22. Therefore, surely you must recognize that women rule over you!“Don’t you work and labor, yet you bring everything and give it to women?
23. A man takes his sword, goes out to travel abroad to raid, steal, and sail the sea and rivers.
24. He faces lions; he walks in darkness; when he steals and robs and plunders, he carries it back to the woman he loves.
25. A man loves his own wife much more than his father or mother.
26. Many men have lost their heads over women, and have become slaves on account of them.
27. Many have perished, stumbled, or sinned because of women.
28. "Now don’t you believe me? Isn’t the king great in his authority? Don’t all countries fear to touch him?
29. I once saw the king and Apame his mistress, the daughter of the eminent Bartacus, sitting by his right side.
30. She took the crown from the king’s head and put it on her own head, and slapped the king with her left hand.
31. At this the king would stare at her with his mouth wide open. If she smiles at him, he laughs; but if she should get angry with him, he humors her so that she may be reconciled to him.
32. Gentlemen, aren’t women powerful, since they can do such things?"
33. The king and the officials looked at each other, and the third young man began to speak about truth:
34. "Gentlemen, aren’t women strong? The earth is great, heaven is high, and the sun is swift in its course, for it circles the heavens and returns again to its place in a single day.
35. Isn’t the one who does these things great? Yet truth is also great and superior still to all of these things.