Chap. 11.] IKSTAlSrCES OF NUMEROUS OFPSPRING. 140 
of certain persons, which, though barren with respect to 
each other, are not so when united to others such, for in- 
stance, was the case with Augustus and Livia."^^ Certain in- 
dividuals, again, both men and women, produce only females, 
others males ; and, still more frequently, children of the two 
sexes alternately ; the mother of the Gracchi, for instance, 
who had twelve children, and Agrippina, the mother of Ger- 
manicus, who had nine. Some women, again, are barren in 
their youth, while to others it is given to bring forth once only 
during their lives. Some women never go to their full time, 
or if, by dint of great care and the aid of medicine, they do 
give birth to a living child, it is mostly a girl. Among other 
instances of rare occurrence, is the case of Augustus, now 
deified, who, in the year in which he departed this life, wit- 
nessed the birth of M. Silanus,^^ the grandson of his grand- 
daughter : having obtained the government of Asia, after 
his consulship, he was poisoned by Nero, on his accession to the 
throne. 
Q. Metellus Macedonicus,"^^ leaving six children, left eleven 
grandsons also, with daughters-in-law and sons-in-law,'® 
twenty- seven individuals in all, who addressed him by the 
name and title of father. In the records of the times of the 
Emperor Augustus, now deified, we find it stated that, in his 
twelfth consulship, Lucius Sylla being his colleague, on the 
This opinion is maintained by Hippocrates, and by Aristotle, Hist. 
Anim. B. vii. c. 8, and is referred to by Lucretius, B. iv. c. 1242, et 
seq. — B. 
The case of Livia and that of Agrippina, referred to by Pliny, are 
mentioned by Suetonius, in the Life of Augustus, c. 63 ; and that of Ca- 
ligula, c. 7. — B. 
'6 M. Junius Silanus, consul under Claudius, a.d. 46, with Valerius 
Asiaticus. He was poisoned by order of the younger Agrippina, that he 
might not stand in the way of Nero. 
■5^^ He is first mentioned in B.C. 168, when he was serving in the army 
of ^milius Paulus, in Macedonia, and was sent to Eome with two other 
envoys to announce the defeat of Perseus. He united with the aristocracy 
in opposing the measures of the Gracchi ; and the speech which he delivered 
against Tiberius Gracchus, is spoken of by Cicero in high terms, as replete 
with true eloquence. 
He left four sons and two daughters ; some writers say three. The 
ten individuals, over and above his children and grandchildren, may have 
consisted of the wives and husbands of his sons and daughters then living, 
as also of others who had died in his lifetime. 
