Philebus was an old man with a wizened and wrinkled face. The top of his head was bald; the rest of his grey locks were trained to hang round his head in long curls. ‘Are you hungry?’ he asked. Onesimus nodded. ‘Here is bread for you, and some flesh of kid, and some wine.’ Onesimus ate and drank with ravenous eagerness, and the old man asked him, ‘A fugitive slave?’ ‘I was free born.’ ‘Hum-m!’ muttered Philebus, incredulously. ‘Well, you are wet, hungry, ragged, miserable. Will you be our servant?’ ‘I am not going to be a priest of the Syrian goddess,’ said Onesimus, with horror. ‘No one asked you to be,’ answered Philebus, with a sneer. ‘You will have light work, good pay, good food.’ ‘What do you want me to do?’ ‘Only to help in tending the ass, and cooking our meals, and going round with the bag for us when we perform.’ The youth paused. Could he, once a Christian, accept this degrading servitude to the vilest of mankind? Yet, after all, what was servitude? What was degradation? Could he be more miserable than he was? To be a servant of the Galli was better than the suicide and the dimly imagined horrors of that unknown world which he had just been about to brave. ‘I will come,’ he said. The old man brought him a tunic in place of his soaked and torn dress, gave him more wine and food, and taking him to the rest congratulated them on their new and handsome servant. Then began a mode of life which Onesimus could never recall in after years without a blush of shame and indignation--a life of squalor, mendacity[*10], and imposture, made more vile by the sanction of abject superstition. In the morning, when the priests drew near to any place where a few spectators could be gathered together, they set out in motley array, dressed in many-coloured robes, and with yellow caps of linen or woollen on their heads. They smeared their faces with a dye, and painted their eyes with henna. Some of them put on white tunics, embroidered with stripes of purple, and fastened with a girdle, and on their feet they wore shoes dyed of a saffron colour. They placed on the back of the ass the image of their goddess in its silken covering, and then, with wild cries, began a dervish-like dance to the tones of the flute played by their youthful attendant. During this dance they bared their arms to the shoulder, and flourished aloft swords and axes. In this way they wandered through various hamlets till they reached the villa of a wealthy landowner. Here they determined to exhibit the full extent of their mercenary fanaticism. Looking on the ground, turning from side to side with various contortions, whirling themselves round and round till their long curls streamed from their heads, they bit their arms, and at length cut some of their veins with the weapons which they carried. Then Philebus simulated a sort of epileptic fit. Falling to the ground, with long sobs, which seemed to shake his whole body, he