Page:In Spite of Epilepsy, Woods, 1913.djvu/30

24 and idleness, he wrote poems and orations, rehearsed them to his captors, and when they failed to show appreciation called them "dunces and numskulls untouched by sentiment or intelligence."

Although his genius at this early period was only evolving, yet so attached was he to things intellectual even then, so devoted to the extension of the higher culture, that we believe he would even have started a Browning society among his obsequious yet amused assassins, if Browning had been sufficiently previous.

Can we not imagine after the labor of the day his surprised and subdued jailors sitting around with their hands in their pockets,—if they had pockets in those days of the toga and seminakedness,—while their youthful prisoner declaimed orations to them to the accompaniment of brine-laden breezes, or breathed into their hairy ears love poems and sonnets by way of contrast? Is it possible for an extravagant imagination to conceive anything more incongruous? He even threatened to crucify his captors, a favored diversion in those dear old days, if they did not pay him proper deference. They, the historian tells us, looked upon it all as a joke. This boy captive threatened his not too captivating captors with capital punishment until after his release, when collecting a fleet of ships at Miletus, he did return, and took them prisoners. He also took all their valuables, including the money paid for his own ransom, and actually did crucify at Pergamos all the prisoners he had taken, according to promise. He never failed to keep his word.