23.
in that year were many portents, to avert which the senate decreed supplications for two days.
[
2]
wine and incense were provided by the state, and the people went in throngs to offer their prayers -both men and women.
[
3]
The supplication was rendered memorable by a quarrel that broke out among the matrons in the chapel of Patrician Modesty, which stands in the Cattle Market, by the round temple of Hercules.
1 Verginia, Aulus's daughter, a patrician wedded to a commoner, Lucius Volumnius the consul, had been excluded by the matrons from their ceremonies, on the ground that she had married out of the
[
5]
patriciate. this led to a short dispute, which the hot anger of the sex soon kindled to a blaze of passionate contention.
[p. 445]Verginia boasted, and with reason, that she had
2 entered the temple of Patrician Modesty both a patrician and a modest woman, as having been wedded to the one man to whom she had been given as a maiden, and was neither ashamed of her husband nor of his honours and his
[
6]
victories. she then added a noble deed to her proud words. in the Vicus Longus, where she lived, she shut off a part of her mansion, large enough for a shrine of moderate size, and, erecting there
[
7??]
an altar, called together the plebeian matrons, and after complaining of the injurious behaviour of the patrician ladies, said, “i dedicate this altar to Plebeian
[
8]
Modesty; and I urge you, that even as the men of our state contend for the meed of valour, so the matrons may vie for that of modesty, that this altar may be said to be cherished —if it be possible —more reverently than that, and by more modest
[
9]
women.” this altar, too, was served with almost the same ritual as that more ancient one, so that no matron but one of proven modesty, who had been wedded to one man alone, should have the right to
[
10]
sacrifice. afterwards the cult was degraded by polluted worshippers, not matrons only but women of every station, and passed finally into
[
11]
oblivion.
in that same year Gnaeus and Quintus Ogulnius the curule aediles brought a number of usurers to
[12??]
trial, and, confiscating their possessions, employed the share which came into the public treasury to put brazen thresholds in the Capitol, and silver vessels for the three tables in the shrine of Jupiter, and a statue of the god in a four —horse chariot on the roof, and at the fig —tree Ruminalis3 a representation of the infant Founders of the City being [p. 447]suckled by the wolf. they also made a paved walk4 of squared stone from the Porta Capena to the temple
[13]
of Mars. and the plebeian aediles Lucius Aelius Paetus and Gaius Fulvius Curvus, likewise with the money from fines, which they exacted from convicted graziers,5 held games and provided golden bowls for the temple of Ceres.
