This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
Table of Contents:
Who was the ‘woman that rode on a donkey’
at Cumae?
Any woman taken in adultery they used to bring
into the market-place and set her on a certam stone
in plain sight of everyone. In like manner they then
proceeded to mount her upon a donkey , and when she
had been led about the circuit of the entire city, she
was required again to take her stand upon the same
stone, and for the rest of her life to continue in disgrace, bearing the name ‘donkey-rider.’ After this
ceremony they believed that the stone was unclean
and they used ritually to purify it.
The citizens of Cumae had also a certain office
called the Guards. The man who held this office
used to watch the prison most of the time, but he
[p. 179]
came to the nocturnal assemblies of the council and
led out the kings by the hand and kept them out,
until by secret ballot the council had decided on
their case, whether they had done wrong or no.
Plutarch. Moralia. with an English Translation by. Frank Cole Babbitt. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1936. 4.
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.
This text was converted to electronic form by optical character recognition and has been proofread to a high level of accuracy.
Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com