any who welcomed this
recommendation, but none more so than that fellow Aemilianus, who a
little while back asserted with the most unhesitating mendacity that
Pudentilla had never thought of marriage until I compelled her to be
mine by my exercise of the black art; that I alone had been found to
outrage the virgin purity of her widowhood by incantations and love
philtres. I have often heard it said with truth that a liar should
have a good memory. Had you forgotten, Aemilianus, that before I came
to Oea, you wrote to her son Pontianus, who had then attained to man's
estate and was pursuing his studies at Rome, suggesting that she
should marry? Give me the letter, or better give it to Aemilianus and
let him refute himself in his own voice with his own words.

Is this your letter? Why do you turn pale? We know you are past
blushing. Is this your signature? Read a little louder, please, that
all may realize how his written words belie his speech and how much
more he is at variance with himself than with me.

70. Did you, Aemilianus, write what has just been read out? 'I know
that she is willing to marry and that she ought to do so, but I do not
know the object of her choice.' You were right there. You knew nothing
about it. For Pudentilla, though she admitted that she wished to marry
again, said nothing to you about her suitor. She knew the intrusive
malignity of your nature too well. But you still expected her to marry
your brother Clarus and were induced by your false hopes to go further
and to urge her son to assent to the match. And of course, if she had
wedded Clarus, a boorish and decrepit old man, you would have asserted
that she had long desired to marry him of her own free will without
the intervention of any magic. But now that she has married a young
man of the elegance which you attribute to him, you say that she had
always refused to marry and must have done so under compulsion! You
did not know, you villain, that the letter you had written on the
subject was being preserved, you did not know that you would be
convicted by your own testimony. The fact is that Pudentilla, knowing
your changeableness and unreliability no less than your shamelessness
and mendacity, rather than forward the letter preferred to keep it as
clear evidence of your intentions, and wrote a letter of her own on
the same subject to her son Pontianus at Rome, in which she gave full
reasons for her determination. She told him pretty fully a