Some of the other women who are notorious for their bad conduct were unquestionably bad. But in the case of Messalina, whose name has become a byword, it has to be remembered that she was only twenty-six years of age when she died. The second Agrippina, who is equally infamous for her wickedness, may be paying the penalty for having written memoirs, in which she blackened the characters of her contemporaries. And nearly all the women who are gibbeted as monsters of iniquity belonged to the imperial family. The Emperor held a position of power and glory such as never had fallen to the lot of any mortal before him. The wealth and honours that were heaped on him were such as might turn the head of any man. They could not but have a very injurious effect on the women of the family. The descendants of this family intermarried cousins with cousins, or even in closer connexion, and, between the unique exaltation of their lot and the frequent intermarriages, need we wonder that a taint of insanity infected them? I think that in this way we may account for a considerable number of the wild excesses that are laid to their charge. I do not deny that there were many licentious women outside of the imperial circle; I do not deny that there may have been some foundation for the railing accusations which Juvenal brings against the sex; but I am confident that these accusations are exaggerated in a high degree. And if there were women who plunged into vice because they saw their husbands and brothers claim and exercise the wildest licence for themselves, there were other women who took an opposite course. They argued that the equality was right, but that men and women were equally bound to abstain from licentiousness, that the same law prevailed for the man as for the woman. This opinion was a tenet of the Stoic philosophy, and it was to this sect of philosophers that many of the noblest Roman women belonged. I will mention but two of them. Porcia, the daughter of Cato and the wife of Brutus, was a Stoic--“a philosopher,” as Plutarch says,[102] “full of spirit and good sense.” When married to Brutus, she perceived that her husband did not communicate to her his political movements and secrets. So she removed all her attendants, took a knife, and inflicted a deep wound in her thigh so that the blood flowed out copiously and then fever ensued. Her husband, in alarm, came to her, and she then addressed him: “I, Brutus, Cato’s daughter, was given unto thy house, not, like women who serve as concubines, to share thy bed and board only, but to be a partner in thy happiness and a partner in thy sorrows. But, with respect to thy marriage, everything is blameless on thy part; but as to me what evidence is there, or what affection, if I must neither share with thee a secret sorrow nor a care which demands confidence? I know that a woman’s nature is considered too weak to carry a secret, but, Brutus, there is a certain power towards making moral character in a good