Petronius: Satires and the Book of Priapeia

was with her head covered, the very one who a little while before had stood with the rustic, and she said, “Did you think you were mocking me? I am the maid of Quartilla, whose sacred rites you disturbed before the crypta vault/grotto. Behold, she herself comes to the inn and asks that it be permitted to speak with you. Do not be disturbed. She neither accuses your error nor punishes it, but rather, she wonders what god led such urban youths into her region.” While we were still silent and bending our assent to neither side, she herself entered, accompanied by a maiden, and sitting upon my bed, she wept for a long time. And not even then did we add any word, but we stood astonished, awaiting the tears prepared for the display of grief. Therefore, when such an ambitious rain shower subsided, she uncovered her proud head with a cloak, and with her hands clenched together until the joints cracked, she said, “What is this audacity, or where did you learn robberies that would surpass even stories? I pity you, by my faith; for no one has ever looked upon what was forbidden without suffering. Indeed, our region is so full of present deities that you can more easily find a god than a man. And so that you do not think I have come here for the sake of vengeance, I am moved more by your youth than by my own injury. For you have committed an inexpiable crime, as I still think, out of imprudence. Indeed, on that very night, I shuddered with such dangerous cold that I fear the attack of a quartan fever A fever recurring every fourth day.. And for that reason, I sought a remedy in a dream and was ordered to search you out and soothe the attack of the disease with the taught subtlety. But I do not labor so much over the remedy; for a greater pain rages in my heart, which leads me to the very necessity of death, lest, driven by youthful license, you make public what you saw in the shrine of Priapus, and bring the councils of the gods before the people. I therefore stretch out my upturned hands to your knees and I ask and pray that you do not make the nocturnal religious rites a joke and a mockery, and that you do not wish to betray secrets of so many years, which barely a thousand people know.”