Ancient Rome and Modern Italy 9 



The region of Perugia offers folklore on our subject which is 

 sufficiently absurd to match the superstitions of even the most 

 primitive age. In order to escape pregnancy a woman must avoid 

 the greeting or even the glance of a midwife and, during inter- 

 course, hold a container of mercury on her chest or wear a bit of 

 stag skin. Alternatives are to drink in wine scrapings from the 

 hoof of a mule or some steel filings. 9 The contribution of the 

 mule is explicable, 93 the avoidance of a midwife is consonant with 

 magic doctrine, but just how the metals are going to do their 

 work I must leave to others to conjecture. 



We wish that we possessed something comparable with modern 

 detailed statistics on births and deaths for any ancient city, but 

 we have but little information on which to build. Interest cen- 

 tered then on rare or sensational phenomena, such as prolonged 

 or abbreviated gestation, 10 Caesarotomy, 11 the birth of mon- 

 strosities, 12 mutation of sex, 13 and multiparity. 14 The cure of 

 sterility and the use of aphrodisiacs and anaphrodisiacs much en- 

 gaged the attention of medical men and, we need hardly add, of 

 the immortal tribe of quacks and operators in magic. Why should 

 any woman continue to grieve over her childlessness, when con- 

 ception within three days was guaranteed her if she would eat in 

 her food the eye of a hyaena along with some licorice and anise? 15 

 Another insurance was to take in drink, they said, certain little 

 worms to the number of five or seven. 16 Pliny says that the 

 dung of hawks taken in honied wine seems to make women 

 fruitful. 17 So, too, eating partridge eggs. 18 Some agents that 

 were recommended belong in the field of magic and are conse- 

 quently utterly absurd. 19 



The excitants to venery and their opposites, the anaphrodisi- 

 acs, in which the Romans were asked to put their trust when 

 they wished to arouse passion in a loved one or make it futile 

 in some rival, range from those which are primarily pharma- 

 ceutical to those that may be termed purely magical. The drugs 

 mentioned in literature would be, we know, in some cases power- 

 less, except for their effect upon the mind, in others, likely to pro- 

 duce the opposite effect, and in still others, so dangerous to use 

 that insanity or death, as ancient writers themselves recognize, 

 could be the result. Since, however, the Roman husband and 

 wife of our present account may be considered an ordinary healthy 



