The two brothers were travelling together, and Pomponia
was with them; something had irritated her. When they stopped to lunch
at a place belonging to Quintus at Arcanum, he asked his wife to
invite the ladies of the party in. "Nothing, as I thought, could be
more courteous, and that too not only in the actual words, but in his
intention and the expression of his face. But she, in the hearing of
us all, exclaimed, 'I am only a stranger here!'" Apparently she had
not been asked by her husband to see after the luncheon; this had been
done by a freedman, and she was annoyed. "There," said Quintus, "that
is what I have to put up with every day!" When he sent her dishes from
the triclinium, where the gentlemen were having their meal, she would
not taste them. This little domestic contretemps is too good to be
neglected, but we must turn to women of greater note and character.
Terentia and Pomponia and their kind seem to have had nothing in the
way of "higher education," nor do their husbands seem to have expected
from them any desire to share in their own intellectual interests.
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