Adorn thyself with simplicity and modesty and with indifference towards the things which lie between virtue and vice. Marcus Aurelius. Meditations. Book 7.
Image: Sculpture of a Modest Roman Matron, 1st century BCE, that I photographed at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. The drapery is rendered in a style reminiscent of Hellenistic period (323-31 BCE), but the statue is certainly a Roman type, the so-called Pudicitia. The type was developed as early at the 3rd-2nd centuries BCE and is named for the goddess Pudicitia, the personification of the virtue modesty. The head is likely intended to represent a specific local benefactor, even though the idealized facial features fail to depict any sort of individualization. Instead the statue represents the modest character of the woman.
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