I saw Giton standing against the wall with towels and scrapers, sad and perturbed. Clearly an unwilling, servant. And to confirm what I saw. . . He turned me a face softened with joy, and said, “Pity me, brother.^[1] I can open my heart only where there are no weapons. Take me from this bloody robber, and punish your repentant judge with whatever brutalities in my misery.”

I made him stop his pleading in case our plans were discovered. I left Eumolpus reciting poetry in the bath, dragged Giton through a dim, filthy side-entrance, and flew with him to my own rooms.

When the door was shut I threw my arms round him and crushed my lips on his tear-stained face. For a long time neither of us spoke. The boy’s lovely body shook with endless sobbing.

“Oh, unworthy weakness,” I cried. “I love you although you left me. And where a gaping wound was in my heart, no scar can be found. What have you to say, you who yielded to an outsider’s love? Did I deserve that injury?”

Feeling himself still loved, his features relaxed. “I referred our love to no other judge. But I will say no more, I will blot it from my mind, if you repent sincerely.” Tears and groans went with my flood of words.

He wiped his face with his cloak, and said, “Encolpius, please, I appeal to the honesty of your memory; did I leave you, or did you betray me? For my part, I admit it quite openly; when I saw two armed men, I sided with the stronger.”

I threw my arms round his neck, gave this wise heart a long kiss, and held him close to me to show we were reconciled and that our friendship lived once more in the deepest sincerity. 

It was now quite dark. The woman had seen to my order for supper, when Eumolpus knocked at the door.

“How many are you?” I asked, in the meantime spying eagerly through a crack in the door to see if Ascyltos had come with him. He was my only visitor, and I opened up at once. He dropped on my bed, and when he caught sight of Giton waiting at table before his very eyes, he nodded, “Good for Ganymede!^[2] Everything will go well for us today.”

I was not pleased with this brash overture, and afraid that I had let another Ascyltos into my rooms.^[3] Eumolpus returned to the charge, and when the boy offered him a drink he said, “I like you more than the whole bathful.”^[4] 

[91 vi] “o facinus” inquam “indignum, quod amo te quamvis relictus, et in hoc pectore, cum vulnus ingens fuerit, cicatrix non est. quid dicis, peregrini amoris concessio? dignus hac iniuria fui?” [vii] postquam se amari sensit, supercilium altius sustulit “nec amoris arbitrium ad alium iudicem [de]tuli. sed nihil iam queror, nihil iam memini, si bona fide sententiam emendas.” [viii] haec cum inter gemitus lacrimasque fudissem, detersit ille pallio vultum et “quaeso” inquit “Encolpi, fidem memoriae tuae appello: ego te reliqui an tu me prodidisti? equidem fateor et prae me fero: cum duos armatos viderem, ad fortiorem confugi.” [ix] exosculatus pectus sapientia plenum inieci cervicibus manus, et ut facile intellegeret redisse me in gratiam et optima fide reviviscentem amicitiam, toto pectore adstrinxi. 

[92 i] et iam plena nox erat mulierque cenae mandata curaverat, cum Eumolpus ostium pulsat. [ii] interrogo ego: “quot estis?” obiterque per rimam foris speculari diligentissime coepi, num Ascyltos una venisset. [iii] deinde ut solum hospitem vidi, momento recepi. ille ut se in grabatum reiecit viditque Gitona in conspectu ministrantem, movit caput et “laudo” inquit “Ganymedem. [iv] oportet hodie bene sit.” non delectavit me tam curiosum principium timuique ne in contubernium recepissem Ascylti parem. [v] instat Eumolpus, et cum puer illi potionem dedisset, “malo te” inquit “quam balneum totum”

He drained the cup dry in one gulp and said he had never tasted anything more acid.

“And would you believe it,” he went on, “I was nearly beaten up while I was in the water, simply for trying to recite poetry to the people sitting round the edge, and after I was thrown out of the baths just as I was out of the theatre, I looked for you in every corner and shouted for Encolpius. Down the other end was a young man^[5] with nothing on—he had lost his clothes—and he kept indignantly calling for Giton, and made just as much noise about it. I was taken for a madman by the boys. They derided me with the most insolent imitations, but he gathered a huge crowd round him, and they applauded him and were extremely respectful in their admiration. For his member was so prodigious that the man himself was to be mistaken for a tassel on it.^[6]

“How very fortunate your mother was,” said Eumolpus, “‘to give birth to a child like you. Be good and do well! How rare it is to see wisdom and beauty combined! And don’t think you have been wasting your breath. You have found a lover! I will fill my poems with your praises. As your protector and teacher, I shall follow you everywhere, even without your permission.^[7] There’s no harm done to Encolpius; he has another love.”

