Chap. 7.] OF THOSE CUT OUT OF THE WOMB. 143 



only instance, almost, of good fortune, out of the number of 

 all those who have come into the world under these circum- 

 stances. And yet, even he may be considered to have paid 

 the penalty of the unfavourable omen produced by the un- 

 natural 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, 47 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, 48 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. 



CHA.P. 7. (9.) OF THOSE WHO HA.VE BEEN CUT OUT OF THE WOMB. 



Those children, whose birth has cost the mother her life, are 

 evidently born under more favourable auspices ; for such was 

 the case with the first Scipio Africanus ; the first, too, of the 

 Caesars was so named, from his having been removed by an in- 

 cision in his mother's womb. For a similar reason, too, the 

 Csesones were called by that name. 49 Manilius, also, who en- 

 tered Carthage with his army, was born in a similar manner. 



47 Agrippina, the daughter of Agrippa and Julia, was the mother of 

 the Emperor Caligula ; and of a second Agrippina, who became the 

 mother of Nero, by whose order she was put to death. B. 



4 * Julia, the daughter of Augustus, so notorious for her depravity, who, 

 as already stated, was the wife of Agrippa. B. See c. 46 of the present 

 Book. 



49 From caedo, * to cut," apparently. The Caesones were a branch of 

 the Fabian family. There has been considerable difference of opinion 

 among the commentators respecting the individuals referred to in this 

 Chapter.. The subject is discussed at length in the Notes of Hardouin, 

 Lemaire, vol. iii. p. 62. B. So in Macbeth, act v. sc. 7, Macduff says to 

 Macbeth 



