Of the heroism, political sagacity, and moral value of the Roman women we have abundant evidence, but it is difficult to catch the outline of faces seen in half-lights, or of characters revealed only on one side. They did not write of themselves, or of each other, as women of later and, to some extent, even of earlier ages have done. There was no Sappho to sing of their joys and sorrows, or give us a clue to what they thought and felt. Men who wrote freely of affairs reserved small space for them, so we know little of their personal life, except through passing glimpses in a few private letters, and the cynical if not malicious pictures of satirists. The Romans were not a creative or imaginative race, and have left us none of the great ideals of womanhood that grace the pages of the Greek poets. No Helen with her divine beauty and charm, no Antigone with her strength of sacrifice, no Andromache with her tender and winning personality, shows us the manner of woman that lived in the minds and hearts of men. But if the delicacy of shading which reveals fine complexities of character is wanting, we have a few records of brave deeds and individual virtues that are likely to stand as long as the world to show us the quality that made them possible. Alcestis going serenely to her death for her weak and selfish lord is not more heroic than Lucretia, who saved the falling liberties of Rome by plunging the dagger into her heart and calling upon her husband to avenge her outraged honor. Iphigenia is not a more touching figure than the innocent Virginia, sacrificed, not to the gods, but to the brutality of wicked men.