to admit, when he has heard the facts, that his envy was groundless
and that he has strayed far from the truth. In the meantime I beg you,
as you have already done, or if possible yet more than you have
already done, to give the best of your attention to me as I trace the
whole case to its fount and source.

Aemilia Pudentilla, now my wife, was once the wife of a certain
Sicinius Amicus. By him she had two sons, Pontianus and Pudens. These
two boys were left by their father's death under the guardianship of
their paternal grandfather--for Amicus predeceased his father--and
were brought up by their mother with remarkable care and affection for
about fourteen years. She was in the flower of her age, and it was not
of her own choosing that she remained a widow for so long. But the
boys' grandfather was eager that she should, in spite of her
reluctance, take his son, Sicinius Clarus, for her second husband[23]
and with this in view kept all other suitors at a distance. He further
threatened her that if she married elsewhere he would by his will
exclude her sons from the possession of any of their father's
heritage. When she saw that nothing could move him to alter the
condition that he had laid down, such was her wisdom, and so admirable
her maternal affection, that to prevent her sons' interests suffering
any damage in this respect, she made a contract of marriage with
Sicinius Clarus in accordance with her father-in-law's bidding, but by
various evasions managed to avoid the marriage until the boys'
grandfather died, leaving them as his heirs, with the result that
Pontianus, the elder son, became his brother's guardian.

[Footnote 23: _iterum_ (Riese).]

69. She was now freed from all embarrassment, and being sought in
marriage by many distinguished persons resolved to remain a widow no
longer. The dreariness of her solitary life she might have borne, but
her bodily infirmities had become intolerable. This chaste and saintly
lady, after so many years of blameless widowhood, without even a
breath of scandal, owing to her long absence from a husband's
embraces, began to suffer internal pains so severe that they brought
her to the brink of the grave. Doctors and wise women agreed that the
disease had its origin in her long widowhood, that the evil was
increasing daily and her sickness steadily assuming a more serious
character; the remedy was that she should marry before her youth
finally departed from her. There were m