Chapter 5

Now the king's son, of whom from the beginning the account set out to speak, being shut up without going out in the palace built for him,

came to the age of youth, having gone through all the learning of the Ethiopians and the Persians. He was gifted and comely in soul no less than in body, sensible and prudent and shining with all good excellences; and he put forward questions of nature to his teachers, so that they too marvelled at the boy's quickness and understanding, and the king was astounded both at the charm of his face and at the composure of his soul. He gave commands to those about him to make none of the sorrowful things of life known to him in any way, nor that death at all succeeds present delights. But he was leaning upon empty hopes, and — as the saying goes — attempting to shoot at the heaven. For how could death escape the notice of human nature? Yet it did not escape the boy either. For having a mind thick-crowned with all understanding, he considered within himself for what reason his father had condemned him to be kept without going out and did not allow entrance to him to anyone who wished it. For he knew within himself that this was not without his father's command. Yet he was ashamed to ask him, saying on the one hand that it was improbable his father did not intend what was profitable for him, and considering on the other that, if the matter were according to his father's mind, even if he asked, his father would not make the truth known to him.

Hence he resolved to learn these things from others, and not from his father. And having one of his tutors dearer and more intimate to him than the rest, he made him still more his own, and, winning him over with generous gifts, inquired from him what the king meant by his confinement within that enclosure, saying: "If you teach me this plainly, you shall be preferred above all by me, and I will make with you a covenant of unbroken friendship." The tutor, being himself prudent and knowing the boy's intelligent and full discernment, and that he would not become to him an occasion of danger, related everything to him part by part: the persecution decreed by the king against the Christians and especially against the ascetics, how they were driven out and cast forth from that region, and what the astrologers had foretold at his birth. "So that you may not," he said, "hearing their teaching, prefer it to our religion, the king contrived that few, and those easily counted, should associate with you, giving us commands to make none of the sorrowful things of life known to you." When the young man heard these things, he added nothing further to say; but a saving word touched his heart, and the grace of the Comforter set about opening his spiritual eyes, leading him by the hand to the God who does not lie, as the account will show as it goes on. And when his father the king came often to see the boy — for he loved him with a surpassing love — on one occasion the son said to him: "There is something I have longed to learn from you, my lord and king, over which a continual grief and an unceasing anxiety devour my soul."

The father, pained in his inmost being at the very words, said: "Tell me, my most beloved child, what is the grief that holds you, and I will hasten to change it speedily into joy." And the boy said: "What is the reason of my confinement here, that you have shut me up within walls and gates, making me altogether unable to go out and unseen by all?" And the father said: "I do not wish, my child, that you should see any of the things that grieve your heart and cut short your gladness. For I intend that you should live the whole of your life in continual luxury and all joy and delight." "But know well, my lord," said the son to his father, "that in this way I do not live in joy and delight, but rather in affliction and great distress, so that even my very food and drink appear to me unpleasant and bitter. For I long to see all the things outside these gates. If, then, you wish me not to live in pain, command that I may go out as I wish, and delight my soul with the sight of things hitherto unseen by me."

The king was grieved when he heard these things, and considered that, if he forbade the request, he would become the occasion to him of greater distress and anxiety. And saying, "My child, I will do what is in your heart," he at once ordered choice horses and a bodyguard befitting a king to be made ready, and appointed that the boy should go out whenever he wished, charging those about him to bring nothing unpleasant to meet him, but to show the boy everything that was good and produced delight, and to set up in the streets choirs harmoniously singing songs and forming various shows, so that his mind might be occupied and delighted with these. And indeed, going out thus often in his processions, the king's son saw one day, through the negligence of his attendants, two men, one of whom was maimed and the other blind. Seeing them, and grieved in his soul, he said to those with him: "Who are these, and what is the unpleasant sight of them?" They, unable to hide what had come into his sight, said: "These are human afflictions, which are wont to befall mortals from corrupted matter and a body of ill humours." And the boy said: "Do these things usually befall all men?" They said: "Not all, but those in whom health is turned aside by the corruption of the humours." Again, then, the boy inquired: "If this does not usually befall all men, but some, are those known beforehand whom these dreadful things are to seize? Or do they come without distinction and unforeseen?" They said: "And who among men can foresee things to come and know them exactly? For this is beyond human nature, and allotted to the immortal gods alone."

And the king's son ceased asking, but was pained in his heart at what he had seen, and the form of his face was changed by the strangeness of the thing. And after not many days, passing by again, he met an old man worn out with many days, wrinkled in face, slack in his legs, bent over, and altogether grey, deprived of his teeth, and speaking with broken words. Astonishment seized him; and, bringing the man near, he inquired to learn the strangeness of the sight. Those present said: "This man is now of very many years, and as his strength has little by little diminished and his limbs grown weak, he has come to the misery you see." "And what," he said, "is the end of this?" They said to him: "Nothing else but death will succeed him." "But is this set before all men," he said, "or does it befall only some of them?" They answered: "Unless death takes someone away from these things first, it is impossible, as the years go on, not to come to the trial of this condition." And the boy said: "In how many years, then, does this come upon a man? And if death is altogether set before us, and there is no means to escape it and not to come to this misery?" They said to him: "In eighty, or even a hundred, years men come to this old age, and then they die, there being no other way. For death is a debt of nature, laid upon men from the beginning, and its coming cannot be turned aside."

When that intelligent and prudent young man saw and heard all these things, he groaned from the depth of his heart and said: "Bitter is this life, and full of all pain and unpleasantness, if these things are so. And how shall anyone be free from care in the expectation of uncertain death, whose coming is not only inescapable but also uncertain, as you have said?" And he went away turning these things over within himself, and reasoning unceasingly, and making frequent reflections on death, living thereby with toils and despondencies and having an unceasing grief. For he said within himself: "Will death then one day seize me? And who will keep my memory after death, since time gives all things over to oblivion? And shall I, when I die, be dissolved into non-being? Or is there some other life and another world?" Thinking unceasingly on these and like things, he grew pale and wasted away; but in his father's sight, when it happened that the king came, he feigned cheerfulness and freedom from grief, not wishing the things he was pondering to come to his father's knowledge. And he longed with an uncontrollable longing, and yearned, to meet someone able to satisfy his heart and to sound a good word in his ears. He inquired again of the aforementioned tutor whether he knew anyone able to help him toward what he desired and to make firm his mind, which was dreadfully reeling among its reasonings and unable to throw off its concern about these things.

And the tutor, recalling again what had been said before, replied: "I told you before too how your father, against those wise men and ascetics who were ever philosophizing about such things, killed some and persecuted others in anger; and I do not now know any such man in this region." At this the youth was filled with much heaviness, and grievously wounded in soul, and was like a man who had lost a great treasure and occupied his whole mind in its search. Thenceforth he lived with continual struggle and anxiety, and all the pleasant and delightful things of the world were in his eyes as a pollution and an abomination. While the young man was in such a state, and crying out in his soul to find the good, the eye that sees all things saw him, and he who wills that all should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth did not overlook him; but, showing in this too his accustomed love for mankind, he made known the road which he was to travel, in the following manner.