=62. Nobler Types of Women.=--But do the above stories represent the true moral condition of most women in Rome? Certainly not, or society could not exist. In the first place such women represent the rotten crust of the nobility; the ordinary equestrian and middle-class women are still relatively modest and moral, efficient managers, good mothers, and, if they are poor, hard workers. In the second place, even among the upper Senatorial nobility, there are plenty of matronæ of the very best type; true props to their husbands, wise mothers to their children, kindly mistresses to their slaves. Gratia has many friends whose households are schools of virtue, and many a Roman, from the Imperial Augustus down, has confessed that his wife has been his tower of strength. =63. Famous and Devoted Wives.=--People still talk of the famous Arria, wife of Cæcina Pætus, who, when the Emperor Claudius ordered him to commit suicide, and he could hardly pluck up courage for a manly exit from life, as an example plunged the dagger in her own breast, then held it out to her husband, saying, “Pætus, it doesn’t hurt me.” Her own daughter, the younger Arria, and Fannia, the wife of the philosopher Helvidius Priscus, grossly murdered by Nero, won hardly less reputations for fortitude. Pliny the Younger has recorded a more humbly born Italian dame, who, when her husband was suffering from incurable ulcers, but lacking the hardihood to kill himself alone, tied herself to him and with him jumped into the lake at Larium so that both were drowned. [Illustration: WEDDED PAIR WITH CAMILLUS (Boy Attendant).] Fortunately the days of tyrannous emperors seem long since over. Wives usually can show their virtue by living for their husbands and not by dying with them. Rather lately there passed away an old man, Domitius Tullus. Vast was his wealth but it brought him no pleasure; he was so crippled and racked in every limb “that he could only enjoy his great riches by looking at them. He was so helpless that he had to get others to clean and wash his teeth.” He had a young and a very pretty wife; but so far from neglecting him or trying to hasten his end, she kept him alive for years by extraordinarily faithful personal care. Lately, too, the venerable Senator Macrinus has lost his wife, “who if she had lived in the good old days would have been counted an exemplary woman. They lived together for thirty-nine years, with never a single quarrel or disagreement.”[31] [Illustration: SEATED NOBLEWOMAN.]