Now, in contrast to Thusnelda's strength, we have Bissula, a picture of Germanic grace. Ausonius, a poet of the late Roman period, sketches the portrait of this German maiden a prisoner who had been captured in the expeditions of Emperor Valentinianus I. against the Alemanni on the Neckar and Upper Rhine. She fell as booty to the poet, who stood high in pedagogical and political offices. The beauty and grace of this charming Alemannian maiden contrast strangely with the majesty and heroism and tragic bitterness of Armin's wife. The slave Bissula becomes a queen, as the queen had become a slave. Ausonius speaks with enthusiastic tenderness of her shining countenance, her blue eyes and blonde hair. "Art possesses no means," he says, "to imitate so much grace." "'Bissula, inimitable in wax or in color, Nature adorned with charms, as art never succeeds. Mix then, O painter, the rose with the white of the lily, Choose then the fragrant blend to paint fair Bissula's face.'" (H. S.) The ancient Teutonic woman is, in general, represented as beautiful in countenance and form. Her rich, reddish-blond, flowing hair became the envy and imitation of the Roman ladies of fashion. Ovid and other poets mention how the Roman ladies tried to change their black hair to German blond. The _rutilce comce_ of Tacitus, became a valued Roman article of trade. In Heinrich von Kleist's drama, _Die Hermannschlacht_, Thusnelda's revenge upon the Roman general Ventidius hinges upon an intercepted letter of his, containing a lock of her golden hair obtained by ruse, and sent to his Roman princess: "Varus, O princess, stands with seven legions Victorious on Cheruscan land: Cheruscan land, mind well, where those locks do grow, Shining like gold and soft like Roman silk. Now mindful of the word spoken in jest by thee, When last thou saw'st me parting for the war: I send a lock of hair destined for thee, When Hermann falls, to clip from his queen's head. By Styx! the trader by the capitol can't offer it: It's a love token from the foremost lady of the land: The Princess of Cheruscia herself." (H. S.) The blue eyes, described by the Roman witnesses as full of fire and chaste defiance, the white rose cheeks and the strong, well-proportioned form make almost ideal the beauty of the German woman when undefiled by foreign admixture. Emphatically does Tacitus state that the German tribes not taking in foreign blood became a genuine, unmixed nation, similar only to themselves (_Germanice populos, nullis aliis aliarum nationum connubiis infectos, propriam et sinceram et tantum sui simikm gentem exstitisse._)