SECVNDA

She will be rich, she who sleeps third in a large bed.
You, marry and stay silent; secrets grant riches.
A manicule and bracket point to the following two lines.

After these things, a harsh judgment is passed upon us.
Censure grants pardon to the crows, but vexes the doves.
The followers of the Stoics fled, trembling, as she sang true
and manifest things; for what in Laronia was false? But what
will others not do, when you take up transparent garments,
Creticus? And you plead cases before the amazed people
against the Proculae and Pollineae? Labulla is an adulteress.
Let her be condemned, if you wish, even Carphinia; such a
woman, even when condemned, would not wear such a toga. But Julius burns,
"I am sweltering; you might as well act naked." Insanity is less shameful.
Behold the attire in which you would enforce the laws and rights,
while the people, recently victorious, and that mountain
crowd, having set aside their plows, were listening to you with fresh wounds.
What? Would you not cry out if you saw these things
on the body of a judge? I ask if transparent silks become a witness.
Fierce and untamed, and a master of liberty,
Creticus, you are shining through. Contagion gave this blemish,
and will give it to more. Just as a whole flock in the fields
perishes from the scabies of one, and pigs from the mange,
and the grape takes on a bruise from the sight of another grape.
A manicule and bracket point to the next line.

Someday you will dare something more foul than this garment.
No one became wicked all at once.

No one became wicked all at once. They will receive you
little by little; they who take up the long ribbons at home
for their foreheads, and have placed necklaces on their whole neck,
and appease the Good Goddess Bona Dea, a deity whose rites excluded men with the abdomen of a tender sow,
and a large crater mixing bowl. But by a sinister custom,
the woman is driven away and does not enter the threshold.
The altar of the goddess is open only to males. Go away, you profane ones!