Pompeius Magnus, among the decorations of his theatre,[944] erected certain statues of remarkable persons, which had been executed with the greatest care by artists of the very highest reputation. Among others, we here read an inscription to the following effect: “Eutychis,[945] of Tralles,[946] was borne to the funeral pile by twenty of her children, having had thirty in all.”[947] Also, Alcippe[948] was delivered of an elephant[949]—but then that must be looked upon as a prodigy; as in the case, too, where, at the commencement of the Marsian war,[950] a female slave was delivered of a serpent.[951] Among these monstrous births, also, there are beings produced which unite in one body the forms of several creatures. For instance, Claudius Cæsar informs us, in his writings, that a Hippocentaur was born in Thessaly, but died on the same day: and indeed I have seen one myself, which in the reign of that emperor was brought to him from Egypt, preserved in honey.[952] We have a case, also, of a child at Saguntum, which returned immediately into its mother’s womb, the same year in which that place was destroyed by Hannibal.
(4.) The change of females into males is undoubtedly no fable. We find it stated in the Annals, that, in the consulship of P. Licinius Crassus and C. Cassius Longinus,[953] a girl, who was living at Casinum[954] with her parents, was changed into a boy; and that, by the command of the Aruspices, he was conveyed away to a desert island. Licinius Mucianus informs us, that he once saw at Argos a person whose name was then Arescon, though he had been formerly called Arescusa: that this person had been married to a man, but that, shortly after, a beard and marks of virility made their appearance, upon which he took to himself a wife. He had also seen a boy at Smyrna,[955] to whom the very same thing had happened. I myself saw in Africa one L. Cossicius, a citizen of Thysdris,[956] who had been changed into a man the very day on which he was married to a husband.[957] When women are delivered of twins, it rarely happens but that either the mother herself, or one, at least, of the twins perishes.[958] If, however, the twins should happen to be of different sexes, it is less probable that both of them will survive. Female children are matured more quickly than males,[959] and become old sooner. Of the two, male children most frequently are known to move in the womb;[960] they mostly lie on the right side of the body, females on the left.[961]
CHAP. 4. (5.)—THE GENERATION OF MAN; UNUSUAL DURATION OF PREGNANCY; INSTANCES OF IT FROM SEVEN TO TWELVE MONTHS.
In other animals the period of gestation and of birth is fixed and definite, while man, on the other hand, is born at all seasons of the year,[962] and without any certain period of gestation;[963] for one child is born at the seventh month, another at the eighth, and so on, even to the beginning of the tenth and eleventh. Those children which are born before the seventh month are never known to survive;[964] unless, indeed, they happen to have been conceived the day before or the day after the full moon, or at the change of the moon. In Egypt it is not an uncommon thing for children to be born at the eighth month; and in Italy, too, children that are born at this period live just as long as others, notwithstanding the opinions of the ancients to the contrary. There are great variations in this respect, which occur in numerous ways. Vestilia, for instance, who was the wife of C. Herdicius, and was afterwards married, first, to Pomponius,[965] and then to Orfitus, very eminent citizens, after having brought forth four children, always at the seventh month, had Suillius Rufus at the eleventh month, and then Corbulo at the seventh, both of whom became consuls; after which, at the eighth month, she had Cæsonia, who became the wife of the Emperor Caius.[966] As for children who are born at the eighth month, the greatest difficulty with them is to get them over the first forty days.[967] Pregnant women, on the other hand, are in the greatest danger during the fourth and the eighth month, and abortions during these periods are fatal. Masurius informs us, that L. Papirius, the prætor, on one occasion, when the next but one in succession was urging his suit at law, decided against him, in favour of the heir,[968] although his mother declared that her period of gestation had lasted thirteen months—upon the ground that it did not appear that there was any fixed and definite period of gestation.[969]
CHAP. 5. (6.)—INDICATIONS OF THE SEX OF THE CHILD DURING THE PREGNANCY OF THE MOTHER.[970]
On the tenth day after conception, pains are felt in the head, vertigo, and dimness of the sight; these signs, together with loathing of food and rising of the stomach, indicate the formation of the future human being. If it is a male that is conceived, the colour of the pregnant woman is more healthy,[971] and the birth less painful: the child moves in the womb upon the fortieth day. In the conception of a child of the other sex, all the symptoms are totally different: the mother experiences an almost insupportable weight, there is a slight swelling of the legs and the groin, and the first movement of the child is not felt until the ninetieth day. But, whatever the sex of the child, the mother is sensible of the greatest languor at the time when the hair of the fœtus first begins to grow, and at the full moon; at which latter time it is that children newly born are exposed to the greatest danger. In addition to this, the mode of walking, and indeed everything that can be mentioned, is of consequence in the case of a woman who is pregnant. Thus, for instance, women who have used too much salted meat will bring forth children without nails: parturition, too, is more difficult, if they do not hold their breath. It is fatal, too, to yawn during labour;[972] and abortion ensues, if the female should happen to sneeze just after the sexual congress.
(7.) It is a subject for pity, and even for a feeling of shame, when one reflects that the origin of the most vain of all animated beings is thus frail: so much so, indeed, that very often the smell even of a lamp just extinguished is a cause of abortion.[973] From such beginnings as these springs the tyrant, from such the murderous dispositions of men. Thou man, who placest thy confidence in the strength of thy body, thou, who dost embrace the gifts of Fortune, and look upon thyself, not only as her fosterling, but even as her own born child, thou, whose mind is ever thirsting for blood,[974] thou who, puffed up with some success or other, dost think thyself a god—by how trifling a thing might thy life have been cut short! Even this very day, something still less even may have the same effect, the puncture, for instance, of the tiny sting of the serpent; or even, as befell the poet Anacreon,[975] the swallowing of the stone of a raisin, or of a single hair in a draught of milk, by which the prætor and senator, Fabius, was choked, and so met his death. He only, in fact, will be able to form a just estimate of the value of life, who will always bear in mind the extreme frailty of its tenure.
CHAP. 6. (8.)—MONSTROUS BIRTHS.
It is contrary to nature for children to come into the world with the feet first, for which reason such children are called Agrippæ, meaning that they are born with difficulty.[976] In this manner, M. Agrippa[977] is said to have been born; the only instance, almost, of good fortune, out of the number of all those who have come into the world under these circumstances. And yet, even he may be considered to have paid the penalty of the unfavourable omen produced by the unnatural mode of his birth, in the unfortunate weakness of his legs, the misfortunes of his youth, a life spent in the very midst of arms and slaughter, and ever exposed to the approaches of death; in his children, too, who have all proved a very curse to the earth, and more especially, the two Agrippinas, who were the mothers respectively of Caius and of Domitius Nero,[978] so many firebrands hurled among the human race. In addition to all this, we may add the shortness of his life, he being cut off in his fifty-first year, the distress which he experienced from the adulteries of his wife,[979] and the grievous tyranny to which he was subjected by his father-in-law. Agrippina, too, the mother of Nero, who was lately Emperor, and who proved himself, throughout the whole of his reign, the enemy of the human race, has left it recorded in writing, that he was born with his feet first. It is in the due order of nature that man should enter the world with the head first, and be carried to the tomb in a contrary fashion.