since passed the boundaries of youth, so powerful a spell of attraction?

At any rate, however certain of himself he might be, he must guard his
feelings. He understood how to bridle passion far better than the uncle
who was so greatly his superior.

Yet it was of the utmost importance to keep her alive, and therefore to
maintain her belief in his admiration. He wished to show the world and
the Great Queen of the East, who had just boasted of conquering, like
death, even the most mighty, its own supremacy as man and victor. But he
must also be gentle, in order not to endanger the object for which he
wanted her. She must accompany him to Rome. She and her children
promised to render his triumph the most brilliant and memorable one which
any conqueror had ever displayed to the senate and the people. In a
light tone which, however, revealed the emotion of his soul, he answered:
"My illustrious uncle was known as a friend of fair women. His stern
life was crowned with flowers by many hands, and he acknowledged these
favours verbally and perhaps--as he did to you in all these letters--with
the reed. His genius was greater, at any rate more many-sided and
mobile, than mine. He succeeded, too, in pursuing different objects at
the same time with equal devotion. I am wholly absorbed in the cares of
state, of government, and war. I feel grateful when I can permit our
poets to adorn my leisure for a brief space. Overburdened with toil,
I have no time to yield myself captive, as my uncle did in these very
rooms, to the most charming of women. If I could follow my own will, you
would be the first from whom I would seek the gifts of Eros. But it may
not be! We Romans learn to curb even the most ardent wishes when duty
and morality command. There is no city in the world where half so many
gods are worshipped as here; and what strange deities are numbered among
them! It needs a special effort of the intellect to understand them.