Parallela minora

Plutarch

Plutarch. Moralia, Vol. 4. Babbitt, Frank Cole, translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1936 (printing).

Brennus, king of the Gauls, when he was ravaging Asia, came to Ephesus and fell in love with a maiden Demonice. She promised to satisfy his desires and also to betray Ephesus, if he would give her the Gauls’ bracelets and feminine ornaments. But Brennus required his soldiers to throw into the lap of the avaricious woman the gold which they were wearing. This they did, and she was buried alive by

the abundance of gold.[*](Cf. Stobaeus, Florilegium, x. 70 (iii. p. 426 Hense).) This Cleitophon relates in the first book of his Gallic History.

Tarpeia, one of the maidens of honourable estate, was the guardian of the Capitol when the Romans were warring against the Sabines. She promised Tatius that she would give him entry to the Tarpeian Rock if she received as pay the necklaces[*](The usual specification was what they bore on their left arms (cf. Life of Romulus, xvii. (27 f-28 d); Livy, i. 11), but, to judge from Stobaeus’s version of the preceding paragraph, its source probably contained necklaces, and so a strict parallelism requires necklace here!) which the Sabines wore for adornment. The Sabines understood the import and buried her alive. So Aristeides the Milesian in his Italian History.