This monumental eulogy of the period which we now approach--a eulogy which the more penetrating study of Renan and the more recent research of M. Boissier and Dr. Dill have not materially lessened--will suffice to warn the inexpert reader against the ancient and popular legend that Rome continued to sink under the burden of its vices until it tottered into the tomb of outworn nations. Under the Empresses whom we have now to consider there was a great improvement of character and recovery of vigour in the Roman Empire, but before we pass to that brighter phase I would enter a brief protest against the general exaggeration of the darkness of the period we have traversed. Even under its worst rulers Rome was far from being wholly corrupt. The vices of a Messalina, the crimes of an Agrippina, and the follies of a Poppæa, stand out so prominently in that period only because they were perpetrated on the height of the throne. Even they were hardly worse than the crimes and follies of the wives or mistresses of kings in many a less censured period of history; and, if you care to count them, the lilies were as numerous as the poppies in this first series of Empresses, but the lilies drooped earlier, and have been less noticed. Whenever, in the course of our story, the light has passed from the throne to the less elevated crowd, we have found fine character mingled with the corrupt even in the darkest years of the early Empire. The heads that fell before the Imperial monsters were as many as the heads that bowed.