e scene in the market-place, the trial, the sentence, and the executioner himself.

I saw he’d already savagely murdered three me

Hey, lads, let’s attack them while they’re sleeping with all our strength and manly courage. Let c

hose magic arts whose powerful spells are praised throughout the world

I was in such a state of aw

Why don’t you go and kiss your aunt?’

witch” he said, “with divine powers to lower the sky, and halt the globe, make fountains stone, and melt the mountains, raise the ghosts and summon the gods, extinguish the stars and illumin

As it kept happening, and many were harmed, public indignation grew, and the people decreed the severest punishment, stoning to death next day. But with the power of her chanting she thwarted their plan. Just as Medea, in that one short day she won from Creon, consumed his daughter, his palace, and the old king himself in the flames from the golden crown, so Meroe, by chanting necromantic rites in a ditch, as she told me herself when she was drunk, shut all the people in their houses, with the dumb force of her magic powers. For two whole days not one of them could break the locks, rip open the doors, or even dig a way through the walls, until at last, at everyone’s mutual urging, they called out, swearing a solemn oath not to lay hands on her themselves, an

roe – for I realised it was truly her in line with Socrates’ tale – replied: ‘No, let him survive at least to cover this wretch’s corpse with a little earth.’ And with that she pushed Socrates’ head to the side and buried her blade in the left of his neck all the way to the hilt. Then sh