Letters

^8. These restraints on marriage are observed even among the heathen; and it is our condemnation if the true faith cannot do for Christ what false ones do for the devil, who has substituted for the saving chastity of the gospel a damning chastity of his own. The Athenian hierophant disowns his manhood and weakens his passions by a perpetual restraint. The holy office of the flamen is limited to those who have been once married, and the attendants of the flamens' wives must also have had but one husband. Only monogamists are allowed to share in the sacred rites connected with the Egyptian bull. I need say nothing of the vestal virgins and those of Apollo, the Achivan Juno, Diana, and Minerva, all of whom waste away in the perpetual virginity required by their vocation. I will just glance at the queen of Carthage who was willing to burn herself rather than marry king Iarbas; at the wife of Hasdrubal who taking her two children one in each hand cast, herself into the flames beneath her rather than surrender her honour; and at Lucretia who having lost the prize of her chastity refused to survive the defilement of her soul. I will not lengthen my letter by quoting the many instances of the like virtue which you can read to your profit in my first book against Jovinian. I will merely relate one which took place in your own country and which will show you that chastity is held in high honour even among wild and barbarous and cruel peoples. Once the Teutons who came from the remote shores of the German Ocean overran all parts of Gaul, and it was only when they had cut to pieces several Roman armies that Marius at last defeated them in an encounter at Aquæ Sextiæ. By the conditions of the surrender three hundred of their married women were to be handed over to the Romans. When the Teuton matrons heard of this stipulation they first begged the consul that they might be set apart to minister in the temples of Ceres and Venus; and then when they failed to obtain their request and were removed by the lictors, they slew their little children and next morning were all found dead in each other's arms having strangled themselves in the night.