t in the
campaign that ended with Philippi, and Lepidus was consul in charge
of Rome. To Lepidus Turia had to go, to beg the confirmation of
Octavian's grace, and this brutal man received her with insult and
injury. She fell at his feet, as her husband describes with bitter
indignation, but instead of being raised and congratulated, she was
hustled, beaten like a slave, and driven from his presence. But
her perseverance had its ultimate reward. The clemency of Octavian
prevailed on his return to Italy, and this treatment of a lad; was
among the many crimes that called for the eventual degradation of
Lepidus.

This was the last of their perilous escapes. A long period of happy
married life awaited them, more particularly after the battle of
Actium, when "peace and the republic were restored." One thing only
was wanting to complete their perfect felicity--they had no children.
It was this that caused Turia to make a proposal to her husband which,
coming from a truly unselfish woman, and seen in the light of Roman
ideas of married life, is far from unnatural; but to us it must seem
astonishing, and it filled Lucretius with horror. She urged that he
should divorce her, and take another wife in the hope of a son and
heir. If there is nothing very surprising in this from a Roman point
of view, it is indeed to us both surprising and touching that she
should have supported her request by a promise that she would be as
much a mother to the expected children as their own mother, and would
still be to Lucretius a sister, having nothing apart from him, nothing
secret, and taking away with her no part of their inheritance.

To us, reading this proposal in cold blood just nineteen hundred years
after it was made, it may seem foolishly impracticable; to her, whose
whole life was spent in unselfish devotion to her husband's interests,
whose warm love for him was always mingled with discretion, it was
simply an act of pietas--of wifely duty. Yet he could not for a moment
think so himself: his indignation at the bare idea of it lives for
ever on the marble in glowing words. "I must confess," he says, "that
the anger so burnt within me that my senses almost deserted me: that
you should ever have thought it possible that we could be separated
but by death, was most horrible to me. What was the need of children
compared with my loyalty to you: why should I exchange certain
happiness for an uncertain future? But I say no more of this: you