The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia
swimming upon a rock, from whence, after being come as near famishing
as before drowning, the weather breaking up, they were brought to the
mainland of Bithynia, the same country upon which Musidorus also was
fallen, but not in so lucky a place.
“For they were brought to the king of the country, a tyrant also not
through suspicion, greediness or revengefulness, as he of Phrygia,
but, as I may term it, of a wanton cruelty: inconstant in his choice
of friends, or rather never having a friend but a play-fellow; of whom
when he was weary, he could not otherwise rid himself than by killing
them; giving sometimes prodigally, not because he loved them to whom
he gave, but because he lusted to give; punishing, not so much for
hate or anger, as because he felt not the smart of punishment;
delighted to be flattered, at first for those virtues which were not
in him, at length making his vices virtues worthy the flattering; with
like judgment glorying, when he had happened to do a thing well, as
when he had performed some notable mischief.
“He chanced at that time, for indeed long time none lasted with him,
to have next in use about him a man of the most envious disposition
that, I think, ever infected the air with his breath; {168} whose eyes
could not look right upon any happy man, nor ears bear the burden of
anybody’s praise; contrary to the natures of all other plagues,
plagued with others’ well being; making happiness the ground of his
unhappiness, and good news the argument of his sorrow: in sum, a man
whose favour no man could win, but by being miserable. And so because
those two faithful servants of theirs came in miserable sort to that
court, he was apt enough at first to favour them; and the king
understanding of their adventure, wherein they had showed so constant
a faith unto their lords, suddenly falls to take a pride in making
much of them, extolling them with infinite praises, and praising
himself in his heart, in that he praised them. And by and by where
they made great courtiers, and in the way of minions, when
advancement, the most mortal offence to envy, stirred up their former
friend to overthrow his own work in them; taking occasion upon the
knowledge, newly come to the court, of the late death of the king of
Phrygia destroyed by their two lords, who having been a near kinsman
to this prince of Pontus, by this envious counsellor, partly with
suspicion of practice, partly with glory of, in part, revenging his
cousin’s death, the king was suddenly turned, and every turn with him
was a down-fall, to lock them up in prison, as servants to his
enemies, whom before he had never known, nor, till that time one of
his own subjects had entertained and dealt for them, did ever take
heed of. But now earnest in every present humour, and making himself
brave in his liking, he was content to give them just cause of
offence, when they had power to make just revenge. Yet did the princes
send unto him before they entered into war, desiring their servants’
liberty. But he, swelling in their humbleness like a bubble blown up
with a small breath broken with a great, forgetting, or never knowing
humanity, caused their heads to be stricken off, by the advice of his
envious counsellor, who now hated them so much the more, as he foresaw
their happiness in having such, and so fortunate masters, and sent
them with unroyal reproaches to Musidorus and Pyrocles, as if they had
done traitorously, and not heroically in killing his tyrannical
cousin.
“But that injury went beyond all degree of reconcilement, so that they
making forces in Phrygia, a kingdom wholly at their commandment, by
the love of the people, and gratefulness of the king, they entered his
country; and wholly conquering it, with such deeds as at least fame
said were excellent, took the king, and by Musidorus’s commandment,
Pyrocles’s heart more inclining to pity, he was slain upon the tomb of
their two true servants; which they caused to be made for them with
royal expenses, and notable workmanship to preserve their dead lives.
For his wicked servant he should have felt the like, or worse, but
that his heart broke {169} even to death with the beholding the honour
done to their dead carcasses. There might Pyrocles quietly have
enjoyed that crown, by all the desire of that people, most of whom had
revolted unto him, but he finding a sister of the late king’s, a fair
and well esteemed lady, looking for nothing more, than to be oppressed
with her brother’s ruins, gave her in marriage to the nobleman his
father’s old friend, and endowed with them the crown of that kingdom.
And not content with those public actions of princely, and as it were,
governing virtue, they did, in that kingdom and some other near about,
divers acts of particular trials, more famous because more perilous.
For in that time those regions were full both of cruel monsters, and
monstrous men, all which in short time by private combats they
delivered the countries of.
