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As the fifth, I shall tell you the deed of Abauchas, and then I shall stop. Once upon a time this man Abauchas came to the city of the Borysthenites,Olbia. bringing his wife, of whom he was exceptionally fond, and two children, one of whom, a boy, was a child in arms, while the other, a girl, was seven years old. There came with him also a companion of his, Gyndanes, who was ill of a wound which he had received on the way from robbers who had attacked them. In fighting with them he had got a thrust in the thigh, so that he could not even stand for the pain of it. During the night, as they slept— they chanced to be living in an upper story—a great fire broke out, every avenue of escape was being cut off, and the flames were encompassing the house on all sides. At that juncture Abauchas woke up; abandoning his crying children, shaking off his wife as she hung upon him and urging her to save herself, he carried his comrade down and managed to burst through at a place which the fire had not yet completely burned away. His wife, carrying the baby, followed, telling the girl too to come along. Halfburned, she let the child fall from her arms and barely leaped through the flames, and with her the little girl, who also came very near losing her life. When someone afterwards rebuked Abauchas for abandoning his wife and children but bringing out Gyndanes, he said: “Why, I can easily have other children, and it was uncertain whether these would be good for anything but I could not in a long time find another friend like Gyndanes, who has given me abundant proof of his devotion.”The reasoning of Abauchas on this point is suspiciously like that ascribed to Seleucus Nicator by Lucian in the Goddess of Syria (18: Vol. IV, p. 364), to Antigone by Sophocles (Antig. 905-912), and to the wife of Intaphernes by Herodotus (III, 119). We cannot, however, be entirely certain in the case of Abauchas that it derives from the Herodotean story. There are parallels from India (in the Ramayana and in the Jatakas: Hermes, XXVIII, 465) and from Persia: sbid., XXIX, 155); cf. also, for modern Syria, A. Goodrich-Freer, Arabs in Tent and Town, p. 25. .
