11 For wickedness, of its nature cowardly, testifies in its own condemnation,and because of a distressed conscience, always magnifies misfortunes.
12 For fear is nought but the surrender of the helps that come from reason;
13 and the more one’s expectation is of itself uncertain,the more one makes of not knowing the cause that brings on torment.
14 So they, during that night, powerless though it was,since it had come upon them from the recesses of a powerless Hades,while all sleeping the same sleep,
15 Were partly smitten by fearsome apparitionsand partly stricken by their souls’ surrender;for fear overwhelmed them, sudden and unexpected.
16 Thus, then, whoever was there fellinto that prison without bars and was kept confined.
17 For whether one was a farmer, or a shepherd,or a worker at tasks in the wasteland,Taken unawares, each served out the inescapable sentence;