GREAT MEN OF ANCIENT TIMES. I3I 



I do not have the date of birth of any of the ancestors of Augus- 

 tus, but I find that his great-grandfather was present at the battle 

 of Cannae, 216 B. C, and was one of the few who escaped alive. 

 If this ancestor were eighteen at that time, then his birth would 

 be located in 234 B. C, and we have (234 — 63)^-3=57 years 

 each for three generations to Augustus. The great-grandfather 

 could hardly be younger than eighteen, and very likely he was 

 older, in which case the steps from father to son would average 

 more than fifty-seven years each. To contemplate such a distance 

 I will ask the reader how many cases he knows of a son being born 

 to a father fifty-seven years old, and if he ever heard of such a 

 thing happening twice in succession, to say nothing of three times. 



OTHER FAMOUS ROMANS. 



Julius Caesar was born 100 B. C. Of his ancestors I have 

 nothing, but I find that his son Caesarion was born when Caesar 

 was fifty-three years old, which simply illustrates the fact that 

 the Romans reproduced late in life. 



Scipio Africanus Major was born 243 B. C. I do not have the 

 birth of any of his ancestors, but going back to his great-grand- 

 father I find that the distance between the times when the father, 

 the grandfather and the great-grandfather became consuls aver- 

 ages forty years. 



Sulla was dictator in 81 B. C. His grandfather was praetor 

 105 years previous, which would make the average distance be- 

 tween generations fifty-two or fifty-three, assuming that the ages 

 at which they held office were the same. They might differ widely, 

 yet Sulla would rank high in our scale. 



One Cato was consul, 195 B. C. Three generations later another 

 Cato was praetor, in 54 B. C, making an average of forty-seven 



