Celerrime denique longo itinere confecto pagum quendam accedimus ibique totam perquiescimus noctem . Ibi coeptum facinus oppido memorabile narrare cupio . Servus quidam , cui cunctam familiae tutelam dominus permiserat , suus quique possessionem maximam illam , in quam deverteramus , vilicabat , habens ex eodem famulitio conservam coniugam , liberae cuiusdam extrariaeque mulieris flagrabat cupidine . Quo dolore paelicatus uxor eius instricta cunctas mariti rationes et quicquid horreo reconditum continebatur admoto combussit igne . Nec tali damno tori sui contumeliam vindicasse contenta , iam contra sua saeviens viscera laqueum sibi nectit , infantulumque , quem de eodem marito iam dudum susceperat , eodem funiculo nectit seque per altissimum puteum adpendicem parvulum trahens praecipitat . Quam mortem dominus eorum aegerrime sustinens adreptum servulum , qui causam tanti sceleris luxurie sua praestiterat , nudum ac totum melle perlitum firmiter alligavit arbori ficulneae , cuius in ipso carioso stipite inhabitantium formicarum nidificia bulliebant et ultro citro commeabant multiiuga scaturrigine . Quae simul dulcem ac mellitum corporis nidorem persentiscunt , parvis quidem sed numerosis et continuis morsiunculis penitus inhaerentes , per longi temporis cruciatum ita , carnibus atque ipsis visceribus adesis , homine consumpto membra nudarunt , ut ossa tantum viduata pulpis nitore nimio candentia funestae cohaererent arbori .

After a long day moving at breakneck pace , we came to a village where we stayed the night , a place where a noteworthy crime had been committed which I’ll relate . A servant , whose master had made him steward of his entire estate , had previously acted as bailiff therefore of the large holding where we had stopped for the night . He was married to a servant in the same household , but burned with love for a freedwoman , who lived outside his master’s estate . Angered by her husband’s disloyalty , the wife set fire to his store-room and all his accounts , destroying both utterly . Not content with this act as revenge for the insult to her marriage , she turned her bitter rage against her own flesh . Tying a rope round her own neck and that of the child she’d just borne her husband , she hurled herself into a deep well , dragging the infant with her . Their master , horrified at their deaths , had the servant , whose infidelity had provoked the dreadful tragedy , arrested , stripped naked and smeared with honey , and tied to a rotting fig-tree inside whose trunk lived a colony of nesting ants that marched in and out in their myriad streams . Detecting the sweet sugary scent on his body , they quickly fastened their tiny jaws in his skin , wounding him deeply with endlessly repeated bites , until after interminable torment , he died . His flesh and his innards were totally consumed and his body stripped to the bare bones which , gleaming a brilliant white , were left tied to the tree .

. So after a long stage at top speed we came to a village where we rested for the night . At this place there had been perpetrated a deed that was so memorable that I propose to put it on record . It concerned a certain slave to whom his master had confided the whole management of his household and who was the steward of the large estate where we had stopped . He had as his consort another slave from the household , but he was madly in love with somebody else , a free woman who was not a member of the family . His wife was so enraged by his infidelity that she made a bonfire of all her husband’s account-books and the entire contents of the barns and storehouses . Then , not thinking this enough of a revenge for the affront to her marriage-bed , she turned her fury against her own flesh and blood : passing a noose around her neck , with the same rope she tied to herself the little boy that she had had by her husband , and threw herself down a deep well , dragging the child down with her . Their master , greatly upset by her death , arrested the slave whose lust had been the cause of such a crime , had him stripped naked and smeared all over with honey and lashed tightly to a fig-tree . This had in its hollow trunk an ants’ nest , swarming and seething with their multitudinous comings and goings . Directly they sensed the sweet honeyed scent of the man’s body they battened on it with their tiny jaws , nibbling endlessly away in their thousands until after many days of torture they had devoured him completely , entrails and all , leaving his bones bare ; only his gleaming white skeleton , stripped of flesh , was left fastened to the fatal tree .