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It was this that caused Turia to make a proposal to her husband which,
coming from a truly unselfish woman, and seen in the light of Roman
ideas of married life, is far from unnatural; but to us it must seem
astonishing, and it filled Lucretius with horror. She urged that he
should divorce her, and take another wife in the hope of a son and
heir. If there is nothing very surprising in this from a Roman point
of view, it is indeed to us both surprising and touching that she
should have supported her request by a promise that she would be as
much a mother to the expected children as their own mother, and would
still be to Lucretius a sister, having nothing apart from him, nothing
secret, and taking away with her no part of their inheritance.
To us, reading this proposal in cold blood just nineteen hundred years
after it was made, it may seem foolishly impracticable; to her, whose
whole life was spent in unselfish devotion to her husband's interests,
whose warm love for him was always mingled with discretion, it was
simply an act of pietas--of wifely duty.


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