It was a good thing for Eumolpus that the soldier had taken my sword away, otherwise I would have wreaked the anger I had worked up against Ascyltos in the poet’s blood. Giton did not fail to notice this. He left the room, supposedly to fetch water.

This discreet departure put an end to my wrath, and as my fury cooled off a little, I said, “Eumolpus, I would rather have you recite, even that, than have you harbour such desires. I am a violent man, and you are a lecher. You can see that our characters don’t fit together. Imagine you have to deal with a lunatic; give way to my madness; in other words, clear out, and quick too.”

Eumolpus was dumbfounded by this threat. He asked no reason for my anger, but went straight out of the room, slammed the door to and locked it, the thing I least expected. He snatched the key out and ran looking for Giton.

I was a prisoner. I resolved to hang myself and put an end to it all. I had already tied my belt to the frame of the bed, which was up against the wall, and was putting my head in the noose, when the door was undone, in came Eumolpus with Giton and recalled me from the very brink of death to the light of life. Giton in particular, whose grief now rose to a savage fury, uttered a cry, pushed me with his two hands, and forced me on to the bed. 

“You’re wrong, Encolpius,” he said, “if you think you can bring about your own death before I die. I thought of it first. I was looking for a sword at Ascyltos’ place. If I hadn’t found you I would have jumped over a precipice. And just to show that death is never far from those who seek it, watch for yourself what you wanted me to see.”

With these words he seized a razor from Eumolpus’ valet, slashed at his throat once, twice, and collapsed in a heap at our feet. I gave a shriek of horror, fell as he had done, and sought the road to death with the same steel blade.

But there was not the slightest trace of a wound on Giton, and I felt no pain at all. The razor had no cutting edge. It was purposely blunted, to give apprentices the confidence of a fully-fledged barber, and had acquired a kind of coating round it. This was why the valet let the blade be taken without turning a hair, and why Eumolpus had not interfered in our farcical suicide.

While this lovers’ interlude was being played, the landlord came in with the rest of our scant dinner.  

[94 x] “erras” inquit “Encolpi, si putas contingere posse ut ante moriaris. prior coepi; in Ascylti hospitio gladium quaesivi. [xi] ego si te non invenissem, petiturus [per] praecipitia fui. et ut scias non longe esse quaerentibus mortem, specta invicem quod me spectare voluisti.” [xii] haec locutus mercennario Eumolpi novaculam rapit et semel iterumque cervice percussa ante pedes collabitur nostros. [xiii] exclamo ego attonitus, secutusque labentem eodem ferramento ad mortem viam quaero. [xiv] sed neque Giton ulla erat suspicione vulneris laesus neque ego ullum sentiebam dolorem. rudis enim novacula et in hoc retusa, ut pueris discentibus audaciam tonsoris daret, instruxerat thecam. [xv] ideoque nec mercennarius ad raptum ferramentum expaverat nec Eumolpus interpellaverat mimicam mortem.

[95 i] dum haec fabula inter amantes luditur, deversitor cum parte cenulae intervenit,

While Eumolpus was having a few private words with Bargates, a crier came into the place with a constable and quite a few others. Waving a torch that spread more smoke than light, he made this announcement: ‘“Lost recently in the public baths; one boy, aged about sixteen, curly-headed, effeminate, attractive, answers to the name of Giton. One thousand pieces reward on return or for information as to his whereabouts.”

Not far from the crier stood Ascyltos wrapped in a multicoloured cloak, displaying particulars and the promised sum on a silver plate. I ordered Giton under the bed at once, and told him to hook his feet and hands on the webbing of the frame that took the mattress, and to stretch under the bed to escape inquisitive hands, just as Ulysses of old clung to the belly of a ram.^[8] Giton did not have to be told twice. In an instant he had slipped his hands in and was clamped up. He had beaten Ulysses at his own game. To leave no room for suspicion, I filled out the bed with my own clothes, and moulded the shape of a single man of my size with them.

Meanwhile, Ascyltos, who had gone round all the rooms with the summoner, arrived at mine, and his hopes rose when he found the door elaborately bolted.^[9] The constable put his hatchet in the joints and loosened the bolt. I fell at Ascyltos’ feet and implored him, in memory of our friendship and the misfortunes we had shared, at least to let me see Giton. To add colour to my hypocritical prayers, I went on, “I know, Ascyltos, I know you have come to kill me. Else why bring these axes? Then glut your anger. Here, I offer you my neck, shed the blood you are really after while you pretend to search.”

Ascyltos denied any malicious intention. He assured me he was only looking for his deserter; he had never willed the death of any man or suppliant, still less of a friend he held most dear even after their fatal quarrel.

