These are simply random cases. Of course, many people know the tribute Pliny the Younger paid to his own wife Calpurnia, much younger than himself but absolutely devoted to her husband: “She has a keen intelligence, she is wonderfully economical, and she loves me.” He went on to add that she read all his literary effusions most carefully, sat behind a curtain to listen when he gave public recitations before a male audience, and that when he had to argue in court had relays of runners to keep her informed as to how well he was impressing the judges. When the twain were separated she “would embrace his letters as though they were himself,” while he (if he got no new letters from her) “would read over her old letters and take them up again and again as though they were new ones.” =64. The Story of Turia.=--One day when Gratia had caught young Junia overhearing a very uncanny story of a rich old lady who kept a whole troupe of profligate actors for her own private amusement, she took her out upon the magnificent avenue of stately tombs along the Appian Way to visit the memorial to a venerated ancestress,--a certain Turia who had lived in the troubled days of the Second Triumvirate, and who by her rare courage, fortitude, and intelligence had saved her husband the noble Vespillo from disgrace and death. Turia’s husband in a long inscription recited how she had saved his life in the Civil Wars at sore peril to her own, and how she had lived with him afterward in perfect affection and harmony, although, being childless, such was her devotion to him that she actually offered to let Vespillo divorce her that he might have children by a second marriage, promising very literally “to be a sister” to his new wife. But her husband repudiated the strange idea with anger: “That you should have ever thought it possible we could be separated save by death was most horrible to me. The one sorrow that was in store for me was that I was destined to survive you.” And thus the tablet concluded: “You were a faithful and obedient wife; you were kind and gracious, sociable and friendly; you were assiduous in your spinning; you followed our family and national religious rites and admitted no foreign superstitions; you did not dress conspicuously, nor make any kind of household display. Your management of our house was exemplary; you tended my mother as carefully as if she had been your own. You had innumerable other excellencies, common to the best type of matrons, but these I mention are peculiarly your own.”[32] Turia has been dead over a hundred years, but there are still high-born women in Rome who are her equals. One of them, Calvilla, has a fine young son now about thirteen, who owes an infinite debt to his mother, and whom the Emperor will presently select as the heir presumptive to the throne. History will call him Marcus Aurelius. CHAPTER V COSTUME AND PERSONAL ADORNMENT