Chap. 7.] OF THOSE CUT OUT OF THE WOMB. 143 
only instance, almost, of good fortune, out of the number of 
all those who have come into the world under these circum- 
stances. And yet, even he may be considered to have paid 
the penalty of the unfavourable omen produced by the un- 
natural mode of his birth, in the unfortunate weakness of his 
legs, the misfortunes of his youth, a life spent in the very midst 
of arms and slaughter, and ever exposed to the approaches of 
death ; in his children, too, who have all proved a very curse to 
the earth, and more especially, the two Agrippinas, who were the 
mothers respectively of Caius and of Domitius ISTero,*"^ so many 
firebrands hurled among the human race. In addition to all 
this, we may add the shortness of his life, he being cut off 
in his fifty- first year, the distress which he experienced from 
the adulteries of his wife,^^ and the grievous tyranny to which 
he was subjected by his father-in-law. Agrippina, too, the 
mother of ISTero, who was lately Emperor, and who proved 
himself, throughout the whole of his reign, the enemy of the 
human race, has left it recorded in writing, that he was born 
with his feet first. It is in the due order of nature that man 
should enter the world with the head first, and be carried to 
the tomb in a contrary fashion. 
CHAP. 7. (9.) — OF THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN CUT OUT OF THE WOMB. 
Those children, whose birth has cost the mother her life, are 
evidently born under more favourable auspices ; for such was 
the case with the first Scipio Africanus ; the first, too, of the 
Caesars was so named, from his having been removed by an in- 
cision in his mother^ s womb. For a similar reason, too, the 
Csesones were called by that name.^^ Manilius, also, who en- 
tered Carthage with his army, was born in a similar manner. 
^"^ Agrippina, the daughter of Agrippa and Julia, was the mother of 
the Emperor Caligula ; and of a second Agrippina, who became the 
mother of Nero, by whose order she was put to death. — B. 
Julia, the daughter of Augustus, so notorious for her depravity, who, 
as already stated, was the wife of Agrippa. — B. See c. 46 of the present 
Book. 
4^ From csedo, **to cut," apparently. The Caesones were a branch of 
the Fabian family. There has been considerable difference of opinion 
among the commentators respecting the individuals referred to in this 
Chaptei^ The subject is discussed at length in the Notes of Hardouin, 
Lemaire, vol. iii. p. 62.— B. So in Macbeth, act v. sc. 7, Macduff says to 
Macbeth — 
