CONCEPTION, BIRTH AND INFANCY IN ANCIENT 

 ROME AND MODERN ITALY 



There have been many scholars who have sought to learn all 

 that they could from ancient art and literature about the Roman 

 child. They have written articles and books that have dealt with 

 such matters as conception and the methods which some used to 

 prevent it, the pregnancy and parturition of the mother, and the 

 period of infancy. On these topics no classical specialist can hope 

 to add much that is new to what has been already published in 

 one language or another. But there is a somewhat novel angle 

 from which he can approach them. Very rarely, indeed, has any 

 researcher or literary writer paid the slightest attention to the 

 birth and early life of a modern Italian baby, Giulio or Giulia, 

 for the purpose of instituting the interesting and sometimes, I 

 believe, illuminating comparisons which can be made with the 

 life of Julius and Julia, their remote ancestors. It is this com- 

 parative method that I have used in all my study of the ancient 

 Romans, and now, as I am nearing, supposedly, the period of my 

 own second childhood, I can see a certain appropriateness in 

 turning my attention to matters that are concerned with the in- 

 fancy of man. 



Perhaps few of my readers have had occasion to consider how 

 small a portion of Latin writing from the Republican and early 

 Imperial periods of Roman history has actually survived. If we 

 only had more of the letters that were interchanged, more of the 

 orations that were delivered, more of the ordinary personal poetry 

 that was composed, and, particularly, more of the public and 

 private inscriptions that were cut, scratched, and painted, we 

 might form rather different opinions of the people as a whole. It 

 is quite possible that Father Time, however grudging we class- 

 icists may consider him to have been, has actually allowed to 

 reach our age a generous representation of Rome's best literature, 

 but we must remember that works that deserve praise from the 

 point of view of literary art may yet be far from dependable 

 sources to use too exclusively in judging an entire civilization. It 

 has been unfortunate for the Romans that so many of her most 

 widely read and most entertaining authors have belonged to a 



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