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Updated: May 8, 2025
Eponina led forth the two sons she had reared in the depths of the earth, and said to the Emperor, "These have I brought into the world and fed on my milk, that we might one day be more to implore thy forgiveness." Tears filled the eyes of all who were there; but Caesar stood firm, and the brave Gaul at last was reduced to demand permission to die with her husband.
Eponina herself was deceived, says Plutarch, whose story I follow, with the additions made thereto by the Comte de Champagny, the historian of Antoninus; and when Martialis the freedman told her of her husband's self-slaughter, she lay for three days and three nights on the ground, refusing all nourishment. When Sabinus heard of her grief, he took pity and caused her to know that he lived.
Is not the happiness that accident brought to the heart of Eponina within reach of every heart, so the will to possess it be there?
And, as the noble Eponina has taken us back to the days of persecution, may we not liken such sorrow to the pagan executioner who, suddenly touched by grace, or perhaps admiration, in the very midst of the torture that he was inflicting, flung himself down headlong at the feet of his victim, speaking words of tenderest sympathy; who demanded to share her suffering, and finally besought, in a kiss, to be told the way to her heaven.
Giving full credit to the story, Eponina was thrown into a transport of grief which went far to convince the spies of Rome that she must have received sure tidings of her husband's death, and that Sabinus had escaped the vengeance of Rome.
He had been attended in his flight by two faithful freedmen, and one of these, Martialis by name, sought Eponina, the loving wife of the chief, and told her that her husband was no more, that he had perished in the flames of the burning hut.
This information brought Eponina as lively joy as the former news had brought her sorrow; but knowing that she was watched, she affected as deep grief as before, going about her daily duties with all the outward manifestations of woe. When night came she visited Sabinus secretly in his new hiding-place, and was received in his arms with all the joy of which loving souls are capable.
Eponina asked that she might die with her husband, saying, "Caesar, do me this grace; for I have lived more happily beneath the earth and in the darkness than thou in the splendor of thy empire."
He had a wife, a young Gaul named Eponina, who was in frantic despair at the rumor; but he had her informed, by the mouth of one of his freedmen, of his place of concealment, begging her at the same time to keep up a show of widowhood and mourning, in order to confirm the report already in circulation. "Well did she play her part," to use Plutarch's expression, "in her tragedy of woe."
Suffering seemed ever radiant in aspect to Eponina, because of her love; but cannot this thing that love brings about, all unknowing, by fortunate accident, be also achieved by thought, meditation, by the habit of looking beyond our immediate trouble, and being more joyous than fate would seem to demand?
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