OPSOPHA&Y. 537 



to drink ;' while the yet more ungallant and sweeping 

 censure, yvvatKi -Tnare^e fir) irlveiv vSeop, ' trust a woman 

 not to drink water/ involves the whole sex. Indeed it 

 was usual to say that the safest wife for a bachelor to 

 choose would be a Scythian, because the vine did not 

 grow in her country ; but that, like many other a priori 

 inferences, was not borne out experience. In pagan 

 days the ladies everywhere seem to have determined 

 upon enjoying a fuU share of wine, in spite of lords and 

 masters who tried, but in vain, to defraud them of it. 

 At Marseilles the women were compelled to drink water 

 only. Athenseus and Theophrastus report similar coer- 

 cive measures to have been adopted by the legislature of 

 MUetus. At Rome the law was equally stringent. ' An- 

 ciently,^ says Pliny, ' our dames were not allowed to drink 

 wine ; and it is recorded in the old chronicles that Igna- 

 tius Mecenius killed his wife outright with a cudgel, on 

 surprising her in the act of tapping a cask ; for which 

 severe act of domestic discipline Romulus exempted him 

 from punishment.^ Pabricius Pictor relates in his an- 

 nals that a woman of rank was actually starved to death 

 by her kinsfolk for opening a blue-beard cupboard in 

 which the keys of the wine-cellar lay; and Cato records 

 that, to prevent the recurrence of such painful scenes, 

 it was enacted that husbands (and in their absence the 

 next of kin) should kiss the matrons daily, that it might 

 appear, from the state of their breath, whether they had 

 been drinking ; a very inadequate precaution truly, for 

 coiJd not, and would not, these ladies soon learn to adopt 

 Martial's advice to eaters of onions, and receive the sa- 

 lute of their trusty and weU-beloved relations, clauso ore, 

 with mouth shut ? One magistrate (an unjust Creticus, 

 no doubt) pronounced the following remarkable judgment 

 against a Roman lady — ' That whereas it appeared she 

 had drunk more wine than was necessary for the preser- 

 vation of health, and that without her husband's know- 



