There is no room for doubt that the daughter of Faustina and Marcus Aurelius was an abandoned woman. Dio declares that she was “no better than Commodus.” We may trust that this is an exaggeration, but the other authorities speak of the looseness of her conduct, and are emphatically agreed that she inspired the plot to murder her brother. No one doubts that her purpose was to recover supreme power. The inferences and impressions we draw from Imperial portraits are not very substantial, but it is interesting that the statue of Lucilla, which we have, suggests just the type of woman that the historians represent her to have been. It is the figure of a full-bodied woman, of strong and imperious temper, sensual to the limit of grossness. In her the beauty of her mother, instead of being enhanced by the purity of her father, is blighted by a general expression of coarseness and self-assertion. Her criminal design was gradually imparted to her lovers. Among these was a young noble named Quadratus, whom she soon fired with a sense of her grievances, and a conspiracy was framed. The actual assassination was undertaken by her stepson, Claudius Pompeianus. Herodian says that his name was Quintianus, and he may have had this name in addition. Dio gives a confused and contradictory account--he describes Pompeianus as married to Lucilla’s daughter, whereas Lucilla was married to his father, and he says that she was intimate with him, yet hated him and wished to destroy him--but, as he lived in Rome at the time, we must accept the substance of his story. The young Senator Pompeianus was an intimate friend of Commodus, and only an infatuation for Lucilla could have drawn him into the plot. He spoiled it, and ruined the conspirators, by his melodramatic display. As Commodus entered the amphitheatre, he rushed upon him with a drawn sword. But he announced his purpose by crying out: “The Senate sends thee this sword,” and the guards arrested him. The plot gave Commodus an opportunity to make a bloody clearance of those who hampered his plans, and caused him to regard the Senate with dark suspicion. The male conspirators were executed, and Lucilla was banished to Capreæ. But Crispina had no triumph by the removal of her rival. She had herself been tainted in that atmosphere of vice, and was detected in one of her liaisons by Commodus. She was banished to Capreæ, and there both she and Lucilla were put to death. [Illustration: LUCILLA BUST IN THE NATIONAL MUSEUM, ROME]