noticed his mother's
alleged madness to have affected for the worse either her words or her
deeds. Let him deny that she showed the utmost shrewdness in her
examination of the accounts of the bailiffs, grooms, and shepherds,
that she earnestly warned his brother Pontianus to be on his guard
against the designs of Rufinus, that she rebuked him severely for
having freely published the letter she had sent him without having
read it honestly as it was written! Let him deny that, after what I
have just related to you, his mother married me in her country house,
as had been agreed some time previously!

88. The reason for our decision to be married by preference at her
country house not far from Oea was to avoid a fresh concourse of
citizens demanding largesse. It was but a short time before that
Pudentilla had distributed 50,000 sesterces to the people on the
occasion of Pontianus' marriage and this boy's assumption of the garb
of manhood. We wished also to avoid the frequent and wearisome
dinner-parties which custom generally imposes on newly-married
couples. This is the whole reason, Aemilianus, why our marriage
contract was signed not in the town but at a country house in the
neighbourhood--to avoid squandering another 50,000 sesterces and to
escape dining in your company or at your house. Is that sufficient? I
must say that I am surprised that you object so strongly to the
country house, considering that you spend most of your time in the
country. The Julian marriage-law nowhere contains a clause to the
effect that no man shall wed in a country house. Indeed, if you would
know the truth, it is of far better omen for the expectation of
offspring that one should marry one's wife in a country house in
preference to the town, on rich soil in preference to barren ground,
on the greensward of the meadow rather than the pavement of the
market-place. She that would be a mother should marry in the very
bosom of her mother, among the standing crops, on the fruitful
plough-land, or she should lie beneath the elm that weds the vine, on
the very lap of mother earth, among the springing herbage, the
trailing vine-shoots and the budding trees. I may add that the
metaphor in the line so well known in comedy

_That in the furrow children true be sown_

bears out this view most strongly. The ancient Romans also, such as
Quintius, Serranus and many others, were offered not only wives but
consulships and dictatorships in the open