22 Conception, Birth and Infancy in 



that we do possess declare their importance in the life of their 

 elders, and, in some cases, reveal an emotional tenderness which 

 one expects to find in a modern Italian, but perhaps not in the old 

 Roman with whom we associate the cruelties of war, the gladia- 

 torial games, and the wild beast fights. In some delightful lines 

 with which Vergil ends his fourth Eclogue he urges the baby who 

 has caused his mother ten long months of travail in bearing him 

 to begin to know her with a smile: 100 "Those who have never 

 smiled on their parents, no god honors with his table, no goddess 

 with her bed." The Tuscan peasant calls the sudden fleeting smile 

 which a mere infant sometimes gives, benedetto, "blessed." The 

 little innocent sees the angels whom we cannot see. 101 If a butter- 

 fly appears near the cradle, the Calabrian recognizes it as an angel, 

 or some baby's soul. 102 Prosaic doctors may say that the smile 

 comes simply from baby's sense of well-being, but Italian mothers 

 and discerning poets will always see in it something of heaven, 

 something divine. On the other hand, a habitual smiling in the 

 first forty days of life is interpreted by the superstitious to be a sign 

 of coming misfortune. 103 Indeed, if a baby is in poor condition and 

 will not be quiet, or, on the other hand, is prone to smile during 

 the first forty days, it may be suspected of being a changeling. 104 

 Either the Devil is responsible for this, or some witch. Parents 

 who are convinced that the child is not their own must work on any 

 suspected person with gifts, and place the changeling at a cross- 

 road in the hope that the witch, moved to pity, will return the 

 mother's own child and take back the weird substitute. 104 



The ancients were too much interested in omens not to be im- 

 pressed with the fact that life begins with a cry, and some main- 

 tained that the much-talked-of smile of infancy — risus praecox Me, 

 as Pliny the Elder puts it — comes to no child until he has had 

 forty days of life. 105 



The student of Roman art is tempted to interpret the fondness 

 of the Romans for the baby forms of the god Cupid and of cupids 

 in their sculpture and mural paintings as evidence of that same 

 special fondness for children which is illustrated by the popularity 

 of the Bambino conception of Christ in the iconography of Christi- 

 anity in Italy. For the inspiration of piety there seems to be in 

 that land more dependence upon representations of the Madonna 

 and her chubby Child than upon those grim pictures of an emaci- 



