must always be whether these statements are not mere exaggerations of her conduct in the popular mind of the time, they are consistent enough with the accredited facts of her career. In the year 44 Claudius returned with joy to what he still regarded as the chaste and tender arms of his young Empress. So lively was his esteem of her virtue that he obtained from the Senate permission for her to ride in the ceremonious car (_carpentum_), an honour which was restricted to the priestly rank and rigorously forbidden to women. He granted her, also, the signal distinction of riding in his chariot on the day of his triumphal procession. The ease with which she duped him led her to fresh excesses. It is said that when she saw his wine-soaked body laid to bed at night, she placed one of her maids with him, and went with the companions of her debauches. If we may believe a story which has no inherent improbability, and has some confirmation later, she made the blind Emperor himself purvey to her vices. She one day complained to Claudius that the popular actor, Mnester, would not obey her when she commanded him to leave the stage and enter her private service. Claudius forced him to do so; and three years later, when Messalina’s conduct was exposed, Mnester exhibited to the Emperor the scars on his body which gave proof of Messalina’s brutal familiarity. Even when she used the bronze coinage of Caligula, which had been withdrawn from circulation, to make a statue to Mnester, Claudius suspected nothing. This licentious conduct continued until the year 47. Messalina was only in her twenty-fifth year when her long impunity led her to take the step which ruined her. A bust of her that is preserved at Florence, and a cameo at Vienna, give a representation of her that we have no inclination to distrust. The curly golden-yellow hair--Juvenal tells us its colour--is elaborately dressed over the low forehead, and the large deep-set eyes are abnormally close. There is some irregularity in the undeniable beauty of the face; and the thin lips and small mouth, drooping weakly at the corners, would irresistibly suggest a record of adventure, if such a story were not assigned to her in the chronicles of the time. With that record before us it is, no doubt, easy for physiognomists to detect a moral distortion in the features, and to discover unknown, as well as verify the known, vices of the Empress in the truthful marble. Yet any thoughtful observer will be disposed to see in those pitiless lineaments a revelation of the truth about Messalina and her race. It is a picture of strength worn to decay by reiterated storms of passion, of beauty fading with the disease which foreruns death. [Illustration: MESSALINA BUST IN THE UFFIZI PALACE, FLORENCE]