Now when this was learned by Pharas, he wrote to Gelimer as follows:  “I too am a barbarian and not accustomed to writing and speaking, nor am I skilful in these matters.  But that which I am forced as a man to know, having learned from the nature of things, this I am writing you.  What in the world has happened 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 me, from whom I should pray God to exact justice, if He should be propitious to me,—­an enemy who, though he had never experienced any harm from me either in deeds which he suffered or in words which he heard, provided