§ 1. HOW WE CAME TO ATHENS.
Loosing from Sidon we were driven by violent winds to the Chelidonian isles. There the Pamphylian sea divides itself from the Lycian; and the floods, meeting several ways and breaking against the promontory, swell into terrible billows rising higher than the cliffs. But when we were now in great peril of our lives, the Lord had mercy on us. For he sent a star which, seeming to settle upon our top-sail, by a left-hand course directed our vessel again into the sea, just when it was ready to be dashed upon the cliffs. I had often before heard speak of these marvellous stars, but never yet had seen them; and although Artemidorus had taught me that they were no gods but mere effects of causes according to nature, yet, in such extreme peril, being filled with thankfulness for our deliverance, I could not but join myself with the mariners and the rest of the crew in doing worship to the twin-gods. That very night—having often before of late had visions of a man seated on the clouds and encompassed with brightness—there came to me another such vision, but of more than usual splendor, and he beckoned to me and said that the stars had been sent by him, and not by these twin-gods whom I had ignorantly worshipped. But I shook off the dream as being a mere phantasm of the night, not knowing that it was from the Lord.
Escaping from the peril of the seas, we sailed through the Arches, and thence were driven onwards, not however to Ephesus, whither we desired to have come, but to Piræus. There, owing to the sickness of Philemon, we spent some days, during which I lodged in the house of Molon the rhetorician; and when at last my master returned to Colossæ, I persuaded him to suffer me to remain at Athens for a while, that I might study rhetoric and attain the true Attic pronunciation and idiom, so that I might be the more useful to him as amanuensis and secretary. But I had other reasons for desiring to remain. For besides the delights and novelties of the city—which were all new to me because I had not been able to persuade Philemon to spend more than two days there when we last came to Greece to visit Lebadea—I had already conceived a love for Eucharis, Molon’s only daughter. But, of this, more hereafter. Meantime it chanced that Philemon, returning to Colossæ, much infected with the superstition of the Christians (as Artemidorus termed it), had caused the latter to suppose that I also was in the same condition of mind; which (to my shame be it spoken) was far from the truth. However, Artemidorus taking it to be true, and being sorely incensed against me, wrote the following letter which I will here set down, being the last I received from him on this matter: