, that he would have been the staff of my declining age. I brought him up genteelly; I gave him a first-rate education;* I went through every step needful to procure him the full privileges of a citizen of Athens; in short, my whole life was a scene of solicitude on his account. But he, forgetting all this, abused me first with words, and assaulted my wife with blows; and at last broke in upon me in the night, brandishing a drawn sword, and was prevented from committing a parricide only by a sudden consternation which seized him, and made the weapon drop from his hand. I have recourse, therefore, to this assembly for my own defence and his punishment. I might, I know, lawfully have punished him

* Literally, "I had him enrolled in his proper ward (øparpía), in his proper house (yévog), and among those arrived at puberty (pnẞo)," the successive steps to Athenian citizenship.

even with death myself; but I had rather leave the whole matter to your judgment than stain my own hands with his blood:' and, having said this, he began to weep.

"Demæneta too accompanied him with her tears, lamenting the untimely but just death which I must soon suffer, whom my evil genius had armed against my parent; and thus seeming to confirm by her lamentations the truth of her husband's accusations.

"At length I desired to be heard in my turn, when the clerk arising put this pointed question to me: Did I attack my father with a sword? When I replied, 'I did indeed attack him, but hear how I came so to do'-the whole assembly exclaimed that, after this confession, there was no room for apology or defence. Some cried out I ought to be stoned; others, that I should be delivered to the executioner, and thrown headlong into the Barathrum.* During this tumult, while they were disputing about my punishment, I cried out, All this I suffer on account of my mother-in-law ; my step-mother makes me to be condemned unheard.' A few of the assembly appeared to take notice of what I said, and to have some suspicions of the truth of the case; yet even then I could not obtain an audience, so much were all minds possessed by the disturbance.

"At length they proceeded to ballot: one thousand seven hundred condemned me to death; some to be stoned, others to be thrown into the Barathrum. The remainder, to the number of about a thousand, having some suspicions of the machinations of my mother-in-law, adjudged me to perpetual banishment; and this sentence prevailed: for though a greater number had doomed me to death, yet there being a difference in their opinions as to the kind of death, they were so divided, that the numbers of neither party amounted to a thousand.

“Thus, therefore, was I driven from my father's house and my country: the wicked Demæneta, however, did not remain unpunished; in what manner you shall hear by-andby. But you ought now to take a little sleep; the night is far advanced, and some rest is necessary for you."

"It will be very annoying to us," replied Theagenes, "if *The Barathrum was a yawning cleft behind the Acropolis, into which criminals were cast.

you leave this wicked woman unpunished."—" Hear, then," said Cnemon, "since you I will have it so."

"I went immediately from the assembly to the Piræus, and finding a ship ready to set sail for Ægina, I embarked in her, hearing there were some relations of my mother's there. I was fortunate enough to find them on my arrival, and passed the first days of my exile agreeably enough among them. After I had been there about three weeks, taking my accustomed solitary walk, I came down to the port; a vessel was standing in; I stopped to see from whence she came, and who were on board. The ladder was no sooner let down, when a person leapt on shore, ran up to me, and embraced me. He proved to be Charias, one of my former companions.-'O Cnemon!' he cried out, 'I bring you good news. You are revenged on your enemy: Demæneta is dead.' I am heartily glad to see you, Charias,' I replied; but why do you hurry over your good tidings as if they were bad ones ? Tell me how all this has happened; I fear she has died a natural death, and escaped that which she deserved.'-'Justice,' said he, has not entirely deserted us (as Hesiod* says); and though she sometimes seems to wink at crime for a time, protecting her vengeance, such wretches rarely escape at last: neither has Demæneta. From my connexion with Thisbe, I have been made acquainted with the whole affair.

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"After your unjust exile, your father, repenting of what he had done, retired from the sight of the world, into a lonely villa, and there lived; gnawing his own heart," according to the poet. But the furies took possession of his wife, and her passion rose to a higher pitch in your absence than it had ever done before. She lamented your misfortunes and her own, calling day and night in a frantic * Hesiod, "Works and Days," 221.

"Justice

When mortals violate her sacred laws,

When judges hear the bribe and not the cause,

Close by her parent god behold her stand,

And urge the punishment their sins demand."-Lee.

