Читать книгу Wonderful Escapes - Frederic Tscharner Bernard - Страница 5

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Mardonias had for an augur, according to the Greek rites, Hegesistratus of Elea. This man, at one time, was in the power of the Spartans, to whom he had wrought very great harm, and he lay heavily ironed in prison, and condemned to death. In this extremity, knowing that he had to expect, not only to lose his life, but to suffer the most frightful tortures before his execution, he performed an incredible exploit. He was fastened to a heavy wooden fetter bound with iron, and by the aid of a scrap of the same metal which he found by accident in his prison, he accomplished the

They came at last to an opening.

most courageous action ever recorded; for, having carefully measured off as much of his foot as he could manage to drag out of the fetters, he cut it away from the rest by the tarsal bone. He then contrived, although the prison was strictly guarded, to pick a hole in the wall of his dungeon, and escape to Tegea, walking, or rather hobbling along, by night, and hiding during the day. He arrived at Tegea on the third night, after eluding all the vigilance of the Lacedemonians, who had, indeed, been struck with almost ludicrous astonishment when they found only the half of the man’s foot in their safe keeping and the owner gone. As soon as Hegesistratus was cured, he provided himself with a wooden foot, and became the declared enemy of the Lacedemonians. His hatred of them was about equalled by his love of gain; and he was enabled to gratify both passions by sacrificing, and by drawing divinations for the Persians at the battle of Platea, for which he was most liberally paid by Mardonius. But his enmity to the Spartans brought him to a bad end, for he was captured by them at Zacynthus, where he was following his trade of divination, and put to death. (Herodotus, bk. ix., § xxxvii.)

In the time of Herodotus, the term “tarsus” was applied, not only to that part of the foot so designated by modern anatomists, but also to that immediately above the toes. It would even seem to follow, from a passage in Hippocrates, that the term tarsus was employed specially to designate those portions now called metatarsal, and to the second row of the bones of the tarsus, from which he distinguishes those in direct communication with the leg. From the text of Herodotus, however, it is sufficiently clear that Hegesistratus cut off his foot at the part where the tarsus and metatarsus join.

It would at first seem incredible that a man could have the resolution to mutilate himself in this way, and, above all, to do subsequently what is here recorded by the Greek author; but facts certainly as extraordinary have been observed among the North American Indians. It is but rarely, however, that among stories of the kind we have collected, even though they may be taken from the gravest historians, some details are not found open to at least the suspicion of exaggeration. We give the name of our authority: the reader must take the story for what it is worth.