10. The memory of noble descent could not enervate them, although to some this is a suggestive licence to lasciviousness; nor the comeliness of their bodies, and the beauty of their well-ordered limbs, although for the most part this affords a hint, that being, as it were, the short-lived flower of an age that rapidly passes away, it should be fed with the offered opportunity of pleasure; nor the first years of a green but mature age, although the blood, still inexperienced, grows hot, and stimulates the natural fires, and the blind flames that stir in the marrow, to seek a remedy, even if they should break forth at the risk of modesty; nor any opportunity afforded by secrecy, or by freedom from witnesses, which to some seems to ensure safety, although this is the greatest temptation to the commission of crime, that there is no punishment for meditating it. Neither was a necessity laid upon them by the authority of those who bade them yield, and in the boldness of association and companionship, by which kind of temptations also righteous determinations are often overcome. Neither did the very rewards nor the kindliness, nor did the accusations, nor threats, nor punishments, nor death, move them; nothing was counted so cruel, so hard, so distressing, as to have fallen from the lofty stand of chastity. They were worthy of such a reward of the Divine Judge, that one of them should be glorified on a throne almost regal; that the other, endowed with her husband’s sympathy, should be rescued by the death of her enemies. These, and such as these, are the examples ever to be placed before our eyes, the like of them to be meditated on day and night.

X. Non illos emollire potuit in vita generosi sanguinis memoria, quae in quosdam licentia lasciviae est ministra: non decor corporis, et apte positorum figura membrorum, quae suggerit plerumque ut, quasi flos quidam, properans velociter transiturae aetatis, porrecta voluptatis occasione pascatur: non anni primi virentis, sed majoris aetatis; cum rudis adhuc sanguis aestuans, naturae flammas accendat, 0824D et in medullis versata caeca incendia ad remedium, verum etiam per periculum pudoris itura: non ulla 0825A latebrarum et sine ullo conscio, quae tuta quibusdam putatur, occasio; quae maxima vis est admittendi sceleris, cum deliberationibus occurrit impunitas. Non posita necessitas de auctoritate jubentium, et in temeritate participum atque sociorum; quo genere franguntur etiam saepe recta consilia. Non praemia ipsa et bonitas, non accusationes, non minae, non poenae, non mortes; nihil tam saevum, tam durum, tam triste, quam cecidisse de alto pudicitiae gradu. Digni tanto judicis divini praemio, quorum alter regio pene throno illustraretur, altera concordia mariti dotata inimicorum mortibus redimeretur. Haec sunt et his similia semper nobis ante oculos exempla ponenda, his paria diebus noctibusque meditanda.