not only were the courage and activity of that young prince conspicuous in undergoing dangers and fatigue, but also the modesty of his deportment. 24. The war with the Tectosagians remained still in its original state. The consul, marching against them, arrived, on the third day, at Ancyra, a city remarkable in those parts, from which the enemy were but a little more than ten miles distant. While his camp lay there, a memorable action was performed by a female. Among many other captives, the wife of the Gallic chieftain Ortiagon, a woman of exquisite beauty, was strictly guarded, and a centurion, possessing the lust and avarice usual among military men, commanded this guard. He, first, endeavoured to learn her sentiments; but, finding that she abhorred the thought of voluntary prostitution, he offered violence to her person, which by the decree of fortune was his slave. Afterwards, in order to soothe her indignation at the insult, he gives the lady hope of a return to her friends; and not even that gratuitously, like a lover. He stipulated for a certain weight of gold, but, being unwilling to have any of his countrymen privy to it, he gave her leave to send any one of the prisoners, whom she chose, as a messenger to her friends. He appointed a spot near the river, to which two of this woman’s friends, and not more, were to come with the gold in the night following, to receive her. It happened that among the prisoners under the same guard was a servant of the lady; the centurion, as soon as it grew dark, conveyed this messenger beyond the advanced posts. Her friends came to the place at the appointed time, likewise the centurion with his prisoner. Here, on their producing the gold, which mounted to an Attic talent, for he had stipulated for that sum the lady in her own language ordered them to draw their swords, and kill the centurion, while he was weighing the gold. She herself, bearing wrapped up in her garment the head of the slain centurion, detached from the trunk, reached her husband Ortiagon, who had fled home from Olympus. And before she would embrace him, she threw down the centurion’s head at his feet; and on his asking, with astonishment, whose head it was, and what was the meaning of such a proceeding, so unaccountable in a female, she acknowledged to her husband the injury committed on her person, and the vengeance she had taken for the forcible violation of her chastity. She maintained to the last, as it is said, by the purity and strictness of the rest of her life, the glory of this achievement, so honourable to her sex.