Now mark, in addition to what has been said, how he also enjoins that the practice of virginity is a gift granted by God; whence those who, on the pretext of vainglory, have advanced to this from among the more incontinent, he rejects, counseling them to marry, lest, when the time of the body's prime is producing throbbings and inflammations for them, they behave indecently, their soul goaded as by a gadfly. For we must examine what he hands down. "But if anyone thinks that he is behaving unseemly toward his virgin," he says, "if she be past the flower of her age, and need so requires, let him do what he will; he does not sin: let them marry"—here properly preferring marriage to unseemliness in the case of those who have chosen to remain virgin but afterward chafe at it and grow weary, and who in word, out of shame before men, boast that they persevere, but in deed are unable to continue even a little longer. To him, however, who by an autonomous and self-chosen purpose judges to keep his own flesh virgin and has no necessity—that is, a passion summoning the loins to intercourse (for there are also, as is likely, differences of bodies)—to such a one, who both struggles through and zealously perseveres in the profession, and carries it through excellently, he urges to remain and to keep it, assigning the first prize to virginity. For he says, "He that is able and ambitious to keep his own flesh virgin does better; but he that is not able, and keeps within lawful bounds and does not corrupt in secret, does well." And concerning these things, enough. But let whoever wishes take in hand the Epistle to the Corinthians, and, conversing with each of the things written therein, let him then also examine, by comparison, the things said by us, whether they do not hold to full agreement and concord with them. These things, then, for chastity, O Arete, I too contribute, according to my ability. EUBOULION: Through very many words indeed, O Gregorion, she scarcely arrived at the matter in hand, having measured out and traversed a most vast sea of discourse. GREGORION: So it seems. But come, let us also go through the rest in order, most faithfully recalling them—of which I think I still have the hearing ringing in my ears—before they fly away and escape; for old men's memories of new things heard are easily wiped out. EUBOULION: But speak; for it is for these very things that we have come gladly, to hear the discourses. GREGORION: Well then, just as you said, after Thaleia had brought her course down to land in unruffled runs, Theopatra, taking up the discourse next in turn, said that she herself spoke as follows.