ntatious displays which violated all the prohibitions of the
_Lex sumptuaria_, leading a life of unseemly pleasures, in which it is
easy to imagine what sort of example of all the finer feminine virtues
she set. Claudius either knew nothing of all this or else submitted
without protest.

Messalina then, with her peculiar levity of character and violence of
temperament, continued to emphasize the modernizing Asiatic tendency
introduced by Caligula into the state, and was influential in
destroying the puritanic traditions of Rome and replacing them by the
corruption and pomp of Asia. Her role was exactly the opposite of that
of Livia. The latter had been the embodiment of the conservative
virtues of traditionalism: the former by her egoism, her extravagance,
and her wantonness was in a fair way to destroy all such traditions.
Livia had been almost a vestal in her fight for the puritanism of old
Rome: Messalina most ardently and violently fought to destroy it.

Such an empress, however, could hardly please the public. While those
who profited by her dissipations greatly admired Messalina, a lively
movement of protest was soon started among the people, for they, unlike
many of the aristocrats, who affected modern views and who pretended to
scorn the traditions of ancient Rome, were faithful to all such
puritanical traditions and wished to see at their emperor's side a lady
adorned with all the fairer virtues of the ancient matron--with those
virtues, in short, which Livia had personified with such dignity. How
could they tolerate this sort of dissipated Bacchante, who should have
been condemned to infamy and exile with the many other Roman women who
had been faithless to their husbands; who with the effrontery of her
unpunished crimes dishonored and rendered ridiculous the imperial
authority?

To the middle classes the emperor was a semi-sacred magistrate, charged
with maintaining by law and example the purity of the family, fidelity
in marital relations, and simplicity of customs. Now, to their
amazement, they saw in the person of the empress all the dissipations,
corruptions, and perversions of the woman who wished to live only for
her pleasure, to enjoy her beauty, and to have others enjoy it,
enthroned, to the scandal of all honest minds, in the palace of the
emperor. Furthermore, it seemed to every one a scandal that one who
was an emperor should at the same time be a weak husband; for the
simple good sense o