154 
pliny's natural history. 
[Book VII. 
soothsayers, that any city to which she might happen to be 
carried, would be destroyed ; she was sent to Suessa Pometia, * 
at that time a very flourishing place, but the prediction was 
ultimately verified by its destruction. Some female childi^bn 
are born with the sexual organs closed,^ a thing of very unfa- 
vourable omen ; of Avhich Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, 
is an instance. Some persons are born with a continuous bone 
in the mouth, in place of teeth ; this was the case with the 
upper jaw of the son of Prusias, the king of Bithynia.^ 
The teeth are the only parts of the body which resist the 
action of fire, and are not consumed along with the rest of it.** 
Still, however, though they are able thus to resist flame, they 
become corroded by a morbid state of the saliva. The teeth are 
whitened by certain medicinal agents.^ They are worn down 
by use, and fail in some persons long before any other part of 
the body. They are necessary, not only for the mastication of 
the food, but for many other purposes as well. It is the office 
of the front teeth to regulate the voice and the speech ; by a 
certain arrangement, they receive, as if in concert, the stroke 
communicated by the tongue, while by their structure in such 
regular order, and their size, they cut short, moderate, or soften 
^ A town of Latium • we learn from Livy, B. i. c. 53, that it was cap- 
tured and plundered by Tarquinius Superbus, but he makes no mention of 
Valeria. See B. iii. c. 9. 
2 It is stated by Seneca, De Consol. c. 16, that Cornelia survived a large 
family of children, all of whom were carried off' early in life ; of these the 
two celebrated Gracchi, Tiberius and Caius, met with violent deaths. The 
peculiarity here referred to, probably consisted in an imperforated hymen, a 
mal-formation which not very unfrequently exists, and requires a surgical 
operation, — B. 
^ This circumstance is mentioned by Val. Maximus, B. i. c. 8.— B. We 
learn from Plutarch, that the same was the case also with Pyrrhus, king of 
Epirus : Euryphjeus also, the Cyrenian, and Euryptolemus, the king of 
Cyprus. Herodotus, B. ix., speaks of a skull found on the plain of Pla- 
tcea, with a similar conformation. 
* Although the teeth, and especially their enamel, form the most inde- 
structible substance which enters into the composition of the body, it is 
not absolutely so ; a certain proportion of them consisting of animal mat- 
ter, which is consumed, when exposed to a suflScient heat ; the earthy part 
may also be dissolved by the appropriate chemical re-agents. — B. 
^ Powerful acids for instance ; but they destroy the enamel. Lord Bacon 
recommends the ashes of tobacco as a whitener of the teeth ; but that has 
been found to have a similar effect. 
