Ancient Rome and Modern Italy 27 



of their efforts abound. 126 In all of this they are true descendants 

 of Roman women who would drink decoctions of plants 127 and eat 

 parts of such animals as hares and cocks 128 as sex determinants, 

 and resort to senseless forms of divination 129 to learn what success 

 was in store. Since there was, we may suppose, nearly a 50-50 

 chance that the prognostic would turn out true, luck might give 

 any method a considerable reputation. According to ancient di- 

 viners, even to dream of a son was better than to dream of a 

 daughter. The vision of a girl implied the need of providing a 

 dowery, and she was, therefore, as it were, a sort of creditor. 130 

 Nor is it without significance to a person of fancy that the naming- 

 d ay of a girl was the eighth day after birth, while a boy's was on 

 the ninth. An extra twenty-four hours needed to settle on his 

 praenomen! In Italy of the present, the Christian present, the 

 baptism of a boy is likely to be esteemed the more important. 131 



One of the tales of Greek mythology that delight our fancy by 

 the naive criminality which is set forth in them tells how Cronus 

 acted like a jack rabbit, eating his children as fast as they were 

 born. When his wife Rhea gave birth to Zeus, she defeated this 

 habitual cannibalism by handing him a stone, swathed in strips of 

 cloth, which he thereupon swallowed, quite unaware that he was 

 still the father of a living infant. Even if we wish to fancy that 

 Cronus, as the aged God of Time, had reached an extreme stage of 

 senile gullibility, it is hardly comprehensible how he could have 

 been deceived by such a substitution. But the myth does become 

 a little more reasonable as soon as one has seen with his own eyes 

 the likeness to an elongated medicinal capsule which a Greek or an 

 Italian infant often bears when it has been wound with a swad- 

 dling-band some five inches wide and several yards in length. 

 When baby's one piece garment, fascia, is flying from a clothesline 

 on a Neapolitan roof, or is hanging in all its undulating length from 

 the rail of a balcony to dry in the sun, a foreigner who is a stranger 

 to Italian ways could readily mistake it for a pennant, a home- 

 made decoration for some festa. Still more do the bands resemble 

 pennants when they have received the maternal tribute of "Gioia 

 Mia", "Delizia Mia", or "Idolo Mio", interwoven in the material, 

 words of endearment and good omen for which no mother who 

 reads aloud the words can need any translation from me. Two 

 thousand years ago the bands were sometimes dyed in color: an 



