The Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius, Vol. 2

A pleasant question may therefore be proposed: Who is to be reckoned the more continent—Publius Africanus the Elder, who, having taken Carthage, a considerable city in Spain, restored to her father, without violation, a blooming virgin of remarkable beauty (the daughter of a noble Spaniard who had been taken captive and brought to him), or Alexander3, who refused to see the wife and sister of King Darius, captured in a mighty battle, who had been described to him as very beautiful, and forbade them to be brought to his presence? But let those expatiate on both these subjects concerning Alexander and Scipio who have plenty of time, and words, and genius for the employment. It will be enough for me.

3 Or Alexander.]—Bayle has a great deal to say on this subject, at the articles Abderame and Macedonia. Abderame was a Moorish general, and by chance of war obtained possession of the person of a widow lady of surprising beauty, whom he treated with the greatest delicacy and generosity; an act, says Bayle, which a Saracen writer would have extolled beyond the boasted continence of Alexander and Scipio. I would not diminish the praise due to Alexander’s self-denial; but it is related of him that he was by nature of an amorous constitution.—“If thou wert pure as snow, thou shalt not ’scape calumny.” Yet of Scipio, Valerius Maximus also relates that in his early life he was a libertine.—“It is said he spent the first years of his youth in a dissolute life.”