Page:The Canterbury tales of Geoffrey Chaucer.djvu/236

 maid slain herself, rather than do trespass with her body? Yea, certes; lo! these stories bear witness.

"When thirty cursed tyrants had slain Phidon, at a feast in Athens, they commanded his daughters to be seized and brought before them in scorn, naked, to sate their foul desire; and they made them dance in their father's blood on the pavement—may God punish them! For which these woful maidens, in fear, rather than lose their maidenhood, leapt privily into a well, and drowned themselves, as the books say.

"They of Messena eke caused men to seek out fifty maidens of Lacedæmonia, whom they would dishonour; but there was none of that company that was not slain, and chose rather, with a glad will, to die, than consent to be robbed of her maidenhood. Why then should I be in fear to die?

"Lo, eke, Aristoclides, the tyrant, loved a maid named Stymphalides, that on a night, when her father was slain, went straight unto Dian's temple, and seized the image in her two hands, from which she would never depart. No wight could tear away her hands from it, till right in the self-same place she was slain. Now sith those maidens so scorned to be disgraced by man's desire, surely a wife methinketh ought rather to slay herself than be disgraced.

"What shall I say of Hasdrubal's wife, that slew herself at Carthage? For when she saw that the Romans had won the town, she took all her children and leapt into the fire, and chose rather to die than that any Roman should do her dishonour.

"Hath not Lucrece, alas! slain herself at Rome, when she was oppressed of Tarquin, for it seemed to her a shame to live when she had lost her fair repute.

"The seven maidens of Miletus eke have slain themselves,