The imperial era, beginning with a display of magnificence and splendor, both in military achievements and literary production, soon degenerated into an era of crime, which, at least in the highest classes of society, has never been equalled in history. Its worst feature was, perhaps, the utter degradation and depravity of the women even of the highest classes, and their readiness to sacrifice everything--chastity, shame, name, and reputation--to the gratification of their passions. Soon the women excelled the men in assassinating, by poison or dagger, their victims or rivals. Augustus, the first Emperor, showed on the throne much less cruelty than he had manifested as a triumvir; but Livia Drusilla, his third wife, was the first of those female monsters on the throne of the Cæsars--Livia, Agrippina, Messalina, Domitia--who never shrank from murder, if by blood or poison they could rid themselves of a rival or of an obstacle to their criminal ambition. Livia, who wished Tiberius, her son by a former marriage, to be the successor of Augustus on the imperial throne, caused Marcellus (the [Illustration: CLAUDIUS] husband of Julia, daughter of Augustus), and also Julia’s two sons, to be poisoned; and by these crimes secured the succession for Tiberius. She is also suspected of having poisoned Augustus himself. Tiberius, the second of the Roman Emperors, lives immortal in history rather by his crimes than by his valorous deeds. So does Caligula, the third, and Claudius, the fourth, and Nero, the fifth Emperor,--who were all assassinated after comparatively short reigns, but who had exhausted all forms of cruelty and crime; while their wives, Messalina, Agrippina, and Poppæa will live in history forever as the unrivalled types of female depravity. Above all, Messalina, the wife of Claudius, who ruled from the year 41 to the year 54 of the Christian era, became notorious for every species of vice. In her libidinous and voluptuous excesses, as well as in the demoniacal conception of her murderous plots against her enemies, she was easily first and foremost,--the real empress of the vicious and fallen women of Rome: she became their open rival in the houses of ill-fame in her capital, she contended with them for the palm of obscenity and prostitution, and vanquished them all.