Page:In Spite of Epilepsy, Woods, 1913.djvu/29

Rh even then that the dictator Sulla at once proscribed him. Thus outlawed, a boy, yet a married man, he was taken ill, it would seem, with a series of epileptic convulsions,—status epilepticus,—and only escaped death while fleeing from the enemy by being concealed as an invalid in a litter.

As an illustration of unconquerable courage and of being able at this early age to take care of himself is the fact that during this period of outlawry he was captured by Cilician pirates,—men who thought murder a trifle,—who held him for ransom. He remained with them a prisoner thirty-eight days, until his ransom came, and in this position of imminent danger—between Scylla and Charybdis—he showed heroic coolness and courage. His captors demanded twenty talents of ransom. He laughed at the smallness of the amount and insisted on its being fifty,—about seventy-five thousand dollars.

During the time of captivity, instead of his being in a state of intimidation, as might be supposed, he seems to have assumed command of the entire band of ship scuttlers and cutthroats. It was his practice then and all through his life to indulge in a short sleep after dinner, a custom which he characteristically declined to abandon, even when under the dangerous condition of duress. During this siesta he invariably insisted on silence, and otherwise treated his custodians as if they were his paid body-guards instead of his captors. He joined on occasion in their diversions, and instead of spending the time of waiting in anxious