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[4] For since men by nature prefer slander to praise, she cut the ground from under the accusation men who love to find fault might raise; for she considered it to be shameful that anyone could say that while her husband, to whom she was wedded in accordance with the laws, was still living, she had had relations with another man, contrary to the laws, and shameful also that she who had been involved in an act for which the laws decree the penalty of death upon the guilty should cling to life any longer. And so she chose by a brief anticipation of death, a debt that in any case she owed to nature, to exchange disgrace for the highest approval.1

1 Much the same liberty has been taken with the translation as the Byzantine excerptor undoubtedly took with the Greek of Diodorus, who never went to quite such pains to point a moral or was so involved.

Diodorus Siculus. Diodorus of Sicily in Twelve Volumes with an English Translation by C. H. Oldfather. Vol. 4-8. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1989.

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