ned to you, my dear Gelimer, that you have cast, not
yourself alone, but your whole family besides, into this pit? Is it,
forsooth, that you may avoid becoming a slave? But this is assuredly
nothing but youthful folly, and making of 'liberty' a mere shibboleth,
as though liberty were worth possessing at the price of all this misery!
And, after all, do you not consider that you are, even now, a slave to
the most wretched of the Moors, since your only hope of being saved, if
the best happens, is in them? And yet why would it not be better in
every way to be a slave among the Romans and beggared, than to be
monarch on Mount Papua with Moors as your subjects? But of course it
seems to you the very height of disgrace even to be a fellow slave with
Belisarius! Away with the thought, most excellent Gelimer. Are not
we,[20] who also are born of noble families, proud that we are now in
the service of an emperor? And indeed they say that it is the wish of
the Emperor Justinian to have you enrolled in the senate, thus sharing
in the highest honour and being a patrician, as we term that rank, and
to present you with lands both spacious and good and with great sums of
money, and that Belisarius is willing to make himself responsible for
your having all these things, and to give you pledges. Now as for all
the miseries which fortune has brought you, you are able to bear with
fortitude whatever comes from her, knowing that you are but a man and
that these things are inevitable; but if fortune has purposed to temper
these adversities with some admixture of good, would you of yourself
refuse to accept this gladly? Or should we consider that the good gifts
of fortune are not just as inevitable as are her undesirable gifts? Yet
such is not the opinion of even the utterly senseless; but you, it would
seem, have now lost your good judgment, steeped as you are in
misfortunes. Indeed, discouragement is wont to confound the mind and to
be transformed to folly. If, however, you can bear your own thoughts and
refrain from rebelling against fortune when she changes, it will be
possible at this very moment for you to choose that which will be wholly
to your advantage, and to escape from the evils which hang over you."

When Gelimer had read this letter and wept bitterly over it, he wrote in
reply as follows: "I am both deeply grateful to you for the advice which
you have given me and I also think it unbearable to be a slave to an
enemy who wrongs m