1As he was tossed between hope and fear by these and similar considerations, hope won. 1There were those who believed that he had turned back, fired by longing for Queen Berenice; 1and indeed his youthful heart was not averse to Berenice, but no hindrance to public business came from it. 1He spent a youth that delighted in pleasures, and was more restrained in his own reign than in his father's. 1So, sailing past the coast of Achaia and Asia and the shores on the left of the sea, he made for the islands of Rhodes and Cyprus, and from there for Syria, by bolder stretches. 1And a desire came upon him to visit and see the temple of Paphian Venus, famous among natives and strangers alike.
1It will not take long to set out briefly the origins of the cult, the ritual of the temple and the form of the goddess (for she is not represented in this way anywhere else).