“Among the rest, two brothers of huge both greatness and force,
therefore commonly called giants, who kept themselves in a castle
seated upon the top of a rock, impregnable, because there was no
coming unto it but by one narrow path where one man’s force was able
to keep down an army. Those brothers had a while served the king of
Pontus, and in all his affairs, especially of war, whereunto they were
only apt, they had showed, as unconquered courage, so a rude
faithfulness: being men indeed by nature apter to the faults of rage
than of deceit; not greatly ambitious, more than to be well and
uprightly dealt with; rather impatient of injury, than delighted with
more than ordinary courtesies; and in injuries more sensible of smart
or loss than of reproach or disgrace. Those men being of this nature,
and certainly jewels to a wise man, considering what indeed wonders
they were able to perform, yet were discarded by that worthy prince,
after many notable deserts, as not worthy the holding, which was the
more evident to them because it suddenly fell from an excess of
favour, which, many examples having taught them, never stopped his
race till it came to an headlong overthrow: they full of rage, retired
themselves unto this castle: where thinking nothing juster than
revenge, nor more notable than the effects of anger, that, according
to the nature, full of inward bravery and fierceness, scarcely in the
glass of reason, thinking itself fair but when it is terrible, they
immediately gave themselves to make all the country about them subject
to that king, to smart for their lord’s folly, not caring how innocent
they were, but rather thinking the more innocent they were, the more
it testified their spite, which they desired to manifest. And with use
of evil, growing more and more evil, they took delight in slaughter,
and pleased themselves in making others’ wrack the effect of their
power: so that where in the time that they obeyed a master, their
anger was a serviceable power of the mind to do public good, so now
unbridled, and blind judge of itself, it made wickedness {170}
violent, and praised itself in excellency of mischief, almost to the
ruin of the country, not greatly regarded by their careless and
loveless king. Till now those princes finding them so fleshed in
cruelty as not to be reclaimed, secretly undertook the matter alone:
for accompanied they would not have suffered them to have mounted; and
so those great fellows scornfully receiving them, as foolish birds
fallen into their net, it pleased the eternal justice to make them
suffer death by their hands: and so they were manifoldly acknowledged
the savers of that country.
“It were the part of a very idle orator to set forth the numbers of
well-devised honours done unto them, but as high honour is not only
gotten and born by pain and danger, but must be nursed by the like, or
else vanisheth as soon as it appears to the world, so the natural
hunger thereof, which was in Pyrocles suffered him not to account a
resting seat of that, which either riseth or falleth, but still to
make one occasion beget another, whereby his doings might send his
praise to others’ mouths to rebound again true contentment to his
spirit. And therefore having well established those kingdoms under
good governors, and rid them by their valour of such giants and
monsters, as before-time armies were not able to subdue, they
determined in unknown order to see more of the world, and to employ
those gifts, esteemed rare in them, to the good of mankind; and
therefore would themselves, understanding that the king Euarchus was
passed all the cumber of his war, go privately to seek exercises of
their virtue, thinking it not so worthy to be brought to heroical
effects by fortune or necessity, like Ulysses and Aeneas, as by one’s
own choice and working. And so went they away from very unwilling
people to leave them, making time haste itself to be a circumstance of
their honour, and one place witness to another of the truth of their
doings. For scarcely were they out of the confines of Pontus, but that
as they rode alone armed, for alone they went, one serving the other,
they met an adventure, which though not so notable for any great
effect they performed, yet worthy to be remembered for the unused
examples therein, as well of true natural goodness as of wretched
ungratefulness.
“It was in the kingdom of Galatia, the season being, as in the depth
of winter, very cold and as then suddenly grown to so extreme and foul
a storm, that never any winter, I think, brought forth a fouler child:
so that the princes were even compelled by the hail, that the pride of
the wind blew into their faces, to seek some shrouding place, which a
certain hollow rock offering unto them, they made it their shield
against the tempest’s fury. And so staying there, till the violence
thereof was passed, they heard the speech of a couple, who not
perceiving them, being hid within {171} that rude canopy, held a
strange and pitiful disputation, which made them step out, yet in such
sort as they might see unseen. There they perceived an aged man, and a
young, scarcely come to the age of a man, both poorly arrayed,
extremely weather-beaten; the old man blind, and the young man leading
him; and yet through all those miseries, in both there seemed to
appear a kind of nobleness, not suitable to that affliction. But the
first words they heard, were those of the old man. ‘Well Leonatus,’
said he, ‘since I cannot persuade thee to lead me to that which should
end my grief and my trouble, let me now entreat thee to leave me: fear
not, my misery cannot be greater than it is, and nothing doth become
me but misery: fear not the danger of my blind steps, I cannot fall
worse than I am: and do not I pray thee, do not obstinately continue
to infect thee with my wretchedness: but fly, fly from this region
only worthy of me.’ ‘Dear father,’ answered he, ‘do not take away from
me the only remnant of my happiness: while I have power to do you
service, I am not wholly miserable.’ ‘Ah my son,’ said he, and with
that he groaned, as if sorrow strove to break his heart, ‘how evil
fits it me to have such a son? and how much doth thy kindness upbraid
my wickedness?’ Those doleful speeches, and some others to like
purpose, well showing they had not been born to the fortune they were
in, moved the princes to go out unto them, and ask the younger what
they were? ‘Sirs,’ answered he with a good grace, and made the more
agreeable by a certain noble kind of piteousness, ‘I see well you are
strangers that know not our misery, so well here known that no man
dare know but that we must be miserable. Indeed our state is such, as
though nothing is so needful unto us as pity, yet nothing is more
dangerous unto us than to make ourselves so known as may stir pity: