and solitary life which the women of
the country led. They lived in separate apartments and never had any
communication with the streets or with the residences of men "the inner
part of the house which was called the women's apartments," said
Cornelius Nepos (preface). Strangers never visited them; they rarely
visited their nearest relations. This was why marriage between brothers
and sisters was authorized by law and encouraged by usage; the sisters
were exposed to the attacks of their brothers because they lived
separated from them.

With the Romans, as with us, the virtuous women corrupted somewhat the
profession of the courtesans. The absolute seclusion of women was never
the fashion at Rome and the stories we have on the authority of Valerius
Maximus on the chastity and modesty of the first Roman matrons merit the
same degree of belief as the legend of Romulus and Remus being brought up
by a wolf, the rape of Lucretia or the tragic death of Virginia. On the
contrary, in Livy, a great admirer of the customs of the early days of
Rome, we find that in those times a great number of Roman women of the
noblest families were convicted of having poisoned their husbands and
condemned to death for this hideous crime: that, by no means shows a very
exquisite and tender conjugal sentiment. During the period of the second
Punic War with what energy they went about the city seeking the repeal of
the law which took out of their hands the custody of jewels and precious
stones! A repeal which they obtained despite the opposition of Cato the
Censor. It appears that the profession of the courtesan was generally
practised by the freed-women; their manner necessarily showed the results
of their education. But the young sparks of Rome never paid much
attention to them, they preferred to have love affairs with the wives of
their friends. For one Sallust who ruined himself with freedwomen, there
were five Cupienniuses; "Cupiennius, that admirer of the pudenda garbed
in white," Hor. Sat. I, ii, 36. Delia, Lesbia, Ipsythillia, Corinna,
Nemesis, Neeria, Cynthia, Sulpitia, Lycimnia, and almost all the women to
whom, under real or assumed names, Catullus, Tibullus, Propertius, Ovid,
Horace, and others, addressed their erotic compositions, were Roman
married women. Horace is the only one who celebrated a freedwoman in
some of his odes. This is due, however, to his taste for variety and
perhaps also, to his birth, for he himself was