But Soæmias had a bad son, the Heliogabulus of infamous note, whom she could not save or reform, and she was wise enough to pave the way for the succession of her sister’s more reputable one, after his death. This sister, Mamæa, was virtually regent during the minority of Alexander Severus, whose purity of character and conduct she guarded with the greatest care. She tried to apply the moral ideals of womanhood to the men of the period, and found the task a difficult and thankless one. Without assuming the trappings of power, she administered the affairs of the empire with wisdom and judgment. An able, humane, and thoughtful woman of conservative tendencies and limited ambition for herself, she declined to sit in the Senate, but chose a body of just and learned counselors to decide upon public questions, while she discussed Christianity with her friend Origen, founded a school for the free education of orphans, gave her son a serious training for his future responsibilities, and worked for the moral betterment of a world that did not wish to be bettered in that way. Her standards were too high, and she reformed too much for people who found license and corruption more to their interest and liking. The Senate was jealous of her wise and just counselors, who could not be used as tools for unscrupulous ends. Impatient, at last, of their interference, and incensed at a woman who wished a moral government, it passed a law excluding women from its ranks and “devoting to the infernal gods the head of the wretch by whom this decree should be violated.” With singular consistency, however, it voted her an apotheosis after ridding itself of the restraining influence of her virtues by practically sending her to a violent death. VI These few instances, gathered from many that are more or less familiar to the student of history, may serve to show in some degree the influence of strong and able women in the affairs of Old Rome. They show, also, the intellectual as well as moral force of the best type of pagan womanhood, which was formed after classic ideals of an heroic pattern.