This effectually was done
By themselves, they flying backward
With averted faces; he
Thus was taken, but his partner,
That strange prodigy of Rome—­
Man in mind, wild beast in manners,
Doubly thus a prodigy—­
Saved himself by power of magic. 
Thus Chrysanthus was sole prisoner,
While the Christian crowd, disheartened,
Fled for safety to the mountains
From their grottoes and their caverns. 
These the soldiers quickly followed,
And behind in that abandoned
Savage place remained but two—­
Two, oh! think, a son and father.—­
One a judge, too, in a cause
Wicked, bad, beyond example,
In a cause that outraged Caesar,
And the gods themselves disparaged. 
There with a delinquent son
Stood I, therefore this should happen,
That both clemency and rigour
In my heart waged fearful battle—­
Clemency in fine had won,
I would have removed the bandage
From his eyes and let him fly,
But that instant, ah! unhappy! 
Came the soldiers back, and then
It were but more misery added,
If they knew of my connivance: 
All that then my care could manage
To protect him was the secret
Of his name to keep well guarded. 
Thus to Rome I brought him prisoner,
Where pretending great exactness,
That his friends should not discover
Where this Christian malefactor
Was imprisoned, to this house,
To my own house, I commanded
That he should be brought; there hidden
And unknown, a few days after
I in his place substituted . . . 
Ah! what will not the untrammelled
Strength of arbitrary power
Dare attempt? what law not trample? 
Substituted, I repeat,
For my son a slave, whose strangled,
Headless corse thus paid the debt
Which from me were else exacted. 
You will say, “Since fortune thus
Has the debt so happily cancelled,
Why imprison or conceal him?”—­
And, thus, full of doubts, I answer
That though it is true I wished not,
Woe is me! the common scaffold
Should his punishment make public,
I as little wished his hardened
Heart should know my love and pity
Since it did not fear my anger: 
Ah! believe me, Claudius,
’Twixt the chastisement a father
And an executioner gives,
A great difference must be granted: 
One hand honours what it striketh,
One disgraces, blights, and blackens. 
Soon my rigour ceased, for truly,
In a father’s heart it lasteth
Seldom long:  but then what wonder,
If the hand that in its anger
Smites his son, in his own breast
Leaves a wound that ever rankles—­
I one day his prison entered
With the wish (I own it frankly)
To forgive him, and when I
Thought he would have even thanked me
For receiving a reproof,
Not severe, too lenient rather,
He began to praise the Christians
With such earnestness and ardour,
In defence of their new law,
That my clemency departed,