Book 21
38
He was a slave indeed both to lust and money: but eventually his love of money got the upper hand; and, on a large sum of gold being agreed to be paid for the woman, he led her off to put her to ransom. There being a river between the two camps, when the Gauls had crossed it, paid the man the money, and received the woman, she ordered one of them by a nod to strike the Roman as he was in the act of taking a polite and affectionate farewell of her. The man obeyed, and cut off the centurion’s head, which she picked up and drove off with, wrapped in the folds of her dress: On reaching her husband she threw the head at his feet; and when he expressed astonishment and said: Wife to keep faith is a good thing, she replied: Yes; but it is a better thing that there should be only one man alive who has lain with me! [Polybius says that he conversed with the woman at Sardis, and was struck with her dignified demeanour and intelligence.]This is really Plutarch’s version of a story he found in Polybius, and, to judge from Livy, 38, 24, not a very complete one. It took place near Ancyra. Plutarch de mulierum virtutibus. . . .
