As Placidus one day hunted in the forest, the Saviour appeared to him
between the antlers of a hart, and converted him. Placidus changed his
name into Eustache, when he was baptized with his wife and sons. God
announced to him by an angel his future martyrdom. Eustache was
afflicted by dreadful calamities, lost all his estate, and was compelled
to go abroad as a beggar with his wife and his children. As he went on
board a ship bound for Egypt, his wife was seized by the shipmaster and
carried off. Soon after, when Eustache was travelling along the shore,
his two children were borne off by a lion and a leopard. Eustache then
worked for a long time as journeyman, till he was discovered by the
emperor Trajan, who had sent out messengers for him, and called him to
court. Reappointed captain, Eustache undertook an expedition against the
Dacians. During this war he found his wife in a cottage as a
gardener—the shipmaster had fallen dead to the ground as he ventured to
touch her—and in the same cottage he found again his two sons as
soldiers: herdsmen had rescued them from the wild beasts and brought
them up. Glad was their meeting again! But as they returned to Rome they
were all burnt in a glowing bull of brass by the emperor’s order,
because they refused to sacrifice to the heathen gods.[522]
* * * * *
The story of Placidus, which forms chapter 110 of the continental “Gesta
Romanorum,” presents few and unimportant variations from the foregoing:
Eustatius came to a river the water of which ran so high that it seemed
hazardous to attempt to cross it with both the children at the same
time; one therefore he placed upon the bank, and then passed over with
the other in his arms, and having laid it on the ground, he returned for
the other child. But in the midst of the river, looking back, he beheld
a wolf snatch up the child he had just carried over and run with it into
the adjoining wood. He turned to rescue it, but at that instant a huge
lion approached the other child and disappeared with it. After the loss
of his two boys Eustatius journeyed on till he came to a village, where
he remained for fifteen years, tending sheep as a hired servant, when he
was discovered by Trajan’s messengers, and so on.
* * * * *
The story is so differently told in one of the Early English
translations of the “Gesta Romanorum” in the Harleian MSS. 7333
(re-edited by Herrtage for the E.E.T. Soc., pp. 87–91) that it is worth
while, for purposes of comparison, reproducing it here in full: