you would not dare to read the verses of some obscene poet, even
if bidden to do so, but you would be restrained by some sense of
shame. Nay, you would never have touched your mother's letters, had
you ever been in touch with letters in the wider sense of the term.
But you have also dared to submit a letter of your own to be read, a
letter written about your mother in outrageously disrespectful,
abusive, and unseemly language, written too at a time when you were
still being brought up under her loving care. This letter you sent
secretly to Pontianus, and you have now produced it to avoid the
reproach of having sinned only once and to rescue so good a deed from
oblivion![27] Poor fool, do you not realize that your uncle permitted
you to do this, that he might clear himself in public estimation by
using your letter as proof that even before you migrated to his house,
even at the time when you caressed your mother with false words of
love, you were already as cunning as any fox and devoid of all filial
affection?

[Footnote 27: _oblivio_ (Casaubon).]

87. I cannot bring myself to believe Aemilianus such a fool as to
think that the letter of a mere boy, who is also one of my accusers,
could seriously tell against me.

There is also that forged letter by which they attempted to prove that
I beguiled Pudentilla with flattery. I never wrote it and the forgery
is not even plausible. What need had I of flattery, if I put my trust
in magic? And how did they secure possession of that letter which
must, as is usual in such affairs, have been sent to Pudentilla by
some confidential servant? Why, again, should I write in such faulty
words, such barbarous language, I whom my accusers admit to be quite
at home in Greek? And why should I seek to seduce her by flattery so
absurd and coarse? They themselves admit that I write amatory verse
with sufficient sprightliness and skill. The explanation is obvious to
every one; it is this. He who could not read the letter which
Pudentilla wrote in Greek altogether too refined for his
comprehension, found it easier to read this letter and set it off to
greater advantage because it was his own.

One more point and I shall have said enough about the letters.
Pudentilla, after writing in jest and irony those words 'Come then,
while I am yet in my senses', sent for her sons and her
daughter-in-law and lived with them for about two months. I beg this
most dutiful of sons to tell us whether he then