Serve in Captivity

“Such is the practice … of keeping a king prisoner throughout his entire lifetime, allowing him to beget and raise a family in captivity, even though the sons thus brought up would be almost sure to seek vengeance for their parent and power for themselves upon coming of age… . It seems to us a perfectly ridiculous system, yet it is in accordance with the immemorial Asiatic usage… . Benjamin of Tudela tells how the khalif, the spiritual ruler of all western Asia, arranged for ‘the brothers and other members of the khalif’s family’ to live lives of ease, luxury, and security: ‘every one of them possesses a palace within that of the khalif, but they are all fettered by chains of iron, and a special officer is appointed over every household to prevent their rising in rebellion against the great king.’ … It was the custom of Turkish kings, as was long doubted by scholars but has recently been proved, to allow their defeated rivals to sit upon their thrones by day, but lock them up in iron cages for the night! … Moving back to the earliest records of all, we find a large class of legends all over the ancient world telling how a victorious god in the beginning bound and imprisoned his rebellious relatives—not killing them, since they partook of his own divine nature… .” (Hugh Nibley, Lehi in the Desert, pp. 201-203)