But the constable was no idler. He took a cane from the innkeeper and pushed it under the bed, and poked it in everything, even the holes in the walls. Giton shrank from the thrusts, drew in his breath most gently, and held a téte-a-téte with the bed-bugs.

                                                  *****

The room’s broken door could keep nobody out. In rushed Eumolpus with an anguished expression.

But the constable was no idler. He took a cane from the innkeeper and pushed it under the bed, and poked it in everything, even the holes in the walls. Giton shrank from the thrusts, drew in his breath most gently, and held a téte-a-téte with the bed-bugs.

                                                 *****

The room’s broken door could keep nobody out. In rushed Eumolpus with an anguished expression.

“The thousand is mine,” he cried, “I’m going after the crier to tell him Giton is in your hands, as your treachery fully deserves.”

I fell and hugged his knees, but he was unmoved. I begged him not to kill the dying, and added, ‘“Your outburst would be justified if you could surrender your quarry. But he has escaped into the crowd, and I’ve no idea where he’s gone. For pity’s sake, Eumolpus, fetch the boy back, even if you have to give him to Ascyltos.”

Just as I was winning him round to my line of thought, Giton, so full of breath he was unable to hold it a moment longer, sneezed three times in rapid succession. The bed shook. Eumolpus spun round at the noise: “Bless you, Giton!”

He raised the mattress and saw our Ulysses, whom even a ravenous Cyclops might have spared. Then he turned on me, and said, “Well, you thief, you daren’t tell the truth even when caught red-handed. And if the god who intervenes in mortal affairs hadn’t wrested a sign from the boy as he hung there, I should have been wandering round the pot-houses looking like a fool.”

                                                   *****

Giton was far more ingratiating than I. He began by stanching the wound in Eumolpus’ forehead with cobwebs soaked in oil. Next he exchanged his small coat for the poet’s torn clothes, and seeing him a little mollified, put his arms round him and smothered him with a poultice of kisses. Then he said, “Our fate, dear father, is in your hands, yours alone. If you love your Giton, the first thing is to save him. If only fierce flames would devour me, or the icy sea engulf me! I am the object, the cause of all these crimes. If I died, it might bring two friends together who have quarrelled.”

*****

Always and everywhere, I have lived by enjoying each day as if it were the last and its light should never return.”

*****

My face streaming with tears, I begged and prayed him to be friends with me again. I said it was not in the power of lovers to control their raging jealousy.

[98 i] at non servus publicus tam languide agit, sed raptam cauponi harundinem subter lectum mittit omniaque etiam foramina parietum scrutatur. subducebat Giton ab ictu corpus et retento timidissime spiritu ipsos sciniphes ore tangebat. [ii] Eumolpus autem, quia effractum ostium cellae neminem poterat excludere, irrumpit perturbatus et “mille” inquit “nummos inveni; iam enim persequar abeuntem praeconem et in potestate tua esse Gitona meritissima proditione monstrabo.” [iii] genua ego perseverantis amplector, ne morientes vellet occidere, et “merito” inquam “excandesceres, si posses perditum ostendere. nunc inter turbam puer fugit, nec quo abierit suspicari possum. per fidem, Eumolpe, reduc puerum et vel Ascylto redde.” [iv] dum haec ego iam credenti persuadeo, Giton collectione spiritus plenus ter continuo ita sternutavit ut grabatum concuteret. [v] ad quem motum Eumolpus conversus salvere Gitona iubet. remota etiam culcita videt Ulixem, cui vel esuriens Cyclops potuisset parcere. [vi] mox conversus ad me “quid est” inquit “latro? ne deprehensus quidem ausus es mihi verum dicere. immo ni deus quidam humanarum rerum arbiter pendenti puero excussisset indicium, elusus circa popinas errarem.” 

                              *****

[vii] Giton longe blandior quam ego, primum araneis oleo madentibus vulnus, quod in supercilio factum erat, coartavit. mox palliolo suo laceratam mutavit vestem, amplexusque iam mitigatum osculis tamquam fomentis aggressus est et [viii] “in tua” inquit “pater carissime, in tua sumus custodia. si Gitona tuum amas, incipe velle servare. [ix] utinam me solum inimicus ignis hauriret vel hibernum invaderet mare. ego enim omnium scelerum materia, ego causa sum. si perirem, conveniret inimicis.”

*****

[99 i] “ego sic semper et ubique vixi, ut ultimam quamque lucem tamquam non redituram consumerem.”

*****

[ii] profusis ego lacrimis rogo quaesoque ut mecum quoque redeat in gratiam: neque enim in amantium esse potestate furiosam aemulationem;