136 
plint's katueal history. 
[Book yii. 
Egypt,® as many as seven children are occasionally produced at 
one birth. ^ 
Individuals are occasionally born, who belong to both sexes ; 
such persons we call by the name of hermaphrodites ; they 
were formerly called Androgyni, and were looked upon as 
monsters, but at the present day they are employed for sensual 
purposes. 
Pompeius Magnus, among the decorations of his theatre, 
erected certain statues of remarkable persons, which had been 
executed with the greatest care by artists of the very highest 
Anim. B. vii., " One woman, at four births, gave birth to twenty children. 
For she brought forth five at a time, and the greater part of them were 
reared." 
s It was a very general opinion, that the waters of the Nile possess the 
property of promoting fecundity. Seneca mentions it as an acknowledged 
fact, Xat. Quaest. B. iii. c. 25.— B. 
9 There are well-authenticated accounts of four children having been 
produced at one birth ; hut, heyond this, we have no statements in which 
we cm place much confidence. In a note by Dalechamps, we have an 
example of the credulity of the authors who have treated on this topic, as 
well modern as ancient. — B. In the recent volumes, however, of *' Notes 
and Queries," we find some apparently well-authenticated cases of women 
being delivered of five children at a birth. Nathaniel "Wanley, in his 
Wonders of the Little World," also gives some apparently authentic in- 
stances of as many as five children being born at a birth : but we must be 
excused giving credit to the story, quoted by him, of Matilda or Margaret, 
Countess of Henneberg, who was said to have been delivered, on the Fri- 
day before Palm-Sunday, in 1276, " of 365 children, half sons and half 
daughters, with the exception of one, which was an hermaphrodite, all 
complete and well-fashioned, of the bigness of chickens new hatched, 
saith Gamerarius." 
10 From Hermaphroditus, the son of Hermes or Mercury, and Aphrodite 
or Venus. According to the poetic story as told by Ovid, Met. B. iv., he 
was united in one body, which bore the characteristics of both sexes, with 
the nymph Salmacis. 
11 Two cases of this description are mentioned by Livy, B. xxvii. c. 37, 
and B. xxxi. c. 12. In this latter passage, Livy enumerates the following 
prodigious births ; among the Sabines, two children of doubtful sex ; at 
Frusino, a lamb with a sow's head ; at Sinuessa, a pig with a human 
head ; and among the Lucani, a foal with five feet. He informs us that 
the hermaphrodites were thrown into the sea. — B. 
12 Cuvier says, " From time to time we do see persons of this nature ; 
and it is not long ago that such a being was exhibited in Paris, though 
certainly not of a nature to have been ' in deliciis,* at the present day.'* 
13 Pliny gives further particulars of this theatre in B. xxxvi. c. 24. It 
was the first stone theatre erected at Home, and was built B.C. 55, and 
contained 40,000 spectators. 
