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And here I do not allude to great and infamous examples that history has handed down in the sober pages of Suetonius and Tacitus, or that unblushing depravity which stands out in the bitter satires of those times; I speak not of the adultery, the poisoning, the infanticide, the debauchery, the cruelty of which history accuses the Messalinas and Agrippinas of imperial Rome; I allude not to the orgies of the Palatine Hill, or the abominations which are inferred from the paintings of Pompeii, I mean the general frivolity and extravagance and demoralization of the women of the Roman empire.
What figures from the Comédie Humaine of Roman society of the first century throng the pages of Tacitus Sejanus, Arruntius, Piso, Otho, Bassus, Caecina, Tigellinus, Lucanus, Petronius, Seneca, Corbulo, Burrus, Silius, Drusus, Pallas, and Narcissus; and those tragic women of the Annals imperious, recklessly daring, beautiful or loyal Livia, Messalina, Vipsania, the two Agrippinas, mothers of Caligula and of Nero, Urgulania, Sabina Poppaea, Epicharis, Lollia Paulina, Lepida, Calpurnia, Pontia, Servilia, and Acte!
No writer, indeed, has done this more skilfully than Tacitus; but this is not his peculiar glory. All the persons who occupy a large space in his works have an individuality of character which seems to pervade all their words and actions. We know them as if we had lived with them. Claudius, Nero, Otho, both the Agrippinas, are masterpieces. But Tiberius is a still higher miracle of art.
I speak not of the adultery, the poisoning, the infanticide, the debauchery, the cruelty of which history accuses the Messalinas and Agrippinas of imperial Rome. I allude not to the orgies of the Palatine Hill, or the abominations which are inferred from the paintings of Pompeii.
The Julias, Faustinas, and Agrippinas, with hair dressed like a big sponge on the brow, were so comical I was never tired of looking at them. I see now where the present bedlamite style of coiffure comes from. 'The philosophers, &c., were very interesting. Cicero so like Wendell Phillips that I could hardly help clapping my hands and saying, "Hear! hear!"
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