BOOK \U. ni. 33-35 



considered portentous, exeept in Egypt, where 

 drinking the water of the Nile causes fecundity. 

 Recently on the day of the obsequies of his late 

 Majesty Augustus a certain woman of the lower 

 orders named 1'austa at Ostia was deUvered of two 

 male and two female infants, which unquestionably 

 portended the food shortage that followed. We 

 also find the case of a woman in the Peloponnese who 

 four times produced quintuplets, the greater number 

 of each birth surviving. In Egypt also Trogus 

 alleges cases of seven infants born at a single 

 birth. 



Persons are also born of both sexes combined — 

 what we call Hermaphrodites, formerly called 

 androgyni and considered as portents, but now as 

 entertainments. Pompey the Great among the 

 decorations of his theatre placed images of celebrated 

 marvels, made with special elaboration for the pur- 

 pose by the talent of eminent artists ; among them 

 we read of Eutychis who at Tralles was carried to 

 her funeral pyre by twenty children and who had 

 given birth 30 times, and Alcippe who gave birth to 

 an elephant — although it is true that the latter case 

 ranks among portents, for one of the first occurrences 

 of the Marsian War" was that a maidservant gave 

 birth to a snake, and also monstrous births of various 

 kinds are recorded among the ominous things that 

 happened. Claudius Caesar writcs that a hippo- 

 centaur was born in Thessaly and died the same day ; 

 and in his rcign we actually saw one that was brought 

 here for him from Egypt preserved in honey. One 

 case is that of an infant at Saguntum which at once 

 went back into the womb, in the year * in which 

 that city was destroyed by Hannibal. 



529 



