“Unhappy band, leave your womanly fastnesses, you whom the male sex has discarded and the female will not adopt. The knife has cut out the stings of love and by that wounding you are pure. A mixture are you of two ages--child and greybeard and nought between. Take your seats, fathers in name alone. Come new lords, come sterile senate, throng your leader Eutropius. Fill the judgement-seat, not the bedchamber. Change your habits and learn to follow the consul’s chair, not the woman’s litter. * * * * * Page 174 “Ne prisca revolvam neu numerem, quantis iniuria mille per annos 475 sit retro ducibus, quanti foedabitur aevi canities, unam subeant quot saecula culpam: inter Arinthaei fastos et nomen erile servus erit dominoque suos aequalis honores inseret! heu semper Ptolomaei noxia mundo 480 mancipia! en alio laedor graviore Pothino et patior maius Phario scelus. ille cruorem consulis unius Pellaeis ensibus hausit; inquinat hic omnes. “Si nil privata movebunt, at tu principibus, vestrae tu prospice causae 485 regalesque averte notas. hunc accipit unum aula magistratum: vobis patribusque recurrit hic alternus honos. in crimen euntibus annis parce, quater consul! contagia fascibus, oro, defendas ignava tuis neu tradita libris 490 omina vestitusque meos, quibus omne, quod ambit oceanus, domui, tanta caligine mergi calcarique sinas. nam quae iam bella geramus mollibus auspiciis? quae iam conubia prolem vel frugem latura seges? quid fertile terris, 495 quid plenum sterili possit sub consule nasci? eunuchi si iura dabunt legesque tenebunt, ducant pensa viri mutatoque ordine rerum vivat Amazonio confusa licentia ritu. * * * * * Page 175 “I would not cite examples from remote antiquity nor count the countless magistrates of past history whom he thus outrages. But think how the reverence due to all past ages will be impaired, on how many centuries one man’s shame will set its mark. Amid the annals that record the name of Arinthaeus,[100] his master, will be found the slave, and he will enter his own honours as equal to those of his owner. The slaves of Egypt’s kings have ever been a curse to the world; behold I suffer from a worse than Pothinus and bear a wrong more flagrant than that of which Egypt was once the scene. Pothinus’ sword at Alexandria spilled the blood of a single consul;[101] Eutropius brings dishonour on all.