[97] Veste non temere alia quam domestica usus est, ab
uxore et filia nepotibusque confecta. Suet. in Vita Augusti.


Although deeply corrupted under Nero and the sovereigns that
resembled him, the Roman women never gambled among themselves
except during the celebration of the festival of the Bona Dea.
This ceremonial, so often profaned with licentiousness, was not
attended by desperate gambling. The most depraved women
abstained from it, even when that mania was at its height, not
only around the Capitol, but even in the remainder of the Empire.

Contemporary authors, who have not spared the Roman ladies, never
reproached them with this vice, which, in modern times, has been
desperately practised by women who in licentiousness vied with
Messalina.

In France, women who wished to gamble were, at first, obliged to
keep the thing secret; for if it became known they lost
caste. In the reign of Louis XIV., and still more in that of
Louis XV., they became bolder, and the wives of the great engaged
in the deepest play in their mansions; but still a gamestress was
always denounced with horror. `Such women,' says La Bruyiere,
`make us chaste; they have nothing of the sex but its garments.'

By the end of the 18th century, gamestresses became so numerous
that they excited no surprise, especially among the higher
classes; and the majority of them were notorious for unfair play
or downright cheating. A stranger once betted on the game of a