[p. 319] porcetra he has, it is true, the authority of Pomponius in the Atellan farce which bears that very title 1 but that “matron” was applied only to a woman who had given birth once, and “mother of a family” only to one who had done so more than once, can be proved by the authority of no ancient writer. Indeed, that seems much more probable which competent interpreters of ancient terms have written, that “matron” was properly applied to one who had contracted a marriage with a man, so long as she remained in that state, even though children were not yet born to them; and that she was so called from the word mater, or “mother,” a state which she had not yet attained, but which she had the hope and promise of attaining later. Matrimonium itself, or “marriage,” has the same derivation; but that woman only is called “mother of the household” 2 who is in the power and possession of her husband, or in the power and possession of the one under whose authority her husband is; since she had come, not only into a state of wedlock, but also into the family of her husband and into the position of his heir.
VII
[7arg] How Favorinus treated a man who made an unseasonable inquiry about words of ambiguous meaning; and in that connection the different meanings of the word contio.DOMITIUS was a learned and famous grammarian in the city of Rome, who was given the surname
