“For she had not lived a year longer, when she was stricken with most obstinate love to a young man but of mean parentage, in her father’s court, named Antiphilus: so mean, as that he was but the son of her nurse, and by that means, without other desert, became known of her. Now so evil could she conceal her fire, and so wilfully persevered she in it that her father offering her the marriage of the great Tiridates, king of Armenia, who desired her more than the joys of heaven, she for Antiphilus’s sake refused it. Many ways her father sought to withdraw her from it, sometimes by persuasions, sometimes by threatenings; once, hiding Antiphilus, and giving her to understand that he was fled the country, lastly, making a solemn execution to be done of another under the name of Antiphilus, whom he kept in prison. But neither she liked persuasions, nor feared threatenings, nor changed for absence: and when she thought him dead, she sought all means, as well by poison as knife, to send her soul, at least to be married in the eternal church with him. This so broke the tender father’s heart, that, leaving things as he found them, he shortly after died. Then forthwith Erona, being seized of the crown, and arming her will with authority, sought to advance her affection to the holy title of matrimony. “But before she could accomplish all the solemnities, she was overtaken with a war the King Tiridates made upon her, only for her person, towards whom, for her ruin, love had kindled his cruel heart, indeed cruel and tyrannous; for being far too strong in the field, he spared no man, woman, nor child; but, as though there could be found no foil to set forth the extremity of his love, but extremity of hatred, wrote, as it were, the sonnets of his love in the blood, and turned them in the cries of her subjects; although his fair sister Artaxia, who would accompany him in the army, sought all means to appease his fury: till lastly, he besieged Erona in her best city, vowing to win her, or lose his life. And now had he brought her to the point either of a woeful consent, or a ruinous denial, when there came thither, following the course which virtue and fortune led them, two excellent young princes, Pyrocles and Musidorus, the one prince of Macedon, the other of Thessalia: two princes as Plangus said, and he witnessed his saying with sighs and tears, the most accomplished both in body and mind that the sun ever looked upon.” While Philoclea spoke those words; O sweet words, thought Zelmane to herself, which are not only a praise to me, but a praise to praise herself, which out of that mouth issueth.