It is needless to recall here the notorious women who followed in the footsteps of Julia, and added to all her sins a cruelty which she had not. The world is familiar enough with the crimes of Messalina, the second Agrippina, Poppæa, and others whose names have become a by-word and a reproach to womanhood. Men, and sometimes women, gravely tell us that these moral monsters are a measure of Roman standards, and a logical result of the culture of the feminine intellect. That two things exist at the same time does not prove that one is the result of the other. The facts in this case, indeed, prove quite the contrary. It would be idle to say that the weaker half of the human family hold a monopoly of the virtues, or that it is in the nature of things for them to pass unscathed through the fiery ordeal of a corrupt age whose supreme end lies in pleasures of sense. But even in Rome at its worst there was a great deal of pure family life, and its conservation rested with women. I have quoted elsewhere from the private letters of distinguished Romans who have given us pleasant glimpses of refined, accomplished, and learned women, as free from the taint of moral laxity as our own; and this when men made no claims to morality themselves. To the great body of Roman women a spotless virtue was among their most cherished traditions. So far from finding their increased intelligence a cause of the decline in morals, it is a fact that those of the highest character and ability constantly suffered indignity and wrong, because their presence was a restraint upon their unscrupulous masters. Long domination had fostered the egotism of men to such an extent that they could not brook opposition of any sort, and it was the ignorant and flexible who bent the most easily to their will, even when it led them to the last extreme of moral subservience. Only a fearless courage and a strong conviction could venture to take high ground against the fashionable sins of men in power. It is always more or less true that when a dominant class lowers its moral standards, it likes to ostracize those who even tacitly reflect upon it.