Page:Juvenal and Persius by G. G. Ramsay.djvu/185

 And who was ever so enamoured as not to shrink from the woman whom he praises to the skies, and to hate her for seven hours out of every twelve?

Some small faults are intolerable to husbands. What can be more offensive than this, that no woman believes in her own beauty unless she has converted herself from a Tuscan into a Greekling, or from a maid of Sulmo into a maid of Athens? They talk nothing but Greek, though it is a greater shame for our people to be ignorant of Latin. Their fears and their wrath, their joys and their troubles—all the secrets of their souls—are poured forth in Greek; their very loves are carried on in Greek fashion. All this might be pardoned in a girl; but will you, who are hard on your eighty-sixth year, still talk in Greek? That tongue is not decent in an old woman's mouth. When you come out with the wanton words, you are using in public the language of the bed-chamber. Caressing and naughty words like these incite to love; but though you say them more tenderly than a Haemus or a Carpophorus, they will cause no fluttering of the heart—your years are counted up upon your face!

If you are not to love the woman betrothed and united to you in due form, what reason have you for marrying? Why waste the supper, and the wedding cakes to be given to the well-filled guests when the company is slipping away—to say nothing of the first night's gift of a salver rich with glittering gold inscribed with Dacian or Germanic victories? If you are honestly uxorious, and devoted to one woman, then bow your head and submit your neck to the yoke. Never will you find a woman who spares 99