This kind of effacement is, however, becoming very displeasing to high-spirited Roman women. They are now asserting their personality by demanding special names. The result is that they are getting a kind of irregular cognomens. Calvus’s daughter is, therefore, known as Junia _Gratia_ (from her mother), and should the house be favored with another young mistress, she will probably be Junia _Calva_ in compliment to her father’s cognomen. Nevertheless, with every explanation, the names alike of men and women at Rome are utterly confusing. Duplication seems incessant and anything like a complete directory of the city would apparently carry many pages of identical entries. Of course, a ready use of nicknames (constantly invented by Italian ingenuity) overcomes the actual difficulty. Among near friends or dependents it is quite proper to cry “Hail, Spurius!” or “Well said, Tiberius”; but it is an impolite familiarity to employ the prænomen except for intimates. Ordinarily the cognomen is the proper form, used, be it said, without any “Sir” or “Mister,” and in the Senate the archaic usage requires that the Conscript Fathers should be summoned by prænomen and gentile name only. “_Dic, Marce Tulle_,” “Speak, Marcus Tullius,” was the form by which Cicero was often called before he began his great orations. =164. Care of Parents in Educating Children.=--So a Roman child receives that great thing, his name. What is the course of his life if he grows to manhood? Very much the same as in other civilized lands, where most parents are loving and where most children bring joy to the house. Boys and girls, until school age, are largely in the hands of the womenfolk. Gratia’s old nurse, brought with her to Calvus’s house, is still more of a beloved mentor and tyrant to Gratia’s children, usually bribing her charges to be good “with honey, nuts and sweet-cakes.” But as soon as boys, at least, begin to pass out of early childhood their fathers are expected to take them in hand, and even a man of high rank is criticized if he leaves his sons too much to the guidance of paid tutors and of slaves.