Hide browse bar Your current position in the text is marked in blue. Click anywhere in the line to jump to another position:
book:
Chapter Headings of Book I
Book II
Book III
Book IV
Book V
Chapter headings of Book VI
Book VII
Book VIII
BOOK IX
Book X
Book XI
Book XII
Book XIII
Chapter Headings of Book XIV
Book XV
Book XVI
Book XVII
Book XVIII
Book XIX
Book XX
Preface
BOOK I
Book II
Book III
BOOK IV
Book V
The Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius: Book VI
BOOK VII
Book VIII
Book IX
Book X
BOOK XI
BOOK XII
Book XIII
Book XIV
Book XV
Book XVI
Book XVII
BOOK XVIII
Book XIX
Book XX
chapter:
section:
This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
Table of Contents:
Those who have written about the life and civilization of the Roman people say that the women of Rome and Latium “lived an abstemious life”; that [p. 279] is, that they abstained altogether from wine, which in the early language was called temetum; that it was an established custom for them to kiss their kinsfolk for the purpose of detection, so that, if they had been drinking, the odour might betray them. But they say that the women were accustomed to drink the second brewing, raisin wine, spiced wine 1 and other sweet-tasting drinks of that kind. And these things are indeed made known in those books which I have mentioned, but Marcus Cato declares that women were not only censured but also punished by a judge no less severely if they had drunk wine than if they had disgraced themselves by adultery. I have copied Marcus Cato's words from the oration entitled On the Dowry, in which it is also stated that husbands had the right to kill wives taken in adultery: 2 “When a husband puts away his wife,” says he, “he judges the woman as a censor would, and has full powers if she has been guilty of any wrong or shameful act; she is severely punished if she has drunk wine; if she has done wrong with another man, she is condemned to death.” Further, as to the right to put her to death it was thus written: “If you should take your wife in adultery, you may with impunity put her to death without a trial; but if you should commit adultery or indecency, she must not presume to lay a finger on you, nor does the law allow it.” [p. 281]
The Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius. With An English Translation. John C. Rolfe. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1927.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.