same); we ours in confidence and
assurance; we understand nothing of the matter; we must leave it to the
Sarmatian women, who may not lie with a man till with their own hands
they have first killed another in battle. For me, who have no other
title left me to these things but by the ears, 'tis sufficient if,
according to the privilege of my age, they retain me for one of their
counsel. I advise them then, and us men too, to abstinence; but if the
age we live in will not endure it, at least modesty and discretion. For,
as in the story of Aristippus, who, speaking to some young men who
blushed to see him go into a scandalous house, said "the vice is in not
coming out, not in going in," let her who has no care of her conscience
have yet some regard to her reputation; and though she be rotten within,
let her carry a fair outside at least.

I commend a gradation and delay in bestowing their favours: Plato
'declares that, in all sorts of love, facility and promptness are
forbidden to the defendant. 'Tis a sign of eagerness which they
ought to disguise with all the art they have, so rashly, wholly, and
hand-over-hand to surrender themselves. In carrying themselves orderly
and measuredly in the granting their last favours, they much more allure
our desires and hide their own. Let them still fly before us, even those
who have most mind to be overtaken: they better conquer us by flying, as
the Scythians did. To say the truth, according to the law that nature
has imposed upon them, it is not properly for them either to will or
desire; their part is to suffer, obey, and consent and for this it is
that nature has given them a perpetual capacity, which in us is but at
times and uncertain; they are always fit for the encounter, that they may
be always ready when we are so "Pati natee."-["Born to suffer."-Seneca,
Ep., 95.]--And whereas she has ordered that our appetites shall be
manifest by a prominent demonstration, she would have theirs to be hidden
and concealed within, and has furnished them with parts improper for
ostentation, and simply defensive. Such proceedings as this that follows
must be left to the Amazonian licence: Alexander marching his army
through Hyrcania, Thalestris, Queen of the Amazons, came with three
hundred light horse of her own-sex, well mounted, and armed, having left
the remainder of a very great, army that followed her behind the
neighbouring mountains to give him a visit; where she publicly and in
p