Читать книгу The Natural History of Pliny (Vol. 1-6) - Pliny the Elder - Страница 317

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(3.) That three children are sometimes produced at one birth, is a well-known fact; the case, for instance, of the Horatii and the Curiatii. Where a greater number of children than this is produced at one birth, it is looked upon as portentous, except, indeed, in Egypt, where the water of the river Nile, which is used for drink, is a promoter of fecundity.937 Very recently, towards the close of the reign of the Emperor Augustus, now deified, a certain woman of the lower orders, at Ostia, whose name was Fausta, brought into the world, at one birth, two male children and two females, a presage, no doubt, of the famine which shortly after took place. We find it stated, also, that in Peloponnesus, a woman was delivered of five938 children at a birth four successive times, and that the greater part of all these children survived. Trogus informs us, that in Egypt,939 as many as seven children are occasionally produced at one birth.940

Individuals are occasionally born, who belong to both sexes; such persons we call by the name of hermaphrodites;941 they were formerly called Androgyni, and were looked upon as monsters,942 but at the present day they are employed for sensual purposes.943

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, Alcippe948 was delivered of an elephant949—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 Casinum954 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