BOOK VII. .wi. 76-xix. 79 



in Belgic Gaul. The Greeks call these cases 

 ' perverts,' but in the Latin country there is no 

 name for them. 



XVII. It has been noticed tliat a man's height from //'"'""' 

 head to foot is equal to his full span " measured from and weight. 

 the tips of the middle fingers ; likewise that the 

 right-hand side of the frame is the stronger, though 



in some cases both sides are equally strong and 

 there are people whose left side is the stronger, 

 though this is never the case with women ; and that 

 males are the heavier; and that the bodies of all 

 creatures are heavier when dead than when ahve, 

 and when asleep than when awake ; and that men's 

 corpses float on their backs, but women's on their 

 faces, as if nature spared their modestv after death. 



XVIII. Cases are recorded of persons living whose varyingneed 

 bones were sohd and without marrow ; and we are told ofiiquid. 

 that their distinguishing mark is insensibihty to 



thirst and absence of perspiration, although we know 

 that thirst can also be subdued by the will, and that 

 a Knight of Rome of the alhed tribe of the Vocontii 

 named JuHus Viator, suffering from dropsy when a 

 minor, was forbidden hquid by the doctors and 

 habituated himself to defeat nature, going without 

 drink till old age. Moreover other persons also 

 have exercised many kinds of self-control. 



XIX. It is stated that Crassus the grandfather o{ pecuiiar 

 Crassus ^ who fell in Parthia never laughed, and was """^^*- 

 consequently called Agelastus, and that Ukewise there 



have been many cases of people who never wept, 

 and that the famous philosopher Socrates always 

 wore the same look on his countenance, never gayer 

 and never more perturbed. This temperament 

 sometimes develops into a kind of rigidity and a 



557 



