Lysimachus mutilated his own friend, Telesphorus from Rhodes. He cut off his nose and ears and kept him locked in a tiny cell like some strange wild animal. The man's hacked and disfigured face no longer looked human. Starvation and filth made it even worse — he was forced to wallow in his own waste. The cell was so small that he had to crawl on his hands and knees instead of walking. His hands and knees became hard and callused. His sides were covered with sores from rubbing against the walls. He looked so shocking and frightening that his punishment had turned him into something monstrous — so monstrous that people couldn't even feel pity for him. But however inhuman the victim had become, the man who did this to him was even more inhuman.
Why, he mutilated his own friend, Telesphorus the Rhodian, cutting off his nose and ears, and kept him for a long while in a den, like some new and strange animal, after the hideousness of his hacked and disfigured face had made him no longer appear to be human, assisted by starvation and the squalid filth of a body left to wallow in its own dung! Besides this, his hands and knees, which the narrowness of his abode forced him to use instead of his feet, became hard and callous, while his sides were covered with sores by rubbing against the walls, so that his appearance was no less shocking than frightful, and his punishment turned him into so monstrous a creature that he was not even pitied. Yet, however unlike a man he was who suffered this, even more unlike was he who inflicted it.