In addition to these, there are the portrait busts of the present Publius Calvus, of his wife Gratia, and of his three children. They are all executed with remarkable verisimilitude and without the least flattery. Customs with the hair often change, and the headdress of Gratia is made detachable so that if her style of headdress alters, the portrait may be promptly brought up to date. Young Sextus the second boy had a birthday yesterday; his statue is still hung with wreaths; flowers too hang around the likeness of Gnæus Calvus, Publius’s brother, who lately died while proprætor of Bætica (South Spain). =41. Death Masks (_Imagines_).=--The sight of these busts is a constant incentive to both the young Calvi to remember their lordly lineage; but they have a still prouder treasure. The enormously rich freedman Vedius just down the street would give twenty million sesterces for the social preëminence implied by the possession of the great cupboard all bound with gilt and bronze bands which stands in the tablinum. Here, carefully labeled, are kept several scores of waxen death masks, blackened, marred, and ugly enough now, but all taken when the successive heads of the family lay in their last slumber. Many of these date from before the production in Rome of sculptured portrait statues. Here, for example, is the mask of the Calvus who helped win the consulship for the plebeians; and here of him who seconded Appius Claudius in the Senate when he turned away the glozing envoys of Pyrrhus. When alien upstarts complain of “noble pride,” it is easy for a Calvus to toss his head: “Have we not something to be proud of!”--and later, it will be duly explained how these waxen _imagines_ appear very conspicuously at public funerals (p. 175). =42. Couches, Their General Use.=--One cannot, however, sit or lie down upon statues or portrait busts, and the domus is well provided with conventional furniture. In general the Romans prefer to _recline_ when men of a later age may prefer to _sit_. Visitors sprawl down on couches for a little conversation, and the regular method of writing is not at a desk but lying on a couch with the right leg doubled and the tablet held on the knee. Long habit makes this attitude quite comfortable.