But Ursidius is delighted with the Julian law[239]--he thinks of bringing up a darling heir, nor cares to lose the fine turtledove and bearded mullets,[240] and all the baits for legacies in the dainties of the market. What will you believe to be impossible, if Ursidius takes a wife? If he, of yore the most notorious of adulterers, whom the chest of Latinus in peril of his life has so often concealed, is now going to insert his idiot head in the nuptial halter; nay, and more than this, is looking out for a wife possessed of the virtues of ancient days! Haste, physicians, bore through the middle vein! What a nice man! Fall prostrate at the threshold of Tarpeian Jove, and sacrifice to Juno a heifer with gilded horns, if you have the rare good fortune to find a matron with unsullied chastity. So few are there worthy to handle the fillets of Ceres; so few, whose kisses their own fathers might not dread. Wreathe chaplets for the door-posts, stretch thick clusters of ivy over the threshold. Is one husband enough for Iberina? Sooner will you prevail on her to be content with one eye. "Yet there is a great talk of a certain damsel, living at her father's country-house!" Let her live at Gabii as she lived in the country, or even at Fidenæ, and I grant what you say of the influence of the paternal country-seat. Yet who will dare assert that nothing has been achieved on mountains or in caves? Are Jupiter and Mars grown so old. In all the public walks can a woman be pointed out to you, that is worthy of your wish. On all their benches do the public shows hold one that you could love without misgivings; or one you could pick out from the rest? While the effeminate Bathyllus is acting Leda in the ballet, Tuccia can not contain herself, Appula whines as in the feat of love, Thymele is all attention to the quick, the gentler, and the slow; and so Thymele, rustic as she was before, becomes a proficient in the art. But others, whenever the stage ornaments, packed away, get a respite, and the courts alone are vocal (since the theatres are closed and empty, and the Megalesian games come a long time after the plebeian), in their melancholy handle the mask and thyrsus and drawers of Accius. Urbicus provokes a laugh by his personification of Autonoe in the Atellan farce. Ælia, being poor, is in love with him. For others, the fibula of the comic actor is unbuckled for a large sum. Some women prevent Chrysogonus from having voice to sing. Hispulla delights in a tragic actor. Do you expect then that the worthy Quintilianus will be the object of their love? You take a wife by whom Echion the harper, or Glaphyrus, or Ambrosius the choral flute-player, will become a father. Let us erect long lines of scaffolding along the narrow streets. Let the door-posts and the gate be decorated with a huge bay, that beneath the canopy inlaid with tortoise-shell,[241] thy infant, Lentulus, supposed to be sprung from a noble sire, may be the counterpart of the Mirmillo Euryalus.