often ransacked the accounts of antiquity, I do not
find any ancient eunuch to whom I can compare him. There were indeed
among the ancients some, though very few, faithful and economical, but
still they were stained by some vice or other; and among the chief
faults which they had either by nature or habit, they were apt to be
either rapacious or else boorish, and on that account contemptible; or
else ill-natured and mischievous; or fawning too much on the powerful;
or too elated with power, and therefore arrogant. But of any one so
universally accomplished and prudent, I confess I have neither ever read
nor heard, relying for the truth of this judgment on the general
testimony of the age.

9. But if any careful reader of ancient histories should oppose to us
Menophilus, the eunuch of King Mithridates, I would warn him to
recollect that nothing is really known of him except this single fact,
that he behaved gloriously in a moment of extreme danger.

10. When the king above mentioned, having been defeated by the Romans
under the command of Pompey, and fleeing to his kingdom of Colchis, left
a grown-up daughter, named Drypetina, who at the time was dangerously
ill, in the castle of Synhorium, under the care of this Menophilus, he
completely cured the maiden by a variety of remedies, and preserved her
in safety for her father; and when the fortress in which they were
enclosed began to be besieged by Manlius Priscus, the lieutenant of the
general, and when he became aware that the garrison were proposing to
surrender, he, fearing that, to the dishonour of her father, this noble
damsel might be made a prisoner and be ravished, slew her, and then fell
upon his sword himself. Now I will return to the point from which I
digressed.

VIII.

Sec. 1. After Marcellus had been foiled, as I have mentioned, and had
returned to Serdica, which was his native place, many great crimes were
perpetrated in the camp of Augustus, under pretence of upholding the
majesty of the emperor.

2. For if any one had consulted any cunning soothsayer about the squeak
of a mouse, or the appearance of a weasel, or any other similar portent,
or had used any old woman's chants to assuage any pain--a practice which
the authority of medicine does not always prohibit--such a man was at
once informed against, without being able to conceive by whom, and was
brought before a court of law, and at once condemned to death.

3. About the same time an individua