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BOOK I, CHAPTER XXXI 283
it; and with those who would be less missed, he decided to hold the pass, and by their deaths to make the enemy pur- chase the entrance thereto as dearly as possible. And so it fell out: for, being presently surrounded on all sides by the Arcadians, after he and his had made a great slaughter of them, they were all killed. Is there any trophy assigned to victors, which would not be more justly due to these van-
quished? The real surmounting has for its part strife, not safety; ! and the honour o ting, not in_winning.
(a) Toreturn to our narrative, these prisoners, despite all that is done to them, are so far from yielding that, on the contrary, during the two or three months that they are kept in captivity, they bear themselves cheerfully; they urge their masters to make haste to put them to that test; they defy them, insult them, upbraid them with their cowardice and with the number of battles they have lost in mutual combat. I have a ballad written by a prisoner wherein is this taunt: Let them come boldly every one, and gather together to dine upon him; for they will at the same time eat their own fathers and grandfathers, who have served as food and nourishment for his body; “these muscles,” he says, “this flesh, and these veins are your own, poor fools that you are; you do not recognise that the substance of -your ancestors’ limbs still clings to them. Taste them carefully, and you will find in them the flavour of your own flesh ”— a conceit which has no smack of barbarism. Those who depict them when dying, and who describe the act of putting them to death, depict the prisoner as spitting in the faces of those who kill him and making mouths at them. In truth, they do not, to their last gasp, cease to brave and defy them by word and look. Verily,in comparison with ourselves these men are savages indeed; for it must be that they are so, or else that we are so; there is a wonderful distance between their behaviour ? and ours.
The men have several wives, and they have the larger number in proportion to their reputation for valour. A notably hesuitiiad | thing in their marriages is that the same
1 Le vray vaincre a pour son rolle Pestour, non pas le salut. % Forme.