hat is with bare thighs,
as Ibykus says; and they accuse them of lust, as Euripides says--

"They stay not, as befits a maid, at home,
But with young men in shameless dresses roam."

For in truth the sides of the maiden's tunic were not fastened together
at the skirt, and so flew open and exposed the thigh as they walked,
which is most clearly alluded to in the lines of Sophokles--

"She that wanders nigh,
With scanty skirt that shows the thigh,
A Spartan maiden fair and free,
Hermione."

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, whi