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Damophilus was a Siceliot, but none of the Roman magnates of the island could have shown a grander state than that which he maintained. His finely bred horses, his four-wheeled carriages, his bodyguard of slaves, his beautiful boys, his crowd of parasites, were known all over the broad acres and huge pasture lands which he controlled.
As the demand for slaves grew, slave-breeding as well as slave-importation was practised. No doubt there were as various theories as to the most profitable management of slaves then as in America lately. Damophilus had the instincts of a Legree: a Haley and a Cato would have held much the same sentiments as to the rearing of infants.
Each of these wreaked his own peculiar vengeance and then turned to take his share in the general massacre. Meanwhile Eunus and his immediate following had learnt news of the arch-enemy Damophilus, He was known to be staying in his pleasance near to the city.
The next day after his arrival, he summoned Damophilus to his presence, and offered that Arian prelate the hard alternative of subscribing the Nicene creed, or of instantly resigning, to the orthodox believers, the use and possession of the episcopal palace, the cathedral of St. Sophia, and all the churches of Constantinople.
Damophilus and Megallis were brought with every insult into the theatre. He began to beg for his life with some effect, but Hermeias and another cut him down; and his wife, after being tortured by the women, was cast over a precipice. But their daughter had been gentle to the slaves, and they not only did not harm her, but sent her under an escort, of which this Hermeias was one, to Catana.
The scene in the theatre had perhaps revealed more than the desire for a systematised revenge. It may have shown that there was some sense of justice, of order in the savage multitude. And indeed vengeance was not wholly indiscriminate. Eunus concealed and sent secretly away the men who had given him meat from their tables. Even the whole house of Damophilus did not perish.
The zeal of Damophilus, which in a Catholic saint would have been justly applauded, embraced, without hesitation, a life of poverty and exile, and his removal was immediately followed by the purification of the Imperial city.
She passed through passages lighted by hanging-lamps of gold and silver and bronze; past walls rich with frescoes in black and yellow and red; panels and pictures such as Caius Fabius Pictor could never have dreamed when he ornamented the Temple of Safety; frescoes that so far surpassed the work of Damophilus and Gorgasus upon the walls of Ceres, as these had surpassed the art of Pictor himself.
Thence he and his wife were fetched with every mark of ignominy, and the unhappy pair were dragged into the town with their hands bound behind their backs. The masters of the city now mustered in the theatre for an act of justice; but Damophilus did not lose his wits even when he scanned that sea of hostile faces and accusing eyes.
The archiepiscopal throne of Macedonius, which had been polluted with so much Christian blood, was successively filled by Eudoxus and Damophilus.
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