22. You see what sort of person a widow is said to
be, the wife of one man, tested also by the progress of age, vigorous
in religion, and worn out in body, whose resting-place is the temple,
whose conversation is prayer, whose life is fasting, who in the times
of day and night by a service of unwearied devotion, though the body
acknowledge old age, yet knows no age in her piety. Thus is a
widow trained from her youth, thus is she spoken of in her age, who has
kept her widowhood not through the chance of time, nor through weakness
of body, but by large-heartedness in virtue. For when it is said
that she was for seven years from her virginity with her husband, it is
a setting forth that the things which are the support of her old age
began in the aims of her youth.