BOOK XXXW II. 5-8 



month — these of all people, whose desire it is not to 

 be known even when aHve " ! That is exactly how 

 things are : indolence has destroyed the arts, and 

 since our minds cannot be portrayed, our bodily 

 features are also neglected. In the halls of our 

 anccstors it was otherwise ; portraits were the objects 

 displayed to be looked at, not statues by foreign 

 artists, nor bronzes nor marbles, but wax models of 

 faces were set out each on a separate side-board, to 

 furnish Ukenesses to be carried in procession at a 

 funeral in the clan, and always when some member 

 of it passed away the entire company of his house 

 that had ever existed was present. The pedigrees 

 too were traced in a spread of Hnes running near the 

 several painted portraits. The archive-rooms ^ were 

 kept filled with books of records and with v/ritten 

 memorials of official careers. Outside the houses and 

 round the doorways there were other presentations of 

 those mighty spirits, \vith spoils taken from the 

 enemy fastened to them, which even one who bought 

 the house was not permitted to unfasten, and the 

 mansions eternally celebrated a triumph even though 

 they changed their masters. This acted as a mighty 

 incentive, when every day the very walls reproached 

 an unwarHke owner with intruding on the triumphs 

 of another ! There is extant an indignant speech by 

 the pleader Messala protesting against the insertion 

 among the Hkenesses of his family of a bust not 

 belonging to them but to the family of the Laevini.^ 

 A similar reason extracted from old Messala the 

 volumes he composed ' On FamiHes,' because when 

 passing through the haU of Scipio Pomponianus he 

 had observed the Salvittones ^ — that was their 



^ Probably, Hke the Scipios, a branch of the Gens CorneHa. 



265 



