I ween he did so show her to best advantage, thus richly and gracefully attired in women’s weeds, no less than when she was armed in all points as the Warrior Queen. For sex doth always count for much; and we may rightly suppose the Emperor was fain to display her at his triumph only under guise of her own fair sex, wherein she would seem most beauteous and agreeable to the populace in all the perfection of her charms. Furthermore, ’tis to be supposed, so lovely as she was, the Emperor had tasted and enjoyed her loveliness, and was yet in the enjoyment thereof. So albeit he had vanquished her in one fashion, yet had she,—or he, if you prefer it so, for the two be as one in this,—won the victory in another. Mine own wonder is, that seeing the said Zenobia was so beautiful, the Emperor did not take her and keep her for one of his mistresses; or else that she did not open and establish by his permission, or the Senate’s, a shop or market of love and harlotry, as did the fair Flora in the same city, for to win wealth and store up much gear and goods, by the toil of her body and shaking of her bed. For to such a market had surely resorted all the greatest men of Rome, one vying with other in eagerness; seeing there is no contentment ’twould seem, or satisfaction in all the world like that of a man’s taking his will of a Royal or Princely person, and enjoying of a fair Queen, or Princess or a high-born Lady. As to this I do appeal to such men as have embarked on these voyages, and made such good traffic there. Now in this fashion would Queen Zenobia have soon grown rich out of the purse of these great folks, as did Flora, which did receive no others in her place of commerce. Had it not been far better for her to make of her life a scene of merry-making and magnificence, of money getting and compliments, than to have fallen into that need and extremity of poverty she did come to? For she was constrained to gain her bread a-spinning among common work-women, and would have died of hunger, but that the Senate, taking pity of her in view of her former greatness, did decree her a pension for her maintenance, and some trifling lands and possessions, which were for long after known as “Zenobia’s Lands.” For indeed and indeed is poverty a sore evil; and whosoever can avoid the same, no matter what transformation be taken to that end, doth well and right, as one I wot of was used to declare.