made the child the slave of the father: Young Quintus Drusus should
marry Cornelia, Lentulus's only child, as soon as the two came to a
proper age. And so the friends went away to win glory in Gaul; to
perish side by side, when Sabinus's ill-fated legion was cut off by
the Eburones.[15]

[13] Every Roman had a _prænomen_, or "Christian name"; also a gentile
name of the gens or clan to which he belonged; and commonly in addition
a cognomen, usually an epithet descriptive of some personal peculiarity
of an ancestor, which had fastened itself upon the immediate descendants
of that ancestor. The _Livii Drusi_ were among the noblest of the Roman
houses.

[14] Died in 91 B.C.

[15] In 54 B.C.

The son and the daughter remained. Quintus Drusus had had kindly
guardians; he had been sent for four years to the "University" at
Athens; had studied rhetoric and philosophy; and now he was back with
his career before him,--master of himself, of a goodly fortune, of a
noble inheritance of high-born ancestry. And he was to marry Cornelia.
No thought of thwarting his father's mandate crossed his mind; he was
bound by the decree of the dead. He had not seen his betrothed for
four years. He remembered her as a bright-eyed, merry little girl, who
had an arch way of making all to mind her. But he remembered too, that
her mother was a vapid lady of fashion, that her uncle and guardian
was Lucius Cornelius Lentulus Crus, Consul-elect,[16] a man of little
refinement or character. And four years were long enough to mar a
young girl's life. What would she be like? What had time made of her?