=Child and Parent.= The Romans practiced the exposure of infants as in Greece. This was begun in the early times and carried down into the later times. The children so exposed were usually feeble or deformed, but the father had the power to use it on any child and this was sometimes done when the father considered the child to be illegitimate. The new-born child was laid at the feet of the father and it was his duty to take the child up into his arms and declare it to be his child and that he would rear it and support it. In case the father did not so claim it, the child was carried away and placed at some cross-roads, where it would die unless taken up by a slave-merchant to rear it to sell. The relation which existed between the father and the child was known as the _patria potestas_. This power of the father was very great in early times. He could sell his children, disinherit them, select a wife for a son or a husband for a daughter, and he even had the power to put them to death. This power ceased only at death or if the father lost his rights of Roman citizenship. The father himself could emancipate his son. Also this power over the son ceased should he become a _flamen_, or priest, and it ceased over the daughter if she married or took the vestal vows. =Names.= The Romans had three names: These were the _prænomen_, the individual's own first name; the _nomen_, the name of the _gens_ or family to which he belonged; and the _cognomen_, or surname, which distinguished the particular branch or division of the tribe from which he sprung. Thus in the name Marcus Tullius Cicero, Marcus was the prænomen, Tullius the nomen, designating the Tullian family, and Cicero, the cognomen, showing that he was from the Cicerones branch of the tribe. The boys received the nomen, family name, on the ninth day after birth and girls on the eighth day. On such day the ceremony of purification took place, which was by sprinkling with a branch of olive or laurel dipped in water, the burning of incense, and the offering of sacrifice. The boy was given his prænomen when he put on the toga virilis at sixteen or seventeen and the girl when she was married. The wife at marriage took the nomen of her husband's family, but this was not often a change from her own family as usually marriages were between members of the same gens. In later times, when marriage did not mean so much, and divorces became frequent, the wife did not take her husband's nomen but she was known by the nomen of her father's gens.