I was inexperienced and sensitive, and when I saw the fear in all the others, I myself began to think that our exploit had been more serious than it in fact was. Timaius, who was an old man and also a Stoic, ought to have been more balanced and encouraged me in the face of such trials rather than depressing me. But he revealed his true nature and all his bitterness when he said:

“Who do you think you are, you idle, repulsive braggart? It was not without reason that your father gave you the name of Minutus, the insignificant one. Your mother was no more than a wanton Greek, a dancing-woman and worse, perhaps a slave. That’s your descent. It was according to the laws and no whim of Emperor Gaius that your father was struck from the rolls of knights, for he was expelled from Judaea in the time of Governor Pontius Pilate because he was involved in Jewish superstitions. He is no true Manilianus, only an adoptive one, and in Rome he made a fortune with the help of a shameful will. Then he was involved in a scandal with a married woman and can never again return there. So you are nothing, and you will become even more insignificant, you dissolute son of a miserly father.”

He would undoubtedly have said even more had I not hit him across the mouth. I was immediately horrified at what I had done, for it is not correct for a pupil to hit his tutor, even if he is a slave. Timaius wiped the blood from his lips and smiled malevolently.

“Thank you, Minutus my son, for this sign,” he said. “What is crooked can never grow straight and what is base can never be noble. You ought also to know that your father drinks blood in secret with the Jews and worships the goblet of the Goddess of Fortune secretly in his room. How else could anyone have been so successful and become so rich with no merits of his own? But I have already had enough of him, and of you, and of the whole of this unhappy world in which injustice reigns over justice, and wisdom has to sit by the door while insolence holds a feast.”

I did not take much notice of his words as I had quite enough to think about with my own tribulations. But I was seized with a blind desire to demonstrate that I was not insignificant and at the same time make good the evil I had done. My fellow conspirators and I remembered that we had heard of a lion which had been attacking cattle half a day’s ride from the city. It was rare that lions dared to approach so close to a large city and the matter was much discussed. I thought that if I and my friends could capture it alive and give it to the city’s amphitheater, we should thus redeem our evil deed and win fame.

9

This thought was so demented that it could only have been born in the sore heart of a fifteen-year-old, but the most lunatic thing of all was that Barbus, who was as drunk as usual that afternoon, considered the plan an excellent one. Nor was it easy for him to oppose it after the many stories he had told me of his own heroic deeds. He himself had caught lions in nets innumerable times to acquire extra income to supplement his meager pay.

It was necessary that we leave the city immediately since the police might well be on their way to arrest me, and in any case I was certain that our horses would be taken from us forever—early the following morning at the latest. I found only six of my friends, for three of them had been wise enough to tell their parents at once what had happened, and their parents had immediately sent them out of the city.

My friends, who were severely shaken, were so delighted with my plan that we soon began to bluster and brag among ourselves. We fetched our horses from the stables in secret and rode out of the city. Meanwhile Barbus got a bag of silver pieces from Marcius the silk merchant, took it to the amphitheater and bribed an experienced animal trainer to come with us. They loaded a cart with nets, weapons and leather protectors and met us outside the city by our sacrificial tree. Barbus also brought meat, bread and a couple of large jars of wine. The wine restored my appetite, for hitherto I had been so anxious and depressed, I had not been able to swallow a single bite of food.

The moon was out when we set off. Barbus and the animal trainer amused us with stories of lion catches in different countries. They described it as something so simple that I and my friends, fired by the wine, sought to restrain them from taking too much part in our venture so that we might receive all the honor. This they willingly promised to do, assuring us that they sought only to help us with advice and with their experience, and that they themselves would keep well out of the way. As far as I was concerned, I had witnessed in the amphitheater with my own eyes how ingeniously an experienced band of men could capture a lion with a net and how easy it is for a man with two spears to kill one.

At dawn we came to the village we had heard about. The villagers were busy lighting their cooking fires. The rumor had been false, for the village was by no means terror-stricken. In fact, it was very proud of its lion. No other lion had been seen in the district within living memory. This one lived in a mountain cave nearby and had worn a path down to a stream. The previous night it had killed and eaten a goat the villagers had tied to a tree by the path so that their valuable cattle should not be taken. The lion had never attacked a human being. On the contrary, it used to

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