Sacred Tales III

​It happened that I was staying in Hadrianoi, since the god had sent me there. At that time, my difficulties were frequent and continuous, for it was neither possible for me to take nourishment, nor to retain whatever I might taste; rather, it immediately coagulated with great heat, scraped my throat, cut off my breath, and burning spasms rushed up into my head. And ​when I tried to vomit, nothing came up, but there was only a drop instead of a great wave, because of its being stuck and causing choking. Only with difficulty, and after much turmoil and great despair, would I be relieved, not without blood, but the entire passage was lacerated and became like another wound. Indeed, the exhaustion, the total weakness of my body, and the purging were in proportion to what was happening. None of my friends or associates was present, but they were traveling elsewhere, except for one person who happened to be staying at the waters at that time. Concerning him, I thought even earlier, in a dream when I was lying alone on the road after the horse on which I sat had fallen, that he said this too happened by fate, that I should be left alone. This had occurred in Pergamum shortly before my departure. But then, while I was in distress in Hadrianoi, I remember such a dream occurring: I seemed to be carried on a raft in the Egyptian sea alone, and to be on the very edge of the raft, near the land. As I was in despair, my foster-father Zosimus appeared to me on the land having a horse, and somehow I disembarked and gladly took hold of the horse. This dream was such. I also seemed, as I was passing through Alexandria, to see schools of children; they were reading and singing these verses, sounding them as sweetly as possible: “And he rescued many from death as it watched them, who were standing at the very gates, the lusterless gates, of Hades.” These are from our own verses, which we composed almost first for the god. I wondered, therefore, how they had already spread to Egypt, and rejoiced exceedingly when I found my own works being sung. The main points of the dreams are these. When day came—for a horse happened to be available to me—I mounted immediately. Although no one would have thought this horse could hold out even to the first stage, I rode him at a run, and I became lighter while he was still running, and much of the weight left my upper parts, and a certain strength was gathered as is possible in such circumstances, and there was hope again. At night, a voice came to me of someone saying, “You are cured,” and this in the midst of the greatest difficulties. Now, the way in which I... to Pergamum...