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THE SECOND BOOKE 171
bond-men; and were not the Climacides certain women
in Syria, which creeping on al foure upon the ground,
served the ladies in steed of footstoles or ladders to get
up into their coachs ? Where the greater part of free
men, for very slight causes, abandon both their life
and being to the power of others. The wives and concubines
of the Thracians strive and contend which of
them shal be chosen to bee slaine over her husbands or
lovers tombe. Have tyrants ever failed to find many
men vowed to their devotion? Where some for an
over-plus or supererogation have added this necessity,
that they must necessarily accompany them as well in
death as in life. Whole hostes of men have thus tyed
themselves unto their captaines. The tenor of the oath
.ministred unto the schollars that entered and were
admitted the rude schoole of Roman Gladiators emplied
these promises, which was this : ' We vow and sweare
to suffer our selves to be enchained, beaten, burned,
and killed with the sword, and endure whatsoever any
lawfull fenser ought to endure for his master: most
religiously engaging both our bodie and soule to the
use of his service :'
Ure meum, si vis, flamma caput, et pete ferro ¹
Corpus, et intorto vcibere terga seca, 1
Burne tyrant (if thou wilt) my head with fire, with sword
My body strike, my backe cut with hard-twisted cord.
Was not this a very strict covenant? Yet were
there some yeares ten thousand found that entered
and lost themselves in those schooles. When the
Scithians buried their king, they strangled over his
dead body first the chiefest and best beloved of his
concubines, then his cup-bearer, the master of his
horse, his chamberlaine, the usher of his chamber,
and his master cooke. And in his anniversary killed
fiftie horse, mounted with fifty pages, whom before they
had slaine with thrusting sharpe stakes into their fundament,
which, going up along their chine-bone, came
out at their throat; whom thus mounted; they set in
¹ TIBUL.1.i.El. ix.21.