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.