“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