Famous Women

A hand-colored woodcut depicts a scene from Roman history. A woman, identified as Claudia Quinta, kneels on a riverbank and pulls a large ship with a rope. On the ship, several men are visible, one of whom holds a small statue on a pedestal. A group of women stands behind Claudia Quinta on the left. The scene is set against a landscape with water and a distant shore.

CLAVDIA QVINTA

She had at all times a very great diligence in all her actions, especially regarding the adornment of her body, so that she was always seen as too costly and well-dressed, more so than all others, including the most noble Roman women. Through this, she was considered by the most honorable and oldest Roman women not only as weak-minded and immodest, but also as shameless in impurity. And in the times when Marcus Cornelius and Publius Sempronius governed in Rome, which was the fifteenth year of the second Roman war against Carthage, it happened that the Mother of the Gods, a goddess of the Romans, was being brought to Rome along the Tiber at that time. And to receive her, the best man, named Nasica, was sent by the senate of the entire city along with all the noble Roman women to the shore. And when they arrived, the ship in which the holy icon resided stood so firmly on the ground that the sailors could in no way move it forward. But when all the young men, through all their strength,