The story, from the Satyricon, is told as an example of the fickleness of women’s emotions, but that‘s not the only way one can read it. Briefly, to summarize: A widow, renowned for her chastity, declares that she will follow her dead husband into his tomb; while grieving for him, a soldier stationed nearby to guard corpses of robbers that have been hung on crosses, discovers her, convinces her to eat, and eventually seduces her. While he is neglecting his duty, the family of one of the corpses comes and steals the body off the cross for burial. The soldier, ashamed of his negligence, vows to kill himself, but the woman, fearing the loss of her new lover, tells him to put the corpse of her husband on the empty cross. So, in the end, not only does the woman not kill herself in grief over her husband’s grave, she actually desecrates the grave to save the soldier.

It’s possible to see the widow as someone easily swayed by circumstance, but most modern readers (I think) would agree that wasting away over the grave of a loved one is a kind of false virtue. The notion of steadfastness, raised in the story, is set in contrast to another theme, which could be called the sanctity of life. While we may judge the widow harshly for her unfaithfulness, the story can be read in a different way, in which the widow comes to realize that her place is among the living, and that the needs of the living supersede our obligations to the dead.