On this account they are said to have become bolder than they should be, and to have first shown this spirit towards their husbands, ruling uncontrolled over their households, and afterwards in public matters, where they freely expressed their opinions upon the most important subjects. On the other hand, Numa preserved that respect and honour due from men to matrons which they had met with under Romulus, who paid them these honours to atone for having carried them off by force, but he implanted in them habits of modesty, sobriety, and silence, forbidding them even to touch wine, or to speak even when necessary except in their husbands' presence. It is stated that once, because a woman pleaded her own cause in the Forum, the Senate sent to ask the oracle what this strange event might portend for the state. A great proof of the obedience and modesty of the most part of them is the way in which the names of those who did any wrong is remembered. For, just as in Greece, historians record the names of those who first made war against their own kindred or murdered their parents, so the Romans tell us that the first man who put away his wife was Spurius Carvilius, nothing of the kind having happened in Rome for two hundred and thirty years from its foundation; and that the wife of Pinarius, Thalaea by name, was the first to quarrel with her mother-in-law Gegania in the reign of Tarquinius Superbus--so well and orderly were marriages arranged by this lawgiver. IV. The rest of their laws for the training and marriage of maidens agree with one another, although Lykurgus put off the time of marriage till they were full-grown, in order that their intercourse, demanded as it was by nature, might produce love and friendship in the married pair rather than the dislike often experienced by an immature child towards her husband, and also that their bodies might be better able to support the trials of child-bearing, which he regarded as the sole object of marriage; whereas the Romans gave their daughters in marriage at the age of twelve years or even younger, thinking thus to hand over a girl to her husband pure and uncorrupt both in body and mind. It is clear that the former system is best for the mere production of children, and the latter for moulding consorts for life. But by his superintendence of the young, his collecting them into companies, his training and drill, with the table and exercises common to all, Lykurgus showed that he was immensely superior to Numa, who, like any commonplace lawgiver, left the whole training of the young in the hands of their fathers, regulated only by their caprice or needs; so that whoever chose might bring up his son as a shipwright, a coppersmith, or a musician, as though the citizens ought not from the very outset to direct their attention to one object, but were like people who have embarked in the same ship for various causes, who only in time of danger act together for the common