his son to run away from him, did not torment himself worse than he.  Now if any one should ask, “To what does this matter tend?” To this:  while fools shun [one sort of] vices, they fall upon their opposite extremes.  Malthinus walks with his garments trailing upon the ground; there is another droll fellow who [goes] with them tucked up even to his middle; Rufillus smells like perfume itself, Gorgonius like a he-goat.  There is no mean.  There are some 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?