thee as erstwhile was the scourge of Myrrha, Semiramis, Byblis, Canace, and Cleopatra.  Nothing strange or new will be wrought by my son in thy regard.  He has, as have the other gods, his own special laws, which thou art not the first to obey, and shouldst not be the last to entertain hopes therefrom.  If haply thou believest that thou art without companions in this, foolish is thy belief.  Let us pass by the other world, which is fraught with such happenings; but observe attentively only thine own city!  What an infinite number of ladies it can show who are in the same case with thyself!  And remember that what is done by so many cannot be deemed unseemly.  Therefore, be thou of our following, and return thanks to our beauty, which thou hast so closely examined.  But return special thanks to our deity, which has sundered thee from the ranks of the simple, and persuaded thee to become acquainted with the delights that our gifts bestow.”

Alas! alas! ye tender and compassionate ladies, if Love has been propitious to your desires, say what could I, what should I, answer to such and so great words uttered by so great a goddess, if not:  “Be it done unto me according to thy pleasure”?  And so, I affirm that as soon as she had closed her lips, having already harvested within my understanding all her words, and feeling that every word was charged with ample excuse for what I might do, and knowing now how mighty she was and how resistless, I resolved at once to submit to her guidance; and instantly rising from my couch, and kneeling on the ground, with humbled heart, I thus began, in abashed and tremulous accents: 

“O peerless and eternal loveliness!  O divinest of deities!  O sole mistress of all my thoughts! whose power is felt to be most invincible by those who dare to try to withstand it, forgive the ill-timed obstinacy wherewith I, in my great folly, attempted to ward off from my breast the weapons of thy son, who was then to me an unknown divinity.  Now, I repeat, be it done unto me according to thy pleasure, and according to thy promises withal.  Surely, my faith merits a due reward in time and space, seeing that I, taking delight in thee more than do all other women, wish to see the number of thy subjects increase forever and ever.”

Hardly had I made an end of speaking these words, when she moved from the place where she was standing, and came toward me.  Then, her face glowing with the most fervent expression of affection and sympathy, she embraced me, and touched my forehead with her divine lips.  Next, just as the false Ascanius, when panting in the arms of Dido, breathed on her mouth, and thereby kindled the latent flame, so did she breathe on my mouth, and, in that wise, rendered the divine fire that slumbered in my heart more uncontrollable than ever, and this I felt at that very moment.  Thereafter, opening a little her purple robe, she showed me, clasped in her arms against her ravishing breast, the very counterpart of the youth I loved, wrapped in the transparent folds of a Grecian mantle, and revealing in the lineaments of his countenance pangs that were not unlike those I suffered.