Now, in regard to the first of these suspicions, we have the assurance of eminent students of art that, in their sculpture, the Romans were exceedingly jealous of exact representation. Viktor Rydberg says: "It is impossible to reproach the Roman art of portraiture with flattery. It gave what the Romans insisted on--rigid fidelity to nature. It made no exception in favor of the Cæsars and their house, not even for the women. Proofs of this almost repulsive fidelity to nature are to be found. An empress, arrived at a more than mature age, is to be represented as Venus. It is possible that she would be glad to decline the honor. She belongs to that period in life when old ladies drape their withered beauties; but she has duties as Cæsar's spouse, and must resign herself to her fate. The goddess of love was the ancestress of the Julian race; and so her attributes, but not her beauty, descend to the empress. The artist has to immortalize her undraped charms, and he does it with almost brutal frankness, so that the little cupid, with finger to his mouth, at her feet, seems to sigh: 'Oh! for a curtain.'" All this may be very true of particular instances; but we know that there were cases when the artist did idealize, as would any sculptor who would place the head of a Cæsar on the trunk of a Greek god, if he were so required. Again, at no period of the world's history has the fraternity of artists been undiversified by members of varying ability, and the task of representing Messalina may have fallen into the hands of an inferior workman. Yet, after all, it is quite possible that the asymmetry in question may have characterized the face of the voluptuous empress; still, it should require something more than a little inequality of feature in a statue not absolutely identified to cause to accept, without a large grain of salt, Juvenal's statement in regard to the wife of Claudius. That Messalina was in the habit of stealing forth from the imperial palace at night to occupy a booth in a brothel as a common demirep under the name of Lycisca is almost too improbable for credence. It is possible that in this Juvenal enlarges on some allusion made by Agrippina the Younger, who wrote the empress's memoirs and who was never a friend to Messalina.