Noctes Atticae
Gellius, Aulus
Gellius, Aulus. The Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius. Rolfe, John C., translator. Cambridge, Mass.; London: Harvard University Press; William Heinemann, 1927 (printing).
The strange thing recorded of partridges by Theophrastus and of hares by Theopompus.
THEOPHRASTUS, most expert of philosophers, declares [*](Frag. 182, Wimmer.) that in Paphlagonia all the partridges have two hearts; Theopompus, [*](F.H.G. i. 301.) that in Bisaltia the hares have two livers each.
That the name Agrippa was given to those whose birth was difficult and unnatural; and of the goddesses called Prorsa and Postverta.
THOSE at whose birth the feet appeared first, instead of the head, which is considered the most difficult and dangerous form of parturition, are called Agrippae, a word formed from aegritudo, or
difficulty,and pedes (feet). But Varro says [*](Ant. Rer. Div. xiv, frag. 17 b, Agahd.) that the position of children in the womb is with the head lowest and the feet raised up, not according to the nature of a man, but of a tree. For he likens the branches of a tree to the feet and legs, and the stock and trunk to the head.
Accordingly,says he,
when they chanced to be turned upon their feet in an unnatural position, since their arms are usually extended they are wont to be held back, and then women give birth with greater difficulty. For the purpose of averting this danger altars were set up at Rome to the two Carmentes, [*](Carmenta was a birth-goddess, whose festival, the Carmentalia (or Karmentalia) occurred on Jan. 11 and 15. The Carmentes may originally have been wise women who assisted at births and were later deified (Fowler, Roman Festivals, pp 290 ff.).) of whom one was called Postverta, [*](That is, head foremost.) the other Prorsa, [*](That is, feet foremost.) named from natural and unnatural births, and their power over them.
Of the origin of the term ager Vaticanus.
WE had been told that the ager Vaticanus, or
Vatican region,and the presiding deity of the same place, took their names from the vaticinia, or
prophecies,which were wont to be made in that region through the power and inspiration of that god. But in addition to that reason Marcus Varro, in his Antiquities of the Gods, states [*](Frag. 20b, Agahd.) that there is another explanation of the name: For,
says he, just as Aius was called a god and the altar was erected in his honour which stands at the bottom of the Nova Via, because in that place a voice from heaven was heard, so that god was called Vaticanus who controls the beginnings of human speech, since children, as soon as they are born, first utter the sound which forms the first syllable of Vaticanus; hence the word vagire ('cry'), which represents the sound of a new-born infant's voice.