Ammianus Marcellinus says, B. xxix., "Inconnivens justitiæ oculus arbiter et vindex perpetuus rerum."

Rarò antecedentem scelestum

Deseruit pede Pœna claudo.-Hor. Od. iii. 11. 31.

† Ον θυμὸν κατέδων. Il. vi. 202.

manner upon Cnemon, her dear boy, her soul; insomuch that the women of her acquaintance, who visited her, wondered at and praised her; that, though a step-dame, she felt a mother's affection. They endeavoured to console and strengthen her; but she replied that her sorrows were past consolation, and that they were ignorant of the wound which rankled at her heart.

"When she was alone she abused Thisbe for the share she had in the business. "How slow were you in assisting my love! How ready in administering to my revenge! You deprived me of him I loved above all the world, without giving me an instant to repent and be appeased." And she gave plain hints that she intended some mischief against her.

"Thisbe seeing her disappointed, enraged, almost out of her senses with love and grief, and capable of undertaking anything, determined to be beforehand with her; and. by laying a snare for her mistress, to provide for her own security. One day, therefore, she thus accosted her: Why, O my mistress, do you wrongfully accuse your slave? It has always been my study to obey your will in the best manner I could; if anything unlucky has happened, fortune is to blame; I am ready now, if you command me, to endeavour to find a remedy for your distress." -"What remedy can you find?" cried she. "He who alone could ease my torments is far distant; the unexpected lenity of his judges has been my ruin: had he been stoned or otherwise put to death, my hopes and cares would have been buried with him. Impossibility of gratification extinguishes desire, and despair makes the heart callous. But now I seem to have him before my eyes: I hear, and blush at hearing him upbraid me with his injuries. Sometimes I flatter my fond heart that he will return again, and that I shall obtain my wishes; at other times I form schemes of seeking him myself, on whatever shore he wanders. These thoughts agitate, inflame, and drive me beside myself. Ye gods! I am justly served. Why, instead of laying schemes gainst his life, did I not persist in endeavouring to subdue h..a by kindness? He refused me at first, and it was but fitting he should do so; I was a stranger, and he reverenced his father's bed. Time and persuasion might have overcome his coldness; but I, unjust, and inhuman as I was, more

like a tyrant than his mistress, cruelly punished his first disobedience. Yet with how much justice might he slight Demæneta, whom he so infinitely surpassed in beauty! But, my dear Thisbe, what remedy is it you hint at ?" The artful slave replied: "O Mistress, Cnemon, as most people think, in obedience to the sentence, has departed both from the city and from Attica; but I, who inquire anxiously into everything that you can have any concern in, have discovered that he is lurking somewhere about the town. You have heard perhaps of Arsinoe the singer: he has long been connected with her. After his misfortune, she promised to go into exile with him, and keeps him concealed at her house till she can prepare herself for setting out."-" Happy Arsinoë!" cried Demæneta; "happy at first in possessing the love of Cnemon, and now in being permitted to accompany him into banishment. But what is all this to me?"

Attend, and you shall hear," said Thisbe. "I will pretend that I am in love with Cnemon. I will beg Arsinoë, with whom I am acquainted, to introduce me some night to him in her room; you may, if you please, represent Arsinoë, and receive his visit instead of me. I will take care that he shall have drunk a little freely when he goes to bed. If you obtain your wishes, perhaps you may be cured of your passion. The first gratification sometimes extinguishes the flame of desire. Love soon finds its end in satiety but if yours (which I hope will not be the case) should still continue, we may perhaps find some other scheme to satisfy it; at present let us attend to this which I have proposed."

:

"Demæneta eagerly embraced the proposal, and desired her to put it into immediate execution. Thisbe demanded a day only for preparation; and going directly to Arsinoë, asked her if she knew Teledemus. Arsinoë replying that she did, "Receive us then," says she, "this evening into your house; I have promised to sleep with him to-night: he will come first; I shall follow, when I have put my mistress to bed." Then hastening into the country to Aristippus, she thus addressed him: "I come, master, to accuse myself; punish me as you think fit. I have been the cause of your losing your son; not indeed willingly, but yet I was instrumental in his destruction: for when I perceived that * Δεύτερος ἔσται πλοῦς, we will go on a fresh tack.