Lucretia, Decius, Regulus, Cato--men and
women who had loved the honour and virtue demanded by Rome, or Rome's
safety better than their lives. The best story of all had been the
one about her own ancestors, the three hundred and six Fabii who,
to establish their country's power, fought by the River Cremera until
every man was dead.

She had grown old enough to read her own stories, to marry, and to
tell stories to a child and to grandchildren, but the time had never
come when her heart had not beat quicker at the thought of men
sacrificing their life or their children, their will or their
well-being to their country's need. She had become a widely read
woman in both Latin and Greek. Her reason told her that appreciation
of beauty in nature and art, grace and elegance in manners,
intellectual freedom and a zest for individual development were
essential factors in the progress of civilisation. She knew that if
her husband had not believed in these things he could not have been
the poet he was, and she knew his poetry had done something for Roman
letters that Virgil's had not done. She had not only loved, with all
the pure passion of her maturity, his charm and his blitheness and
his gifted sensitiveness, but she had been proud of his achievements.
His citizenship had satisfied her. But always, within the barriers
of her own individuality, that faith which is deeper, warmer, more
masterly than reason, had kept her the reverent lover of duty, the
passionate guardian of character, for whose sake she would deny not
only ease and joy, but, even, if the dire need came, beauty itself.
Art the Romans had had to borrow. Their character they had hewn for
themselves, with a chisel unknown to the Greeks, out of the brute
mass of their instincts. Its constancy, its dignity, its magnanimity,
probity and fidelity Cicero had described in words befitting their
massive splendour. To possess this character was to be a Roman
citizen, in the Forum and on the battlefield, in the study and the
studio, in exile and in prison, in life and in death. Ovid's
citizenship, save for the empty title, had been ended by an imperial
decree. In losing Rome he had ceased to be a Roman. His voice came
back only in cries in which there was no dignity and no fortitude.
He was tiring out his friends. Perilla no longer let Fidus see his
letters. Even in her own heart the sharpest sorrow was not his exile
but his defeat. Her love had outlived her pride.

The d