Ancient Rome and Modern Italy 17 



Other vile fumigations and repulsive potions recommended for 

 this purpose depended upon the use of such things as excrescences 

 from the legs of horses, their hoofs, and their dung. 73 



An Italian amulet against uterine pain is the first tooth that 

 was shed by one of the mother's own children. 74 For the same 

 purpose a girdle that is made of sealskin may be worn. 75 But in 

 neither case can I guess at any possible line of reasoning that can 

 go on about it in a user's mind. Perhaps it comes to nothing more 

 than a willingness to try anything when in desperate pain. Mere 

 strangeness may be a recommendation for a remedy among ig- 

 norant, superstitious people. 



Romans believed that a taper kindled in honor of Candelifera 

 kept away the evil spirits. 76 These seemed to have disliked the 

 light and the smell of lights. They were thought to be partic- 

 ularly pestiferous during a woman's pregnancy and parturition. 

 In Italy there is still current a strong belief that a light must be 

 kept burning constantly to safeguard the baby against demons 

 until he has received the protection of baptism. 77 Once he is made 

 a Christian, he is relatively secure against the powers of darkness. 

 But there are also, I need hardly add, purely religious reasons 

 that prompt a pious Roman Catholic to keep an oil lamp or 

 candle which has been blessed attached somewhere to the woman's 

 bed. 78 Moreover, holy water must be at hand to use, if an 

 emergency should arise, for the baptism of the newborn child. 

 The rite may have to be performed by either doctor or nurse when 

 there is no priest living near enough to arrive in time in answer 

 to a summons. 79 



When a Roman woman was in the pangs of childbirth, she 

 would regularly turn for support to one of the major divine 

 powers, Juno Lucina or Diana Lucina, goddesses who brought 

 babies safely into the light of day {lux), quite as in Rome, at this 

 writing, parturient women address themselves to the Madonna 

 in Santa Maria Maggiore. Some antiquarians have thought, in- 

 deed, that that great basilica occupies the site of a temple of 

 Juno Lucina. A table of food was set out for her, after the 

 woman whom she had been helping in the birth of her child had 

 had a successful issue. 80 Some deliveries must have given the 

 goddess a sharp appetite. Two other divinities, Pilumnus and 

 Picumnus, received a similar collation. 81 Two thousand years 



