1870.] On Idiocy. 51 



had died from a peculiar incapacity for receiving nourishment in 

 the usual way. This defect is common enough in profound idiots. 

 Under the most favourable circumstances the Roman infant had 

 a sharp struggle for existence, and the amount of the mortality of 

 the young may be estimated, if we leave the question of idiocy out, 

 by the number of skeletons discovered in the " suggrundaria " — 

 under the eaves and close to the walls of houses. At Chester ford * 

 no less than fifteen skeletons of infants were found close to the walls 

 of a Roman villa discovered in 1852. The bodies were associated 

 with a corresponding number of small vessels of Roman manu- 

 facture. It would seem that their parents had done all in their 

 power by providing them with nourishment to soothe them and stop 

 the crying, which Virgil, in the narrative of the descent of iEneas 

 to Hades, in the 6th book of the iEneid, mentions thus : — 



"Vagitus et in gens, 

 Infantumque animae ilentes in limine primo." 



The shades of the children were crying, and on the first 

 threshold, that is just without the doors — an allusion no doubt to 

 the place of their sepulture. The laws against intramural burial 

 extended to the case of children who were subject to be buried in 

 the cemeteries but not to be burned. Pliny tells us that children 

 cut their teeth in the seventh month ! ! ! and proceeds to inform us 

 that it was not customary to burn their bodies before that time. 

 Juvenal also describes the funeral of a child without fire — 



" Terra clauditur infans, et minor igne rogi." 



Fulgentius says that baby bodies were not burned until they 

 were forty days old. There is, then, some reason for believing that 

 the interment laws were broken in the case of such children as were 

 idiotic and still-born. These were buried quietly in the " suggrun- 

 daria." 



Those idiots whom we call simpletons, and who are not 

 really solitaries, but approach the lowest types of the perfect in 

 mind, were doubtless common in those Roman families where there 

 was wealth and freedom from the usual active competition with the 

 world. Doubtless there was many a big Roman, solemn and staid- 

 looking, who was studiously silent and dressed in the quietest toga, 

 just as there are magnificent-looking men, but, oh, how simple, who 

 now-a-days follow the wise precept of holding the tongue and 

 wearing black. The range of mental deficiency, from the true 

 solitary through those who are mimics and mischievous incapables, 

 to the solemn and sometimes witty fool who just verges on the 



* An admirable description of this discovery, from which I have quoted largely, 

 is in the ' Trans. Essex Arch. Soc ' 1858, bv the late Lord Braybrooke. 



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