The robbers had just lost their own captain, so they received Haemus with great joy, and made him their leader.  Soon afterwards ten of his men came in, loaded with swollen wine-bags.

“Here’s enough wine,” he said, “to last us a fortnight if we use it temperately.  Let us celebrate this glorious day by finishing it at one sitting!”

The robbers at once fell furiously to drinking, and their new captain forced Charite to come and sit beside him.  After a little wooing, she began to cling to him, and return his kisses.

“Oh, what a frail, fickle, faithless race are women!” I said to myself.  “Scarcely two hours ago she was crying her eyes out for her bridegroom; now here she is, fondling a wretched assassin.”

What an ass I was!  It was some time before I noticed that the new captain did not drink himself, and that the men he brought with him were only pretending to drink, while forcing the wine on the other robbers, who soon became too drunk to drink, and rolled over in a deep sleep.

“Up, boys, and disarm and bind these ruffians!” said the new captain, who was none other than Tlepolemus, the bridegroom of the fair Charite.  And leaving his servants to perform this task, he put Charite on my back, and led me to his native town.  All the inhabitants poured out into the street to see us pass, and they loudly acclaimed Tlepolemus for his valour and ingenuity in rescuing his lovely bride, and capturing the robbers.

Charite did not forget me in the scenes of rejoicing.  She patted my head and kissed my rough face, and bade the groom of the stud feed me well, and let me have the run of the fields.

“Now I shall at last be able to get a mouthful of roses,” I thought, “and recover my human shape.”

But, alas! the groom was an avaricious, disobedient slave, and he at once sold me to a troupe of those infamous beggarly priests of Cybele, who cart the Syrian goddess about the public squares to the sound of cymbals and rattles.

The next morning my new owners smeared their faces with rouge, and painted their eyes with black grease; then they dressed themselves in white tunics, and set their wretched goddess on my back, and marched out, leaping and brandishing great swords and axes.  On coming to the mansion of a wealthy man, they raised a wild din, and whirled about, and cut themselves and scourged themselves until they were covered with blood.  The master of the mansion was so impressed with this savage and degrading spectacle that he gave the priests a good sum of money, and invited them into his house.  They took the goddess with them, and I scampered out into the fields searching for some roses.

But I was quickly brought back by the cook.  His master had given him a fat haunch from an enormous stag to roast for the priests’ dinner, and a dog had run off with it.  In order to avoid being whipped for his carelessness, the slave resolved to let the priests dine off a haunch of their own ass.  He locked the door of the kitchen, so that I could not escape, and then took a long knife and came to kill me.  But I had no mind to perish in this way; and I dashed upstairs into the room where the master was busy worshipping the goddess in the company of the priests, and knocked the table over, and the goddess and many of the worshippers.