[41] Quintilian declared, '_Latrocinium_ facilius in viro, _veneficium_ in femina credam.' To the same effect is an observation of Pliny: 'Scientiam feminarum in _veneficiis_ praevalere.' According to the earlier Christian writers, the frailer sex is addicted to infernal practices by reason of their innate wickedness: and in the opinion of the 'old Fathers' they are fitted by a corrupt disposition to be the recipients and agents of the devil's will upon earth. The authors of the _Witch-Hammer_ have supported their assertions of the proneness of women to evil in general, and to sorcery in particular, by the respectable names and authority of St. Chrysostom, Augustin, Dionysius Areopagiticus, Hilary, &c. &c.[42] The Golden-mouthed is adduced as especially hostile in his judgment of the sex; and his 'Homily on Herodias' takes its proper place with the satires of Aristophanes and Juvenal, of Boccaccio and Boileau.[43] [42] 'They style a wife The dear-bought curse and lawful plague of life, A bosom-serpent and a domestic evil.' [43] The royal author of the _Demonologie_ finds no difficulty in accounting for the vastly larger proportion of the female sex devoted to the devil's service. 'The reason is easy,' he declares; 'for as that sex is frailer than man is, so is it easier to be entrapped in the gross snares of the devil, as was over-well proved to be true by the serpent's deceiving of Eva at the beginning, which makes him the homelier with that sex sensine:' and it is profoundly observed that witches cannot even shed tears, though women in general are, like the crocodile, ready to weep on every light occasion.