me, saying, "Go, I beseech you, even to the Isaurians, only escape from us. For wherever you fall, you fall into safety, provided you escape our hands." Hearing and seeing this, the noble matron Seleucia, the wife of my lord Rufinus (for she tended us most officiously), pleaded with me and begged me to lodge in her suburban villa, which was five miles from the city, and she sent certain men with us, with whom we set out to that place.
C 3. But not even there was this treachery to have an end. For when Pharetrius learned of this, he uttered many threats against her, as he claimed. When I was received into her villa, I myself knew nothing of these things; for she came out to us and kept this hidden from us, but disclosed it to her steward who was there, and commanded him to offer us every kind of service, but if any monks came, in order that they might harass us or mistreat us, he should collect laborers from her other villages, and so join battle with the monks. She also begged me to flee into her house, which had a fortress and could not be conquered by any forces, so that I might escape the hands of the bishop and the monks. But I could not be persuaded to do this; I remained in the villa, ignorant of all these things which were being prepared against me afterwards. Not even this sufficed for them to curb their madness against us. For afterwards, in the middle of the night, I being unaware of any of these things (for Pharetrius was pressing hard, hurling, as she said, grave threats against her, and forcing and pushing her so that she might cast me out D even from the suburb), the woman, not bearing the man’s importunity, unknown to me, gave notice that the barbarians were present, since out of shame she could not bear to say the violence she was suffering. And in the middle of the night Evethius the presbyter entered, and waking me from my sleep, he said with a great cry: "Arise, I beseech you, the barbarians are approaching, and are not far off." I wish you to consider here what my state of mind was when I heard these things. When I asked him what needed to be done—for we could not flee into the city, lest we suffer things there more grievous than what the Isaurians were about to do to us—he forced us to go out. The night was moonless, it was midnight, gloomy, dark; this very thing again cast us into the greatest perplexity; there was no one to help, for all had abandoned us. Nevertheless, compelled by fear and expecting to die at any moment, weary and worn out, I arose and ordered lamps to be lit. But the presbyter ordered these also to be extinguished, lest, as he said, the barbarians, roused by the brilliance of the light, make an assault upon us. When the lamps were extinguished, the mule that was carrying our litter (for the road was extremely rough, steep, and stony) fell to its knees, and I, who was shut in the litter, was cast to the ground, and I was within a little of perishing. Then I arose and walked along slowly, while Evethius the presbyter, who had himself dismounted from his horse, held me by the hands; and thus led by the hand, or, to speak more correctly, dragged along, I crept: for in such difficulty of the place, and on dangerous mountains, it was impossible for me to walk in the middle of the night. Think, I pray, what my state of mind was, when I was constrained by such evils, and pressured by fever, and knew nothing of what had been plotted against me, but feared and trembled at the barbarians, and expected nothing else than to fall into their hands. Do you not think that these sufferings alone, even if nothing else had happened, could blot out many of our sins, and provide me with a great opportunity for glory?
The cause of these calamities, as I suppose, was this. As soon as I entered Caesarea, all who were in office, from the ex-vicars and governors to the sophists and the tribunes, and the whole common people, visited me every day, honored me, and almost carried me in their eyes; this, I believe, stung Pharetrius: nor did the envy which drove us from Constantinople cease here, as I opine; for I do not affirm and assert, but I conjecture. And who finally could encompass in speech the other things which we had to endure on the road? The fears, the dangers?