of the chin, you may see that rarity--beauty and intellect in one--and
with it the heightening shadow of an eternal regret. Before her Marcus
Aurelius, her husband, stands, decked with the purple, with all the
splendor of the imperator, his beard in overlapping curls, his
questioning eyes dilated. Beyond is her daughter, Lucille, less fair
than the mother, a healthy girl of the dairymaid type. Near by is the
son, Commodus. Across the hall is Lucius Verus, the husband of Lucille;
in a corner, Antonin, Faustine's father, and, more remotely, his wife.
Together they form quite a family group, and to the average tourist
they must seem a thoroughly respectable lot. Antonin certainly was
respectable. He was the first emperor who declined to be a brute.
Referring to his wife he said that he would rather be with her in a
desert than without her in a palace; the speech, parenthetically, of a
man who, though he could have cited that little Greek princess,
Nausicaa, as a precedent, was too well-bred to permit so much as a
fringe of his household linen to flutter in public. Besides, at his
hours, he was a poet, and it is said that if a poet tell a lie twice he
will believe it. Antonin so often declared his wife to be a charming
person that in the end no doubt he thought so. She was not charming,
however, or if she were, her charm was not that of exclusiveness.

It was in full sight of this lady's inconsequences that Faustine was
educated. Wherever she looked, the candors of her girlhood were
violated. The phallus then was omnipresent. Iamblicus, not the
novelist, but the philosopher, has much to say on the subject; as has
Arnobius in the Adversus gentes, and Lactance in the De falsa
religione. If Juvenal, Martial, Petronius, are more reticent, it is
because they were not Fathers of the Church, nor yet antiquarians. No
one among us exacts a description of a spire. The phallus was as common
to them, commoner even. It was on the coins, on the doors, in the
gardens. As a preservative against Envy it hung from children's necks.
On sun-dials and water clocks it marked the flight of time. The vestals
worshipped it. At weddings it was used in a manner which need not be
described.

It was from such surroundings that Faustine stepped into the arms of
the severe and stately prince whom her father had chosen. That Marcus
Aurelius adored her is certain. His notebook shows it. A more
tender-hearted and perfect lover romance may show, but histor