Book V - Snyder Bible

220
with so heavy sadness? I should like to know. For if you informed
me of the cause, I might be able both to show you
clearly, O woman, that spirits do live in the infernal regions;
and instead of the precipice or the deep sea, I might give you
some remedy, that you may be able to end your life without
Chapter XV: The Womans Account
Then the woman, hearing this welcome promise, began to
tell, what is my extraction, or what is my country. It is enough
only to explain the cause of my grief, why I have rendered my
hands powerless by gnawing them. Being born of noble parents,
and having become the wife of a suitably powerful man, I
had twin sons, and after them one other. But my husbands
brother was vehemently enflamed with illegitimate love towards
me; and as I valued chastity above all things, and would
neither consent to so great wickedness, nor wished to disclose
to my husband the baseness of his brother, I considered
whether in any way I could escape unpolluted, and yet not set
brother against brother, and so bring the whole race of a noble
family into disgrace. I made up my mind, therefore, to leave
my country with my twins, until the incestuous lust should
subside, which the sight of me was fostering and inflaming;
and I thought that our other son should remain to comfort his
father to some extent.
Chapter XVI: The Womans Account Continued.
had a dream, in which some deity stood by me in a vision, and
told me that I should immediately depart from the city with
my twins, and should be absent until he should command me
to return; and that, if I did not do so, I should perish with all
my children. And so it was done. For as soon as I told the
dream to my husband, he was terrified; and sending with me
my twin sons, and also slaves and maidservants, and giving
me plenty of money, he ordered me to sail to Athens, where I