wist well that, should I make suit for her with those
formalities which you, perchance, will say were due, then, for the great
love you bear her, and for fear lest I should take her away with me to
Rome, I might not hope to have her. Accordingly I made use of the secret
practice which is now manifest to you, and brought Gisippus to consent in
my interest to that whereto he was averse; and thereafter, ardently
though I loved her, I sought not to commingle with her as a lover, but as
a husband, nor closed with her, until, as she herself by her true witness
may assure you, I had with apt words and with the ring made her my lawful
wife, asking her if she would have me to husband, whereto she answered,
yes. Wherein if she seem to have been tricked, 'tis not I that am to
blame, but she, for that she asked me not who I was.

"This, then, is the great wrong, sin, crime, whereof for love and
friendship's sake Gisippus and I are guilty, that Sophronia is privily
become the wife of Titus Quintius: 'tis for this that you harass him with
your menaces and hostile machinations. What more would you do, had he
given her to a villein, to a caitiff, to a slave? Where would you find
fetters, dungeons, crosses adequate to your vengeance? But enough of this
at present: an event, which I did not expect, has now happened; my father
is dead; and I must needs return to Rome; wherefore, being fain to take
Sophronia with me, I have discovered to you that which otherwise I had,
perchance, still kept close. Whereto, if you are wise, you will gladly
reconcile yourselves; for that, if I had been minded to play you false,
or put an affront upon you, I might have scornfully abandoned her to you;
but God forefend that such baseness be ever harboured in a Roman breast.
Sophronia, then, by the will of the Gods, by force of law, and by my own
love-taught astuteness, is mine. The which it would seem that you,
deeming yourselves, peradventure, wiser than the Gods, or the rest of
mankind, do foolishly set at nought, and that in two ways alike most
offensive to me; inasmuch as you both withhold from me Sophronia, in whom
right, as against me, you have none, and also entreat as your enemy
Gisippus, to whom you are rightfully bounden. The folly whereof I purpose
not at present fully to expound to you, but in friendly sort to counsel
you to abate your wrath and abandon all your schemes of vengeance, and
restore Sophronia to me, that I may part from you on terms of