XX. (166) With such discourses as these, he was continaully 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–lace, but shut himself up in his house, where he kept himself close, never venturing to go beyond the outer court. (167) 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; {4}{this is evidently taken from #De 28:66, “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. (168) 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. (169) 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, (170) “O King of gods and men! you are not, then, indifferent to the Jewish nation, nor are the assertions which they relate with respect to your providence false; but those men who say that that people has not you for their champion and defender, are far from a correct opinion. And I am an evident proof of this; for all the frantic designs which I conceived against the Jews, I now suffer myself. (171) I consented when they were stripped of their possessions, giving immunity to those who were plundering them; and on this account I have myself been deprived of all my paternal and maternal inheritance, and of all that I have ever acquired by gift or favour, and of everything else that ever became mine in any other manner. (172) In times past I reproached them with ignominy as being foreigners, though they were in truth sojourners in the land entitled to full privileges, in order to give pleasure to their enemies who were a promiscuous and disorderly multitude, by whom I, miserable man that I was, was flattered and deceived; and for this I have been myself branded with infamy, and have been driven as an exile from the whole of the habitable world, and am shut up in this place. (173) Again, I led some of them into the theatre, and commanded them to be shamelessly and unjustly insulted in the sight of their greatest enemies; and therefore I justly have been myself led not into a theatre or into one city, but into many cities, to endure the utmost extremity of insult, being ill-treated in my miserable soul instead of my body; for I was led in procession through the whole of Italy as far as Brundusium, and through all Peloponnesus as far as Corinth, and through Attica, and all the islands as far as Andros, which is this prison of mine; (174) and I am thoroughly assured that even this is not the limit of my misfortunes, but that others are still in store for me, to fill up the measures as a requital for all the evils which I have done. I put many persons to death, and when some of them were put to death by others, I did not chastise their murderers. Some were stoned; some were burnt alive; others were dragged through the middle of the market-place till the whole of their bodies were torn to pieces. (175) And for all this I know now that retribution awaits me, and that the avengers are already standing as it were at the goal, and are pressing close to me, eager to slay me, and every day, or I may rather say, every hour, I die before my time, enduring many deaths instead of one, the last of All.”{5}{this is like the passage in Shakespeare–“Cowards die many times before their deaths; / The brave men only taste of death but once.”} (176) And he was continually giving way to dread and to apprehension, and shaking with fear in every limb and every portion of his body, and his whole soul was trembling with terror and quivering with palpitation and agitation, as if nothing in the world could possibly be a comfort to the man now that he was deprived of all favourable hopes; (177) no good omen ever appeared to him, everything bore a hostile appearance, every report was ill-omened, his waking was painful, his sleep fearful, his solitude resembling that of wild beasts, nevertheless the solitude of his herds was what was most pleasant to him, any dwelling in the city was his greatest affliction; his safe reproach was a solitary abiding in the fields, a dangerous, and painful, and unseemly way of life; every one who approached him, however justly, was an object of suspicion to him. (178) “This man,” he would say, “who is coming quickly hither, is planning something against me, he does not look as if he were hastening for any other object, but he is pursuing me; this pleasant looking man is laying a snare for me; this free-spoken man is despising me; this man is giving me meat and drink as they feed cattle before killing them. (179) How long shall I, hardhearted that I am, bear up against such terrible calamities? I well know that I am afraid of death, since out of cruelty the Deity will not punish me violently, to cut short my miserable life, in order to load me to excess with irremediable miseries, which he treasures up against me, to do a pleasure to those whom I treacherously put to death.”
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