The very fact that as unmarried girls Roman matrons were denied all chance for lawful romances, now makes devious love affairs seem all the more racy. Any number of fine ladies have indulged in unwise “friendships” with dissolute actors, public dancers, or even gladiators. In many a mansion there is a handsome freedman or even a slave who can become extraordinarily familiar with his mistress. There are said to be coarse-grained mothers who actually teach their married daughters how to push intrigues and to smuggle in or out love-letters under the very noses of their husbands; and there are plenty of young men, rich, “noble,” and very idle, who spend their time philandering with married ladies. With every deduction and allowance for scandal the number of such unsteady women is very great. “What snakes are driving you mad,” cried Juvenal, “that you think of taking a wife? Why not leap from a high window or from the Æmilian bridge rather than submit to a she-tyrant?” However, even if women lead lives that are outwardly respectable, there are plenty of minor charges against Roman ladies. Some are utterly extravagant; haunting the fine shops along the Via Lata and running up ruinous bills. Some are laughed at for taking up music, poetry, or Greek antiquities as shallow fads and “chattering in a mixture of Latin and Greek, and making their tongues go incessantly like a gong.” Some are said to take fencing lessons and to waste their days practicing on a dummy antagonist with a foil, and learning to handle a shield as if intending to join the army. Others are never happy unless they know all the latest news: “What the Thracians and the Seres (Chinese) are doing”; “Who has just married a notorious widow”; “Whether a comet threatens the King of Parthia.” Others are utterly selfish and heartless; they will weep at the loss of a pet sparrow, but treat their slave girls with hideous brutality, and “let a husband die to save a lap-dog’s life.” Worst of all are certain women actually suspected of giving their unloved husbands a dose of poison when various reasons make a divorce inconvenient. =60. Divorces, Easy and Frequent.=--However, divorce is the regular outcome of very many unlucky marriages. Every Roman girl, when her parents tell her “We have chosen for you--”; knows in the back of her mind: “Marriage will give me freedom. If this wedlock isn’t a success, my next husband will probably be my own choosing.”