the unquestioned dread of danger prevailed.  For so potent was the majesty of Frode, that it guarded even gold that was thus exposed to pillage, as though it were fast with bolts and bars.  The strange device brought great glory upon its inventor.  After dealing destruction everywhere, and gaining famous victories far and wide, he resolved to bestow quiet on all men, that the cheer of peace should follow the horrors of war, and the end of slaughter might be the beginning of safety.  He further thought that for the same reason all men’s property should be secured to them by a protective decree, so that what had been saved from a foreign enemy might not find a plunderer at home.

About the same time, the Author of our general salvation, coming to the earth in order to save mortals, bore to put on the garb of mortality; at which time the fires of war were quenched, and all the lands were enjoying the calmest and most tranquil peace.  It has been thought that the peace then shed abroad so widely, so even and uninterrupted over the whole world, attended not so much an earthly rule as that divine birth; and that it was a heavenly provision that this extraordinary gift of time should be a witness to the presence of Him who created all times.

Meantime a certain matron, skilled in sorcery, who trusted in her art more than she feared the severity of the king, tempted the covetousness of her son to make a secret effort for the prize; promising him impunity, since Frode was almost at death’s door, his body failing, and the remnant of his doting spirit feeble.  To his mother’s counsels he objected the greatness of the peril; but she bade him take hope, declaring, that either a sea-cow should have a calf, or that the king’s vengeance should be baulked by some other chance.  By this speech she banished her son’s fears, and made him obey her advice.  When the deed was done, Frode, stung by the affront, rushed with the utmost heat and fury to raze the house of the matron, sending men on to arrest her and bring her with her children.  This the woman foreknew, and deluded her enemies by a trick, changing from the shape of a woman into that of a mare.  When Frode came up she took the shape of a sea-cow, and seemed to be straying and grazing about the shore; and she also made her sons look like calves of smaller size.  This portent amazed the king, and he ordered that they should be surrounded and cut off from returning to the waters.  Then he left the carriage, which he used because of the feebleness of his aged body, and sat on the ground marvelling.  But the mother, who had taken the shape of the larger beast, charged at the king with outstretched tusk, and pierced one of his sides.  The wound killed him; and his end was unworthy of such majesty as his.  His soldiers, thirsting to avenge his death, threw their spears and transfixed the monsters, and saw, when they were killed, that they were the corpses of human beings with the heads of wild beasts:  a circumstance which exposed the trick more than anything.