ge,
should I be Vulcan, whom the poet blazons? Nay, I am neither a cripple,
coiner of false money, nor smith, as he was. My wife possibly will be as
comely and handsome as ever was his Venus, but not a whore like her, nor I
a cuckold like him. The crook-legged slovenly slave made himself to be
declared a cuckold by a definite sentence and judgment, in the open view of
all the gods. For this cause ought you to interpret the afore-mentioned
verse quite contrary to what you have said. This lot importeth that my
wife will be honest, virtuous, chaste, loyal, and faithful; not armed,
surly, wayward, cross, giddy, humorous, heady, hairbrained, or extracted
out of the brains, as was the goddess Pallas; nor shall this fair jolly
Jupiter be my co-rival. He shall never dip his bread in my broth, though
we should sit together at one table.

Consider his exploits and gallant actions. He was the manifest ruffian,
wencher, whoremonger, and most infamous cuckold-maker that ever breathed.
He did always lecher it like a boar, and no wonder, for he was fostered by
a sow in the Isle of Candia, if Agathocles the Babylonian be not a liar,
and more rammishly lascivious than a buck; whence it is that he is said by
others to have been suckled and fed with the milk of the Amalthaean goat.
By the virtue of Acheron, he justled, bulled, and lastauriated in one day
the third part of the world, beasts and people, floods and mountains; that
was Europa. For this grand subagitatory achievement the Ammonians caused
draw, delineate, and paint him in the figure and shape of a ram ramming,
and horned ram. But I know well enough how to shield and preserve myself
from that horned champion. He will not, trust me, have to deal in my
person with a sottish, dunsical Amphitryon, nor with a silly witless Argus,
for all his hundred spectacles, nor yet with the cowardly meacock Acrisius,
the simple goose-cap Lycus of Thebes, the doting blockhead Agenor, the
phlegmatic pea-goose Aesop, rough-footed Lycaon, the luskish misshapen
Corytus of Tuscany, nor with the large-backed and strong-reined Atlas. Let
him alter, change, transform, and metamorphose himself into a hundred
various shapes and figures, into a swan, a bull, a satyr, a shower of gold,
or into a cuckoo, as he did when he unmaidened his sister Juno; into an
eagle, ram, or dove, as when he was enamoured of the virgin Phthia, who
then dwelt in the Aegean territory; into fire, a serpent, yea, even into a