Following this interview, I walked to the chamber I shared with Bono, and I recalled all the lessons in language Dr. Trefusis had set me in the last weeks I’d been permitted to study with him:
(A) In the reign of the Tarquins (so Livy tells us), a slave-boy was found sleeping in the palace with his head afire; it burned with a mystical flame as he slumbered, and yet was not consumed. When this boy, son of the captive Princess of Corniculum, awoke, the flames evaporated, leaving him unscarred; some years later, as this prodigious conflagration foretold, he was crowned King of Rome.
(B) I read of the slave revolt of the wizard called King Antiochus.
(C) I read of the Greek slaves who, endued with countless graces, taught their Roman masters’ children philosophy, declamation, poetry, and all the arts.
(D) I read love-poems to bonded girls.
(E) I read in Plutarch of the rise of the gladiatorial slave Spartacus.
(F) I read of Diogenes the Cynic, who traveled the length and breadth of Greece in a bathtub, and who was captured by pirates and sold into slavery in Crete. When the slave-auctioneer inquired what skills Diogenes might offer, the philosopher replied, “Ruling men.”