Kallistratus

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II WAR HUMOURS I Will now tell of Strabo, whose life was at first a part of mine. He was a slave, but yet he lived with us not as slaves live with masters. I remember him as he was to me, being yet a boy by the banks of the swift, clear Rhone. He seemed to have no thought for the best, nor for the...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II WAR HUMOURS I Will now tell of Strabo, whose life was at first a part of mine. He was a slave, but yet he lived with us not as slaves live with masters. I remember him as he was to me, being yet a boy by the banks of the swift, clear Rhone. He seemed to have no thought for the best, nor for the past; and when my father spoke of either, he slept. Nor did he think of the distant future; and when men spoke of it and wondered, he cast his eyes only to the pantry. But he loved the present, and himself only, as it seemed. And yet he loved also my father and my mother, and Kallinice and Kallicles, and at last proved it well; me he loved not over-much. The rest of the world he despised verily; but said nought of it, fearing to receive injury, against which he with care guarded himself. He could make a man laugh; for in his talk there was that which idlers loved. So when he died the Capuans cried, Woe for him f 24 KALLISTRATVS For seventeen years after I was born we lived on the banks of the Rhone, and, save my mother's death, little happened to us; only the coming of the Gauls to the oracle, and the coming of the pedlars with their wares and news. Four times each year my father went to Massilia, and stayed there for three nights or more. He rode along the bank of the river to Avenio, and then crossed the plain to the port. Four times he had taken me, and twice my brother, and once Kallinice. I felt always happy when I was young and my life was before me; now each boy is my master, for I would that I were he; but then I was myself a boy, and every one when he saw me looked again at me. Woe, woe is me, I say, for the time of boyhood 1 In those days I made plans to govern the Gauls as their king. I told my plans to my father, that he might use them, and t...