138 
PLINT's ISTATUliAL HISTORY. 
[Book VII. 
also, of a child at Saguntum, which returned immediately into 
its mother's womb, the same year in which that place was 
destroyed by Hannibal. 
(4 ) The change of females into males is undoubtedly no 
fable. We find it stated in the Annals, tbat, in the consulship 
of P. Licinius Crassus and C. Cassius Longinus,^^ a girl, who 
was living at Casinum^^ with her parents, was changed into a 
boy ; and that, by the command of the Aruspices, he was con- 
veyed away to a desert island. Licinius Mucianus informs us, 
that he once saw at Argos a person whose name was then Ares- 
con, though he had been formerly called Arescusa : that this per- 
son had been married to a man, but that, shortly after, a beard 
and marks of virility made their appearance, upon which he 
took to himself a wife. He had also seen a boy at Smyrna,^^ to 
whom the very same thing had happened. I myself saw in 
Africa one L. Cossicius, a citizen of Thysdris,^^ who had been 
changed into a man the very day on which he was married 
to a husband .^^ When women are delivered of twins, it rarely 
additions which the story had gained, in the writings of various authors. 
Oicero, in various parts of his writings, refers to the account of the Hippo- 
centaur as a fabulous tale ; Tusc. Quaest. B. i. c. 27 ; de Nat. Deor. B. i. c. 
38, and B. ii. c. 2 ; De Divin. B. ii. c. 21.~B. 
22 Consuls A.u.c. 581. 
23 See B. iii. c. 9. Hardouin remarks that Aulus Gellius, in copying 
from this passage, seems to have read the word Casini," as though it 
were C. Asinii, meaning that the boy belonged to one C. Asinius. How- 
ever, it is pretty clear that the reading adopted is the right one, PUny 
having been careful to give the various localities at which these wonderful 
facts occurred. 
2* Phlegon tells us that this happened in the first year of Nero, and that 
tlie name of the youth, while supposed to be a girl, was Philotis. 
25 See B. V. c. 4, 5. 
A case of this description is mentioned by Ambrose Pare. The indi- 
vidual was brought up as a girl, but, in consequence of a sudden muscular 
exertion, the organs of the male were developed, which had previously 
been concealed internally. It may be remarked, that a great proportion 
of the well-authenticated cases of a supposed change of sex have been from 
the female to the male, evidently of the kind mentioned by Pare, where 
the male organs have been concealed in childhood, and become subsequently 
developed. Cases, however, have occasionally occurred of the contrary 
kind, arising probably from the unusual size of the clitoris ; there are also 
certain cases, where, from the malformation of the parts, the sex is actually 
doubtful, or where even a certain degree of the two may exist, as has 
been stated above, in Note 51 to Chapter 2. This paragraph of Phny is 
quoted by Aulus Gellius, B. ix. c. 4.— B. 
