It is very easy, however, for a student of history to encourage an exaggerated idea of Roman depravity, even as it was in the days of Messalina and Poppsea. Whence do we obtain our picture of the Rome of those times? Partly from historians; but very largely from such writers as Juvenal, Petronius, and Apuleius. The historians confined their accounts to the prominent people of their times, and it not unfrequently happened that the most prominent and successful were the least commendable from the moral standpoint. The moralists necessarily placed the worst in the boldest relief, in order to ensure a more telling effect. Seneca held such writers up to ridicule, when he said: "Morals are gone; evil triumphs; all virtue, all justice, is disappearing; the world is degenerating. This is what was said in our fathers' days, it is what men say to-day, and it will be the cry of our children." And yet, the world does not grow worse. As for the society portrayed by Petronius and Apuleius, these men sought their characters among the low pothouses and the brothels of Rome. The morals of the ordinary Roman home must not be judged by a scene either in a house of ill fame or in the palace of a crazy and dissolute tyrant, any more than the common life of Herculaneum or Pompeii is to be conjectured solely from the obscene pictures found on the walls of their ruined dwellings. In this present chapter, the women we shall cite are chiefly those who were ennobled in their deaths rather than in their lives. That is to say, though they lived well, had it not been for their brave manner of dying their names would not have been preserved in history. As has been said, Roman society was not wholly corrupt, even though an adulterous Messalina, an unprincipled Poppæa, or a cruel and ambitious Agrippina, shared the throne. Contemporary with these were women who still with pure hands and sincere hearts invoked the ancient goddess of chastity. There were those who had mother love for their children, but were free from deadly ambition. Among the more ordinary homes were many that were graced with the same family loyalty and tender affection as beautify our homes to-day.