Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and RomansPlutarch
PhilosophyPhilosophy
Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans
Plutarch
Greece -- Biography -- Early works to 1800; Rome -- Biography -- Early works to 1800
And so their women, it is said, were bold and masculine, overbearing to
their husbands in the first place, absolute mistresses in their houses,
giving their opinions about public matters freely, and speaking openly
even on the most important subjects. But the matrons, under the
government of Numa, still indeed received from their husbands all that
high respect and honor which had been paid them under Romulus as a sort
of atonement for the violence done to them; nevertheless, great modesty
was enjoined upon them; all busy intermeddling forbidden, sobriety
insisted on, and silence made habitual. Wine they were not to touch at
all, nor to speak, except in their husband's company, even on the most
ordinary subjects. So that once when a woman had the confidence to
plead her own cause in a court of judicature, the senate, it is said,
sent to inquire of the oracle what the prodigy did portend; and, indeed,
their general good behavior and submissiveness is justly proved by the
record of those that were otherwise; for as the Greek historians record
in their annals the names of those who first unsheathed the sword of
civil war, or murdered their brothers, or were parricides, or killed
their mothers, so the Roman writers report it as the first example, that
Spurius Carvilius divorced his wife, being a case that never before
happened, in the space of two hundred and thirty years from the
foundation of the city; and that one Thalaea, the wife of Pinarius, had
a quarrel (the first instance of the kind) with her mother-in-law,
Gegania, in the reign of Tarquinius Superbus; so successful was the
legislator in securing order and good conduct in the marriage relation.
Their respective regulations for marrying the young women are in
accordance with those for their education. Lycurgus made them brides
when they were of full age and inclination for it. Intercourse, where
nature was thus consulted, would produce, he thought, love and
tenderness, instead of the dislike and fear attending an unnatural
compulsion; and their bodies, also, would be better able to bear the
trials of breeding and of bearing children, in his judgment
the one end of marriage.
Astolos chiton, the under garment, frock, or tunic, without anything,
either himation or peplus, over it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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