On being promised assistance, he told them that his three usurers
were avarice, sensuality, and hunger. Of the two first he was rid,
having neither money nor passions: but, as he had eaten nothing for
three days, the third was beginning to be troublesome, and demanded
its usual debt, without paying which he could not well live; whereon
certain philosophers, seemly amused by his apologue, gave him a gold
coin. He went to a baker's shop, laid down the coin, took up a
loaf, and went out of Athens for ever. Then the philosophers knew
that he was endowed with true virtue; and when they had paid the
baker the price of the loaf, got back their gold.

When he went into Lacedaemon, he heard that a great man there was a
Manichaean, with all his family, though otherwise a good man. To
him Serapion sold himself as a slave, and within two years converted
him and his wife, who thenceforth treated him not as a slave, but as
their own brother.

After awhile, this "Spiritual adamant," as Palladius calls him,
bought his freedom of them, and sailed for Rome. At sundown first
the sailors, and then the passengers, brought out each man his
provisions, and ate. Serapion sat still. The crew fancied that he
was sea-sick; but when he had passed a second, third, and fourth day
fasting, they asked, "Man, why do you not eat?" "Because I have
nothing to eat." They thought that some one had stolen his baggage:
but when they found that the man had absolutely nothing, they began
to ask him not only how he would keep alive, but how he would pay
his fare. He only answered, "That he had nothing; that they might
cast him out of the ship where they had found him."

But they answered, "Not for a hundred gold pieces, so favourable was