The wicked side of the Roman woman--and this was sometimes very wicked indeed--has been sufficiently emphasized. It is more agreeable and perhaps more profitable to consider her better side. Her talent was essentially administrative, and we find many illustrations of it among those who were conspicuous in public life. There were strong and wise women who had great power; as a rule, it was held wisely. Many of them, indeed most of them, brought moral questions to bear upon State problems, with a keen discriminating insight into conditions that troubled the hearts of wise men. Their number was small, as no woman below the rank of an empress was eligible to the smallest position of influence, aside from the religious offices, which were largely perfunctory; but it was sufficient to show a quality of womanhood that was not only strong, but intrinsically fine and noble. Of these, as we have seen, the most striking representative was Livia. Among those who followed more or less in her footsteps was Plotina, the able and accomplished wife of Trajan. Trained in the philosophy of the Stoics, her head was turned neither by prosperity nor misfortune. She entered the palace, on her husband’s elevation to the throne, with serene dignity, and said that she could leave it with equal calmness. With less ambition than the first empress, she had a finer moral sense, also the gravity and firmness of a matron of the old school. She loved truth and justice better than the pageantry of courts, and ignored the claims of an artificial society. A woman of brilliant intellect, noble character, and exalted aims, she led a simple life in the midst of luxury, and used her power not only to raise the tone of morals and to foster a taste for letters, but to expose political corruptions, suppress abuses, diminish unjust taxes, and promote financial reforms. It was through her influence that Hadrian was adopted, a favor which he recognized by extending her authority in his reign, and writing hymns in her praise. The trace of asceticism in her character and manners did not please the idlers who liked to bask in the sunshine of a gay and luxurious court. She was censured and talked about, with little enough reason as it seems, as no records have left a shadow on her reputation. Her fault, in the eyes of bad men, lay in her moral force. To frown upon vice, to oppose corruption in high places, was an unwarranted interference with their natural rights. But good men sustained her. At her death she was placed in the ranks of the gods and honored with a temple dedicated to the “Mother of the People.”