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Updated: May 4, 2025
You, as Phorbas, have been under my special care, as the darling of poor Falco, who was one of my best friends, though I had known him so short a time. My visits here cannot prejudice your welfare and may help you, even save you. "Cheer up! Agathemer says that the real murderers are certain to betray themselves by attempting to dispose of some of the stolen gems. He is right.
"Phorbas," he said, "I am resolute never to buy another gem, equally resolute to auction all I have whenever conditions make a profitable sale probable. Yet, although I feel that I shall never live to see them auctioned, the very thought of parting with them cuts me to the quick. I am almost in tears to think of it. I love every piece I own.
But Achilles slept in an inner room, and beside him the daughter of Phorbas lovely Diomede, whom he had carried off from Lesbos. Patroclus lay on the other side of the room, and with him fair Iphis whom Achilles had given him when he took Scyros the city of Enyeus. When the envoys reached the tents of the son of Atreus, the Achaeans rose, pledged them in cups of gold, and began to question them.
Then, when they had stood aside, he gazed about at the spectators in the nave, at the crowd behind them, interested in the next case or in others to come up later, at the hangers-on in the side aisles; for a time, mute, he stared at the glowing charcoal fire in the big brazier. When he spoke he said: "It is my opinion that Phorbas is innocent.
As Phorbas I heard of you first, when it was represented to me that you had murdered your late master and been cleared by that indulgent humanitarian, Lollius Corbulo; that the case was a most flagrant miscarriage of justice and that such slackness would breed a crop of such murders unless temptation was counteracted by severity.
And even those who follow the most reasonable of these legends, and admit that it was Romulus who founded the city after his own name, do not agree about his birth; for some say that he was the son of Aeneas and Dexithea the daughter of Phorbas, and with his brother Romus was brought to Italy when a child, and that as the river was in flood, all the other boats were swamped, but that in which the children were was carried to a soft bank and miraculously preserved, from which the name of Rome was given to the place.
He turned out to be young Lollius Corbulo, whom I had not set eyes on until he came to know me as Phorbas, for he was an art amateur of high standing, considering his youth. I never have discovered how much he was influenced by his natural kindliness of disposition, how much by personal regard for me, how much by Tanno, acting for himself and Vedia, whether he had been bribed or not.
And now dewy Night had just reached heaven's mid-cone; the sailors, stretched on their hard benches under the oars, relaxed their limbs in quiet rest: when Sleep, sliding lightly down from the starry sky, parted the shadowy air and cleft the dark, seeking thee, O Palinurus, carrying dreams of bale to thee who dreamt not of harm, and lit on the high stern, a god in Phorbas' likeness, dropping this speech from his lips: 'Palinurus son of Iasus, the very seas bear our fleet along; the breezes breathe steadily; for an hour rest is given.
"Phorbas gives greeting to Opsitius, and informs him that after he had been sold by Olynthides to Nonius Libo, he survived the sinking of his owner's yacht and was sold by Libo's heir to Pomponius Falco, in whose retinue he now is. Farewell." I sent off, at least once a season, a letter like this to both Tanno and Vedia. No word from either ever reached me.
He seemed to appraise me an expert on all such lines and to be well pleased with his purchase. Certainly I was as well clothed, fed, lodged and attended as if I had been his twin-brother. Before he had owned me many days Falco said to me: "Phorbas, I've been puzzling about you. You are a slave and you were sold to poor Libo and by Rufius to me as a Greek.
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