, some committed suicide, others fled and
were captured. Now Sabinus himself could easily have got out of the way
and made his escape to the barbarians, but he had married a most
excellent wife, whose name in that part of the world was Empone, but in
Greek would be Herois, and he could neither leave her behind nor take
her with him. As he had in the country some underground caves, known
only to two of his freedmen, where he used to stow away things, he
dismissed all the rest of his slaves, as if he intended to poison
himself, and taking with him these two trusty freedmen he descended with
them into those underground caves, and sent one of them, Martialis, to
tell his wife that he had poisoned himself, and that his body was burnt
in the flames of his country-house, for he wanted his wife's genuine
sorrow to lend credit to the report of his death. And so it happened.
For she, throwing herself on to the ground, groaned and wailed for three
days and nights, and took no food. And Sabinus, being informed of this,
and fearing that she would die of grief, told Martialis to inform her
secretly that he was alive and well and in hiding, and to beg her not to
relax her show of grief, but to keep up the farce. And she did so with
the genius of a professional actress, but yearning to see her husband
she visited him by night, and returned without being noticed, and for
six or seven months she lived with him this underground life. And she
disguised him by changing his dress, and cutting off his beard, and
re-arranging his hair, so that he should not be known, and took him to
Rome, having some hopes of obtaining his pardon. But being unsuccessful
in this she returned to her own country, and spent most of her time with
her husband underground, but from time to time visited the town, and
showed herself to some ladies who were her friends and relations. But
what is most astonishing of all is that, though she bathed with them,
she concealed her pregnancy from them. For the dye which women use to
make their hair a golden auburn, has a tendency to produce corpulence
and flesh and a full habit, and she rubbed this abundantly over all
parts of her body, and so concealed her pregnancy. And she bare the
pangs of travail by herself, as a lioness bears her whelps, having hid
herself in the cave with her husband, and there she gave birth to two
boys, one of whom died in Egypt, the other, whose name was Sabinus, was
among us only the other day at Delph