Toxaris; Or, Friendship (29)

The unhappy Antiphilos had accordingly been in durance a long time, with the reputation of

being the most abandoned malefactor in the prison, and the Egyptian jailer, a superstitious man, considered that he was pleasing and avenging the god by bearing heavily on Antiphilos. If he ever defended himself, declaring that he had never done anything of the sort, he was thought utterly shameless, and hated the more. Presently he fell ill and suffered a great deal, naturally, for he slept on the ground, and at night he could not stretch out his legs because they were in the stocks. For by day the collar and a handcuff on the left-hand were enough, but at night they must needs bind him completely. Moreover, the illstench of the place, the stifling atmosphere created by so many prisoners confined in the same room, cramped for space and hardly breathing, the clang of iron, the scarcity of sleep-all these things were oppressive and unendurable to a man who was unused to them, and had had no experience of such a squalid life.