Toxaris, or Friendship (58-60)

So we discussed the situation to see what we should do, now that we had become absolutely penniless in a strange country. My own thought was to plunge my sword into my side forthwith, and make my exit from life before enduring any unseemly experience under the pressure of hunger or thirst, but Sisinnes encouraged me and begged me not to do anything of that sort, for he himself would discover a means of our having enough to live on.

That day, therefore, he carried lumber in from the port and came back with supplies for us which he had procured with his wages. But the next morning, while going about in the market-place he saw a sort of procession, as he put it, of high-spirited,

Those were his words; accordingly, we eked out a wretched existence during the interval, and when at length the spectacle began we were there looking on, for taking me with him on the pretext of going to see a Greek show that would be enjoyable and novel, he had brought me to the theatre. We took our seats, and first we saw wild beasts brought down with javelins, hunted with dogs, and loosed upon men in chains—criminals, we conjectured. Then the gladiators entered, and the herald, bringing in a tall youth, said that whoever wanted to fight with that man should come forward, and would receive ten thousand drachmas in payment for the encounter. Thereupon Sisinnes arose, and, leaping down, undertook to fight and requested arms. On receiving his pay, the ten thousand drachmas, he promptly put it in my hands, saying: “If I win, Toxaris, we shall go away together, with all that we need; but if I fall, bury me and go back to Scythia.”

While I was lamenting over this, he was given his armour and fastened it on, except that he did not put on the helmet but took position bareheaded and fought that way. He himself received the first wound, an under-cut in the back of the thigh, dealt with a curved sword, so that blood flowed copiously. For my part, I was already as good as dead in my fright. But he waited until his opponent rushed

That, Mnesippus, did not happen either in Machlyene or among the Alans, so as to be unattested and possible to disbelieve; there are many Amastrians here who remember the fight of Sisinnes.