Sulpicia was also the author of a poem on conjugal affection which is most highly commended by Martial; but unfortunately it has been lost. Indeed, from the reference in the beginning of her satire to her "thousand sportive effusions," we gather that she was a prolific writer and that all her poetry was not of the philosophic or didactic kind. With this brief reference to Sulpicia, our account of woman's creative participation in Roman literature must end for want of material. The real part which the women of the Roman world played in the formation of the literature of their time must be sought rather in the view which the authors present of their character and the inspiration which the poets drew from their love and friendship. That is to say, we meet the Roman woman in the poetic art of her nation as the model and also as the motive, but not as the artist. But it is very essential that we should give attention to both these phases of feminine life. Hitherto we have dealt only with historic personages, and those of the highest class; to obtain a complete view of the Roman woman, it is necessary to see her in that broader light in which she is sketched by the makers of other literature than history. And in order that our attention may not be confined to the women of one class, we must take notice of those ladies of whom the poets sing and to whom they address their effusions. First let us consider the woman drawn by Roman creative art. In her image, as it is portrayed in literature, we see the real person of flesh and blood, as she appeared to the literary artists. Virgil says: "Woman is a fickle and ever changeable creature;" and yet he must have found in the women of his time the qualities with which he endowed Queen Dido. She is a Roman woman, because she is the creation of a Roman. She is an ideal queen; yet one who governs her kingdom in the same manner in which a noble matron presided over the activities of her household, "dispensing justice and laws to her subjects" from the middle room, or atrium, of the temple, and "in equal portions distributing their tasks or settling them by lot." Furthermore, she is a true woman. She is the sole contribution of Roman poetry to that gallery of imaginary men and women who, having their existence only in literature, are immortal because they faithfully represent the real. In Dido, Virgil, though he calls her a Sidonian, shows how a woman of pagan Rome could love; and how, her heart being broken and her pride injured by rejection, she could die in the high-spirited manner peculiar to her prideful race.