WHAT MEN ARE SUITED FOR GENERATION. INSTANCES OF VERY NUMEROUS OFFSPRING

Latine · Mayhoff 1906

Est quaedam privatim dissociatio corporum, et inter se steriles, ubi cum aliis iunxere se, gignunt, sicut Augustus et Livia. item alii aliaeque feminas tantum generant aut mares, plerumque et alternant, sicut Gracchorum mater duodeciens et Agrippina Germanici noviens. aliis sterilis est iuventa, aliis semel in vita datur gignere. quaedam non perferunt partus, quales, si quando medicina et cura vicere, feminam fere gignunt. Divus Augustus in reliqua exemplorum raritate neptis suae nepotem vidit genitum quo excessit anno, M. Silanum, qui, cum Asiam obtineret post consulatum Neronis principis successione, veneno eius interemptus est. Q. Metellus Macedonicus, cum sex liberos relinqueret, XI nepotes reliquit, nurus vero generosque et omnes, qui se patris appellatione salutarent, XXVII. in act is temporum Divi Augusti invenitur duodecimo consulatu eius L.que Sulla collega a. d. III. idus Aprilis C. Crispinium Hilarum ex ingenua plebe Faesulana cum liberis VIII, in quo numero filiae duae fuere, nepotibus XXVII, pronepotibus XVIII, neptibus VIII, praelata pompa tum omnibus, in Capitolio immolasse.

English · Bostock & Riley 1855–57

There exists a kind of peculiar antipathy between the bodies of certain persons, which, though barren with respect to each other, are not so when united to others; such, for instance, was the case with Augustus and Livia. Certain individuals, 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 Germanicus, 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, witnessed 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 third day before the ides of April, C. Crispinus Hilarus, a man of a respectable family of the plebeian order, living at Fæesulæ, came to the Capitol, to offer sacrifice, attended by eight children (of whom two were daughters), twenty-eight grandsons, nineteen great-grandsons, and eight granddaughters, who all followed him in a lengthened train.