The library was a capacious, well-lighted room, prettily frescoed, and provided with comfortably upholstered couches.  In the niches were a few choice busts:  a Sophocles, a Xenophon, an Ennius, and one or two others.  Around the room in wooden presses were the rolled volumes on Egyptian papyrus, each labelled with author and title in bright red marked on the tablet attached to the cylinder of the roll.  Here were the poets and historians of Hellas; the works of Plato, Aristotle, Callimachus, Apollonius Rhodius and the later Greek philosophers.  Here, too, were books which the Greek-hating young lady loved best of all—­the rough metres of Livius Andronicus and Cnaeus Naevius, whose uncouth lines of the old Saturnian verse breathed of the hale, hearty, uncultured, uncorrupted life of the period of the First Punic War.  Beside them were the other great Latinists:  Ennius, Plautus, Terence, and furthermore, Pacuvius and Cato Major, Lucilius, the memoirs of Sulla, the orations of Antonius “the orator” and Gracchus, and the histories of Claudius Quadrigarius and Valerius Antias.

The library became virtually Cornelia’s prison.  She read tragedy, comedy, history, philosophy,—­anything to drive from her breast her arch enemy, thought.  But if, for example, she turned to Apollonius Rhodius and read—­

  “Amidst them all, the son of AEson chief
  Shone forth divinely in his comeliness,
  And graces of his form.  On him the maid
  Looked still askance, and gazed him o’er;"[163]

  [163] Elton, translator.

straightway she herself became Medea, Jason took on the form of Drusus, and she would read no more; “while,” as the next line of the learned poet had it, “grief consumed her heart.”

Only one other recreation was left her.  Artemisia had not been taken away by Phaon, who decided that the girl was quite impotent to thwart his ends.  Cornelia devoted much of her time to teaching the bright little Greek.  The latter picked up the scraps of knowledge with a surprising readiness, and would set Cornelia a-laughing by her naivete, when she soberly intermixed her speech with bits of grave poetical and philosophical lore, uttered more for sake of sound than sense.

As a matter of fact, however, Cornelia was fast approaching a point where her position would have been intolerable.  She did not even have the stimulus that comes from an active aggressive persecution.  Drusus was in the world of action, not forgetful of his sweetheart, yet not pent up to solitary broodings on his ill-fated passion.  Cornelia was thrust back upon herself, and found herself a very discontented, wretched, love-lorn, and withal—­despite her polite learning—­ignorant young woman, who took pleasure neither in sunlight nor starlight; who saw a mocking defiance in every dimple of the sapphire bay; who saw in each new day merely a new period for impotent discontent.  Something had to determine her situation, or perhaps she would not indeed have bowed her head to her uncle’s will; but she certainly would have been driven to resolutions of the most desperate nature.