The bed in which a wife lies is the constant scene of quarrels and mutual recriminations. There is little chance of sleep there. Then is she indeed bitter toward her husband, fiercer than tigress robbed of her whelps; when, conscious of her secret guilt, she counterfeits groans, or hates the servants, or upbraids you with some rival of her own creation, with tears ever fruitful, ever ready at their post, and only waiting her command in what way to flow. You believe it genuine love. You, poor hedge-sparrow, plume yourself, and kiss off the tears! Ah! what amorous lays, what letters would you read, if you were but to examine the writing-case of that adulteress that counterfeits jealousy so well!
But suppose her actually caught in the arms of a slave or knight. "Pray suggest in this case some colorable excuse, Quintilian!" "We are at fault! Let the lady herself speak!" "It was formerly agreed," she says, "that you should do what you pleased, and that I also might have full power to gratify myself. In spite of your outcry and confounding heaven and sea, I am mortal." Nothing is more audacious than these women when detected. They affect resentment, and borrow courage from their very guilt itself.
Yet should you ask whence are these unnatural prodigies, or from what source they spring; it was their humble fortune that made the Latin women chaste in days of yore, nor did hard toil and short nights' rest, and hands galled and hardened[259] with the Tuscan fleece, and Hannibal close to the city, and their husbands mounting guard at the Colline tower, suffer their lowly roofs to be contaminated by vice. Now we are suffering all the evils of long-continued peace. Luxury, more ruthless than war, broods over Rome, and exacts vengeance for a conquered world. No guilt or deed of lust is wanting, since Roman poverty has disappeared. This was the source whence Sybaris flowed to these seven hills, and Rhodes too, and Miletus, and Tarentum crowned with garlands, insolent and flushed with wine!
Money, the nurse of debauchery, was the first that introduced foreign manners, and enervating riches sapped the sinews of the age with foul luxury. For what cares Venus in her cups? All difference of head or tail is alike to her who at very midnight devours huge oysters, when unguents mixed with neat Falernian foam, when she drains the conch,[260] when from her dizziness the roof seems to reel, and the table to rise up with the lights doubled in number.[261] Go then, and knowing all this, doubt, if you can, with what a snort of scorn Tullia snuffs up the air when she passes the ancient altar of Chastity; or what Collatia says to her accomplice Maura. Here they set down their litters at night, and bedew the very image of the goddess with copious irrigations, while the chaste moon witnesses their abominations,[262] over which, when morn returns, you pass on your way to visit your great friends.