The Defense

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 as Catullus says, after the filthy fashion in vogue among the Iberians.

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 What is there so lascivious in all my verses compared with that one line? I will say nothing of the writings of Diogenes the Cynic, of Zeno the founde

 Now let me read you the others also which they read last as being the most intemperate in expression.

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 There is another poem by Plato dealing conjointly with the boys Alexis and Phaedrus:

 Without citing any further examples I will conclude by quoting a line addressed by Plato to Dion of Syracuse:

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 The divine Hadrian, when he honoured the tomb of his friend the poet Voconius with an inscription in verse from his own pen, wrote thus:

 words which he would never have written had he regarded verse of somewhat too lively a wit as proving their author to be a man of immoral life. I reme

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 The lines which follow are so wonderful, that had you read them you would envy me my wallet even more than you envy me my marriage with Pudentilla.

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 But you who take such exception to fish attribute far different instruments to magicians, charms not to be torn from new-born foreheads, but to be cut

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 Similarly in another passage he says:

 But never in the works of Homer did Proteus anoint his face nor Ulysses his magic trench, nor Aeolus his windbags, nor Helen her mixing bowl, nor Circ

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 He glorified many fish in other verses, stating where each was to be found and whether they were best fried or stewed, and yet he is not blamed for it

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 These words, which I have quoted in Greek, have been selected by Rufinus and separated from their context. He has taken them round as a confession on

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76

His wife, however, was getting old and worn out and gave up the whole household to dishonour. But there was a daughter who, at her mother's instigation, was exhibited to all the wealthy young men, but in vain. To some of the suitors she was even given to try. Had she not come across so easy a victim as Pontianus, she would perhaps still have been sitting at home a widow who had never been a bride. Pontianus, in spite of urgent attempts on our part to dissuade him, gave her the right - false and illusory though it was - to be called a bride. He did this knowing that, but a short time before he married her, she had been deserted by a young man of good family to whom she had been previously betrothed, after he had had enough of her.

And so his new bride came to him, not as other brides come, but unabashed and undismayed, her virtue lost, her modesty gone, her bridal-veil a mockery. Cast off by her previous lover, she brought to her wedding the name without the purity of a maid. She rode in a litter carried by eight slaves. You who were present saw how impudently she made eyes at all the young and how immodestly she flaunted her charms. Who did not recognize her mother's pupil, when they saw her dyed lips, her rouged cheeks, and her lascivious eyes? Her dowry was borrowed, every penny of it, on the eve of her wedding, and was indeed greater than could be expected of so large and impoverished a family.