Valerius Maximus relates an incident where Scipio was unfaithful to her with one of their own maid-servants, but Aemilia chose not to make the matter public. Valerius Maximus and Plutarch would have considered such behavior as honorable for Scipio, who after all, was not debauching his own wife. Marital sex was considered to be essentially procreative among Middle-Republic Romans. The year of this incident was around 191 BC or later, at which time Aemilia was either pregnant with her youngest child or had given birth recently. The fact that Aemilia chose not to expose her husband's infidelity (per Valerius Maximus) could indicate either a desire to spare him embarrassment or her own desire to avoid embarrassment for herself. A Roman wife could not expect her husband to be faithful, and his misconduct whether at home or outside was not grounds for a divorce. Furthermore, by divorcing her husband (or rather, being divorced in that period), a woman lost custody of her children and usually had to return to her father's or brother's house. The husband could retain most of her dowry, so Aemilia could get as little as one-fifth of her dowry back. Aemilia's sister-in-law Papiria Masonis was divorced c. 183 BC by her husband, simply because he was tired of her. She was entirely blameless, having provided him with two sons and two daughters, and her chastity was not in question. After her divorce, she lived in rather straitened circumstances, and without her children who remained with their father and paterfamilias.