Rome, A.D. 19 (Tacitus, Annals 2.85. L)
In the same year the senate passed severe provisions to repress women’s dissoluteness and prohibited prostitution for granddaughters, daughters, and wives of Roman knights. For Vistilia, a woman of a praetorian family, had made public, before the aediles, her practice of prostitution. This was done in keeping with a valid and venerable custom by which it is considered sufficient punishment for unchaste women to admit their shame publicly. The senate also wanted to know why Titidius Labeo, Vistilia’s husband, had not carried out the punishment provided by law for his patently guilty wife. But he explained that the sixty days allowed for him to make up his mind what to do had not yet elapsed,[1] so the senate passed judgment only on Vistilia, who was relegated to the island of Seriphos. [2]
1. By the lex Iulia de adulteriis. Cf. nos. 120, 125, 127.
2. A deserted island in the Cyclades used for the purpose.