Things being in this delicate position owing to the mother’s request and the son’s fear, chance or destiny brought me to Oea on my way to Alexandria. Did not my respect for my wife prevent me, I would say ‘Would God it had never happened.’ It was winter when this occurred. Overcome by the fatigues of the journey, I was laid up for a considerable number of days in the house of my friends the Appii, whom I name to show the affection and esteem with which I regard them. There Pontianus came to see me; for not so very long before certain common friends had introduced him to me at Athens, and we had afterwards lodged together and come to know each other intimately. He greeted me with the utmost courtesy, inquired anxiously after my health, and touched dexterously on the subject of love. For he thought that he had found an ideal husband for his mother to w............