Chap. 11.] INSTANCES OF NUMEROUS OFFSPRING. 149 



of certain persons, which, though barren with respect to 

 each other, are not so when united to others ; 74 such, for in- 

 stance, was the case with Augustus and Livia. 75 Certain in- 

 dividuals, again, both men and women, produce only females, 

 others males ; and, still more frequently, children of the two 

 sexes alternately ; the mother of the Gracchi, for instance, 

 who had twelve children, and Agrippina, the mother of Ger- 

 manicus, who had nine. Some women, again, are barren in 

 their youth, while to others it is given to bring forth once only 

 during their lives. Some women never go to their full time, 

 or if, by dint of great care and the aid of medicine, they do 

 give birth to a living child, it is mostly a girl. Among other 

 instances of rare occurrence, is the case of Augustus, now 

 deified, who, in the year in which he departed this life, wit- 

 nessed the birth of M. Silanus, 76 the grandson of his grand- 

 daughter : having obtained the government of Asia, after 

 his consulship, he was poisoned by J^ero, on his accession to the 

 throne. 



Q. Metellus Macedonicus, 77 leaving six children, left eleven 

 grandsons also, with daughters-in-law and sons -in- law, 7S 

 twenty-seven individuals in all, who addressed him by the 

 name and title of father. In the records of the times of the 

 Emperor Augustus, now deified, we find it stated that, in his 

 twelfth consulship, Lucius Sylla being his colleague, on the 



74 This opinion is maintained hy Hippocrates, and by Aristotle, Hist. 

 Anim. B. vii. c. 8, and is referred to by Lucretius, B. iv. c. 1242, et 

 scq. B. 



75 The case of Livia and that of Agrippina, referred to hy Pliny, are 

 mentioned hy Suetonius, in the Life of Augustus, c. 63 ; and that of Ca- 

 ligula, c. 7. B. 



76 M. Junius Silanus, consul under Claudius, A.D. 46, with Valerius 

 Asiaticus. He was poisoned hy order of the younger Agrippina, that he 

 might not stand in the way of Nero. 



77 He is first mentioned in B.C. 168, when he was serving in the army 

 of JEmilius Paulus, in Macedonia, and was sent to Rome with two other 

 envoys to announce the defeat of Perseus. He united with the aristocracy 

 in opposing the measures of the Gracchi ; and the speech which he delivered 

 against Tiberius Gracchus, is spoken of by Cicero in high terms, as replete 

 with true eloquence. 



78 He left four sons and two daughters ; some writers say three. The 

 ten individuals, over and above his children and grandchildren, may have 

 consisted of the wives and husbands of his sons and daughters then living, 

 as also of others who hud died in his lifetime. 



