A certain dreadful and monstrous distemper did seize the Milesian
maids, arising from some hidden cause. It is most likely the air had
acquired some infatuating and venomous quality, that did influence
them to this change and alienation of mind; for all on a sudden an
earnest longing for death, with furious attempts to hang themselves,
did attack them, and many did privily accomplish it. The arguments and
tears of parents and the persuasion of friends availed nothing, but
they circumvented their keepers in all their contrivances and industry
to prevent them, still murdering themselves. And the calamity seemed to
be an extraordinary divine stroke and beyond human help, until by the
counsel of a wise man a decree of the senate was passed, enacting that
those maids who hanged themselves should be carried naked through the
market-place. The passage of this law not only inhibited but quashed
their desire of slaying themselves. Note what a great argument of good
nature and virtue this fear of disgrace is; for they who had no dread
upon them of the most terrible things in the world, death and pain,
could not abide the imagination of dishonor and exposure to shame even
after death.