Noctes Atticae

What Servius Sulpicius wrote in his work On Dowries about the law and usage of betrothals in early times.

IN the book to which he gave the title On Dowries Servius Sulpicius wrote [*](Fr. 2, Huschke; p. 226, Bremer.) that in the part of Italy known as Latium betrothals were regularly contracted according to the following customary and legal practice.

One who wished to take a wife,

says he,

demanded of him from whom she was to be received a formal promise that she would be given in marriage. The man who was to take the woman to wife made a corresponding promise. That contract, based upon pledges given and received, was called sponsalia, or 'betrothal.' Thereafter, she who had been promised was called sponsa, and he who had asked her in marriage, sponsus. But if, after such

v1.p.327

an interchange of pledges, the bride to be was not given in marriage, or was not received, then he who had asked for her hand, or he who had promised her, brought suit on the ground of breach of contract. The court took cognizance of the case. The judge inquired why the woman was not given in marriage, or why she was not accepted. If no good and sufficient reason appeared, the judge then assigned a money value to the advantage to be derived from receiving or giving the woman in marriage, and condemned the one who had made the promise, or the one who had asked for it, to pay a fine of that amount.

Servius Sulpicius says that this law of betrothal was observed up to the time when citizenship was given to all Latium by the Julian law. [*](90 B.C.) The same account as the above was given also by Neratius in the book which he wrote On Marriage. [*](Fr. 1, Bremer.)

A story which is told of the treachery of Etruscan diviners; and how because of that circumstance the boys at Rome chanted this verse all over the city:

Bad counsel to the giver is most ruinous.

The statue of that bravest of men, Horatius Cocles, which stood in the Comitium [*](The Comitium, or place of assembly (com-, co), was a templum, or inaugurated plot of ground, orientated according to the points of the compass, at the north-western corner of the Forum Romanum.) at Rome, was struck by lightning. To make expiatory offerings because of that thunderbolt, diviners were summoned from Etruria. These, through personal and national hatred of the Romans, had made up their minds to give false directions for the performance of that rite.

They accordingly gave the misleading advice that the statue in question should be moved to a lower position, on which the sun never shone, being cut off by the high buildings which surrounded the place on every side. When they had induced the Romans to take that course, they were betrayed and brought to trial before the people, and having confessed their duplicity, were put to death. And it became evident, in exact accord with what were later found to be the proper directions, that the statue ought to be taken to an elevated place and set up in a more commanding position in the area of Vulcan; [*](On the lower slope of the Capitoline Hill, at the northwest corner of the Forum.) and after that was done, the matter turned out happily and successfully for the Romans. At that time, then, because the evil counsel of the Etruscan diviners had been detected and punished, this clever line is said to have been composed, and chanted by the boys all over the city: [*](p. 37, Bährens, who needlessly changes the reading.)

1. Bad counsel to the giver is most ruinous.

This story about the diviners and that senarius [*](The senarius was an iambic trimeter, consisting of six iambic feet, or three dipodies. The early Roman dramatic poets allowed substitutions (the tribrach, irrational spondee, irrational anapaest, cyclic dactyl, and proceleusmatic) in every foot except the last; others conformed more closely to the Greek models.) is found in the Annales Maximi, in the eleventh book, [*](Fr. 3, Peter.) and in Verrius Flaccus' first book of Things Worth Remembering. [*](p. xiii, Müller.) But the verse appears to be a translation of the Greek poet Hesiod's familiar line: [*](Works and Days, 166.)

1. And evil counsel aye most evil is
2. To him who gives it.