164 NUMA AND LYtURGUS.

girls were not sewn together at the lower part, but used to fly back and show the whole thigh bare as they walked. The thing is most distinctly given by Sopho- cles. — She, also, the young maid, Whose frock, no robe yet o'er it laid.* Folding back, leaves her bare thigh free, Hermione. And so their women, it is said, were bold and masculine, overbearing to their husbands in the first place, absolute mistresses in their houses, giving their opinions about pub- lic matters freely, and speaking openly even on the most important subjects. But the matrons, under the govern- ment of Numa, still indeed received from their husbands all that high respect and honor which had been paid them iinder Romulus as a sort of atonement for the vio- lence done to them ; nevertheless, great modesty was en- joined upon them ; all busy intermeddling forbidden, sobriety insisted on, and silence made habitual. Wine they were not to touch at all, nor to speak, except in their husband's company, even on the most ordinary sub- jects. So that once when a woman had the confidence to plead her own cause in a court of judicature, the sen- ate, it is said, sent to inquire of the oracle what the prodigy did portend ; and, indeed, their general good be- havior and submissiveness is justly proved by the record of those that were otherwise ; for as the Greek historians record in their annals the names of those who first un- sheathed the sword of civil war, or murdered their brothers, or were parricides, or killed their mothers, so the Roman writers report it as the first example, that Spurius Carvilius divorced his wife, being a case that

• Asfolos chiton, the under gar- thing, either hi motion or pepltu,

ment, frock, or tunic, without any over it.