handwerk

By what road shall one go to the Land of Love ? If you seek him in the streets, you will repent the courtesan's greed for gold and luxury. If you approach a maiden's bed, it must end in lawful wedlock or punishment for seduction. Who would endure to awake reluctant desire for his lawful wife, forced to do a duty? Adulterous intercourse is the worst of all and has no part in love, and un­natural sin should be ranked with it. As for widows, if one of them is ill-conducted, she is anyone's mistress, and knows all the arts of harlotry, while if she is chaste she with difficulty consents, she is pricked by loveless remorse, hates what she has done, and having a remnant of shame shrinks from the union till she is disposed to announce its end. If you associate with your own servant, you must make up your mind to change places and become hers, and if with someone else's, the law which prosecutes for outrage on slaves not one's own will mark you with infamy. Omnia haec effugit Diogenes et palma hymenaeum cantabat, Laide non egens.

302.—Agathias Scholasticus - Anthologia Graeca