Book fragments
4
Among the Romans women are forbidden to drink wine; and they drink what is called passum, which is made from raisins, and tastes very like the sweet wine of Aegosthena or Crete. This is what they drink to quench their thirst. But it is almost impossible for them to drink wine without being found out. For, to begin with, the woman has not got the charge of wine; and, in the next place, she is bound to kiss all her male relatives and those of her husband, down to his cousins, every day on seeing them for the first time; and as she cannot tell which of them she will meet, she has to be on her guard. For if she has but tasted wine, there is no occasion for any formal accusation.I have translated this passage as it stands in the various editions of Polybius. But I feel convinced that none of it belongs to him except the first sentence. It comes from Athenaeus, 440 E.
5
Ancus Marcius, Livy, 1, 33.He also founded Ostia at the mouth of the Tiber.
