These two, we may feel sure, were wholly worthy of each other.  What she would have said of him, if he had been the first to go, we can only guess; but he has left a portrait of her, as she lived and worked in his household, which, mutilated though it is, may be inadequately paraphrased as follows: 

“You were a faithful wife to me,” he says, “and an obedient one:  you were kind and gracious, sociable and friendly:  you were assiduous at your spinning (lanificia):  you followed the religious rites of your family and your state, and admitted no foreign cults or degraded magic (superstitio):  you did not dress conspicuously, nor seek to make a display in your household arrangements.  Your duty to our whole household was exemplary:  you tended my mother as carefully as if she had been your own.  You had innumerable other excellences, in common with all other worthy matrons, but these I have mentioned were peculiarly yours.”

No one can study this inscription without becoming convinced that it tells an unvarnished tale of truth—­that here was really a rare and precious woman; a Roman matron of the very best type, practical, judicious, courageous, simple in her habits and courteous to all her guests.  And we feel that there is one human being, and one only, of whom she is always thinking, to whom she has given her whole heart—­the husband whose words and deeds show that he was wholly worthy of her.

CHAPTER VI

THE EDUCATION OF THE UPPER CLASSES

From what has been said in preceding chapters of the duties and the habits of the two sections of the upper stratum of society, it will readily be inferred that the kind of education called for was one mainly of character.  In these men, whether for the work of business or of government, what was wanted was the will to do well and justly, and the instinctive hatred of all evil and unjust dealing.  Such an education of the will and character is supplied (whatever be its shortcomings in other ways) by our English public school education, for men whose work in life is in many ways singularly like that of the Roman upper classes.  Such an education, too, was outlined by Aristotle for the men of his ideal state; and Mr. Newman’s picture of the probable results of it is so suggestive of what was really needed at Rome that I may quote it here.[247]

“As its outcome at the age of twenty-one we may imagine a bronzed and hardy youth, healthy in body and mind, able to bear hunger and hard physical labour ... not untouched by studies which awake in men the interest of civilised beings, and prepare them for the right use of leisure in future years, and though burdened with little knowledge, possessed of an educated sense of beauty, and an ingrained love of what is noble and hatred of all that is the reverse.  He would be more cultivated and human than the best type of young Spartan, more physically vigorous and