Faustina had inherited her mother’s beauty, and was reared in a very conscientious home. It was the home in which Marcus Aurelius learned his first lessons in virtue, as his father died early, and all the chroniclers speak of it with great respect. We know very little about her, however, until she becomes Empress, and, as she died three years afterwards, we have not much concern with her. She is believed to have married somewhat late for a Roman girl, in or about her sixteenth year (120). Titus Aurelius Antoninus was then in his thirty-fourth year, a tall, graceful, and handsome man, of quiet and captivating manners, good cultivation, fine character, and a face of great dignity and sweetness. He was of good family, and was advancing rapidly in the public service. Shortly after the marriage he became consul, and he remained in Rome in one or other civic capacity until 128 or 129. He was very wealthy and greatly esteemed. One of the chroniclers has charged her with light behaviour, and, as this is the only period in which we can plausibly entertain it, we may regard the charge for a moment. The book of Dio’s history for the reign of Antoninus Pius is lost, so that neither he nor his commentators throw any light on Faustina. Aurelius Victor and Eutropius say nothing of her character. The one hostile witness is “Julius Capitolinus,” the anonymous writer of the fourth century who provides the sketch of the life of Antoninus Pius in the “Historia Augusta.” He says (c. 3): “Many things are said of his wife’s excessive freedom and looseness of life, which he had painfully to overlook.” Serviez enlarges on this with his usual license. But as he makes Faustina the sister of Ælius Verus, and says that she neglected the education of her children, which is also untrue, we may ignore him. It is now more customary to reject this charge against the elder Faustina, on the ground that the single witness is a light anecdotist of the fourth century. Moreover, when the tutor Fronto wrote a glowing panegyric of Faustina after her death, Antoninus Pius answered that it was even more true than eloquent, and swore that he “would rather live with her at Gyaros [a barren island, to which criminals were deported] than in a palace without her.” Nevertheless, we must leave the question open. Antoninus Pius was not a puritan. When the Emperor Julian introduces him before the gods, in his charming contest of the Emperors for the highest praise (“The Cæsars”), he calls him “a moderate man, not indeed in love-affairs, but in the administration of the Empire.” Faustina was probably charming enough to merit his sincere lament. But as Capitolinus mingles truth and untruth with a very light hand, and the relevant book of Dio is wanting, we cannot decide the issue.