foreign enemy might not find a plunderer at home.

About the same time, the Author of our general salvation, coming to the
earth in order to save mortals, bore to put on the garb of mortality;
at which time the fires of war were quenched, and all the lands were
enjoying the calmest and most tranquil peace. It has been thought that
the peace then shed abroad so widely, so even and uninterrupted over the
whole world, attended not so much an earthly rule as that divine birth;
and that it was a heavenly provision that this extraordinary gift of
time should be a witness to the presence of Him who created all times.

Meantime a certain matron, skilled in sorcery, who trusted in her art
more than she feared the severity of the king, tempted the covetousness
of her son to make a secret effort for the prize; promising him
impunity, since Frode was almost at death's door, his body failing, and
the remnant of his doting spirit feeble. To his mother's counsels
he objected the greatness of the peril; but she bade him take hope,
declaring, that either a sea-cow should have a calf, or that the king's
vengeance should be baulked by some other chance. By this speech she
banished her son's fears, and made him obey her advice. When the deed
was done, Frode, stung by the affront, rushed with the utmost heat and
fury to raze the house of the matron, sending men on to arrest her and
bring her with her children. This the woman foreknew, and deluded her
enemies by a trick, changing from the shape of a woman into that of a
mare. When Frode came up she took the shape of a sea-cow, and seemed to
be straying and grazing about the shore; and she also made her sons
look like calves of smaller size. This portent amazed the king, and he
ordered that they should be surrounded and cut off from returning to
the waters. Then he left the carriage, which he used because of the
feebleness of his aged body, and sat on the ground marvelling. But the
mother, who had taken the shape of the larger beast, charged at the king
with outstretched tusk, and pierced one of his sides. The wound killed
him; and his end was unworthy of such majesty as his. His soldiers,
thirsting to avenge his death, threw their spears and transfixed the
monsters, and saw, when they were killed, that they were the corpses of
human beings with the heads of wild beasts: a circumstance which exposed
the trick more than anything.

So ended Frode, the most famous king in the whole world. The