me who would not
keep company with a lady, unless her modest garment perfectly conceal
her feet. Another, again, will only have such as take their station in a
filthy brothel. When a certain noted spark came out of a stew, the
divine Cato [greeted] him with this sentence: "Proceed (says he) in your
virtuous course. For, when once foul lust has inflamed the veins, it is
right for young fellows to come hither, in comparison of their meddling
with other men's wives." I should not be willing to be commended on such
terms, says Cupiennius, an admirer of the silken vail.

Ye, that do not wish well to the proceedings of adulterers, it is worth
your while to hear how they are hampered on all sides; and that their
pleasure, which happens to them but seldom, is interrupted with a great
deal of pain, and often in the midst of very great dangers. One has
thrown himself headlong from the top of a house; another has been
whipped almost to death: a third, in his flight, has fallen into a
merciless gang of thieves: another has paid a fine, [to avoid] corporal
[punishment]: the lowest servants have treated another with the vilest
indignities. Moreover, this misfortune happened to a certain person, he
entirely lost his manhood. Every body said, it was with justice: Galba
denied it.

But how much safer is the traffic among [women] of the second rate! I
mean the freed-women: after which Sallustius is not less mad, than he
who commits adultery. But if he had a mind to be good and generous, as
far as his estate and reason would direct him, and as far as a man might
be liberal with moderation; he would give a sufficiency, not what would
bring upon himself ruin and infamy. However, he hugs himself in this one
[consideration]; this he delights in, this he extols: "I meddle with no
matron." Just as Marsaeus, the lover of Origo, he who gives his paternal
estate and seat to an actress, says, "I never meddle with other men's
wives." But you have with actresses, you have with common strumpets:
whence your reputation derives a greater perdition, than your estate.
What, is it abundantly sufficient to avoid the person, and not the
[vice] which is universally noxious? To lose one's good name, to
squander a father's effects, is in all cases an evil. What is the
difference [then, with regard to yourself,] whether you sin with the
person of a matron, a maiden, or a prostitute?

Villius, the son-in-law of Sylla (by this title alone he was misled),
suffer