objects of love, magicians, just because the person in
love with them chances to say so in a letter? If, indeed, Pudentilla
wrote in a letter to another person what would clearly be prejudicial
to myself, I think she could hardly have been in love with me at the
moment in question.

80. Tell me now, what is your contention? Was she mad or sane when she
wrote? Sane, do you say? Then she was not the victim of magic. Insane?
In that case she did not know what she was writing and must not be
believed. Nay, even supposing her to have been insane, she would not
have been aware of the fact. For just as to say 'I am silent' is to
make a fool of oneself, since these very words actually break silence,
and the act of speaking impugns the substance of one's speech, so it
is even more absurd to say 'I am mad'. It cannot be true unless the
speaker knows what he says, and he who knows what madness is, is
_ipso facto_ sane. For madness cannot know itself any more than
blindness can see itself. Therefore Pudentilla was in possession of
her senses, if she thought she was out of them. I could say more on
this point, but enough of dialectic! I will read out the letter which
gives crying witness to a very different state of things and might
indeed have been specially prepared to suit this particular trial.
Take it and read it out until I interrupt. (_The letter is read._)

Stop a moment before you go on to what follows. We have come to the
crucial point. So far, Maximus, as far at any rate as I have noticed,
the lady has made no mention of magic, but has merely repeated in the
same order the statements which I quoted a short time ago about her
long widowhood, the proposed remedy for her ill health, her desire to
marry, the good report she had heard of me from Pontianus, his own
advice that she should marry me in preference to others.

81. So much for what has been read. There remains a portion of the
letter which, although like the first part it was written in my
defence, also turns against me. For although it was specially written
to rebut the charge of magic brought against me, a remarkable piece of
ingenuity on the part of Rufinus has altered its meaning and brought
me into discredit with certain citizens of Oea as being a proved
sorcerer. Maximus, you have heard much from the lips of others, you
have learned yet more by reading, and your own personal experience
has taught you not a little. But you will say that never yet have you
com