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His wife, however, was getting old and worn out and gave up the whole household to dishonour. But there was a daughter who, at her mother's instigation, was exhibited to all the wealthy young men, but in vain. To some of the suitors she was even given to try. Had she not come across so easy a victim as Pontianus, she would perhaps still have been sitting at home a widow who had never been a bride. Pontianus, in spite of urgent attempts on our part to dissuade him, gave her the right - false and illusory though it was - to be called a bride. He did this knowing that, but a short time before he married her, she had been deserted by a young man of good family to whom she had been previously betrothed, after he had had enough of her.

And so his new bride came to him, not as other brides come, but unabashed and undismayed, her virtue lost, her modesty gone, her bridal-veil a mockery. Cast off by her previous lover, she brought to her wedding the name without the purity of a maid. She rode in a litter carried by eight slaves. You who were present saw how impudently she made eyes at all the young and how immodestly she flaunted her charms. Who did not recognize her mother's pupil, when they saw her dyed lips, her rouged cheeks, and her lascivious eyes? Her dowry was borrowed, every penny of it, on the eve of her wedding, and was indeed greater than could be expected of so large and impoverished a family.