An excerpt from a speech of Marcus Cato [11] on the life and
customs of women of long ago and on the right of the husband to
kill a wife caught committing adultery.
(1) Those who have written about the life and culture of the
Roman people say that women in Rome and Latium 'lived an abstemious
life', which is to say that they abstained altogether from wine,
called temetum in the early language and that it was the
custom for them to kiss their relatives so they could tell by
the smell whether they had been drinking. [12] Women, however,
are said to have drunk the wine of the second press, raisin wine,
myrrh-flavoured wine and that sort of sweet drink. This things
are found in these books, as I said, but Marcus Cato reports that
women were not only judged but also punished by a judge as severely
for drinking wine as for committing adultery.
I have copied Cato's words from a speech called On the Dowry,
in which it is stated that husbands who caught their wives in
adultery could kill them: 'The husband', he says, 'who divorces
his wife is her judge, as though he were a censor; [13] he
has power if she has done something perverse and awful; if she
has drunk wine she is punished; if she has done wrong with another
man, she is condemned to death.' It is also written, regarding
the right to kill: 'If you catch your wife in adultery, you can
kill her with impunity; she, however, cannot dare to lay a finger
on you if you commit adultery, nor is it the law.'