But on the contrary, in the days of our ancestors, it was these that were to be seen in their halls, and not statues made by foreign artists, or works in bronze or marble: portraits modelled in wax[1801] were arranged, each in its separate niche, to be always in readiness to accompany the funeral processions of the family;[1802] occasions on which every member of the family that had ever existed was always present. The pedigree, too, of the individual was traced in lines upon each of these coloured portraits. Their muniment-rooms,[1803] too, were filled with archives and memoirs, stating what each had done when holding the magistracy. On the outside, again, of their houses, and around the thresholds of their doors, were placed other statues of those mighty spirits, in the spoils of the enemy there affixed, memorials which a purchaser even was not allowed to displace; so that the very house continued to triumph even after it had changed its master. A powerful stimulus to emulation this, when the walls each day reproached an unwarlike owner for having thus intruded upon the triumphs of another! There is still extant an address by the orator Messala, full of indignation, in which he forbids that there should be inserted among the images of his family any of those of the stranger race of the Lævini.[1804] It was the same feeling, too, that extorted from old Messala those compilations of his “On the Families of Rome;” when, upon passing through the hall of Scipio Pomponianus,[1805] he observed that, in consequence of a testamentary adoption, the Salvittos[1806]—for that had been their surname—to the disgrace of the Africani, had surreptitiously contrived to assume the name of the Scipios. But the Messalas must pardon me if I remark, that to lay a claim, though an untruthful one, to the statues of illustrious men, shows some love for their virtues, and is much more honourable than to have such a character as to merit that no one should wish to claim them.