In the early Roman republic, a woman caught drinking wine could be put to death — and her husband praised for killing her. It sounds like an exaggeration, but the Romans themselves recorded it approvingly. The history of women and wine in the ancient world is a story of taboo, surveillance and a startling double standard — with, in one corner of the Mediterranean, a striking exception2.
Quick facts
- Early Rome forbade women from drinking temetum, the strong sacred wine.
- Male relatives could kiss a woman to smell her breath for wine — the ius osculi.
- Cato the Elder reportedly said a husband finding his wife drinking should kill her.
- In ancient Egypt, by contrast, women drank wine and beer freely.
A taboo enforced by death
Rome’s earliest attitude to women and wine was uncompromising. Respectable women were forbidden temetum, the strong, undiluted sacred wine, and the ban was no dead letter3. The Roman writers Pliny the Elder and Valerius Maximus both record the case of Egnatius Metellus, who beat his wife to death for drinking wine — and, they note with approval, no one charged or even blamed him, since he was thought to have justly punished a violation of sobriety1. Cato the Elder put the principle with brutal economy.
“If you should catch your wife drinking wine, kill her.”— attributed to Cato the Elder, in Roman moral tradition2
Behind the violence lay a particular fear: that wine loosened a woman’s self-control and led, by a short road in the Roman imagination, to adultery and the corruption of the household’s honour and bloodline5.
The kiss of suspicion
The most extraordinary instrument of this policing was the ius osculi — the “right of the kiss.” By custom, a woman’s male relatives were entitled to kiss her on the lips to check her breath for the tell-tale smell of wine1. The Romans even credited the practice to their founder: Pliny reports a tradition that King Romulus himself had ordered that women be kept from wine, and the daily kiss became a household surveillance system, a lie-detector run on a woman’s own body4.
What women were allowed to drink
The ban was not on everything fermented, but specifically on temetum, the potent stuff. Women were permitted weaker and sweeter drinks — and the distinction reveals exactly what the Romans feared6:
| Drink | Status for women | What it was |
|---|---|---|
| Temetum | Forbidden | Strong, undiluted sacred wine |
| Lora | Permitted | Weak “piquette” from pressed grape skins and water |
| Passum | Permitted | Sweet raisin wine |
| Murrina / spiced wines | Permitted | Mild, sweetened or spiced drinks |
It was intoxication, in other words, that was policed — the loss of control, not the grape itself. As Rome grew richer and its old moral order loosened, the taboo faded, and by the late republic and empire women drank far more openly. But the double standard it expressed — that a woman’s drinking was a threat to be watched, while a man’s was his right — would outlast Rome by two thousand years3.
Egypt: a different world
Travel to the other end of the Mediterranean and the picture inverts completely. In ancient Egypt, women drank wine and beer freely, at banquets and festivals, and the sources treat it as entirely unremarkable7. Egypt even had goddesses of intoxication: Hathor, in her fierce aspect, was “the Lady of Drunkenness,” and her great Festival of Drunkenness saw worshippers of both sexes drink to the point of ecstatic collapse as an act of devotion7.
The contrast is the whole point. There was nothing natural or inevitable about the Roman taboo; it was a specific cultural choice about controlling women, dressed up as a rule about wine.
The long shadow
The ancient double standard around women and drink never entirely went away. Long after Rome fell, the idea that a woman’s drinking was uniquely shameful or dangerous echoed through European law and manners2. To read the Roman sources today is to see, with uncomfortable clarity, how a simple pleasure can be turned into an instrument of control — and how much of that history is bound up in a single cup of wine.
Frequently asked questions
More from this day in wine history
See everything else that happened on May 30 — who was born, what was bottled, and which laws were signed.
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References
- The Conversation — A kiss to detect wine on her breath: the violent policing of women drinking in Ancient Rome. theconversation.com ↩
- Imperium Romanum — Why couldn’t ancient Roman women drink wine? imperiumromanum.pl ↩
- Greece & Rome (Cambridge) — The Wine Taboo Regarding Women in Archaic Rome. www.cambridge.org ↩
- Pliny the Elder, Natural History, Book XIV (the inspection of wine and the kiss) — via the Bill Thayer text archive. penelope.uchicago.edu ↩
- University of Melbourne (SHAPS) — Policing Women’s Drinking in Ancient Rome. blogs.unimelb.edu.au ↩
- World History Encyclopedia — Wine in the Ancient World. www.worldhistory.org ↩
- World History Encyclopedia — Hathor (and the Festival of Drunkenness). www.worldhistory.org ↩
Recommended reading
Patrick E. McGovern
The definitive account of ancient wine and the cultures — Egyptian, Near Eastern, classical — that drank it.
Tom Standage
A lively social history in which wine reveals the values, hierarchies and taboos of the ancient world.
As an Amazon Associate, This Day in Wine History earns from qualifying purchases. Book recommendations are chosen independently.
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