The painting is real from 1872.
I think situations like these happened during the Roman Empire although that empire was long gone in 1872 and I doubt thumb down meant back then what it means today.

The contest Art & Writing is hosted by @solperez. Weekly she provides in 3 paintings. I used this one to write about. The idea is to be creative.

What I wrote about is what I see, think that's going on. As you can see I used the tags #story and #creativewriting