I saw the uproar into which the meeting was breaking, and knew that I was lost; so I sprang at once to the hearth and laid hold of the sacred emblems. That act, and that alone, was my salvation at the time; for although I stood disgraced in the eyes of the gods,Owing to his participation in the mutilation of the Hermae four years before. they, it seems, had more pity on me than did men; when men were desirous of putting to death, it was the gods who saved my life. My subsequent imprisonment and the extent and nature of the bodily suffering to which I was subjected would take too long to describe.