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To cite examples, whereas everywhere else wayward wives were required to pay fines, Zaleucus stopped their licentious behaviour by a cunningly devised punishment. That is, he made the following laws: a free-born woman may not be accompanied by more than one female slave, unless she is drunk; she may not leave the city during the night, unless she is planning to commit adultery; she may not wear gold jewelry or a garment with a purple border, unless she is a courtesan; and a husband may not wear a gold-studded ring or a cloak of Milesian1 fashion unless he is bent upon prostitution or adultery. [2] Consequently, by the elimination, with its shameful implications,2 of the penalties he easily turned men aside from harmful luxury and wanton living; for no man wished to incur the sneers of his fellow citizens by acknowledging the disgraceful licentiousness. [3] He wrote many other excellent laws, such as those on contracts and other relations of life which are the cause of strife. But it would be a long task for us to recount them and foreign to the plan of our history, and so we shall resume our account at the point where we digressed from the course of our narrative.

1 Miletus was noted for the luxurious life of its inhabitants.

2 The preceding legislation of Zaleucus has been cited as an example of "imperfect" laws, that is, those which lack any penal sanction other than the offender's sense of shame or the infamy attaching to him (cp. S. Pufendorf, De jure naturae et gentium, 1.6.14).

Diodorus Siculus. Diodorus of Sicily in Twelve Volumes with an English Translation by C. H. Oldfather. Vol. 4-8. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1989.

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