Virtue and womanly dignity were inconsiderable qualities in the days of Nero. The ladies of the court could only attain and hold their positions by means of their personal attractions and by taking part in excesses from which every vestige of virtue was eradicated. Prostitution had now become fashionable. It is possible to give Messalina the benefit of a doubt as to whether or not she were a mere freak of nature. Agrippina was monstrously ambitious and as merciless as a tigress whose young are threatened; but she adopted the only means which her times afforded. In Poppæa, however, we see the typical woman of decadent Rome--of ordinary intellect, intensely voluptuous, and devoid of natural affection. Poppæa was the daughter of that beautiful but wanton lady of the same name whom Messalina had forced to seek death by her own hand. In this instance, heredity claimed its vindication; to the daughter descended the loveliness of person and also the lax principles which characterized the mother. "This woman," says Tacitus, "possessed everything but an honest mind. Her wealth was equal to the dignity of her birth; she had a fascinating conversation, and was not deficient in wit. She observed an outward decorum, but in her heart was wanton; she rarely appeared in public, and when she did she wore a veil, either because she did not want to glut people's eyes with her beauty, or because she thought a veil became her." It is said of her that she employed all the recipes at that time known--and they were very numerous--to prevent the inroads which age will make. She covered her face with a mask when out of doors, in order to shield it from the sun; and when at last her mirror informed her that the charms of that face were beginning to wane, she cried: "Let me die rather than lose my beauty!"--a wish by no means unnatural, for in the game which she so desperately played her beauty was her only stake. Nero married her solely for her loveliness of person. The conjugal fidelity which stands the test of changing years was not then common; and the law did not enforce it upon the unwilling. Juvenal doubtless truly pictures the contretemps which women like Poppsea had to fear: "Sertorius what I say disproves, For though his Bibula is poor, he loves. True! but examine him; and on my life, You'll find he loves the beauty, not the wife. Let but a wrinkle on her forehead rise, And time obscure the lustre of her eyes; Let but the moisture leave her flaccid skin, And her teeth blacken, and her cheeks grow thin; And you shall hear the insulting freedman say: 'Pack up your trumpery, madam, and away! Nay, bustle, bustle; here you give offence, With snivelling night and day;--take your nose hence!'"